The Mad Road (6/10)
DEAN
Hanging around in the Roadhouse meant hanging around more people than Dean had had to deal with at one time since he got out of the hospital, and to be frank, it was making him just a little bit twitchy. The fact that, if he looked just right, he could just about see where the borders of the half-remembered burnt out wreckage of the Roadhouse matched with the present day one wasn't helping.
Castiel had swanned off to go look for Sam or hope or God or whatever it was angels did with themselves when they went off on their own not long after Dean pointed out "the man" who'd been following him since the hospital -- if it even was a man, which Dean wasn't entirely sure of.
Admittedly, he wasn't entirely sure of much, these days.
The things he knew: most of the world thought he was dead. He recognized people he should never have met before. He had a bitch of a time doing much of anything useful with his right hand, these days. Jo wore striped hip-hugger panties to bed, and always turned him down when he got comfortable enough to actually try to get in there with her. Which was okay, because if Ellen ever got wind of him even hitting on her when they were on the road together, he might end up dead for real.
"Hey, new kid!"
Dean's fingers slid on the damp pint glass for the umpteenth time as he tried to line it up underneath the tap. He'd almost had it that time, too, except Mr. Self-Important Hunter apparently got too impatient and the fingers on Dean's right hand had healed up too tight under the scar tissue. He could position the glass with his left hand and bump the tap on with his arm, but something told him that showing that weakness in a bar full up with hunters wasn't the best idea in the world.
Right now, he was just thankful no one had connected him with the supposedly dead guy in the motel halfway across the state. Sticking mostly with Jo over the last few months had spoiled him, and he was discovering that he really hated having to explain all that.
"Pipe down, Walt." Jo, on the other hand, handled herself behind the bar like she'd been born there, which Dean supposed was a distinct possibility. "Ain't like you need the empty calories."
A few of Walt's friends laughed at that one, giving Dean the opening he needed to finally get the glass under the tap and switch it on. It wasn't exactly the most graceful way to pour a beer, but it wasn't like Walt deserved a decent head on it. He was kinda hoping for a glass full of foam.
Jo bumped her shoulder into his. "Hey. You don't have to be back here, you know."
Dean snorted, easing the tap closed. "You kidding? I always dreamed of tending bar."
"Right." Jo rolled her eyes and pulled two bottles of PBR from the cooler under the counter with one hand, then popped them open expertly against the edge. She held them out to him. "You know I can see through you, right?"
Dean gave her a bland look. "Like what you see?"
"Not as much as you wish I did." She pushed the beers into his chest when he didn't take them right away. "Those are for Ash. Back room."
"You trying to get rid of me, Harvelle?"
"Hell yeah. You're slowing us down."
"What can I say?" Dean hooked the two bottles between the fingers of his left hand, then shifted around to squeeze out behind her, making it just a bit of a tighter fit than it needed to be. He leaned his head towards her ear when he was completely behind her. "Sometimes slow can be good."
Jo snickered hard enough she almost spilled Walt's glass-of-head. Dean grinned to himself, then took advantage of the excuse she offered him to beat a hasty retreat.
He used to love bars. He remembered that much. In the alternate timeline right now, he'd be living it up in a place like this one with his brother making prissy faces at his side.
If he ever found out who had royally fucked the timeline, he was going to grind them into powder and throw them onto a bonfire.
He looked around once he made it to the back, wondering just which direction this Ash guy's "back room" might be in. Ellen leaned against the door frame with her phone tucked between her head and shoulder and pointed when she saw him, but otherwise paid him no attention. Dean didn't want to think too hard about why that kind of hurt. He headed for the door labeled "Dr. Badass" and knocked with the back of his fist. The door cracked open, revealing a nose, an eye, half a mullet, and much to Dean's dismay, a nipple.
"What?"
Dean held up the beer. "Special delivery."
The mullet-man grinned. "And enough to share. Come on in."
Trading a bar full of hunters for close quarters with a half-naked dude Dean had just met wasn't exactly what he'd call an upswing, but he was pretty sure if he went back out to the bar proper right now, Jo would roast and eat him. "Uh, sure." He slipped past Ash as the man held the door open a little wider, and soon saw that the too-close-for-comfort entrance had less to do with any touchy-feely crap on Ash's part and more to do with the fact that Ash's back room was apparently a broom closet. "Nice digs."
"Beats dealing with the weekend crowd out there. Grab a seat, man. I'm Ash."
"Yeah." Dean glanced over for a full view of Ash, taking in easy going expression, the mullet, and the calculator watch on his wrist, and he was hit once again by a wave of almost inexplicable grief, though one not nearly as strong this time. He also found himself thinking about Einstein and the Kama Sutra, and decided that whatever he might mysteriously know about this guy would be better off unexamined. "Dean Winchester."
Ash shook his head. "No shit. Ellen told me you were around." He flopped down on a raggedy beanbag chair which took up half the floor space in the room. "You make a habit of this dying and coming back thing?"
Dean swallowed back a bit of near-déjà vu. "Well, all the cool kids are doing it."
Ash pointed at him. "That they are." He reached behind him and pulled out what looked like a laptop with a couple extra circuit boards wired in. "Tell ya what, whatever decided to fake your death didn't do a half-assed job of it."
Dean shrugged, looking around for a spot to sit and finally settling for the floor. "Good enough to fool my dad."
"Like I said." Ash tapped away at the laptop for a few moments. "Been working on this since I sent Jo after you at the loony bin."
"That was you?"
"Who else, man? You know, thirty years ago, there were hunters around who never even laid eyes on a demon? These days it seems you can't turn a corner without tripping over an exorcism." Ash hit a few more buttons, then turned the laptop towards Dean. Dean leaned forward. He worked out that Ash was showing him some sort of database, but that was about it.
"What am I looking at?"
"Possessions, man. Just what I heard about over the Roadhouse grapevine."
Dean skimmed over the information on the screen, his eyes zeroing in on the word "totals", and the number listed beside it. "Hell."
"Exactly."
"Dad never talked much about demons. I always figured there weren't more than a couple cases a year."
"There weren't. Until lately."
Dean looked up from the spreadsheet, meeting Ash's gaze. "How long has this been going on?"
"I can tell you exactly. October 27th. Same day you supposedly bit the dust."
*
It seemed like everything for Dean -- life, family, death, afterlife -- came down somehow to fire. And pain, of course. The two went hand in hand, like blades and pain and torture and sex and Sam and screaming. And screaming. And screaming. And screaming --
Sometimes, Dean thought he cut them just to try and get them to shut up. There was that moment, just after the odd scrunch-squelch of a soul's throat collapsing, when everything would fall blissfully silent. Just for a moment. Just a split second before the soul remembered that they had no throat and they had no body and they breathed no air and went on screaming, anyway. If he cut them just a little bit more, if he burned them just right, if he said the perfect words while he did it, then maybe Alastair would say what the other demons whispered when he wasn't around -- that Dean was the best there'd been in a long, long time. That Dean had talent. That Dean was an innovator.
Alastair never said those things. Alastair never even smiled at him, not since he stepped down from the rack. Alastair adjusted Dean's grip on the knife and pointed out other areas to burn the soul or that his words could be just a little bit sharper and more cruel. No matter what Dean tried, it was never enough for Hell's master torturer. And the hell of it was that Dean never, ever stopped trying.
The current soul was unrestrained, which was new, but it just meant Dean had to pin it with his body. The new soul didn't scream so much as sneer, though it did shy away from him. It begged, sometimes. But Dean, well, he just didn't know where to start. And if he didn't start soon, Alastair would come and Alastair would find out and Alastair would put him back on the rack and eat his eyes and his ears and pull out his tongue and electrify his skin and part of Dean even longed for that, the familiarity of it, though he flinched at how he'd thought he'd been so strong and so right, those years he spent refusing Alastair's kindness. No wonder Alastair never said Dean did well. He was too busy remembering Dean's first thirty years of failure.
The screams stayed distant, as if giving him and his new soul privacy, which was odd. They screamed words, too, words that twisted and weaved around the soul's begging, which was also strange. And then there was a sound -- a new sound -- something like distant thunder and Dean looked up and for a moment, he could swear he saw Heaven. Then something pushed at his left side, twisting him over and back and the unchained soul fled -- it fled and oh, Alastair was going to kill him -- and Dean hit wood and his knees gave out and he gasped, staring across a dark, dingy bar, at a valkyrie holding a shot gun.
The soul -- the -- it was -- Dean closed his eyes, swallowing against vertigo, and fumbled his hands against the floor. The screaming hadn't stopped. The soul yelled, and the valkyrie yelled, and he thought he might know them both, and then another voice spoke too low to be heard. Dean's right hand found the hilt of his knife, but his fingers wouldn't close around it. He pushed at the floor with his bare feet instead, digging himself further into the corner, turning his left side into the wall and thrusting out the badly gripped knife with the other.
"Dean," said the low voice, much, much closer, now. Dean swiped at it with the blade. He felt resistance and knew he'd connected, but the voice didn't seem concerned. Fingers pressed to his head before he had time to flinch away, and Dean gasped again, his eyes coming open.
"Sonuva." He didn't bother to finish the curse. His arms flailed automatically, the knife flinging drops of blood as it arced, and Castiel caught his wrist. "Holy."
"Yes," said Castiel. "You're awake, now."
Dean shivered and focused on his fingers, forcing them to uncurl as much as they could from around the knife. It didn't drop all the way to the floor, but the way it dangled in his grip, he figured the only person he could be really dangerous to was himself.
As though that were even remotely new.
"I'm just saying," Jo said, somewhere over Castiel’s shoulder, "you didn't have to shoot him."
"He had you pinned to the bar with a knife."
"It was totally under control!"
"Like hell it was!"
"Juh," said Dean. "S'n'v." He ordered himself to shut up until his lips, tongue, and breathing seemed to be back under control. It wasn't working very well.
"Okay, fine, it wasn't. You can at least put the gun down now."
Dean whined in the back of his throat as his left side caught up with the world around him and seemed to erupt. He brought his left hand up to press against the pain and discovered he wasn't wearing a shirt.
No shirt. No pants. "N' s'rvice," he mumbled. Castiel leaned closer.
"What was that?"
Oh, and Dean was bleeding, a scattering of wounds low on his left side, above his hip but well below his ribs. His right hand shot out, knife and all, and wrapped itself in the lapels of Castiel's coat. He pulled him closer, leaning into his face. "Ffffuck."
There. That was almost a word.
"I believe he may need medical attention," said Castiel. Because the guy was a freaking genius.
"You're an angel." Dean wasn't actually sure if that was Jo or Ellen, there. The world was going all spinny again, and he couldn't be bothered to tell the difference. "Heal him."
"That's not within my present capabilities."
"Fuck," Dean said again, though this time the word came out less like a heavy breath and more like a squeak. Footsteps scratched over the floor of the bar, and then Jo was leaning in his face, too. He'd've grabbed her, but his hands were already full. Also, Ellen might've shot him again. "Fuck," he told her.
"Uh huh," she said. She tried to bump Castiel out of the way, but only got a faint clang and, by the way her nose wrinkled, a sore shoulder out of the deal. "Move it, wing-boy. Lemme look at him."
"Ah, yes." Castiel moved back as much as he could without dislodging Dean's fingers. His eyes were fixed on Dean's bare chest, and as much as the dreams or future-memories or whatever the hell they were were screaming at Dean to trust him, that fact still made him want to curl in on himself even more.
"Fuck," said Dean, and that wasn't quite what he'd intended to say, so he tried again. "Stop starin'."
No one seemed to be paying him any attention any more.
"Help me lay him out," Jo said, her hand brushing briefly over the side of Dean's head before wandering down to his shoulder to tug him away from the wall. "Mom, can you get some whiskey?"
Ellen grumbled something Dean was pretty sure he didn't want repeated. "Ash, cover him." He spotted her moving over Castiel and Jo's shoulders, headed for the bar, throwing him looks of anger and pity.
In that moment, Dean knew he'd do anything to get her to stop doing that.
"Wha' happ'ned?"
Castiel mimicked Jo's movements, tugging on Dean's right shoulder and pulling him slowly away from the wall. His eyes pulled away from Dean's chest just long enough to flick over to Jo, who smiled faintly at him.
"Sleepwalking. Again. You got just a little bit more active this time." She was all business, guiding him down onto his right side. Castiel's gaze shifted to Dean's left and widened slightly, fixing there.
"S'bad, isn't it," Dean said. He wanted to groan, but was just awake enough to realize that that kind of movement might not be a good idea.
"You kidding? Mom barely winged you."
"Of course I did." Ellen appeared at Jo's shoulder, a bottle of whiskey, a pill bottle, and a pair of tweezers in her hands. "I know how to handle a shot gun."
"You didn't wish to kill him," Castiel said. "That's good. Death makes him irritable."
Ellen and Jo stared sideways at him with identical expressions of disbelief and Dean started to laugh. He had to cut himself off quickly thanks to the way it tugged at his side, but it was a laugh, a real one, something he wasn't sure he'd had in a long-ass time.
Then Jo went at him with the tweezers.
*
"Fuggin' butcher," Dean mumbled, his head tilted forward almost enough to rest it on the table in front of him.
"You're welcome." Jo pushed a pill bottle across the table into his field of vision. "Wimp."
"Let's see you take a chestful of buckshot."
"Please. It was your side. And barely that. Totally a flesh wound."
Dean pulled the quilt Ellen had handed him tighter against his body, feeling the pull of the bandages down his side as he did so. "Yeah, well, flesh wounds hurt." He blinked over at Castiel, who sat on the other side of the table, staring at him as though trying to put together some sort of complex puzzle. "The hell are you doing here? Why don't you go fetch Sam or something?"
Castiel shook his head minutely. "I can't find Sam. I believed at first it was the Enochian symbols that prevented me, but I performed that procedure in 2009."
"Trippy," Ash muttered. He had his arms folded across the shot gun on the table, mostly because Ellen wasn't letting him put it away, yet. Dean's little bout of sleepwalking had her well and truly spooked.
Castiel didn't look much better. "Yes," he said, nodding to Ash, his eyes still fixed on Dean. "Very." He tilted his head. "Dean, when did you get that tattoo?"
Dean glanced down, spotting the tops of a few of the rays of sun on his chest below the blanket. "I know it looks girly," he said. "But it's to keep me from being possessed."
"That should totally be S.O.P. for hunters." Jo was as cheerful as ever, as though bar room surgery was a favorite hobby of hers. "We should spread the word."
"Again, yes," said Castiel. "But the idea didn't occur to Dean and Sam until 2008."
Dean frowned. "The hell are you saying?"
"You have a scar in the shape of a hand print on your left shoulder," said Castiel.
"Yeah, and now everyone here knows it, because I apparently decided to go for a midnight ramble in my shorts."
"That scar is from my hand."
Dean sat up in his chair, his forehead crinkling. "Come again?"
"It is the reminder of the power of Heaven which pulled you forth from Hell."
Dean glanced over at the others, who were all looking at Castiel like he'd grown an extra head. Well, aside from Ash. Ash had his eyes rolled to the ceiling and seemed to be counting something to himself.
"What're you saying here, Cass?"
"We assumed that your knowledge of the alternate timeline was due to psychic dreams brought on by being forcefed demon blood while you were hospitalized." Dean nodded, twiddling his fingers around the edge of the blanket to get Castiel to continue. "I no longer believe that to be the case."
"Communism was a red herring," said Ash. Everyone ignored him.
Dean could see the shape of what Castiel was speaking around in his head, and he blinked hard. "No way."
Castiel nodded solemnly. "Dean Winchester -- the Dean of this timeline -- was in fact killed in a motel fire. You, Dean, are from the future."
It was the sort of statement that Dean had always figured should be followed by a period of stunned silence, as everyone just sort of took it in. And it might have been, anywhere else, if the anywhere else included somewhere that didn't have Ash.
"I knew it!" Ash raised both hands in victory. Jo snorted.
"Oh you did not."
"I did." Ash lowered one hand to point at Jo. "And I'm betting I know just when Dean here crash-landed in oh-five."
Dean leaned back in his chair, sticking his hand out the top of the quilt to rub at the bridge of his nose. "October 27th?"
"First day of your file at El Hospital Loco."
Dean dropped his hand and stared across at Ash. "Say I even remotely believe this. That means the demons skyrocketing. That was me." He glanced down at his wrists. "And these are, what, some sort of self-flagelation?"
"Those are new," said Castiel. "I didn't think it wise to ask."
"Sleepwalking," Dean muttered. "Or the demon. Or." He took a breath. "I don't really know. Woke up in a hallway with my wrists open, holding a piece of glass." He slowly clenched and unclenched his fingers on his right hand, feeling the pressure from the still healing scar. "Guess I knew what I did. Under it all."
Ash tapped on the table. "Hey, man. That wasn't the only jump in demons, remember? First time was thirty years ago. Well. Thirty-three, to be exact."
Dean thought back on his conversation with Ash and frowned. "What happened then?"
Ash shrugged. "How should I know? At the time my mom was still just hoping to meet the band. Anyway, then there's another spike again, 'bout five years later."
Castiel folded his hands on the table. "Those would be the times that we traveled back, previously, Dean."
Dean sighed. "Dude, I don't know if you've noticed, but my memory right now is apparently worth crap. Care to elaborate?"
"We visited late spring, 1973, then returned to 1978. Neither event altered the timeline."
Jo opened her mouth and raised her hand, then pursed her lips. Ellen, who'd been watching everything the way someone watched a bar fight -- or, Dean supposed, a tennis match, but he sure as hell had never seen one of those, let alone seen someone watching one -- rubbed her forehead. "We're all gonna need way more liquor."
"I still don't understand," said Castiel. "There was no noticeable increase in demonic activity when I time traveled previously. And Dean could not have traveled without my assistance."
Dean sighed. His head was starting to hurt, pounding in time with the throb from his side. "You sure you didn't accidentally drag me along with you?"
"Our arrivals were several months apart."
"I'll take that as a 'no', then."
"So, what, then?" Jo crossed her arms over her chest. "We're looking at some other mystery time traveler, who skipped back thirty years? Why? The timeline difference doesn't go back that far, does it?"
Castiel shook his head. "I would have to interview Dean to be certain, but I believe the separation occurred around the time that the Dean of this timeline was killed."
"So Mystery Man was thirty years too early." Dean shrugged. "Maybe he missed. You know, like you did." He frowned. "Wait, if I'm dead in the past -- this present -- whatever -- shouldn't I have, like, blinked out of existence? I mean, yay me, but still."
"No. In traveling back, you've removed yourself from the time stream, as have I."
Dean closed his eyes. "That doesn't make any sense."
"Hell." Ellen put a bottle of whiskey down in front of Dean with a thump. "He lost me at 'angel of the Lord'."
Dean tilted his head back and offered his best apologetic smile. "I really didn't mean to attack Jo in my sleep."
Ellen rolled her eyes. "Shut up and drink, Dean."
"Yes'm."
*
They took a break from their pow-wow for drinking. Dean was tempted to ask for time to put some clothes on, but he knew well enough it'd be a painstaking process, one he was willing to put off for as long as possible. He refused to let Ash or Castiel help him with it, and though he might have said "yes" to Jo helping, Ellen had made it clear enough that that wouldn't be on offer.
He settled, instead, for getting much, much better lubricated before he took another stab at understanding just what had gone down.
"Right, so you're saying we traveled back in time twice before."
Castiel nodded, his expression grave and thoughtful as he picked at the label on a bottle of Jim Beam.
"How the hell do an angel and a hunter go back in time and not change the timeline?"
Castiel looked up. "The first was destiny. You were meant to witness the events leading up to your mother's deal with Azazel --"
"Who is?"
"The demon who killed her."
"And she made a deal with him."
"Yes."
"Tell me you realize how screwed up that is."
"It was destiny."
Dean rolled his eyes. "Okay, so the second time?"
Castiel sighed, and after a moment, took a swig from the bottle. "A rogue fallen angel decided to go back in time and ensure that you and Sam were never born."
Dean shut his eyes, images of beautiful and vengeful women assaulting him, of a man -- his father -- demanding knowledge. "Dad found out about hunting."
"Yes. Then Michael made him forget."
Ash rubbed his chin. "Archangel Michael?"
Castiel nodded. "He erased John and Mary's memories of the entire event to ensure that the timeline was kept intact."
"So this Michael dude." Dean rubbed at his temples. "He just brainwashed Mom and Dad?"
Castiel turned back to Dean. "Yes."
Jo had taken up the seat across from Castiel. She leaned forward. "What about everyone else?"
Castiel frowned. "Else?"
"Like, the rest of the world?"
The frown deepened. "The rest of the world had nothing to do with the situation."
"So you didn't interact with anyone except Dean's parents." Jo tilted her head, disbelief written all over her features. "From what I've seen, you angel guys aren't exactly subtle."
"I suppose," Castiel let the sentence drag out, as though it was pulled from his lips. "Our presence may have been sensed."
"Sensed." Dean closed his eyes again, trying to drag the vague impressions of his previous time travel to the front of his mind. Whatever had swiss-cheesed his brain had done a thorough job of it -- pulling the images forth was kind of like trying to draw a wendigo out of its den. He blinked his eyes open again. "Like by Azazel?"
Castiel contemplated the bottle of booze in his hand silently. Jo ducked her head down and forward and raised her eyebrows. Castiel sighed.
"Yes. I suppose that's possible."
"Okay," said Dean. "I could be wrong -- I really hope I'm wrong -- but I seem to remember telling a demon that I was gonna be the one to kill him."
Castiel looked up sharply. "You told Azazel that?"
Dean sat back. "Maybe?"
"If Azazel thought you were a threat to his plan. . . ." Castiel trailed off and shook his head, then downed the rest of his bottle. "That explains a great deal."
Didn't explain a goddamn thing to Dean, really, and he was about to say so when the door to the bar banged open. He jumped up, the quilt falling to the floor as both hands flailed for a weapon, though Ellen had said flat out that he'd better not be carrying in her bar again. A figure stood silhouetted in the door, its shape so familiar that Dean's heart jackhammered against his ribs. It stepped forward.
"Now what in hell is so important that you dragged me out here in the middle of the damn night to -- Dean?"
The breath rushed out of Dean so quickly he had to sit down again. "Bobby."
The room erupted. Bobby, it seemed, didn't react too well to finding a dead man sitting down to drink with his friends. The same instant he charged forward, Ellen and Jo were already charging back, yelling.
"It's him, Bobby," they said, their voices jumbling together, mother and daughter, until their words were barely intelligible. Wasn't hard to work out the gist, though. "It's him, we tested him, calm down."
Bobby froze about halfway into the bar and stared at Dean. Dean sank lower in his chair and shrugged. "Hi."
"You're dead," Bobby said. "I was there. I helped John out by burning the rest of your remains."
Dean winced. "Yeah. Apparently you did."
Bobby looked around the room, from Dean to Ellen to Jo to Ash. Castiel got a brief frown, but otherwise no real attention. His eyes returned to Dean's and narrowed. "You time travelin' too?"
Dean glanced to Castiel, then back. "Too?"
Castiel twisted in his chair. "How did you know to come here?"
"I called him." Ellen lead Bobby over to the table, pulling a chair from another one nearby and setting it down between Ash and Jo. "Figured we could maybe get a lead on finding Sam."
Bobby nodded slowly. "I could do." He stared at Dean with almost as much intensity as Castiel had, earlier. "Which one you wanna see?"
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