Call (3/4)
Title: Call (3/4)
Author: chickenperson52
Pairing/s: Gabriel/Sam
Rating: T
Word Count: ~
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural, nor do I profit from this piece of fanfiction. Please don't sue. Warnings: AU from the first scene of season one.
Spoilers: General spoilers through all of season five.
Summary: The Winchesters hunt demons. Even when they only exist in their minds.
Chapter Three: you’ll probably never solve ‘em
Brady and Jess dragged him out of the house on Halloween. There was a party going on, apparently, and he was missing all the fun. Sam hated Halloween, but he’d been away from hunting for years, and what could possibly happen? So he grabbed a clean shirt and let them drag him to some packed club with flashing red lights and smashed pumpkin on the door.
As soon as the door shut behind him, the music died. The lights stopped flashing.
Every single person in the club turned to look at him in unison, and Sam realized to his horror that he knew every single person there. They were his friends, his professors, the barista who always made his coffee, the librarian who helped him find rare articles. And they were all smiling at him, like this was all a big joke.
“Christo.” Sam whispered, shivers going up his spine, and found himself staring into a hundred black eyes.
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Dean didn’t see the fire department, or hear the protests of the firemen as he rushed into the burning building. He didn’t feel any pain as his jacket caught fire, and he made his way with single-minded determination towards the figure in the corner of the room. The fire burned around Sam, who was cowering against the wall, but it never touched him.
Jess had caught fire right before his eyes. The entire room had burned, demons laughing as their hosts were cooked alive. The flames had filled the entire room, and then the demons had fled with the smoke, leaving behind corpses. And Sam.
As he dragged his screaming, sobbing wreck of a brother out of the building, and rushed him into the car, and drove him away as fast as he could, pedal pressed to the floor, Dean could only think one horrible thought.
Sam was alive, and nothing else mattered.
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The next few weeks were the worst of Dean’s life.
There was something wrong with his brother.
After Sam had gone off to school, he’d done his best to stay in touch. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk to Sam, it was just…Sam was safe and normal, and Dean was hunting, sometimes with Mary, but more often alone. Mary hunted for the demon exclusively now that both her sons were grown, and Dean was the one who followed, two steps behind, taking any cases she sent his way.
He stitched himself up and had to have his own back, and there wasn’t much time in between to call Sam just so they could stumble awkwardly through a conversation.
So Dean had left Sam alone, until Mary had gone to Jericho chasing a lead, sent him a text about a possible hunt there, and then vanished. Faced with the possibility of being alone without his mother, Dean had gone to Stanford to borrow Sam (just for the weekend, he told himself).
He’d found a nightmare instead, and now Sam was lying on a cheap bed in a bad hotel, shaking. He cried out sometimes, but it was always unintelligible. No matter what he did, his little brother wouldn’t wake.
After two days, Dean stole an I.V. and hooked Sam up to it so he could keep him alive. He called other hunters, he tried summoning spells and cleansing rites. He prayed. Nothing happened. Sam stayed unconscious, stopped shaking, stopped yelling out like he was sleeping so Dean couldn’t even pretend.
His brother was gone, even though Dean could reach out and touch him, and he didn’t know how to save him.
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Zachariah was unhappy.
At first, being assigned the Winchesters seemed like a dream come true. He got to wipe the Earth clean, he got in good with the big guys upstairs, and how much trouble could a few humans cause? It was destiny, after all.
But things had gone wrong from the start. First, Azazel had been thwarted while trying to give Sammy his first dose of demon juice. The kid had come out human, Mary had somehow survived, and Dean hadn’t gotten to drag Sam out of the fire. The wards had managed to kill John off, but things were still altered early in the game.
The wards had been personally made by Zachariah. They were foolproof, perfect, and yet when he had gone down to examine them after the Winchesters were gone, they were unbroken. There was no sign that anyone had entered, and yet someone had to have.
Without the demon blood in him, Sam was compromised as a vessel. The symbolism was all wrong as it was. So they had had to take steps, and it had seemed simple enough.
Then the Winchesters disappeared.
Spending over two decades trying to hunt down one family among the millions, without actually taking vessels, was very difficult. Zachariah had been on the verge of a fit when he’d found Sam Winchester by chance.
Azazel turned out to be invisible as well, and so he’d put the word out instead. It was slow going, but eventually Lucifer’s vessel had drunk thirty demons dry. It might have been too much, but if Sam died…Dean would bring him back, the first seal would break, and things would progress as planned, minus a few hundred demons who would escape Hell anyways.
Right now, he wanted to know how the Winchesters were hiding from him.
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Her name was Meg, and she was in the apartment when Dean returned. She was petting Sam, like he was a goddamn cat, and smirking like this was in any way funny.
“Hi, Dean.” She brushed Sam’s bangs off of his forehead. “I’m Meg. I’m here to fix your brother. Exorcise me, and he’ll probably die because you’re too stupid to know how to fix him.”
“Get away from my brother, you bitch.” Dean said hoarsely. She sighed.
“Your brother is psychic. He needs to learn how to use his powers. That’s why he’s in a coma- he’s stuck inside his own head.”
“Right. Sure. Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus-”
“I can save him.” Meg said. “I can fix him. Or you can send me back to Hell and watch him die. Your choice.” She started to stand up, and Dean looked past her to Sam’s face. He was pale, he was still, and he was dying, and Dean could never stand by and watch it happen while a solution walked away.
“What are you going to do to him?”
“I’m going to wake him up.” She said. “Watch and learn.” She leaned over Sam, her lips almost touching his ear, and Dean moved as close as he could, so that his gun was pointed directly between her shoulder blades. She was whispering, in a rough language Dean had never heard, and Sam’s eyelids twitched.
Then Meg jumped up, and crashed into Dean, screaming. Dean saw blood all over Sam’s face and freaked- and then saw that there was blood coming from her empty eye sockets.
“You son of a bitch.” She gasped. “Why are you here? What are you doing?”
There was no answer, and Dean grabbed her by the collar and hauled her backwards. She didn’t resist even as he pointed the gun at her face.
“Why are you here?” Meg asked. She gritted her teeth, and Dean fired, one shot through her forehead, one through her heart. She laughed, even as gore dripped down her face, her chest, soaking into the fabric. She looked monstrous as she dragged herself upright.
“I know what you are! You’re-” Orange light flashed from inside her body, lighting her up so Dean could see her ribs. Meg shook, and collapsed like a puppet with cut strings, and Dean rushed to his brother’s side.
Sam was the same as before, and still breathing. Dean used his sleeve to wipe the blood away, checking for a wound, and when he found none, he turned back to the body on the floor. Meg looked dead, and he poured some holy water into her mouth to be sure, then wrapped her body in a blanket and hid it in the closet. Bobby could help him move her once he arrived. Fumbling for his phone, Dean managed to get the number right on the third time.
“Dean?”
“Bobby, I got a dead demon here. She was after Sam, something about him being psychic.”
“Dead demon? As in dead?”
“Looks like it. She was trying to do something to Sam, I don’t know what, and then bam, she freaked out about someone who wasn’t supposed to be there. Then she died.”
“No black smoke?”
“It looked like she’d swallowed a flash bomb or something. Oh, and her eyes got burned out.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like it. Sam alright?”
“He’s still out cold.” Dean sighed. “How far are you? I need some help dumping the body.”
“I’ll be there in an hour. You heard from Mary?”
“…not yet. She had a lead in France, and she said something about India afterwards…”
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Meg had a knife strapped to her ankle, serrated and carved with runes. Dean pocketed it and helped Bobby haul her out of town for a salting and burning.
“You said she was scared?”
“Scared, angry, surprised…” Dean shrugged. “What can kill a demon? I mean, kill it, not just throw it back in Hell.”
“Nothing I know of. There are rumors- there’s the supposed Colt that can kill anything, and there’s lore about angels.”
“But nothing anyone’s actually seen?” Bobby nodded. “Great. This thing was in our room, and I never saw it. Hell, I still don’t know how ‘Meg’ got in- my salt lines were intact and everything.”
“I know a couple of psychics. I’ll get someone up here to look at Sam.”
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He was lying on a beach, and it was warm there.
The sky was blue, cloudless, and the water brushed the shore in a rhythm that reminded Sam of being seven years old, burying his brother in the sand. The sand beneath was like powder, and he was comfortable in a way he hadn’t been since…
“Hey.”
Sam didn’t know the voice, and he reluctantly opened his eyes. The absolute calm he’d grasped was slipping away with the water, and when the next wave crashed into the shore, he dragged himself up onto his elbows.
“This is a dream.”
“Yep.” There was a man sitting in the sand next to him.
Sam had been raised to fear strangers who knew him. But he wasn’t afraid.
“I haven’t been to the beach in a while. Too busy studying, I guess. But I’ve never been here before.”
“You wanted a beach, I gave you a beach. This is Kenya, by the way.” Sam sat all the way up and looked around. It was white sand and ocean as far as he could see, with not a soul- or even a sign of civilization- in sight.
“I always wanted to travel.” Sam imagined, wistfully, himself, with a suitcase and a tourist guide and his family, without monsters lurking in their shadows.
“I know.” Gabriel sighed. Watching Sam’s life fall apart reminded him of the first war, where angel fought angel to throw Lucifer out of the sky: unrelenting, pointless destruction. Everything that could go wrong in Sam’s life was going to go wrong, and no matter what Gabriel did, some things were going to be. They might even be worse, with his interference.
“Do I know you?” Sam asked. Gabriel looked familiar, somehow. Yet he was sure that if they’d met, he would have remembered it.
“Not yet.” Not ever, if things went as planned. Sam could tell the angels he was down here. “I’m just here to show you the way back to Kansas.”
“I can’t stay here in Oz?” Sam stared up at the sky. He could feel anxiety in the pit of his stomach now. Whatever magical peace he’d held was leaving fast.
“Sorry, kid.” Gabriel said. “Your brother’s waiting for you.” He held out his hand. “Come on.”
Sam took his hand. He gave the horizon one last hungry stare, trying to preserve the sea and sand in his memory. The archangel didn’t bother telling him he wouldn’t remember anything later.
He folded in his wings and flew Sam out of his mind, and it descended back into turmoil.
Sam woke up.
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Mary didn’t have enough cash to fill up the tank of her stolen car when she arrived, but she was close enough to the location of Dean’s last voicemail to walk. She hefted her duffel bag up higher on her shoulder, and strode down the sidewalk, going in and out of the pools of light under the streetlights. She listened to the messages Dean had left her; they grew more and more frantic, and the last one sounded as if Dean was crying.
Mary reached the hotel and curtly asked the clerk where her boys were. She was a mess and she knew it; short blonde hair, worn jacket and jeans, scuffed boots. There was a scar under her right eye. But she was intimidating enough to get the room number out of him, and she found the room easily enough- it was a small hotel, cheap, skeevy.
She knocked three times on the door. “Dean!”
“Mom?” Sam’s voice, not Dean’s. Mary let out a sigh of relief and pounded on the closed door again. This time it opened, and Dean splashed holy water onto her face. Then he handed her a silver knife. She drew it across her forearm, and a thin line of blood welled up. Satisfied, he let her in.
There was a portable devil’s trap made of iron on the floor in front of the door. She stepped into it, and then out of it, across a salt line, and to Dean’s bed, where his duffel bag and a weapon he’d been cleaning were laying. On the other bed, Sam was drinking soup. Bobby was between the beds in a chair, with a musty tome in his lap.
If there was a catastrophe going on, she couldn’t see it yet. She glanced at Dean, her expression suggesting that he spill his guts.
“Sam, show Mom.” Dean muttered. “And don’t screw with the guns.”
“I’m not an idiot, Dean.” Sam snapped. He closed his eyes, and Mary waited.
The alarm clock on the bedside table next to him was moving, sliding toward the edge of the table. It continued on in a straight line even after it went over the edge, floating over to Mary, who reached with one hand and grabbed it. She stared at it, and fought to keep her expression neutral; after all this time, she’d begun to doubt.
Of course Sam was different. Why else would the demon want him?
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“Meg.” She repeated. “Her host’s name?”
“Yeah, real name’s Meg Masters, vanished a while back. One sister, parents- the demon wasn’t being subtle.” Dean listed off what he’d learned from a quick check with the missing persons database.
“And she died.” Mary repeated dubiously. There was a thrill of excitement in her blood at the thought of killing a demon, and yet she didn’t want to believe it. It seemed too lucky to have happened to her sons. “And you have no idea how it happened?”
“Sam doesn’t remember anything and I checked. The salt line was intact, I had devil’s traps at the doors, hell, I painted stuff on the ceiling. I have no clue how Meg got in, let alone the thing that killed her.” Dean said. “Mom, I-I don’t know. Even with Bobby here, Sam’s a psychic now. What if his powers make him some kind of demon magnet?”
“Dean,” Mary said, “There’s something you should know about your brother. About the night your father died. The demon wasn’t there for your father.” She hesitated. “It was after Sam.”
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Mary thought of only one thing in the weeks that followed her return. She sent Dean and Sam off hunting- Dean was more than capable of looking after Sam, and there was no fear of Sam leaving after the fire. She thought of the dead demon.
There was someone out there with the power to kill demons, and Mary wanted them. She toyed with the idea of summoning a demon to ask them, but it was risky business if demons were looking for Sam. She couldn’t let anything get a hold of her youngest son now. But she knew there had to be some clue, and so she watched Sam carefully.
“Where’d you get that amulet, Sam?” Sam looked down at the silver feather hanging from a cord around his neck. He frowned.
“Oh, this? I did a jeweler a favor while I was a Stanford. He had a haunted wedding ring. He gave it to me as payment.”
“Let me see.” She held out a hand expectantly, and Sam tugged the cord over his head and handed it to her.
She dangled it in air, examining it. It looked like a miniature feather done in silver -no runes, no odd marks, and when she tested it in holy water and salt, nothing happened. Perhaps she was grasping for straws.
She pocketed it. “I’m going out. Stay here.” Sam nodded, and turned around to continue reading his newspaper. He reached up, absently, to his neck, where the amulet had been.
Where the amulet now was. Mary reached into her pocket and found it was empty; Sam tugged at the silver feather hanging from his neck in confusion.
“What the hell?” Dean snapped. His mother grabbed her duffel, still packed, off of the table.
“We’re leaving. Get packed.”
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On her way out of town, Mary stopped to see the jeweler Sam had mentioned. Dean and Sam were both in the car, bewildered and frustrated, but she didn’t really care. She had a gut feeling about the amulet, and she was determined to follow it, whether her sons liked it or not.
Couldn’t they see how close they were? It would all be over soon.
The jeweler told her about a man who’d come to the store a month before Sam had, and given him both the wedding ring Sam had melted down and the amulet with clear instructions. He’d been reluctant at first, but when the bloody woman began appearing in the store, he was quick to make sure Sam received the amulet if it meant getting rid of the ring.
“Was there anything unusual about him?” She asked.
“Well…” The jeweler hesitated. “There was this one thing. A couple nights before he showed up, someone came into the store and smashed every piece of glass, eve the camera lenses. They didn’t steal anything- just broke the glass. I was still replacing stuff when he came, so I didn’t even have camera footage.”
“I see. Thanks.” Broken glass? Definitely something supernatural. And Mary thought of the description- short, reddish brown hair- and thought again of the man who’d told her that her sons were destined to end the world.
She wondered what he was as she climbed back into the driver’s seat and hit the gas.
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Sam was asleep beside him when Dean woke up. It took him a minute to figure out why- they were grown men, the bed was tiny, and Dean was pretty sure he hadn’t been screaming in his sleep or anything-but he saw the mess of papers and books spread out on the other bed and understood. Mary was bent over a map, marking out something with a pen.
Sam was using Dean’s shoulder as a pillow. This resulted in the most uncomfortable position ever, with his entire body curled up awkwardly to fit into the space beside Dean. His younger brother was going to have the worst aches when he woke up.
“Mom?”
“I’m leaving.” She replied curtly. “Before I go, there’s something you need to know. About Sam.”
“Yeah?” He could feel the nervousness in the pit of his stomach.
“You’ll need to watch him closely.” She said softly. “His powers came from the demon. If he…you’ll have to stop him.”
“Sam wouldn’t.” Dean said, and it sounded like he was pleading. His mother couldn’t be saying this to him, not after she’d put baby Sammy in his arms and told him to watch out for him while she hunted her first monsters. He’d rocked him to sleep, made his lunches, taught him to tie his shoes, stuck him on a bus to California with a lump in his throat. “He’s my brother.”
“You’ll have to kill him, if you can’t save him.” Mary picked up her papers and began folding them into her bag. She slid the strap over his shoulder and walked out the door, and it shut with a click behind her. It was silent in the room.
Dean was frozen, his eyes fixed on his sleeping brother. He hadn’t even moved, every muscle tensed, because he didn’t want to wake his brother, and at that moment he would have been happy if Sam never woke up, if Sam was safe at his side forever.
“I can’t, Mom. I’m sorry-” He let his head fall back onto the pillow and pretended there were no tears welling up in his eyes. “-but I can’t kill Sammy.”
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Dean thought that he was doing a good job of concealing his worrying from Sam. He wasn’t. Something was up, and Sam knew it.
Dean had always been fussy about Sam eating enough and always took the more dangerous position in a hunt and never admitted to needing help with his injuries or being sick, now he was staring at Sam whenever Sam pretended to be asleep and or distracted. He kept asking Sam about how he was feeling, to the point where Sam had actually spiked his beer with holy water and given him some real silver cutlery.
It went from overprotective to freaky when Sam caught Dean pouring holy water into his coffee.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” Dean snapped, trying to slip the flask back into his coat without being caught. Sam sat down and downed his coffee in one long gulp.
“Dean.” Sam waited patiently for Dean to talk. When eh didn’t. Sam groaned. “Look. Mom’s been gone for months without calling. Possessions are up all over the country. Things are tense right now.”
“Look, I’m fine. Let’s eat and get going.” Dean stood up, pushed in his seat, and threw a bill down onto the table.
“You were spiking my drink with holy water. You are not fine if you think I’m a demon.” Sam followed Dean out of the diner and out into the cold as they stomped towards the car.
“Sam. We are not having this conversation.” The driver’s side door slammed as Dean got in.
“What is it, Dean? I know there’s something up. You haven’t been this freaked since that witch tried to make me her virgin sacrifice. If something’s going on, I need to know so I can help you, protect you-” Sam slammed the door as well.
“It’s not your job to protect me, okay? Come on.”
“If I don’t have your back, who does? Mom’s not here.”
“I know.” Dean leaned back against the seat, his hands resting loosely on the wheel.
Sam was wrong. He was the one who needed to be protected, form the demons and possibly himself. Sam’s powers were growing stronger, and Dean was terrified that somehow they would lead his brother astray. Sometimes he found himself staring at Sam, trying to understand how anyone could believe he was capable of becoming a monster.
When his brother was in danger, Dean protected him. It had always been that way, except that now Sam was grown up and looking for something more, and Dean didn’t know how to let him.
“I liked it better when you were little,” he said finally, “and all you wanted was to hug my face in your sleep and stuff like that.”
“You hated it when I did that.” Sam said with a laugh.
“Nah, I didn’t.” Dean sighed. “Sam, Mom…she said some stuff about you.”
“What stuff?”
“She told me that the demon…was after you.” He stared straight out the windshield, at the parking lot, without seeing it. He didn’t want to see Sam’s face. “That you were in danger and I had to look out for you.”
“Mom’s said that a million times.”
“She said that I had to save you, or else…”
“Or else what?” Sam could feel his heart pounding.
“Or else I’d have to kill you, Sammy.”
It was silent in the car after that. Dean turned the key in the ignition, and drove out of the town on autopilot. The trees and the cars blurred together as he drove, in a straight line, not worrying about where he was going. Maybe if he drove fast enough he could go back in time, way back, and keep Sam from ever knowing.
“You should have told me.” Sam’s voice was like ice, but Dena could read the fury and the hurt beneath it.
“No need.” Dean replied. “It’s not going to happen.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I can’t, Sam. I’d rather die. I’m going to save you, so forget it, alright?”
“Dean-”
“You’re not going to!” Dean realized, belatedly, that he was yelling. And after he’d promised himself he’d keep cool and clam Sam down. “No matter what Mom thinks might happen to you. I’ll save you.”
“I know you will, Dean. But from what?”
“From everything.” Dean snapped, and he pressed down harder on the gas.
Sam thought of the yellow-eyed demon in his dreams, and felt cold. Now he understood.
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Author: chickenperson52
Pairing/s: Gabriel/Sam
Rating: T
Word Count: ~
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural, nor do I profit from this piece of fanfiction. Please don't sue. Warnings: AU from the first scene of season one.
Spoilers: General spoilers through all of season five.
Summary: The Winchesters hunt demons. Even when they only exist in their minds.
Chapter Three: you’ll probably never solve ‘em
Brady and Jess dragged him out of the house on Halloween. There was a party going on, apparently, and he was missing all the fun. Sam hated Halloween, but he’d been away from hunting for years, and what could possibly happen? So he grabbed a clean shirt and let them drag him to some packed club with flashing red lights and smashed pumpkin on the door.
As soon as the door shut behind him, the music died. The lights stopped flashing.
Every single person in the club turned to look at him in unison, and Sam realized to his horror that he knew every single person there. They were his friends, his professors, the barista who always made his coffee, the librarian who helped him find rare articles. And they were all smiling at him, like this was all a big joke.
“Christo.” Sam whispered, shivers going up his spine, and found himself staring into a hundred black eyes.
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Dean didn’t see the fire department, or hear the protests of the firemen as he rushed into the burning building. He didn’t feel any pain as his jacket caught fire, and he made his way with single-minded determination towards the figure in the corner of the room. The fire burned around Sam, who was cowering against the wall, but it never touched him.
Jess had caught fire right before his eyes. The entire room had burned, demons laughing as their hosts were cooked alive. The flames had filled the entire room, and then the demons had fled with the smoke, leaving behind corpses. And Sam.
As he dragged his screaming, sobbing wreck of a brother out of the building, and rushed him into the car, and drove him away as fast as he could, pedal pressed to the floor, Dean could only think one horrible thought.
Sam was alive, and nothing else mattered.
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The next few weeks were the worst of Dean’s life.
There was something wrong with his brother.
After Sam had gone off to school, he’d done his best to stay in touch. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk to Sam, it was just…Sam was safe and normal, and Dean was hunting, sometimes with Mary, but more often alone. Mary hunted for the demon exclusively now that both her sons were grown, and Dean was the one who followed, two steps behind, taking any cases she sent his way.
He stitched himself up and had to have his own back, and there wasn’t much time in between to call Sam just so they could stumble awkwardly through a conversation.
So Dean had left Sam alone, until Mary had gone to Jericho chasing a lead, sent him a text about a possible hunt there, and then vanished. Faced with the possibility of being alone without his mother, Dean had gone to Stanford to borrow Sam (just for the weekend, he told himself).
He’d found a nightmare instead, and now Sam was lying on a cheap bed in a bad hotel, shaking. He cried out sometimes, but it was always unintelligible. No matter what he did, his little brother wouldn’t wake.
After two days, Dean stole an I.V. and hooked Sam up to it so he could keep him alive. He called other hunters, he tried summoning spells and cleansing rites. He prayed. Nothing happened. Sam stayed unconscious, stopped shaking, stopped yelling out like he was sleeping so Dean couldn’t even pretend.
His brother was gone, even though Dean could reach out and touch him, and he didn’t know how to save him.
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Zachariah was unhappy.
At first, being assigned the Winchesters seemed like a dream come true. He got to wipe the Earth clean, he got in good with the big guys upstairs, and how much trouble could a few humans cause? It was destiny, after all.
But things had gone wrong from the start. First, Azazel had been thwarted while trying to give Sammy his first dose of demon juice. The kid had come out human, Mary had somehow survived, and Dean hadn’t gotten to drag Sam out of the fire. The wards had managed to kill John off, but things were still altered early in the game.
The wards had been personally made by Zachariah. They were foolproof, perfect, and yet when he had gone down to examine them after the Winchesters were gone, they were unbroken. There was no sign that anyone had entered, and yet someone had to have.
Without the demon blood in him, Sam was compromised as a vessel. The symbolism was all wrong as it was. So they had had to take steps, and it had seemed simple enough.
Then the Winchesters disappeared.
Spending over two decades trying to hunt down one family among the millions, without actually taking vessels, was very difficult. Zachariah had been on the verge of a fit when he’d found Sam Winchester by chance.
Azazel turned out to be invisible as well, and so he’d put the word out instead. It was slow going, but eventually Lucifer’s vessel had drunk thirty demons dry. It might have been too much, but if Sam died…Dean would bring him back, the first seal would break, and things would progress as planned, minus a few hundred demons who would escape Hell anyways.
Right now, he wanted to know how the Winchesters were hiding from him.
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Her name was Meg, and she was in the apartment when Dean returned. She was petting Sam, like he was a goddamn cat, and smirking like this was in any way funny.
“Hi, Dean.” She brushed Sam’s bangs off of his forehead. “I’m Meg. I’m here to fix your brother. Exorcise me, and he’ll probably die because you’re too stupid to know how to fix him.”
“Get away from my brother, you bitch.” Dean said hoarsely. She sighed.
“Your brother is psychic. He needs to learn how to use his powers. That’s why he’s in a coma- he’s stuck inside his own head.”
“Right. Sure. Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus-”
“I can save him.” Meg said. “I can fix him. Or you can send me back to Hell and watch him die. Your choice.” She started to stand up, and Dean looked past her to Sam’s face. He was pale, he was still, and he was dying, and Dean could never stand by and watch it happen while a solution walked away.
“What are you going to do to him?”
“I’m going to wake him up.” She said. “Watch and learn.” She leaned over Sam, her lips almost touching his ear, and Dean moved as close as he could, so that his gun was pointed directly between her shoulder blades. She was whispering, in a rough language Dean had never heard, and Sam’s eyelids twitched.
Then Meg jumped up, and crashed into Dean, screaming. Dean saw blood all over Sam’s face and freaked- and then saw that there was blood coming from her empty eye sockets.
“You son of a bitch.” She gasped. “Why are you here? What are you doing?”
There was no answer, and Dean grabbed her by the collar and hauled her backwards. She didn’t resist even as he pointed the gun at her face.
“Why are you here?” Meg asked. She gritted her teeth, and Dean fired, one shot through her forehead, one through her heart. She laughed, even as gore dripped down her face, her chest, soaking into the fabric. She looked monstrous as she dragged herself upright.
“I know what you are! You’re-” Orange light flashed from inside her body, lighting her up so Dean could see her ribs. Meg shook, and collapsed like a puppet with cut strings, and Dean rushed to his brother’s side.
Sam was the same as before, and still breathing. Dean used his sleeve to wipe the blood away, checking for a wound, and when he found none, he turned back to the body on the floor. Meg looked dead, and he poured some holy water into her mouth to be sure, then wrapped her body in a blanket and hid it in the closet. Bobby could help him move her once he arrived. Fumbling for his phone, Dean managed to get the number right on the third time.
“Dean?”
“Bobby, I got a dead demon here. She was after Sam, something about him being psychic.”
“Dead demon? As in dead?”
“Looks like it. She was trying to do something to Sam, I don’t know what, and then bam, she freaked out about someone who wasn’t supposed to be there. Then she died.”
“No black smoke?”
“It looked like she’d swallowed a flash bomb or something. Oh, and her eyes got burned out.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like it. Sam alright?”
“He’s still out cold.” Dean sighed. “How far are you? I need some help dumping the body.”
“I’ll be there in an hour. You heard from Mary?”
“…not yet. She had a lead in France, and she said something about India afterwards…”
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Meg had a knife strapped to her ankle, serrated and carved with runes. Dean pocketed it and helped Bobby haul her out of town for a salting and burning.
“You said she was scared?”
“Scared, angry, surprised…” Dean shrugged. “What can kill a demon? I mean, kill it, not just throw it back in Hell.”
“Nothing I know of. There are rumors- there’s the supposed Colt that can kill anything, and there’s lore about angels.”
“But nothing anyone’s actually seen?” Bobby nodded. “Great. This thing was in our room, and I never saw it. Hell, I still don’t know how ‘Meg’ got in- my salt lines were intact and everything.”
“I know a couple of psychics. I’ll get someone up here to look at Sam.”
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He was lying on a beach, and it was warm there.
The sky was blue, cloudless, and the water brushed the shore in a rhythm that reminded Sam of being seven years old, burying his brother in the sand. The sand beneath was like powder, and he was comfortable in a way he hadn’t been since…
“Hey.”
Sam didn’t know the voice, and he reluctantly opened his eyes. The absolute calm he’d grasped was slipping away with the water, and when the next wave crashed into the shore, he dragged himself up onto his elbows.
“This is a dream.”
“Yep.” There was a man sitting in the sand next to him.
Sam had been raised to fear strangers who knew him. But he wasn’t afraid.
“I haven’t been to the beach in a while. Too busy studying, I guess. But I’ve never been here before.”
“You wanted a beach, I gave you a beach. This is Kenya, by the way.” Sam sat all the way up and looked around. It was white sand and ocean as far as he could see, with not a soul- or even a sign of civilization- in sight.
“I always wanted to travel.” Sam imagined, wistfully, himself, with a suitcase and a tourist guide and his family, without monsters lurking in their shadows.
“I know.” Gabriel sighed. Watching Sam’s life fall apart reminded him of the first war, where angel fought angel to throw Lucifer out of the sky: unrelenting, pointless destruction. Everything that could go wrong in Sam’s life was going to go wrong, and no matter what Gabriel did, some things were going to be. They might even be worse, with his interference.
“Do I know you?” Sam asked. Gabriel looked familiar, somehow. Yet he was sure that if they’d met, he would have remembered it.
“Not yet.” Not ever, if things went as planned. Sam could tell the angels he was down here. “I’m just here to show you the way back to Kansas.”
“I can’t stay here in Oz?” Sam stared up at the sky. He could feel anxiety in the pit of his stomach now. Whatever magical peace he’d held was leaving fast.
“Sorry, kid.” Gabriel said. “Your brother’s waiting for you.” He held out his hand. “Come on.”
Sam took his hand. He gave the horizon one last hungry stare, trying to preserve the sea and sand in his memory. The archangel didn’t bother telling him he wouldn’t remember anything later.
He folded in his wings and flew Sam out of his mind, and it descended back into turmoil.
Sam woke up.
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Mary didn’t have enough cash to fill up the tank of her stolen car when she arrived, but she was close enough to the location of Dean’s last voicemail to walk. She hefted her duffel bag up higher on her shoulder, and strode down the sidewalk, going in and out of the pools of light under the streetlights. She listened to the messages Dean had left her; they grew more and more frantic, and the last one sounded as if Dean was crying.
Mary reached the hotel and curtly asked the clerk where her boys were. She was a mess and she knew it; short blonde hair, worn jacket and jeans, scuffed boots. There was a scar under her right eye. But she was intimidating enough to get the room number out of him, and she found the room easily enough- it was a small hotel, cheap, skeevy.
She knocked three times on the door. “Dean!”
“Mom?” Sam’s voice, not Dean’s. Mary let out a sigh of relief and pounded on the closed door again. This time it opened, and Dean splashed holy water onto her face. Then he handed her a silver knife. She drew it across her forearm, and a thin line of blood welled up. Satisfied, he let her in.
There was a portable devil’s trap made of iron on the floor in front of the door. She stepped into it, and then out of it, across a salt line, and to Dean’s bed, where his duffel bag and a weapon he’d been cleaning were laying. On the other bed, Sam was drinking soup. Bobby was between the beds in a chair, with a musty tome in his lap.
If there was a catastrophe going on, she couldn’t see it yet. She glanced at Dean, her expression suggesting that he spill his guts.
“Sam, show Mom.” Dean muttered. “And don’t screw with the guns.”
“I’m not an idiot, Dean.” Sam snapped. He closed his eyes, and Mary waited.
The alarm clock on the bedside table next to him was moving, sliding toward the edge of the table. It continued on in a straight line even after it went over the edge, floating over to Mary, who reached with one hand and grabbed it. She stared at it, and fought to keep her expression neutral; after all this time, she’d begun to doubt.
Of course Sam was different. Why else would the demon want him?
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“Meg.” She repeated. “Her host’s name?”
“Yeah, real name’s Meg Masters, vanished a while back. One sister, parents- the demon wasn’t being subtle.” Dean listed off what he’d learned from a quick check with the missing persons database.
“And she died.” Mary repeated dubiously. There was a thrill of excitement in her blood at the thought of killing a demon, and yet she didn’t want to believe it. It seemed too lucky to have happened to her sons. “And you have no idea how it happened?”
“Sam doesn’t remember anything and I checked. The salt line was intact, I had devil’s traps at the doors, hell, I painted stuff on the ceiling. I have no clue how Meg got in, let alone the thing that killed her.” Dean said. “Mom, I-I don’t know. Even with Bobby here, Sam’s a psychic now. What if his powers make him some kind of demon magnet?”
“Dean,” Mary said, “There’s something you should know about your brother. About the night your father died. The demon wasn’t there for your father.” She hesitated. “It was after Sam.”
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Mary thought of only one thing in the weeks that followed her return. She sent Dean and Sam off hunting- Dean was more than capable of looking after Sam, and there was no fear of Sam leaving after the fire. She thought of the dead demon.
There was someone out there with the power to kill demons, and Mary wanted them. She toyed with the idea of summoning a demon to ask them, but it was risky business if demons were looking for Sam. She couldn’t let anything get a hold of her youngest son now. But she knew there had to be some clue, and so she watched Sam carefully.
“Where’d you get that amulet, Sam?” Sam looked down at the silver feather hanging from a cord around his neck. He frowned.
“Oh, this? I did a jeweler a favor while I was a Stanford. He had a haunted wedding ring. He gave it to me as payment.”
“Let me see.” She held out a hand expectantly, and Sam tugged the cord over his head and handed it to her.
She dangled it in air, examining it. It looked like a miniature feather done in silver -no runes, no odd marks, and when she tested it in holy water and salt, nothing happened. Perhaps she was grasping for straws.
She pocketed it. “I’m going out. Stay here.” Sam nodded, and turned around to continue reading his newspaper. He reached up, absently, to his neck, where the amulet had been.
Where the amulet now was. Mary reached into her pocket and found it was empty; Sam tugged at the silver feather hanging from his neck in confusion.
“What the hell?” Dean snapped. His mother grabbed her duffel, still packed, off of the table.
“We’re leaving. Get packed.”
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On her way out of town, Mary stopped to see the jeweler Sam had mentioned. Dean and Sam were both in the car, bewildered and frustrated, but she didn’t really care. She had a gut feeling about the amulet, and she was determined to follow it, whether her sons liked it or not.
Couldn’t they see how close they were? It would all be over soon.
The jeweler told her about a man who’d come to the store a month before Sam had, and given him both the wedding ring Sam had melted down and the amulet with clear instructions. He’d been reluctant at first, but when the bloody woman began appearing in the store, he was quick to make sure Sam received the amulet if it meant getting rid of the ring.
“Was there anything unusual about him?” She asked.
“Well…” The jeweler hesitated. “There was this one thing. A couple nights before he showed up, someone came into the store and smashed every piece of glass, eve the camera lenses. They didn’t steal anything- just broke the glass. I was still replacing stuff when he came, so I didn’t even have camera footage.”
“I see. Thanks.” Broken glass? Definitely something supernatural. And Mary thought of the description- short, reddish brown hair- and thought again of the man who’d told her that her sons were destined to end the world.
She wondered what he was as she climbed back into the driver’s seat and hit the gas.
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Sam was asleep beside him when Dean woke up. It took him a minute to figure out why- they were grown men, the bed was tiny, and Dean was pretty sure he hadn’t been screaming in his sleep or anything-but he saw the mess of papers and books spread out on the other bed and understood. Mary was bent over a map, marking out something with a pen.
Sam was using Dean’s shoulder as a pillow. This resulted in the most uncomfortable position ever, with his entire body curled up awkwardly to fit into the space beside Dean. His younger brother was going to have the worst aches when he woke up.
“Mom?”
“I’m leaving.” She replied curtly. “Before I go, there’s something you need to know. About Sam.”
“Yeah?” He could feel the nervousness in the pit of his stomach.
“You’ll need to watch him closely.” She said softly. “His powers came from the demon. If he…you’ll have to stop him.”
“Sam wouldn’t.” Dean said, and it sounded like he was pleading. His mother couldn’t be saying this to him, not after she’d put baby Sammy in his arms and told him to watch out for him while she hunted her first monsters. He’d rocked him to sleep, made his lunches, taught him to tie his shoes, stuck him on a bus to California with a lump in his throat. “He’s my brother.”
“You’ll have to kill him, if you can’t save him.” Mary picked up her papers and began folding them into her bag. She slid the strap over his shoulder and walked out the door, and it shut with a click behind her. It was silent in the room.
Dean was frozen, his eyes fixed on his sleeping brother. He hadn’t even moved, every muscle tensed, because he didn’t want to wake his brother, and at that moment he would have been happy if Sam never woke up, if Sam was safe at his side forever.
“I can’t, Mom. I’m sorry-” He let his head fall back onto the pillow and pretended there were no tears welling up in his eyes. “-but I can’t kill Sammy.”
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Dean thought that he was doing a good job of concealing his worrying from Sam. He wasn’t. Something was up, and Sam knew it.
Dean had always been fussy about Sam eating enough and always took the more dangerous position in a hunt and never admitted to needing help with his injuries or being sick, now he was staring at Sam whenever Sam pretended to be asleep and or distracted. He kept asking Sam about how he was feeling, to the point where Sam had actually spiked his beer with holy water and given him some real silver cutlery.
It went from overprotective to freaky when Sam caught Dean pouring holy water into his coffee.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” Dean snapped, trying to slip the flask back into his coat without being caught. Sam sat down and downed his coffee in one long gulp.
“Dean.” Sam waited patiently for Dean to talk. When eh didn’t. Sam groaned. “Look. Mom’s been gone for months without calling. Possessions are up all over the country. Things are tense right now.”
“Look, I’m fine. Let’s eat and get going.” Dean stood up, pushed in his seat, and threw a bill down onto the table.
“You were spiking my drink with holy water. You are not fine if you think I’m a demon.” Sam followed Dean out of the diner and out into the cold as they stomped towards the car.
“Sam. We are not having this conversation.” The driver’s side door slammed as Dean got in.
“What is it, Dean? I know there’s something up. You haven’t been this freaked since that witch tried to make me her virgin sacrifice. If something’s going on, I need to know so I can help you, protect you-” Sam slammed the door as well.
“It’s not your job to protect me, okay? Come on.”
“If I don’t have your back, who does? Mom’s not here.”
“I know.” Dean leaned back against the seat, his hands resting loosely on the wheel.
Sam was wrong. He was the one who needed to be protected, form the demons and possibly himself. Sam’s powers were growing stronger, and Dean was terrified that somehow they would lead his brother astray. Sometimes he found himself staring at Sam, trying to understand how anyone could believe he was capable of becoming a monster.
When his brother was in danger, Dean protected him. It had always been that way, except that now Sam was grown up and looking for something more, and Dean didn’t know how to let him.
“I liked it better when you were little,” he said finally, “and all you wanted was to hug my face in your sleep and stuff like that.”
“You hated it when I did that.” Sam said with a laugh.
“Nah, I didn’t.” Dean sighed. “Sam, Mom…she said some stuff about you.”
“What stuff?”
“She told me that the demon…was after you.” He stared straight out the windshield, at the parking lot, without seeing it. He didn’t want to see Sam’s face. “That you were in danger and I had to look out for you.”
“Mom’s said that a million times.”
“She said that I had to save you, or else…”
“Or else what?” Sam could feel his heart pounding.
“Or else I’d have to kill you, Sammy.”
It was silent in the car after that. Dean turned the key in the ignition, and drove out of the town on autopilot. The trees and the cars blurred together as he drove, in a straight line, not worrying about where he was going. Maybe if he drove fast enough he could go back in time, way back, and keep Sam from ever knowing.
“You should have told me.” Sam’s voice was like ice, but Dena could read the fury and the hurt beneath it.
“No need.” Dean replied. “It’s not going to happen.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I can’t, Sam. I’d rather die. I’m going to save you, so forget it, alright?”
“Dean-”
“You’re not going to!” Dean realized, belatedly, that he was yelling. And after he’d promised himself he’d keep cool and clam Sam down. “No matter what Mom thinks might happen to you. I’ll save you.”
“I know you will, Dean. But from what?”
“From everything.” Dean snapped, and he pressed down harder on the gas.
Sam thought of the yellow-eyed demon in his dreams, and felt cold. Now he understood.
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