Side B, part three

[chiiyo86]

Part two



Ansem Beckett.

The name had bugged Mary as soon as Bill had said it. Call it female intuition, or just a hunter’s intuition, or maybe it was only that she had worked on this case for so long and thought she knew it so well, that it was jarring to have to handle a new piece of the puzzle.

“Bill!” she called, doing her best to keep her voice steady.

She kept her eyes on the screen of the computer in Karen’s office on the second floor, listening for Bill’s footsteps coming up to her. Although the room was impeccable, and Mary knew she wouldn’t find even one speck of dust in there, it wasn’t quite as tidy as everywhere else in the house. Other than the writing desk where the computer sat and a loveseat tucked in a corner, the only furniture were the bookshelves lined along the walls. It was obvious that the books had once been sorted by topics and alphabetical order, but at one point the shelves had overflowed and some of the books were piled at the top of the shelves and even on the floor, making the room feel crowded and at odds with the glossy catalog quality of the rest of the house. Mary suspected the office had once been Karen’s husband’s, but it was now open to use for all the hunters who stopped by Karen’s refuge.

Bill’s voice floated up to her from somewhere down the stairs: “Yeah? What is it?”

“Can you come here for a sec?”

She found herself shrouded in shadow when Bill’s tall figure came to obscure the light from the doorway.

“I was looking up Ansem Beckett,” she explained, turning the screen so he could see. “And guess what? He’s a student.” She heard the false calm in her voice start to crack, and Bill probably heard it too because he stepped into the room. “At KU Lawrence.”

Bill’s hand dropped on the back of her chair. “Where Sam is.”

“Yes. It can’t be a coincidence.” She blinked at the screen for a few more seconds, and her fingers curled in her lap. “Bill.”

“I know. Give me half-an-hour to get ready and we’ll leave.”

“Okay. I’ll… I’ll try to call Sam.”

She tried. A few dozen times, but Sam wasn’t answering. There could be many innocuous reasons for that: maybe he was out of battery, or he’d forgotten his phone, or had turned it off because he was studying - something he often did. Mary wasn’t an overly anxious person by nature, but since John had died she had never been able to stop worrying about her sons, and especially about Sam, the anxiety only fueled by her uncertainty as to why the yellow-eyed demon had come for him that night. Now she couldn’t help but think of the people murdered in Arizona, of Max Miller, born the same year as Sam, both a victim and a killer. Ansem Beckett anywhere in the vicinity of her son could only be bad news.

They left Karen’s in a hurry, and Mary knew that she was scaring her friends with her urgency, but she couldn’t worry about that at the moment. Karen promised to let them know about anything her hunter friends would uncover about the other kids, packed them a box of cookies for the trip, and extorted from them the promise to call her with an update as soon as they could.

Bill drove, while Mary tried a few more times to call Sam, with no success. She didn’t leave more than one message on his answering machine. She didn’t want to worry him in case there was nothing wrong. She kept instinctively pressing her feet against the floor, where the gas pedal would be if she were in the driver’s seat, tensing her whole body in a futile effort to make the car go faster. She wished they’d just flown over to Lawrence, but they never could have gotten their truck-full worth of weapons past airport security.

“Any chance?” Bill asked. His tone was casual but he held the wheel in a white-knuckled grip.

“No. Maybe he…” She was going to drone out one of the possible explanations she had thought of, but suddenly couldn’t muster the energy. It wasn’t as if Bill wouldn’t see right through her act anyway.

“I’m sure he’s okay, Mary.” This was the kind of empty words of comfort that didn’t deserve a reply, but Bill surprised her by adding: “Did you try to call Dean?”

Mary couldn’t help the way her heart stuttered in her chest, hearing that name in a conversation where she wasn’t expecting it. “No? Why would I-”

“Maybe he’s in the area and can check on Sam faster than us. Maybe he knows something we don’t. Maybe he’s even with Sam at the moment.”

“I don’t think that-” Mary started, but swallowed back her words. She knew Sam and Dean called each other, so why wouldn’t they see each other too? “I don’t even know if the number I have for him is still good.”

She had her phone in her hand and she looked at it, willing herself to make the call but unable to move her fingers. She was startled when the phone began to ring: it was Sam, and it took her a second to realize it and pick up the call. “Sam, baby, are you-”

“Mom? Wow, slow down. I saw that you tried to call me. I’m sorry, I was out of battery and I didn’t realize it until-”

“No, it’s fine. As long as you’re okay.” She forced herself to breathe so she wouldn’t sound too off-kilter and scare him. “Listen, Sam - there’s this boy in your school, his name’s Ansem Beckett, and you need to stay away from him. Do you understand? I’m coming to you with Bill, but we won’t be there until tomorrow. We were in South Dakota and-” Sam’s end was completely silent, and Mary’s heartbeat picked up again. “Sam? Sammy?”

Bill was casting her looks, but he didn’t try to butt into the conversation.

“Still here,” Sam said eventually. He sounded calm, but oddly flat too, almost emotionless. “I met Ansem already, but I don’t think you need to worry about him; I don’t think he wants to harm me - not for the moment, anyway. But you still need to come here, because he mentioned the yellow-eyed man to me. I called because I thought it might be of some interest to you.”

“The… what?” The whiplash from worry to relief didn’t leave Mary enough brain space to process what her son was telling her. The yellow-eyed man. She knew there was a connection between the demon and Ansem Beckett (and Sam, and all the other children), but how did Sam know about it? “Is your brother with you?” was the only thing she could think of saying.

“Yes.” Sam’s voice was dry as a bone bleached white by the sun. She couldn’t remember ever hearing him taking this tone with her. “He is. Look, Mom, we’ll talk about it when you’ll get here. Don’t worry, Dean and I can handle it.”

“Wait, Sam-”

Sam had already hung up. Mary clenched her teeth hard, her fingers clamping on her phone. To Bill’s questioning look she only said, “Drive faster.”

The rest of the trip was a blur. Instead of stopping for the night they just switched drivers and went on. Bill dropped asleep as soon as he settled in the passenger seat, leaving her alone. Mary drove through the darkness and the odd twirl of fog, the car’s lights like two beacons always on the verge of being swallowed by the dark. Although she hadn’t had any sleep she didn’t feel tired at all, but wired instead with nervous energy. She knew she was getting too old not to pay for this later; right now, she didn’t care. Her gut-wrenching worry for her son had subsided with his call, but now her mind was whirling with so many different emotions, so many thoughts, all tangled together in impossible knots. Her Sam hearing about the yellow-eyed man, knowing she’d lied to him - oh god, the betrayal in her boy’s voice. Sam was a bit of an all-or-nothing type, nursing grudges for years like jealously guarded treasures. He could forgive his brother the invention of a yellow-eyed boogieman because he’d been a child himself then; Mary wasn’t so sure he would forgive her her masquerade of the truth.

And Dean. Just thinking about him, about seeing him and talking to him after years of silence, had her mind short-circuiting. She couldn’t imagine what that reunion would be like; she needed to be way more prepared for this, she needed more sleep, better circumstances. The way she’d envisioned it - because she’d never for one moment resigned herself to never speaking to him again - it always happened after she’d offed the demon that had killed John and stopped whatever his plans for Sam were. When everything got back to normal, she could call Dean, could try to make him see that all she’d ever wanted was to protect him from a soul-destroying life-style and a quest that would only get him killed. Only she wasn’t given any choice, was she; if she wanted to take this quest to its conclusion, she had to contend with Sam and Dean’s involvement in it.

It was dawn when they reached Lawrence. They stopped at Mary’s house; she changed her clothes and both of them had a shower before Mary called Sam. It was decided that they would meet here, at the house, and even as Sam agreed easily Mary thought that she would’ve liked to be a fly on the wall when her youngest tried to convince his brother to come.

“Hey, you okay?”

His hair dark from the shower, Bill was leaning against the doorframe, looking at her. Mary put back the phone on its base and faked a smile. “They’ll be there shortly.”

“You’re a master of avoidance, Winchester.”

“I’ll be fine. It’s just…” She shook her head. “But I made my bed, didn’t I?”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

She blinked at him, then barked a short, surprised laugh. “Look who’s talking,” she said.

---

Never had so short a car trip seemed so long. In the passenger seat Sam kept playing with his phone, his head hung low, his hair falling over his eyes like some of those fucking froufrou curtains; in the backseat Vivian was silent, and in the cut-out image of the rearview mirror Dean could only see part of her shoulder and the back of her head as she looked through the window. She’d insisted on coming with them, and since she’d worked this case with him from the beginning Dean couldn’t come up with a reason good enough to keep her away. Even then, damn if the thought of all the dirty laundry they were going to air up in front of a stranger didn’t make him cringe. Bill would be there too, but he was almost family.

Heaving a sigh - were they ever going to get there? - Dean fumbled for the dial of the radio, hoping to keep his mind off things with some music, but Sam slapped his hand away.

“Don’t.”

“Hey! Mind the attitude, dude. My car, my-”

Sam raised his head minutely to shoot him a look from in-between his bangs. “Dean, please, don’t.”

“Fine.” Dean put his hand back on the wheel. It didn’t take long before his fingers, almost on their own volition, started to beat rhythmically while he hummed Fire of Unknown Origin. He looked pointedly at Sam, daring him to say anything, but his brother only huffed and kept pressing buttons on his phone, albeit maybe a little more angrily. Why was Sam so snappy anyway? Okay, Dean hadn’t been perfectly honest with him about this gig, but now he knew everything, no more secret, and he wasn’t the one heading toward a family crisis. Dean tried not to think about it too much.

When he parked on the other side of the street from the house, the sun was just flirting with the top of the roof, crowning it with light. Dean turned off the engine but didn’t make another move. He heard Vivian open up the door on her side and step out of the car, but Sam remained in his seat too. When Dean dared look in his direction, expecting Sam’s face of disapproval, he found that his brother was giving a soft, considering look.

“You don’t have to come in,” he said. “I can-”

“You’re telling me this now? After I psyched myself all the way to here? No can do, dude.” He pulled on the lapels of his jacket, straightening it. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Outside the car Vivian was waiting for them with her arms crossed, her feet stomping on the ground against the early morning temperature. When they joined them she jerked her chin in a ‘finally’ sort of gesture, but kept silent and followed them in locked step when they crossed the street.

Looking at it from the outside, the house was still the same. At least it matched pretty closely the image of it that Dean had tucked away in a corner of his memory: the tall elm tree shadowing one corner of the house, and the old swing swaying from one of the lower branches, its strings frayed with age. The bushes under the windows, always in need of a good cut because their mother rarely took the time to care for them, in spite of her claims that she liked gardening. The rusty tricycle half-hidden by the stairs leading to the porch, Sam’s or Dean’s, that they had never gotten rid of. It was almost like jumping backward in time.

Dean felt Sam bump his shoulder. “Dean?”

“Yeah.” His throat felt closed up as though from anaphylactic shock. He took a breath in, drawing as much air as he could into his lungs, but it still didn’t feel like enough. “I’ll, uh, let you lead the way, Sammy.”

Behind him he heard Vivian’s clothes swoosh as she fidgeted, and he knew she was getting impatient with their stalling. Well, tough shit for her, but she was the one who had insisted on coming with them.

Sam looked at him one last time, then nodded. In a few strides of those freakishly long legs of his he was at the front door, shuffling his feet over on the doormat and fiddling his key in the keyhole.

“Mom,” he called as the pushed the front door open. “Mom, we’re-”

Mary had been probably waiting for them, watching the street through the lacy curtains from the kitchen window overlooking the front lawn.

“Thanks for coming,” she said formally, kissing Sam on the cheek but looking over his shoulder, her eyes warily watching Dean, fixed on him like she was expecting him to pounce at any moment.

“Hi,” Dean said, wondering if he should call her Mom or Mary, finding one impossible and the other absurd, and dismissing them both. He stepped aside to reveal Vivian. “This is-”

“Vivian Walker.” Bill suddenly loomed from behind Mary, looking like he’d just had a shower, which… yeah, not going there. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Just giving a hand,” Vivian said. “Do you mind?”

Bill watched her for a moment before he said, “It’s a free country.”

They went inside the house, and Dean was once more overwhelmed by a wave of déjà vu. This time the match between past and present was slightly off: the couch, armchairs and bookshelves had been moved around, some new pictures adorned the walls, and the rug had been changed.

Before he could close the front door behind him and follow the rest of the party to the living area, Bill stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, leaning to whisper in his ear: “Be careful about partnering up with Vivian Walker.”

Dean shot a surprised look to Bill, then to Vivian’s lean back as she exchanged greetings with his mother. “What d’you mean?”

“You don’t want to tangle with obsession like that. If you get sucked into it you can end up as collateral damage.”

Dean looked at Bill, turned his head in direction of his mother and brother, then looked back at Bill, a pointed eyebrow lifted up. “I know a thing or two about obsession.”

They all settled in the living room and Mary offered them some tea. While she was gone in the kitchen, Dean’s eye got caught by the thin image cut out by the half-open door of his former room: there he could see bookshelves and the corner of a desk, and couldn’t help the unexpected stab of betrayal he felt. What did you expect, huh? That she would preserve your room like a fucking shrine?

They drank their tea when it was ready and no one talked for a moment. Dean swallowed his like a shot of liquor rather than sipping it like Sam did. It burned his tongue and throat and tasted like freshly cut grass. He made a face and stuck the empty, still hot cup between his knees. Sam glanced irritably at him, but it was familiar irritation of the ‘won’t you behave! variety.

“Shall we share information?” Sam said haughtily to their mother. “That means, we’re straight with you, and you’re straight with us.” Dean caught the flash of hurt in Mary’s expression before she could cover it with a hunter’s poker face.

“Alright,” she said. “Tell me what you know.”

Sam related the death of Rachel Landon, the bizarre behavior of her roommate at the joined houses party, and Ansem’s little talk at the library.

“We thought that Rachel and Vicky might have fallen victim to some form of possession, but now we think-” There he shared a quick look with Dean, like checking with him on the use of the plural pronoun. “We think maybe Ansem’s done something to them. After I called you I went to talk with Vicky again, and she told me that lately she’d been harassed by a boy and Rachel had played bodyguard. She’d also urged Vicky to file a complaint against that guy, but the strange thing is that, even though he’s been bothering her so much, she couldn’t remember his name or give a precise description of him. That, combined to Ansem showing up out of the blue…”

“Ansem Beckett’s definitely involved,” Mary said. She was speaking stiffly, holding herself ramrod straight in a way that didn’t match any of Dean’s memories of her.

“How do you know that?” Sam asked.

Mary exchanged a look with Bill and Bill unfurled from his armchair, pushing himself up with his hands on his knees. “Vivian?” he said, and tilted his head toward the door. “Wanna have a word with me outside?”

There no shortage of belligerence in the way Vivian looked at him, and Dean braced himself for a big showdown between the two, but then her eyes swept over the whole Winchester family, and she said, “Not really. But yeah, I’ll go with you.”

After the two had gone, Dean, Sam and their mother were left looking at each other, in some kind of three-way Mexican standoff where everyone was sitting and no one was holding a gun. Yet. “Family reunions, right?” Dean said. “Fun times.”

To his surprise, Mary gently snorted and shook her head. That same amused shake of the head that had been her reactions to his antics when he was much younger. Then she was serious again: “Ansem Beckett is part of a list of young people born in 1983 who had fires happen in their house when they were six-month old. And it all ties up somehow to the… the yellow-eyed man Dean saw in Sam’s room the night your dad died.”

All the blood in Dean’s body suddenly turned cold, like rivers during a winter freeze. “I thought the yellow-eyed man was just a figment of my imagination.” This wasn’t what he’d meant to say; it sounded like a snippy, passive-aggressive, bratty comeback, because he’d always known - almost always - that the yellow-eyed man existed. But in his weaker moments he’d managed to convince himself that his mother genuinely thought he wasn’t real.

“He’s a demon,” Mary continued, her eyes downcast on her hands, speaking fast like she’d worked herself up to a point where she had no choice but to get it all out. “It. Different from most demons who make it topside but I know close to nothing about it, except that it’s working - has been working for decades - on some sort of plan involving children and-”

You knew. You’ve always known, Dean thought as he listened to his mother, but he didn’t want to interrupt her because he was finally getting the truth and there was no stopping it now.

“A few of those kids seem to have manifested some kind of… psychic abilities. One of them could see the future. Another was telekinetic. Whatever is going on in your school…” Here her eyes flickered lightning-fast to Sam. “It’s too big a coincidence. He has to be the one doing it.”

Sam hadn’t said a word in a while. It was so unusual for him that Dean forgot his feelings of betrayal and looked at his brother in concern: his own petty grievances were nothing new, but Sam had actually entertained the illusion that hunting was something that didn’t concern him if he decided it didn’t. Seeing it shattered had to sting like a motherfucker.

“Sammy?” he called, weirded out by the kid’s silence and the blank look on his face. Sam was never blank: he wore every emotion on his face like a badge of pride.

“If Ansem has a psychic ability it has to be some sort of mind control,” Sam said, and his voice had the same bland quality as his face. “He made Rachel jump out of the window because she was in his way, and he made Vicky slap me because… Because I was talking to her, I guess? Because he was afraid of what she might tell me, or maybe just because he was jealous.”

“He can control people, then,” Mary said, and she had finally stopped staring at her hands. “Even from a distance, apparently, or else he just made people forget he was there at all. Because if there had been a boy in the house when Rachel Landon died, one of the girls would have mentioned it.”

Okay, so that was how they were going to play it, apparently: business now, emotional fallout later. Dean could work with that.

“Something I don’t get,” he said, “If Ansem wanted Sam to stop talking to Vicky, why didn’t he just make him stop? So far he’d avoided using his mind trick on her - he could have made her fall into his arms or whatever, but he didn’t. Instead he flew her nagging roommate out of the window. Why didn’t he do the same with Sam?”

He regretted his question when he saw his brother’s mouth twitch and his nostrils flare. “I think,” Sam said in a strangled voice, “that maybe it’s because he can’t. Maybe-”

The front door opened and Dean felt a surge of annoyance - first family talk in years and they couldn’t get ten minutes without anyone barging in.

Sam, who was facing the entrance, said, “Vivian? Where’s Bill?”

Dean turned around and saw Vivian, standing tall in the empty doorway that led to the entrance hall, her gun in her hand and pointed like she was about to use it. Bill was nowhere to be seen. “Vivian? What the hell-”

She turned to him and fired her gun. Sam and Mary both cried out. Dean’s shoulder exploded with pain, and his world faded to black.

---

It had happened so fast that Sam’s brain didn’t seem able to catch up. Part of him was still stuck on the conversation they’d just had, the reveals his mom had thrown to their faces - to his face, goddamn it, how could she hide that from him - while the other part saw Vivian shoot his brother without warning. He heard himself shout but it didn’t sound right, like watching a movie where the sound and image are out of sync.

“Dean!”

The impact of the bullet had sent Dean right back in the chair he’d been sitting in before, and Sam could see a dark spot of blood spreading as the fabric soaked it up.

“Listen, I don’t know what you want-”

The panicked edge in his mom’s voice, so unusual, made Sam tear his eyes away from his bleeding brother. He saw that Vivian was now turning to her, even though Sam was closer. The analytical part of his brain that never seemed to shut up stashed that thought away for further analysis, while his body leaped forward like he could catch her in time. A scream escaped him, coming from deep in his gut: “No! Stop!”

No one was more surprised than he was when Vivian actually stopped. Sam froze, panting like after a long run, his heart beating too fast in his chest. “Don’t move,” he added, his voice a little trembling.

Vivian didn’t move - at all. She was still but in a completely unnatural way: her gun hand still raised, her other hand slightly away from her body, fingers stretched. She looked frozen mid-step, like in a game of red light, green light.

Sam slowly walked around her so he could look at her face, and with each step his heartbeat slowed down until it was back to normal. When he saw Vivian’s eyes, though, his heart went up a notch once more.

“Oh, God.”

Her face was scrunched up with effort, her eyes almost bulging out of their sockets. They followed Sam’s movements with piercing intensity, and if looks could send bullets Sam had a feeling he’d be the one with a hole in his body right now.

“Vivian, are you-”

“Look at her. She’s torn between two different directions at once; I wonder how long we can keep this game going before her brain start leaking from her ears.”

Sam wasn’t much surprised to see Ansem step into the room, but he heard his mother utter a slight gasp. She’d gone to Dean’s side and was pressing a handkerchief to his wound. The makeshift pad was already completely red from the blood, but Dean was groaning softly and his eyelids fluttered rapidly as he struggled for consciousness.

“I didn’t think you had it in you, Sammy!”

Sam’s first instinct was to tell Ansem off for calling him Sammy, but there were more urgent matters at hand. “What do you mean?” he said through gritted teeth.

“What, you don’t get it?” Sam wanted to smack the smirk right off his smug face; Ansem must have felt it because he didn’t wait for another clueless and pissed-off question before babbling on: “This is your doing. You stopped her with your ability. You’re just like me!”

Sam’s ears started to ring, almost drowning the rest of Ansem’s ramblings: “I wondered if you had manifested an ability already - you’re a little late, you know, but that’s the power of denial for you. I’m glad I got to see your first time; this is so exciting! It’s like we’re brothers.”

That last word snapped Sam right back. “No, we’re not. You shot my brother!”

At his periphery he saw that Dean was conscious now, albeit very pale, looking like all the blood from his face had leaked out of his bullet wound. His eyes were locked on Ansem, and even in his state it looked like the only thing keeping from jumping to the guy’s throat was Mom’s hands on his shoulder and chest.

“What did you do to Bill?” Sam asked Ansem.

“Me? Nothing.” He pointed a thumb toward Vivian; her whole body had started trembling and Sam worried that Ansem’s talk of leaking brains was not a hyperbole. “She wacked him good over the head, though. But don’t worry, he’s alive. I think.”

Not a whole lot of comfort, but there wasn’t much Sam could do about it for now.

“Let Vivian go,” he said. “Let all of them go.”

“Let me think… Nah. I don’t care if her brain does leak out of ears, but don’t worry - for that to happen you would have to strong enough to fight me, but you aren’t, Sam, not yet. I’ve been at it longer than you have.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to help you get rid of your family, Sam. I’m doing this for you, man, believe it or not. You don’t see it but they’re slowing you down.”

“Like your mother slowed you down?” Mom asked. “Is that why you killed her? Made her douse herself in gasoline and set herself on fire?”

Even if Sam had already known that Ansem was capable of murder, this tidbit of information had fear dig into his insides. A guy who’d killed his own mother wouldn’t stop at anything to destroy Sam’s family.

Ansem went pale at Mom’s words, dropping his ever-present smile like a hot potato. “You don’t know anything. She deserved it. She was a killer!”

“And you would know all about it, wouldn’t you?” Sam said.

Ansem turned back to Sam, stepping forward, and even if Sam was more or less convinced Ansem didn’t want to harm him he couldn’t help an involuntary jerk of fear. “I had a brother too, you know,” Ansem said in a trembling voice. “A twin brother. His name was Andy. He was my other half, Sam, and she let him burn. So it was only justice - fire for fire.”

“I’m sure she tried to save him,” Mom said. “She probably didn’t have the time-”

“Shut up!” Ansem yelled, throwing his arms up in the air. Mom’s mouth was instantly sealed shut, bloodless lips pressed in a tight line. “She had two arms, for god’s sake! She could have saved him if she’d wanted to, but she never even wanted to be pregnant, let alone with two babies. It was her mother that convinced her to keep us. But by the time of the fire Grandma was dead, so my mother seized that occasion to get rid of one kid and let my brother die!”

Ansem looked seriously unhinged now, his usually pale face red with anger and his teeth bare like he wanted to take a bite out of Mom. “It’s like that bitch, Vicky! I tried to make her like me without using my power, God knows I tried, and at first I thought that her friend Rachel was the one turning her against me with poisonous words, but even after her death Vicky wouldn’t talk to me!”

Sam saw Dean quirk an eyebrow at that, and could almost hear the smartass comment: And you were surprised, lover boy? None of them dared say anything, though.

“It’s because they’re just people, Sammy.” Ansem’s attention was once again on Sam and it seemed to calm him down, like he genuinely thought that he might have a kindred spirit in Sam. “They’re just puppets for us to use. I get it now. I know what the yellow-eyed man wants: he wants us to raise above our human condition.”

Intent on his message he took another step, closer to Sam and away from the entrance hall where Sam could see a large figure looming.

“What the hell does that mean?” Sam asked, hoping to distract Ansem from Bill’s coming behind him.

It was in vain; Bill raised his fist but froze mid-air, and Ansem didn’t turn around but tension was marked in the way his jaw was set and his fingers clenched in fists. On the right, out of Ansem’s vision field, Sam saw Vivian twitch and he wondered: had Ansem ever had that many people under his control? He knew that Ansem was right, that he had more practice at this mind control thing than Sam had, and if they were fighting to keep control over one person there was no way he would win. Except that Ansem was trying now to control four different people at the same time, and Sam was already fighting with him for Vivian. What if-

His eyes met with his brother’s, and for one moment the communication was wide open between them: because Dean was injured, Ansem’s attention was off him and if Sam gave it a shove he could help Dean break Ansem’s hold on him. On paper it sounded like a good plan, but the thought of actually doing it, of consciously using this power he didn’t understand on his brother made Sam’s head spin.

Could he do it? Could he live with himself after crossing that line?

“Alright,” Ansem said, with a fake cheerful note that couldn’t hide the strain in his voice from the effort he was making. “I think it’s time to end this masquerade. Sammy, you got to work with me here. Let Vivian go.”

If Ansem was asking, it meant that it wasn’t that easy for him to tighten his leash on Vivian. Decision time, Sammy. If he let Vivian go, Ansem was going to make her kill his family.

“You and me, Sam.” Ansem held out a hand to Sam; his eyes, wide and intense, were of a blue so clear they looked like pools of water under a clear sky, trying to draw Sam and make him fall into them. “With the yellow-eyed man’s help, we will take over the world.”

“Is that what he promised you?”

“He promised me everything.”

“He’s a demon, Ansem. Demons lie.”

Sam looked at his family: his brother’s eyes, clouded over with pain but determined; his mother, her blond hair dark with perspiration. His mother who had lied to him all his life, but had also loved him, raised him, showed him how the world really was and taught him to fight.

“A demon?” Ansem said with a derisive snort. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. He’s not lying to us; he’s the only one who’s telling the truth. Look at what we can do!”

Sweat beaded on Ansem’s forehead. He was now almost close enough for Sam to punch him, but not quite, and if Ansem saw it coming the consequences would be dire. Right now all of Ansem’s attention was aimed at Sam, intent on convincing him, so earnest about it that Sam felt in equal part bad for him and creeped out by his attempt to have Sam replace the brother he’d lost in the fire.

Dean. He took care in forming the name in his mind, tried to make it as intentional and clear as if he were saying it out loud. If Ansem could do it, it meant that it was possible. Go for it. Punch his lights out.

For a few suspended seconds he didn’t know if it had worked. Then Dean sprung from his chair and threw a punch at Ansem. He was weak and shaky, though, probably from a combination of both the injury and the double mind control, and his fist only grazed Ansem’s temple. Ansem wavered, brought a hand to the side of his head, and barked in a voice deformed by pain and anger: “Vivian! Kill him!”

Sam could feel the toll using his newfound power was taking on him, an ache that wasn’t entirely physical but more like a sort of mind-cramp, and he knew he couldn’t stop Vivian the same way he had before. He jumped on her and managed to catch her gun arm just when her finger was about to press the trigger. The shot went wild and the bullet lodged itself in the ceiling. Sam gripped both of Vivian’s wrists and tried to wrestle her before she could fire another shot, but she was strong and it took all he had to manage to fold her arms against her chest. Her gun was stuck between them and she was twisting her hand so she could aim it at Sam.

“Mom!”

Dean’s call behind him fired like a shot, and Sam couldn’t turn to look at what was going on. He crushed Vivian’s hand in his, tugging at her fingers, trying to make her drop her gun. Her eyes burned in her face and she looked at him with such hatred that Sam thought it couldn’t just be Ansem’s influence. He heard groans, shouts, the muffled sound of flesh hitting flesh. His mother and brother fighting Ansem - which meant that Ansem was now having a hard time controlling them.

“Let it go,” Sam hissed through his teeth, trying to get to Vivian somehow. “Let it go.”

She stopped resisting suddenly and Sam let go of her hands; when it didn’t look like she was going to try to shoot him, he hurried to his family’s help. It appeared that they no longer needed the help, though: they’d taken hold of Ansem on both sides, and although they were both out of breath and Dean’s front was covered in gore, they didn’t look worse for the wear. Bill had finally lowered his fist, but from his owlish expression he seemed to have trouble grasping what had happened to him. Ansem’s face was bruised and he was blinking rapidly, clinging to consciousness but quickly losing ground.

“What the fuck are we gonna do with him?” Dean rasped, looking himself like he was seconds away from dropping to the floor. “When he gets his marbles together, he’ll just use us as puppets all over again.” Not a word on Sam’s apparent immunity, not that Sam wanted to open that can of worms just now.

“I suggest we keep him unconscious for now,” Mom said. “Let me get-”

Bang! They all jumped in surprised. Dean yelled and let go of Ansem, losing his balance and falling to his knees while the body crumpled on his side. Sam blinked and wiped at his face where he’d felt something warm splash him - blood, grey matter - absent-mindedly at first, then a little frantically. He looked in the direction where the shot had come from: it was Vivian, of course, her eyes cold and in her hands the gun Sam had left her.

“Problem solved,” she said, and tucked her weapon away.

---

Looking through the crack where the half-open door was hinged, Mary observed Vivian saying her goodbyes to Dean before Sam took her back to her own car. Between getting rid of the body without alarming the neighbors and patching Dean up, it’d been close to four hours since Ansem’s death and Mary still didn’t know what to think about what had happened. It was a conundrum: on the one hand, the way Vivian had gunned down a twenty-two-year old kid was downright chilling; but on the other hand, none of them had known what to do with him and there was a guilty sense of relief at having the problem taken off their hands.

“I’m still holding you to that promise you made me,” Vivian was saying, looking down on Dean, who was making efforts to sit straight on the couch.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Dean said vaguely. “That was some cold-blooded shit you did there.”

“Someone had to make a call, and I could tell no one else was going to do what needed to be done.”

“Yeah, I know. I mean, just, damn. That kid was Sammy’s age.”

Mary couldn’t see Vivian’s face but she saw her body language shift at the mention of Sam’s name: tensing, bringing her arms to her front like as if to defend herself.

“You’ll need to keep an eye on your brother.” She was speaking so low that Mary almost couldn’t hear her.

Dean’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Just to keep an eye on him. Look at what he did to me - to you. Did it seem natural to you? One day he may not quite be your brother anymore.”

The phone rung before Dean could answer that. Mary let a few seconds pass so she wouldn’t betray that she’d been listening in when she crossed the living room to get to the phone in the entrance hall. It was Karen, who told her that another of the kids from the list, Scott Carey, had fried his neighbor’s cat. She hung up the phone with the feeling that her insides had frozen and were weighing her down to the ground.

Bill materialized by her side. He wasn't looking at her, but at Sam and Vivian climbing into the Impala through the panes of glass bordering the front door. There was crusty blood matting his hair where he’d been hit by Vivian.

“Do you know her story?” he asked Mary.

“Some of it: her brother got turned, didn’t he? Vampire or werewolf or something. Heard she was damn good at the job, too. A natural.”

“It was a vampire.” Bill’s frown deepened. “She killed the thing that turned him, and now most of her time is spent tracking her brother down to give him the final haircut. She’s one of those hunters with an obsession.”

Mary was surprised by the hard edge in his voice; knowing his story, she’d have thought he wouldn’t be judgmental about mercy-killing a loved one touched by evil.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Bill said. “I, of all people, should understand her. And it’s not that I don’t - but she has a way of going about it: she’s been known to beat up hunters who tried to have a go at her fang brother. Doesn’t matter that she maybe saved their lives, because Gordon’s a hard kill, I can’t tolerate that kind of behavior in my bar. She’s also used other hunters pretty ruthlessly to get what she wants. I don’t like that Dean got tangled with her: boy’s a sucker for a pretty face, and I hope to hell it doesn’t get him killed.”

Mary thought again about the conversation she’d overheard. “You’ll find that my boy has his priorities straight.”

“Well, I sure hope so.” Outside, the Impala had turned around the corner and they couldn’t see it anymore, but only heard the echo of her deep rumble fading away. “What was that phone call? You don’t look too happy about it.”

Mary told him what she’d learned from Karen. “I know it’s only a cat, but what if it’s just a start? I’m sure Ansem Beckett started small too.”

“What’re you going to tell the boys?” When Mary didn’t answer immediately he said, “I hate to give you parental advice-”

Mary groaned. “Go ahead. You know you want to.”

“-but if you don’t tell them, you know what’s going to happen. Dean’ll just keep doing what he’s been doing so far, which is what the hell he wants, and Sam- Whatever hold you had on him is broken now. He’s not gonna take kindly to being kept out of the loop. They’re both as headstrong as their mother. So think about it.”

Bill went to the kitchen to make himself coffee, and Mary mulled over his words as she went back to the living room. There she found Dean laid down on the couch, grey-faced and grouchy.

“Did you tell Sam to be careful with my car? He needs-”

“I’m sure your brother can handle it.”

He scowled half-heartedly at her, the sort of look whose annoyance was only skin-deep, a familiar tug-of-war. The last time he’d looked at her like that, Mary thought he’d been no older than fifteen.

“He passed his driving test years ago,” she added lightly, keeping up the pretense if only for a moment. Oh, how much she wanted to hold onto that playfulness, even though it felt like her heart was about to crack her ribcage open.

“I feel so much better now,” Dean shot back mildly and closed his eyes - or rather, let his eyelids droop like he was too weary for the effort of keeping them open.

His hair was shorter than when he was twenty, his face a little thinner. He hadn’t changed that much more: still the same cheekbones, the same mouth and nose, the same face that had teenage girls lining up outside their house just a few years ago. But there was a bruise marring the apple of his cheek, and shadows under his eyes that had been there even before he was shot: marks of the hunting lifestyle digging its claws in her boy, that one day would turn him into a harsh, bitter, ruthless man. She’d seen it happen often enough to take bets on it.

“You’re staring, Mom,” Dean mumbled.

“Sorry. I’ll be-”

He cracked an eye open. “Something you wanted to tell me?”

Something? So many things that she didn’t think she’d have enough of a lifetime to find the words.

“I’m glad- that you came here with your brother. I didn’t think you would.”

He opened his other eye and pursed his mouth, lower lip jutting out in his trademark expression of disappointment. “In my most charitable moments I wanted to believe you really thought I had imagined the yellow-eyed man - well, demon.”

People always talked of heartbreaks as if they were something metaphorical; Mary begged to differ. “I wanted-” She sounded squeaky and tried to clear her throat. “I didn’t want you to get involved in this.”

“How could I not get involved? I saw my father die.”

“I know. I know, I- I handled it all wrong but I wanted-” She had the sudden insight that this wasn’t the moment to try justifying herself. “I’m sorry. I really am.”

He held her eyes with a hard glare for a few seconds, then his anger seemed to melt and his face slacked with exhaustion. “I’m too fucked up to fight right now. And you’re going to have your hands full with Sammy. I’d feel bad about kicking you when you’re down.”

“He’s going to hate me, isn’t he.”

“Speaking from experience, what he’s going to feel will be a little more complicated than hate.”

Right on cue, she heard the distinctive rumble of the Impala’s engine come from outside. Dean started to prop himself up, maybe to get a glimpse of his car and check if it was okay, but winced and hissed through his teeth before falling back on the couch cushions.

“This sucks,” he whined. “From now on I’m wearing a bulletproof jacket.”

“Then they can just shoot you in the leg,” Sam said, coming in and heading directly for the couch. He shoved at his brother’s feet so that Dean moved and let him sit at the other end.

Sam hadn’t cast even a quick glance in her direction. Mary remained standing in front of the couch, crossing her arms over her chest. When she noticed how defensive her body language was, she uncrossed them and joined her fingers together. Be brave, Mary. Courage isn’t just about shooting the monster in the face. “I wanted to talk to you.”

Both boys’ attention instantly zeroed in on her. Sam’s fingers curled around his brother’s ankle, offering or seeking support.

“I need to- I think I need to apologize for all the things I hid from you.” She paused for a moment, expecting them to chime in, but they were both silent and looking at her with unnerving intensity. “I just wanted to protect you. And I think, maybe - I didn’t want it to be real. If I could keep you from it, then it wouldn’t touch you and one day I’ll be able to pretend….” She took a deep breath; in spite of her, her eyes kept drifting away, unable to settle on her sons. “I think it’s obvious now that there’s no escaping it. If we want to make it out alive, then we need to be in it together.”

She forced herself to look at them. They both looked so young: Dean with his bloodless face and his juvenile spiky hairstyle, and Sam, her baby, with his floppy hair and his gangly height, looking like he had yet to grow into his body. Watching her warily with unforgiving eyes, waiting for her next misstep.

“I will tell you everything I know. I think it all started - at least as far as we’re concerned - in 1973, the year you dad asked me to marry him…”

A/N2: If you've gotten to the end, you may have noticed how open-ended this fic is... I don't know if I will write more in this verse, although I might, but I also welcome anyone who would want to play with this AU. Just drop me a line about it. :).

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