"A Beast in Repose" (4/?), Supernatural, R, gen.
Title: A Beast in Repose
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R for gore, violence, and language. Click here for trigger warnings.
Length: Part four is about 4500 words; the entire story is currently about 13,500 words.
Characters/Pairings: Dean, Bobby, other canon characters.
Spoilers: All of season two, particularly "All Hell Breaks Loose (Part 1)" for this section.
Summary: What if Lenore didn't think that letting Sam go was the best course of action? And what if Dean ended up in San Francisco with a different hunter at his back?
Notes: At this point, I'm estimating there'll be six parts to the story, and the last two'll be pretty sizable. Again, extended notes will come at the end of the last part.
Part one | Part two | Part three
A Beast in Repose (part four)
The parts of Sam's childhood he remembers best are the the times alone with Dean. Not when Dean was watching Sam - it was too common to be distinctive - but the moments when Dad defended against some creature, and Dean stood as Sam's last line of defense. Nothing ever breached Dad's lines, of course, but it never stopped the terror that rose within Sam.
Dean couldn't comfort Sam and lose aim, but most times, he let Sam lean on his back and wrap his arms around his waist.
“Sammy,” Dean said once, “they won't finish you. Not ever.”
It wasn't until Sam was a teenager that he understood the full meaning behind those words. As a kid, he took it to mean Dean would protect him from all comers. It was a part of the meaning, of course. But Dean also meant, I'll make it quick if I have to.
The days after adolescence brought its own form of security, both at Stanford and traveling the country. Sam almost completely forgot about Dean's original promise. It only resurfaced in the weeks and months after he'd been turned, when the hunger and solitude and weakness wore away his resolve. He'd awaken every evening, imagine Dean with a machete, and know he didn't have to hold out forever. After time, it was all he knew for sure.
Which is why he stands in front of Dean, their mouths covered in blood, and loses the power of speech almost completely. His knees go weak, and he sits on the pulled-out kitchen chair.
“What?” Dean asks. “You okay?”
Sam laughs weakly. “You have to kill me.”
“We can take him, save--”
“God, Dean,” Sam says. Despite all his revulsion, he looks Dean in the eye. “We're monsters. Nothing's going to change that.”
“No. But we can use it.”
Sam clenches his jaw. “I can't.”
“Why not?”
He wonders if Dean would actually listen to a sob story. “I've killed people.”
Dean's hands clench. “We've killed a lot.”
Sam shakes his head. “Never innocents.”
When Dean pauses, Sam wonders if he was wrong about getting through to him. But Dean says, “It wasn't your fault.”
“Does it matter?” Sam says. There's a bit of an incredulous laugh attached to the last word. “I was the means.”
“But they're the murderers.”
Sam narrows his eyes. “Try telling yourself that when you hold the body of a dead girl in your arms. A girl you drained dry because you couldn't fight your instincts.”
Dean pales, but he stays where he is. “Sammy--”
“Don't,” Sam says, shaking his head. “Just...good intentions aren't enough, you know?”
“Touching.”
Sam and Dean look toward the door at once. It's open wide enough for Sam to see Bobby on the other side.
“Bobby,” Dean says as Bobby pushes the door the rest of the way open. “I didn't know you were back.”
A hint of Bobby's scent makes it to Sam's nose. It isn't the same as it was before his exit, but that's putting it mildly; it's a hint of human, combined with rotting flesh and sulfur.
He jumps up and starts to run past Dean, but an invisible force jerks him back, and he slams against the kitchen wall with a grunt. Before Dean can respond, Bobby approaches and puts a hand on his forehead.
“Down,” he says.
Dean falls to the ground in a heap and cries out. His limbs jerk and seize up, and panic rises in Sam.
“Stop!”
Bobby looks up at Sam. His only eye flashes with yellow.
“Why should I?” Bobby asks. His voice is deeper and slightly more drawn out than before, and Sam's heart races.
“Please.”
Bobby - no, Yellow Eyes - waves a hand, and Dean stills. He's panting more than Sam's ever heard, and Sam strains against the force holding him back. He gives up with a gasp as Yellow Eyes closes in.
“Nice try,” Yellow Eyes says. He closes his eyes, leans in, and inhales. “Don't you smell good.”
Sam tilts his face away until Yellow Eyes moves back marginally.
“Is that any way to treat a guest?”
Sam looks back at him and tries to ignore how exhausted and defeated he feels.
“Let us go,” Sam says quietly. “Please.”
The smile fades from Bobby's face. “What happened to your fire, Sammy?”
Sam sags. Yellow Eyes's power keeps him upright. “I'll do whatever you want. Let Dean go.”
Dean twitches slightly on the floor. Sam wonders if he can talk, or if he thinks it's a bad idea to distract the demon. Certainly, he can't seem to move.
“He has a part,” Yellow Eyes replies. “So do you. And as...refreshing as I find your willingness to play, I need a little more.”
“I will, I swear,” Sam says. “Please, leave Dean.”
“Not good enough.”
Yellow Eyes walks over to Dean and snakes Bobby's fingers in his hair. He draws Dean up by his follicles, and Dean cries out, his face contorted.
“You boys hear of a little thing called hellhounds?”
Sam shakes his head.
“The name pretty much explains it. But do you know where they come from?”
“Hell.”
The chuckle coming from Bobby's throat is nothing Sam's heard before, and he hopes to never hear it again. “That's the kind of outside-of-the-box thinking I expect from you, Sammy. But no.”
He curls Bobby's fingers into a fist, and Dean jerks under his grasp. Sam sees the muscles moving under the skin, the bones jutting and reshaping. Dean screams, and the pitch of his voice deepens and grows rougher with each passing second.
“Stop! Stop it!”
Yellow Eyes relaxes his hand, and Dean loses all tension. His eyelids flutter, and beads of sweat dot his skin.
“Werewolves,” Yellow Eyes says, “are handy things to have around, even before they die.”
Without warning, pure rage floods Sam's veins, and his teeth pop out of his gums. He bares them and says, “If you hurt Dean, so help me--”
“That's more like it!”
Yellow Eyes releases Dean, who trembles and sways, but manages to make his way to the counter for support.
“Dean's fine,” Yellow Eyes says, “For now. You can think of him as...incentive.”
Sam tries to lift one of his limbs. “I don't know what fucking game you're playing, but--”
“Sorry, kid. I'm not tipping my hand.” The demon bares Bobby's teeth in a semblance of a smile. “But I can't hold Dean in front of you all day, so just in case...”
In the blink of an eye, Sam feels fire in his throat. He gasps thickly, and dark blood oozes onto his shirt. Sam can't grab at the wound, so he snarls instead.
“A little more insurance,” the demon says, raising the blade in Bobby's hand for Sam to see. It's sheathed in more of the dark sludge, and Bobby's single eye watches it. “Good luck.”
He raises Bobby's other hand, and the world around Sam goes dark.
-
Dean's eyes feel as if they're nailed shut, or like there's weights at the ends of his lids. It takes all his effort to pry them apart, but he manages. It takes a moment for his swimming vision to orient, so as soon as the disorientation passes, he inspects the room.
He's never seen anything like it: metallic walls in a circle, a huge Devil's Trap on the floor, and another in a grate, covering a fan. A bed lies across the room, and the smell of iron and salt coats the air.
The skin around his eyes feels puffy and bloated, and as he inhales, the tissues of his nose and throat sting. He raises a hand to touch his face, and a glint of silver catches his eye. It doesn't take a direct look to know shackles encircle his wrists - shaking his arm rattles the connecting chains well enough - but he glances to make sure cloth separates his skin from the metal. And it does.
Considerate bastard, Dean thinks.
He squints at the floor. The Devil's Trap seems intact, so Yellow Eyes didn't put him in this fix. And if he didn't, no demon he'd met would have the juice.
But he didn't magically appear in chains, either.
The answer comes when he leans on his right hand and pain floods his entire arm. With a hiss, he pulls his palm off the floor and sees scarlet across his skin. It looks like someone dug a knife in his hand a few different times, but the injuries are mostly healed. The healed lines are thick, and he can't remember how long it would have taken him to recover in the past. A week? Two? No, probably closer to a month.
He feels his face with the back of his hand. There's some scruff, but not enough for a month. A couple days, at least, but no more than a week. That was a relief.
A glance around the room reveals no key for the cuffs. It's no surprise, but it sucks. He briefly considers trying to pry off the chains by hand, but he can imagine Bobby telling him what an dumbass move that would be.
Bobby. Shit.
Dean shakes his head and props himself upright. “Bobby! Sam! Anyone?”
No one replies. Again, no surprise.
He pulls his arms over his head until the chains tighten. Nothing special happens, so he puts some strength into them. The chains groan impressively, which is more than Dean could have managed before, but they stay firm.
With a quiet cry of frustration, he drops his arms and leans against the wall behind him. He knows he won't die in the chains - Yellow Eyes said he had a part to play, and if he'd been lying, Dean wouldn't be alive - but he figures he's in for a lot of frustration.
-
Sam's skin itches, and his throat is on fire.
He open his eyes, and they too burn. Squeezing his lids shut does nothing to dispel it, so he opens them and takes in his surroundings as quickly as he can. To say the buildings around him didn't appear modern was an understatement; they would have fit better a good century or more in the past. He can't see as well in light as he can in the dark, even with clouds as a filter, but he can tell the structures are in various states of disrepair, and he's alone.
Except, in the distance, a voice cries out.
Sam gets on his feet and stumbles into a building. Luckily, the roof above his head is intact, and the pain on his skin dissipates, a single pinprick at a time...only to be replaced by pain so severe in his stomach that he doubles over, panting.
The voices grow louder.
The single hiding spot is a set of rotting stairs in the back anchored to the western wall, so he lurches forward. He bangs his legs into broken chair legs and table tops, since the room is thick with debris and he doesn't have time to ease through. It makes a racket, and he flinches with every noise, but he doesn't stop moving.
It's only when Sam's mostly concealed under the stairs that he sighs in relief. Unfortunately, expelling and taking in air brings the scent of human with it, and pangs stab his stomach. He pinches his nose, but it's too late; his fangs have deployed, and his mouth is so full of saliva it almost chokes him.
A figure passes by the open door moments after his scent, and Sam presses himself against the wall. He isn't sure if it's because he doesn't want to be found, or because he's holding himself back with everything he has.
Keep walking, he thinks. Keep walking!
More voices ring in the distance. The figure hovers a moment longer and moves away from the entrance. Sam counts to twenty in his head before stepping back into the room.
He looks at the stairs; most of them are whole, but several lack large chunks of wood. He breathes in a little of the mist from outside and considers finding another spot. Almost immediately, he knows stepping outside is a very bad idea. He swallows hard, despite the protest of his slashed throat, and inspects the room once more.
Sam spots a door under the stairs, which could be the entrance to a cellar. It could work. But he needs to keep an eye on things, if only to try to get a jump on Yellow Eyes, and a cellar or basement isn't likely to have a good view.
That leaves the second story.
It takes some five minutes of cautious motion and a couple of near-misses, but he makes it to the landing at the top. The first room faces the main part of the town, and it's enough for him.
Sam lowers himself into the corner opposite the window. He hugs his legs, and loses consciousness.
-
“Dean?”
Dean groans and wipes his chin. His head's thick, like he'd gone on a bender, but he knows he wasn't that lucky. He shifts his arms and legs to relieve them of their stiffness, and he lifts his head off his knees.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, blinking heavily.
Jo smirks and points her rifle at the ground. “Good to see you too. How'd you end up like this?”
“Wish I knew.”
She looks at his wrists. “Know where the key is?”
“Not remotely.”
“No, it would have been too easy.” She sighs. “Do you have any ideas?”
Dean points, and the chain dangling from his arm rattles. “Bobby has tools. See if there's a saw or something.”
“Is there anything out there, or can I leave my gun?”
He squints. “Use the strap.”
Jo slings the gun over her shoulder and makes her way toward the panic room's open door. She puts a hand on the butt of the rifle, peers around the edges, and, after a moment, steps out the door and out of sight. Almost immediately after, Dean hears banging metal.
“Where's your mom?” he shouts.
The banging stops. “What?”
“You found a toolbox?”
“Yeah!”
“Bring it in here.”
More clanking, and Dean winces. Yeah, he definitely feels hung over. By the time Jo pushes a wheeled tool chest up to the door, the thickness in his head is a full-fledged headache.
“This...thing...is huge,” she puffs.
He rubs his eyes. “Need a break?”
She glares at him and opens one of the drawers. She pulls out a variety of tools in a hurry: socket wrenches, wire splitters, hammers, needle-nose pliers. Nothing big enough to clip handcuffs, much less the heavy work around his wrists. Dean sighs.
“Where's Ellen?”
“Looking for you guys,” she said. “Where's Bobby?”
“No clue.”
Jo looks over her shoulder. “He locked you in his basement and left you?”
“Wasn't Bobby.” Understatement of the day. “Why're you looking for us?”
She turns. “The Roadhouse burned down.”
“What? When?”
“Yesterday. Drove all night to get here.” She sighs and goes back to the box. “I think Mom wanted me out of the way.”
Dean hadn't seen Jo and Ellen much before Sam disappeared, and even less after, but it doesn't take long to get the measure of people. He's willing to bet that Ellen wanted Bobby to keep Jo safe, and that Ellen was following a risky lead.
Which makes it kind of funny that Jo's trying to free a chained werewolf.
“Could you hurry it up?” he asks.
“Can't hold it for five minutes?”
Dean rolls his eyes. “I have to catch up with Sam, smart ass.”
Jo drops the wrench she's holding with a clatter.
“Yes, make even more noise, please,” he mutters as his head throbs in response.
“Dean?”
“What?”
“Sam's...Sam's not...”
“You're behind on the news, sweetheart.”
Jo turns around and crosses her arm. “Obviously. I don't know why you're chained up.”
“Didn't ask, did you?”
“Thought I did.”
“You said 'how',” Dean says with a smirk. “Not 'why'.”
She rolls her eyes. “Now you're just--”
“I'll tell you everything I know,” he says. “But I have to piss like a racehorse.”
“You can talk while I look.”
“Not if you want to hear me.”
Jo huffs and dives back into the chest. Dean shifts again and tries to ignore the cramps in his arms and legs. It's enough to make a man grumpy.
Luckily, it only takes a couple more minutes for Jo to deliver. When she reaches the middle of the chest and the biggest drawer, she makes a sound of triumph and holds up a set of pliers longer than her arm.
“You're awesome,” Dean says as Jo approaches.
She nods. “I know. Hold up your arms.”
He complies, and Jo positions the pliers at the edge of the chains.
“You can find something smaller when I get you loose,” she says. “For the cuffs.”
“Right, whatever.”
The pliers slip in Jo's grasp - she seemed unprepared for their weight - but she grabs them tighter and opens the arms wide over the right-hand chain. Dean puts a foot on the chain on the floor and leans into the cuff. Jo closes the pliers, and his hand shoots up as the chain snaps.
“I've got the next one,” he says. “Get the chest out of the door.”
Jo gets to her feet and extends the pliers, and Dean takes them. Immediately, the scars on his palms itch, and burn, and Dean drops the pliers.
“Fuck,” he says in a hiss, looking at his hands. Most of the bigger scars were split and bleeding, and Dean holds them against his jeans. He didn't think about it when Jo pulled them out, but the pliers are gray-colored. Usually, it means steel, but if anyone's going to have silver-coated pliers, it'd be Bobby. Dean doesn't want to think about how he would use them.
“What--” Jo begins, turning around.
Their eyes meet, and Jo's jaw drops. In an instant, she slings the gun off her shoulder and points it at Dean's head.
“Whoa!” Dean says, holding his hands up. “What the hell--”
“What happened upstairs?”
Dean frowns. “What?”
The barrel of the gun holds steady. “You don't know anything about the kitchen?”
He remembers the big stain of blood smeared on the floor, and the ache in his head returns. It's not a good sign.
Before he can reply, Jo speaks again. “Are you Dean?”
“Why wouldn't I be?”
“Your teeth.”
Dean scowls and puts a hand to his mouth. Sure enough, it feels like his canines are curving. Great.
“I had...an accident,” he said. “I was going to tell you about it.”
“Yeah, sure.”
He growls, and not in a pissed-off human way. Jo jumps back about a foot, and Dean can smell she's scared. The back of his hands begin to itch, and he can't bring himself to look at them.
“Shoot me,” he says.
Jo pales. “What?”
“Shoot me! Or get out of here!”
“Dean--”
“You're not safe around me!”
He braces himself as Jo shifts the gun upward. But her finger stays off the trigger, and she backs out.
“Damn it,” she says, then runs for the stairs.
Dean watches her go and feels the pain recede somewhat. He waits for the front door to slam before he eyes the pliers and takes a deep breath through grit teeth.
“Let's do this,” he says, and leans forward to grab them.
-
The smell of human fills Sam's nose when he comes back to himself. Covering his nose and mouth with his hand helps marginally, but not as much as it should. He sees the roof across the street with perfect clarity and understands.
The hunger's always worse at night.
A voice echoes, and he edges toward the window. He isn't sure if it's because he wants to hear, or because he's almost to the point where his stomach directs his actions.
“No,” a woman says. “I won't.”
The replying voice is deep and confident, but edged with panic. “If we don't, we're dead.”
“I'd rather be.”
Sam risks a peek over the sill. The woman's a small blonde dwarfed by the coat she wears. She hugs herself and the coat as she speaks. “This isn't right.”
Across from her stands a man clad in desert camouflage. “No. But it's necessary.”
“This?” She raises her head, and even from a distance, Sam can see her eyes are puffy and red. “Isn't necessary. This guy in our dreams, he's not human!”
She doesn't describe him, but she doesn't have to. Yellow Eyes.
The man steps forward once, and she steps back.
“It won't be hard,” he said. “Touch me.”
“Let's just go.”
The man shakes his head. “Sorry.”
Before she can react, the man rushes forward and takes the woman's head in his hands. He twists, and with a loud snap, the woman goes limp. He puts her on the ground carefully and moves back a few paces, bowing his head for one reason or another.
“Quite a show, huh?”
Sam flattens into the nearest corner. Yellow Eyes, still in Bobby's body, leans against the frame of the door, looking toward the window with fondness.
“My kids,” he says, chuckling. “Talented bunch.”
“You did this.” Sam's voice is harsh and choked, and he can feel his breath leave the slash wound.
Yellow Eyes holds up Bobby's hands. “I may have been the agent here, but these kids, they're the stars.”
Sam considers jumping out the window, since Yellow Eyes has the door blocked. He could make a run for it...if the killer wasn't there. He didn't know what he'd do if confronted with a human.
He decides information's more valuable at the moment. “What's going on here?”
“Doesn't matter. You should be wondering why you're here.”
He pauses, and Sam knows he's supposed to fill in the gap with a question or protestation, but he stays quiet. Yellow Eyes laughs and shakes his head.
“I gave you a head start, with my visit to Jess. You were doing all right, but I figured, why not give you a little boost? After all, you are my favorite.”
“Favorite?” Sam swallows. “Of the children?”
Yellow Eyes nods. “Only need one of you, after all.”
“For what?”
“That's for the winner to know. And we have the finals first.”
Sam glances outside. “I'm not killing anyone.”
“Sure you are, sport!” Yellow Eyes walks in front of Sam and drops into a crouch. “You're a killer. I made you that way.”
“I don't have to do anything.”
“No, you don't. But Dean sure does.”
Sam opens his mouth to reply, but Yellow Eyes lifts Bobby's hand, and Sam jerks awake.
It's nighttime in the ghost town, and a voice in the streets calls Sam's name.
-
The blood's starting to dry on Dean's hands as he jogs across Bobby's junkyard. The pain radiating in his hands, however, is as strong as it was when he first broke free, and water streams from his eyes in response. It makes searching hard, but then, Dean never expected things to be easy.
It's on his third circuit of the yard that he finds the Impala, tucked away behind a stack of cars. It's exactly as he left it...except for the missing tires, replaced by cinderblocks.
“Son of a bitch,” Dean says, but even to him, the words sound flat. “You think this is going to stop me?”
“Stop? No.”
Bobby's sitting in a gutted rust bucket to his left, but even in the dark, Dean can see the reflection of yellow in his eyes. He clenches his hands into fists and, as fresh waves of pain shoot up his arms, immediately regrets it.
Yellow Eyes opens Bobby's mouth to keep talking, but before he can, Dean runs as hard as he can in the opposite direction. Streams of blood tickle his arms, and it's not without cost; he's panting hard and slower than he should be. But the desire to get free, to get somewhere where he can think without worrying about being a demon's bitch, is stronger than his flagging energy, and he makes it to the front of Bobby's house.
Of course, demons have faster means of transport, and Yellow Eyes waits in the front path. Dean stops, but the adrenaline pumping through his body keeps him ready to move.
“There's no point in running,” Yellow Eyes says. “I want to take you to Sam.”
Dean frowns. “Why?”
Yellow Eyes pulls Bobby's lips into a smile and waves a hand. Dean blinks, and he's standing on dirt instead of concrete. Yellow Eyes is gone, and he's surrounded by dark buildings.
He walks forward, and, before long, he spots a bundle on the ground. He runs to it and is vaguely surprised to find himself nervous. But the hair is nonexistent and the outfit too military, and he relaxes.
That is, until he sees the torn-out throat and eyes staring at nothing.
A low cry comes from the shadow, and Dean reaches for his waistband. For once, his gun waits for him, and he pulls it out, taking a second to pop the clip and check for ammunition. After, he points the gun toward the noise and clicks the safety off.
“Come out, slow,” Dean says. He feels no better physically than he did in Bobby's junkyard, but it was amazing the kind of confidence a gun would give a man.
A man steps away from one of the buildings, and Dean lowers his gun.
“Sam,” he says.
Sam's mouth is smeared with blood, and so are the shaking hands he holds in front of him. The wound in his throat is gone.
Dean raises the gun and points it directly at Sam's heart.
Trigger warnings: Punenpgre qrngu, tbel jbhaqf, rkprffvir oybbq. (translate)
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R for gore, violence, and language. Click here for trigger warnings.
Length: Part four is about 4500 words; the entire story is currently about 13,500 words.
Characters/Pairings: Dean, Bobby, other canon characters.
Spoilers: All of season two, particularly "All Hell Breaks Loose (Part 1)" for this section.
Summary: What if Lenore didn't think that letting Sam go was the best course of action? And what if Dean ended up in San Francisco with a different hunter at his back?
Notes: At this point, I'm estimating there'll be six parts to the story, and the last two'll be pretty sizable. Again, extended notes will come at the end of the last part.
Part one | Part two | Part three
A Beast in Repose (part four)
The parts of Sam's childhood he remembers best are the the times alone with Dean. Not when Dean was watching Sam - it was too common to be distinctive - but the moments when Dad defended against some creature, and Dean stood as Sam's last line of defense. Nothing ever breached Dad's lines, of course, but it never stopped the terror that rose within Sam.
Dean couldn't comfort Sam and lose aim, but most times, he let Sam lean on his back and wrap his arms around his waist.
“Sammy,” Dean said once, “they won't finish you. Not ever.”
It wasn't until Sam was a teenager that he understood the full meaning behind those words. As a kid, he took it to mean Dean would protect him from all comers. It was a part of the meaning, of course. But Dean also meant, I'll make it quick if I have to.
The days after adolescence brought its own form of security, both at Stanford and traveling the country. Sam almost completely forgot about Dean's original promise. It only resurfaced in the weeks and months after he'd been turned, when the hunger and solitude and weakness wore away his resolve. He'd awaken every evening, imagine Dean with a machete, and know he didn't have to hold out forever. After time, it was all he knew for sure.
Which is why he stands in front of Dean, their mouths covered in blood, and loses the power of speech almost completely. His knees go weak, and he sits on the pulled-out kitchen chair.
“What?” Dean asks. “You okay?”
Sam laughs weakly. “You have to kill me.”
“We can take him, save--”
“God, Dean,” Sam says. Despite all his revulsion, he looks Dean in the eye. “We're monsters. Nothing's going to change that.”
“No. But we can use it.”
Sam clenches his jaw. “I can't.”
“Why not?”
He wonders if Dean would actually listen to a sob story. “I've killed people.”
Dean's hands clench. “We've killed a lot.”
Sam shakes his head. “Never innocents.”
When Dean pauses, Sam wonders if he was wrong about getting through to him. But Dean says, “It wasn't your fault.”
“Does it matter?” Sam says. There's a bit of an incredulous laugh attached to the last word. “I was the means.”
“But they're the murderers.”
Sam narrows his eyes. “Try telling yourself that when you hold the body of a dead girl in your arms. A girl you drained dry because you couldn't fight your instincts.”
Dean pales, but he stays where he is. “Sammy--”
“Don't,” Sam says, shaking his head. “Just...good intentions aren't enough, you know?”
“Touching.”
Sam and Dean look toward the door at once. It's open wide enough for Sam to see Bobby on the other side.
“Bobby,” Dean says as Bobby pushes the door the rest of the way open. “I didn't know you were back.”
A hint of Bobby's scent makes it to Sam's nose. It isn't the same as it was before his exit, but that's putting it mildly; it's a hint of human, combined with rotting flesh and sulfur.
He jumps up and starts to run past Dean, but an invisible force jerks him back, and he slams against the kitchen wall with a grunt. Before Dean can respond, Bobby approaches and puts a hand on his forehead.
“Down,” he says.
Dean falls to the ground in a heap and cries out. His limbs jerk and seize up, and panic rises in Sam.
“Stop!”
Bobby looks up at Sam. His only eye flashes with yellow.
“Why should I?” Bobby asks. His voice is deeper and slightly more drawn out than before, and Sam's heart races.
“Please.”
Bobby - no, Yellow Eyes - waves a hand, and Dean stills. He's panting more than Sam's ever heard, and Sam strains against the force holding him back. He gives up with a gasp as Yellow Eyes closes in.
“Nice try,” Yellow Eyes says. He closes his eyes, leans in, and inhales. “Don't you smell good.”
Sam tilts his face away until Yellow Eyes moves back marginally.
“Is that any way to treat a guest?”
Sam looks back at him and tries to ignore how exhausted and defeated he feels.
“Let us go,” Sam says quietly. “Please.”
The smile fades from Bobby's face. “What happened to your fire, Sammy?”
Sam sags. Yellow Eyes's power keeps him upright. “I'll do whatever you want. Let Dean go.”
Dean twitches slightly on the floor. Sam wonders if he can talk, or if he thinks it's a bad idea to distract the demon. Certainly, he can't seem to move.
“He has a part,” Yellow Eyes replies. “So do you. And as...refreshing as I find your willingness to play, I need a little more.”
“I will, I swear,” Sam says. “Please, leave Dean.”
“Not good enough.”
Yellow Eyes walks over to Dean and snakes Bobby's fingers in his hair. He draws Dean up by his follicles, and Dean cries out, his face contorted.
“You boys hear of a little thing called hellhounds?”
Sam shakes his head.
“The name pretty much explains it. But do you know where they come from?”
“Hell.”
The chuckle coming from Bobby's throat is nothing Sam's heard before, and he hopes to never hear it again. “That's the kind of outside-of-the-box thinking I expect from you, Sammy. But no.”
He curls Bobby's fingers into a fist, and Dean jerks under his grasp. Sam sees the muscles moving under the skin, the bones jutting and reshaping. Dean screams, and the pitch of his voice deepens and grows rougher with each passing second.
“Stop! Stop it!”
Yellow Eyes relaxes his hand, and Dean loses all tension. His eyelids flutter, and beads of sweat dot his skin.
“Werewolves,” Yellow Eyes says, “are handy things to have around, even before they die.”
Without warning, pure rage floods Sam's veins, and his teeth pop out of his gums. He bares them and says, “If you hurt Dean, so help me--”
“That's more like it!”
Yellow Eyes releases Dean, who trembles and sways, but manages to make his way to the counter for support.
“Dean's fine,” Yellow Eyes says, “For now. You can think of him as...incentive.”
Sam tries to lift one of his limbs. “I don't know what fucking game you're playing, but--”
“Sorry, kid. I'm not tipping my hand.” The demon bares Bobby's teeth in a semblance of a smile. “But I can't hold Dean in front of you all day, so just in case...”
In the blink of an eye, Sam feels fire in his throat. He gasps thickly, and dark blood oozes onto his shirt. Sam can't grab at the wound, so he snarls instead.
“A little more insurance,” the demon says, raising the blade in Bobby's hand for Sam to see. It's sheathed in more of the dark sludge, and Bobby's single eye watches it. “Good luck.”
He raises Bobby's other hand, and the world around Sam goes dark.
-
Dean's eyes feel as if they're nailed shut, or like there's weights at the ends of his lids. It takes all his effort to pry them apart, but he manages. It takes a moment for his swimming vision to orient, so as soon as the disorientation passes, he inspects the room.
He's never seen anything like it: metallic walls in a circle, a huge Devil's Trap on the floor, and another in a grate, covering a fan. A bed lies across the room, and the smell of iron and salt coats the air.
The skin around his eyes feels puffy and bloated, and as he inhales, the tissues of his nose and throat sting. He raises a hand to touch his face, and a glint of silver catches his eye. It doesn't take a direct look to know shackles encircle his wrists - shaking his arm rattles the connecting chains well enough - but he glances to make sure cloth separates his skin from the metal. And it does.
Considerate bastard, Dean thinks.
He squints at the floor. The Devil's Trap seems intact, so Yellow Eyes didn't put him in this fix. And if he didn't, no demon he'd met would have the juice.
But he didn't magically appear in chains, either.
The answer comes when he leans on his right hand and pain floods his entire arm. With a hiss, he pulls his palm off the floor and sees scarlet across his skin. It looks like someone dug a knife in his hand a few different times, but the injuries are mostly healed. The healed lines are thick, and he can't remember how long it would have taken him to recover in the past. A week? Two? No, probably closer to a month.
He feels his face with the back of his hand. There's some scruff, but not enough for a month. A couple days, at least, but no more than a week. That was a relief.
A glance around the room reveals no key for the cuffs. It's no surprise, but it sucks. He briefly considers trying to pry off the chains by hand, but he can imagine Bobby telling him what an dumbass move that would be.
Bobby. Shit.
Dean shakes his head and props himself upright. “Bobby! Sam! Anyone?”
No one replies. Again, no surprise.
He pulls his arms over his head until the chains tighten. Nothing special happens, so he puts some strength into them. The chains groan impressively, which is more than Dean could have managed before, but they stay firm.
With a quiet cry of frustration, he drops his arms and leans against the wall behind him. He knows he won't die in the chains - Yellow Eyes said he had a part to play, and if he'd been lying, Dean wouldn't be alive - but he figures he's in for a lot of frustration.
-
Sam's skin itches, and his throat is on fire.
He open his eyes, and they too burn. Squeezing his lids shut does nothing to dispel it, so he opens them and takes in his surroundings as quickly as he can. To say the buildings around him didn't appear modern was an understatement; they would have fit better a good century or more in the past. He can't see as well in light as he can in the dark, even with clouds as a filter, but he can tell the structures are in various states of disrepair, and he's alone.
Except, in the distance, a voice cries out.
Sam gets on his feet and stumbles into a building. Luckily, the roof above his head is intact, and the pain on his skin dissipates, a single pinprick at a time...only to be replaced by pain so severe in his stomach that he doubles over, panting.
The voices grow louder.
The single hiding spot is a set of rotting stairs in the back anchored to the western wall, so he lurches forward. He bangs his legs into broken chair legs and table tops, since the room is thick with debris and he doesn't have time to ease through. It makes a racket, and he flinches with every noise, but he doesn't stop moving.
It's only when Sam's mostly concealed under the stairs that he sighs in relief. Unfortunately, expelling and taking in air brings the scent of human with it, and pangs stab his stomach. He pinches his nose, but it's too late; his fangs have deployed, and his mouth is so full of saliva it almost chokes him.
A figure passes by the open door moments after his scent, and Sam presses himself against the wall. He isn't sure if it's because he doesn't want to be found, or because he's holding himself back with everything he has.
Keep walking, he thinks. Keep walking!
More voices ring in the distance. The figure hovers a moment longer and moves away from the entrance. Sam counts to twenty in his head before stepping back into the room.
He looks at the stairs; most of them are whole, but several lack large chunks of wood. He breathes in a little of the mist from outside and considers finding another spot. Almost immediately, he knows stepping outside is a very bad idea. He swallows hard, despite the protest of his slashed throat, and inspects the room once more.
Sam spots a door under the stairs, which could be the entrance to a cellar. It could work. But he needs to keep an eye on things, if only to try to get a jump on Yellow Eyes, and a cellar or basement isn't likely to have a good view.
That leaves the second story.
It takes some five minutes of cautious motion and a couple of near-misses, but he makes it to the landing at the top. The first room faces the main part of the town, and it's enough for him.
Sam lowers himself into the corner opposite the window. He hugs his legs, and loses consciousness.
-
“Dean?”
Dean groans and wipes his chin. His head's thick, like he'd gone on a bender, but he knows he wasn't that lucky. He shifts his arms and legs to relieve them of their stiffness, and he lifts his head off his knees.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, blinking heavily.
Jo smirks and points her rifle at the ground. “Good to see you too. How'd you end up like this?”
“Wish I knew.”
She looks at his wrists. “Know where the key is?”
“Not remotely.”
“No, it would have been too easy.” She sighs. “Do you have any ideas?”
Dean points, and the chain dangling from his arm rattles. “Bobby has tools. See if there's a saw or something.”
“Is there anything out there, or can I leave my gun?”
He squints. “Use the strap.”
Jo slings the gun over her shoulder and makes her way toward the panic room's open door. She puts a hand on the butt of the rifle, peers around the edges, and, after a moment, steps out the door and out of sight. Almost immediately after, Dean hears banging metal.
“Where's your mom?” he shouts.
The banging stops. “What?”
“You found a toolbox?”
“Yeah!”
“Bring it in here.”
More clanking, and Dean winces. Yeah, he definitely feels hung over. By the time Jo pushes a wheeled tool chest up to the door, the thickness in his head is a full-fledged headache.
“This...thing...is huge,” she puffs.
He rubs his eyes. “Need a break?”
She glares at him and opens one of the drawers. She pulls out a variety of tools in a hurry: socket wrenches, wire splitters, hammers, needle-nose pliers. Nothing big enough to clip handcuffs, much less the heavy work around his wrists. Dean sighs.
“Where's Ellen?”
“Looking for you guys,” she said. “Where's Bobby?”
“No clue.”
Jo looks over her shoulder. “He locked you in his basement and left you?”
“Wasn't Bobby.” Understatement of the day. “Why're you looking for us?”
She turns. “The Roadhouse burned down.”
“What? When?”
“Yesterday. Drove all night to get here.” She sighs and goes back to the box. “I think Mom wanted me out of the way.”
Dean hadn't seen Jo and Ellen much before Sam disappeared, and even less after, but it doesn't take long to get the measure of people. He's willing to bet that Ellen wanted Bobby to keep Jo safe, and that Ellen was following a risky lead.
Which makes it kind of funny that Jo's trying to free a chained werewolf.
“Could you hurry it up?” he asks.
“Can't hold it for five minutes?”
Dean rolls his eyes. “I have to catch up with Sam, smart ass.”
Jo drops the wrench she's holding with a clatter.
“Yes, make even more noise, please,” he mutters as his head throbs in response.
“Dean?”
“What?”
“Sam's...Sam's not...”
“You're behind on the news, sweetheart.”
Jo turns around and crosses her arm. “Obviously. I don't know why you're chained up.”
“Didn't ask, did you?”
“Thought I did.”
“You said 'how',” Dean says with a smirk. “Not 'why'.”
She rolls her eyes. “Now you're just--”
“I'll tell you everything I know,” he says. “But I have to piss like a racehorse.”
“You can talk while I look.”
“Not if you want to hear me.”
Jo huffs and dives back into the chest. Dean shifts again and tries to ignore the cramps in his arms and legs. It's enough to make a man grumpy.
Luckily, it only takes a couple more minutes for Jo to deliver. When she reaches the middle of the chest and the biggest drawer, she makes a sound of triumph and holds up a set of pliers longer than her arm.
“You're awesome,” Dean says as Jo approaches.
She nods. “I know. Hold up your arms.”
He complies, and Jo positions the pliers at the edge of the chains.
“You can find something smaller when I get you loose,” she says. “For the cuffs.”
“Right, whatever.”
The pliers slip in Jo's grasp - she seemed unprepared for their weight - but she grabs them tighter and opens the arms wide over the right-hand chain. Dean puts a foot on the chain on the floor and leans into the cuff. Jo closes the pliers, and his hand shoots up as the chain snaps.
“I've got the next one,” he says. “Get the chest out of the door.”
Jo gets to her feet and extends the pliers, and Dean takes them. Immediately, the scars on his palms itch, and burn, and Dean drops the pliers.
“Fuck,” he says in a hiss, looking at his hands. Most of the bigger scars were split and bleeding, and Dean holds them against his jeans. He didn't think about it when Jo pulled them out, but the pliers are gray-colored. Usually, it means steel, but if anyone's going to have silver-coated pliers, it'd be Bobby. Dean doesn't want to think about how he would use them.
“What--” Jo begins, turning around.
Their eyes meet, and Jo's jaw drops. In an instant, she slings the gun off her shoulder and points it at Dean's head.
“Whoa!” Dean says, holding his hands up. “What the hell--”
“What happened upstairs?”
Dean frowns. “What?”
The barrel of the gun holds steady. “You don't know anything about the kitchen?”
He remembers the big stain of blood smeared on the floor, and the ache in his head returns. It's not a good sign.
Before he can reply, Jo speaks again. “Are you Dean?”
“Why wouldn't I be?”
“Your teeth.”
Dean scowls and puts a hand to his mouth. Sure enough, it feels like his canines are curving. Great.
“I had...an accident,” he said. “I was going to tell you about it.”
“Yeah, sure.”
He growls, and not in a pissed-off human way. Jo jumps back about a foot, and Dean can smell she's scared. The back of his hands begin to itch, and he can't bring himself to look at them.
“Shoot me,” he says.
Jo pales. “What?”
“Shoot me! Or get out of here!”
“Dean--”
“You're not safe around me!”
He braces himself as Jo shifts the gun upward. But her finger stays off the trigger, and she backs out.
“Damn it,” she says, then runs for the stairs.
Dean watches her go and feels the pain recede somewhat. He waits for the front door to slam before he eyes the pliers and takes a deep breath through grit teeth.
“Let's do this,” he says, and leans forward to grab them.
-
The smell of human fills Sam's nose when he comes back to himself. Covering his nose and mouth with his hand helps marginally, but not as much as it should. He sees the roof across the street with perfect clarity and understands.
The hunger's always worse at night.
A voice echoes, and he edges toward the window. He isn't sure if it's because he wants to hear, or because he's almost to the point where his stomach directs his actions.
“No,” a woman says. “I won't.”
The replying voice is deep and confident, but edged with panic. “If we don't, we're dead.”
“I'd rather be.”
Sam risks a peek over the sill. The woman's a small blonde dwarfed by the coat she wears. She hugs herself and the coat as she speaks. “This isn't right.”
Across from her stands a man clad in desert camouflage. “No. But it's necessary.”
“This?” She raises her head, and even from a distance, Sam can see her eyes are puffy and red. “Isn't necessary. This guy in our dreams, he's not human!”
She doesn't describe him, but she doesn't have to. Yellow Eyes.
The man steps forward once, and she steps back.
“It won't be hard,” he said. “Touch me.”
“Let's just go.”
The man shakes his head. “Sorry.”
Before she can react, the man rushes forward and takes the woman's head in his hands. He twists, and with a loud snap, the woman goes limp. He puts her on the ground carefully and moves back a few paces, bowing his head for one reason or another.
“Quite a show, huh?”
Sam flattens into the nearest corner. Yellow Eyes, still in Bobby's body, leans against the frame of the door, looking toward the window with fondness.
“My kids,” he says, chuckling. “Talented bunch.”
“You did this.” Sam's voice is harsh and choked, and he can feel his breath leave the slash wound.
Yellow Eyes holds up Bobby's hands. “I may have been the agent here, but these kids, they're the stars.”
Sam considers jumping out the window, since Yellow Eyes has the door blocked. He could make a run for it...if the killer wasn't there. He didn't know what he'd do if confronted with a human.
He decides information's more valuable at the moment. “What's going on here?”
“Doesn't matter. You should be wondering why you're here.”
He pauses, and Sam knows he's supposed to fill in the gap with a question or protestation, but he stays quiet. Yellow Eyes laughs and shakes his head.
“I gave you a head start, with my visit to Jess. You were doing all right, but I figured, why not give you a little boost? After all, you are my favorite.”
“Favorite?” Sam swallows. “Of the children?”
Yellow Eyes nods. “Only need one of you, after all.”
“For what?”
“That's for the winner to know. And we have the finals first.”
Sam glances outside. “I'm not killing anyone.”
“Sure you are, sport!” Yellow Eyes walks in front of Sam and drops into a crouch. “You're a killer. I made you that way.”
“I don't have to do anything.”
“No, you don't. But Dean sure does.”
Sam opens his mouth to reply, but Yellow Eyes lifts Bobby's hand, and Sam jerks awake.
It's nighttime in the ghost town, and a voice in the streets calls Sam's name.
-
The blood's starting to dry on Dean's hands as he jogs across Bobby's junkyard. The pain radiating in his hands, however, is as strong as it was when he first broke free, and water streams from his eyes in response. It makes searching hard, but then, Dean never expected things to be easy.
It's on his third circuit of the yard that he finds the Impala, tucked away behind a stack of cars. It's exactly as he left it...except for the missing tires, replaced by cinderblocks.
“Son of a bitch,” Dean says, but even to him, the words sound flat. “You think this is going to stop me?”
“Stop? No.”
Bobby's sitting in a gutted rust bucket to his left, but even in the dark, Dean can see the reflection of yellow in his eyes. He clenches his hands into fists and, as fresh waves of pain shoot up his arms, immediately regrets it.
Yellow Eyes opens Bobby's mouth to keep talking, but before he can, Dean runs as hard as he can in the opposite direction. Streams of blood tickle his arms, and it's not without cost; he's panting hard and slower than he should be. But the desire to get free, to get somewhere where he can think without worrying about being a demon's bitch, is stronger than his flagging energy, and he makes it to the front of Bobby's house.
Of course, demons have faster means of transport, and Yellow Eyes waits in the front path. Dean stops, but the adrenaline pumping through his body keeps him ready to move.
“There's no point in running,” Yellow Eyes says. “I want to take you to Sam.”
Dean frowns. “Why?”
Yellow Eyes pulls Bobby's lips into a smile and waves a hand. Dean blinks, and he's standing on dirt instead of concrete. Yellow Eyes is gone, and he's surrounded by dark buildings.
He walks forward, and, before long, he spots a bundle on the ground. He runs to it and is vaguely surprised to find himself nervous. But the hair is nonexistent and the outfit too military, and he relaxes.
That is, until he sees the torn-out throat and eyes staring at nothing.
A low cry comes from the shadow, and Dean reaches for his waistband. For once, his gun waits for him, and he pulls it out, taking a second to pop the clip and check for ammunition. After, he points the gun toward the noise and clicks the safety off.
“Come out, slow,” Dean says. He feels no better physically than he did in Bobby's junkyard, but it was amazing the kind of confidence a gun would give a man.
A man steps away from one of the buildings, and Dean lowers his gun.
“Sam,” he says.
Sam's mouth is smeared with blood, and so are the shaking hands he holds in front of him. The wound in his throat is gone.
Dean raises the gun and points it directly at Sam's heart.
Trigger warnings: Punenpgre qrngu, tbel jbhaqf, rkprffvir oybbq. (translate)