"The Links That Bind", Supernatural, R, gen.
Title: The Links That Bind
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R for gore, violence, and language. I'm emphasizing the gore; I was told that it was tough to read. Click here for trigger warnings.
Length: About 4700 words.
Characters/Pairings: Bobby, Dean, Meg!Sam, Sam.
Spoilers: Primarily "Born Under A Bad Sign" and "Dream A Little Dream Of Me", so if you're up through season three, no need to worry about spoilers.
Summary: When Sam is possessed by the demon that originally possessed Meg, Dean isn't the only target for revenge.
Notes: I wrote this story for pecansoda for spn_summergen this past year. The prompt I chose was Born Under A Bad Sign: Bobby breaks the binding link an hour too late. As dark as you like, but no character death please. As I've mentioned, it was originally posted anonymously (because that's how the fic fest worked). Click here to see the original post, and check the end of the story for more extended notes.
The Links That Bind
Bobby's first thought when the ceiling cracked above his head wasn't that he needed to run...or anything at all useful, when he came to it. The only thing that came up during the seconds of quiet that followed was some crap about having to fix the ceiling and repaint the Devil's Trap.
The demon rolled Sam's head on his neck. “There. That's better.”
And then, its gaze focused on Bobby.
With it, a slam of power threw him into the nearest wall and robbed him of his breath. His head hit first, and he felt the band of his hat dig into his scalp as his full weight pressed against it. Funny that it got his attention when his brain rattled in his skull, but that's how it was sometimes.
Before he could dwell on it more, his eyes closed, and he sank into the black behind his eyelids.
--
It was the sound of gagging that brought Bobby back into the waking world, but it was the feel of the beer burning on its way out of his throat that made him fully conscious. His head was mobile enough that he was able to lean it on his shoulder, but the shoulders themselves seemed riveted in place, so he was only able to aim away from his body when he started to vomit.
As his eyelids pried apart, he could see that a lot of the puke attached to the sleeve of his jacket. Some of it had gotten on the chair and the floor, but he was wearing most of it. Better his sleeve than his front, anyway.
Boots stomped, a little far at first, but closer and closer as Bobby's throat finished convulsing. He did his best to spit the acidic taste out of his mouth, but really, it didn't bother him much. There were other things that could leave a man tasting grit, and one of them was still in the room with him.
“Finished?” a voice said.
Bobby said nothing in response, but he did tilt his head back up. His living room rocked around him, but he'd been expecting it, so he let his eyes dance and clenched his teeth shut. Dry heaving would do him no good now.
Sam's body was standing in front of him, leaning against the door frame into the front of the house. His arms were crossed, and Bobby could see something glinting in his hand. His vision wouldn't focus enough to see what it was exactly, but he bet that it was a blade or a firearm. Knife seemed more likely, but Sam's hands were big enough to hide anything.
A smile stretched across Sam's face, which was familiar enough, but the black that obscured his eyes sent chills skipping across Bobby's skin. “Not in a talking mood?”
Bobby did his best to keep his expression composed, but it only took effort because the nausea didn't seem to want to stop. Even if this son of a bitch hadn't been a demon, it took more than a wise-ass punk to get a rise out of him.
Sam's legs moved, and the demon walked him forward in a loping gait that was nothing like the way the boy usually walked. He was never this confident...or, at least, never this aware of it. It stopped a few feet short of Bobby's chair and sunk to Sam's knees, which let Bobby lean his head against his chest. Another dizzy spell hit him, but the muscles in his neck seemed to sing with their release. He had to take what he could get.
“Gramps,” the demon said, using Sam's vocal chords at a higher pitch than their norm, “now you're being rude.”
Bobby did his best to focus on Sam's hands. Sure enough, Sam's fingers stroked up and down the side of a knife. Bobby could hear the blade ring every time the fingertips tested the edge.
He didn't bother raising his eyes back up when he spoke. Maybe the demon would think he was scared, but it didn't really bother him. “Where's Dean?”
“Around. But I was hoping we could have a little chat,” the demon said, stretching the tips of Sam's mouth into a bigger smile. “There's a lot I want to ask you.”
Despite his original plans to play it cool, Bobby frowned. “What in the hell would you want to ask me?”
The demon threw Sam's back and gave the same laugh it had given when the exorcism had failed. Damn creepy, although you would have had to pry Bobby's fingernails off to get him to admit it.
“Bobby, you do have a way with words.”
Some compliment, coming from a demon.
The demon leaned Sam's head against the hand that held the knife. “Were you ever married?”
Even though Bobby's wrists were tied securely to the wide arms of his chair, his hands sat on top of the wood without dangling over to the front or to the sides. It gave him enough room to let his hands shake a bit. A man had to let out tension somehow, after all.
“None of your business.” His words were a little harsh, but what the hell. The demon wasn't stupid.
The demon shrugged, then rose to a standing position without using a handhold. It flipped the knife forward, holding the blade in front instead of against Sam's arm. “Sure about that?”
Bobby watched the knife move forward as best he could with the room's slight churning and considered his options. The demon was going slow, so it didn't want him dead right away. That meant it was either bluffing him into talking, or it was getting ready to torture him and wanted Bobby to know it.
“Hey! Back off!”
Or it was putting on a show for Dean.
The demon clouded Sam's eyes with black and focused on a point somewhere behind Bobby. “Nice of you to join us. Care to weigh in?”
Dean coughed, and it sounded wet. “Leave him alone, you fucking bastard, or I'll...”
“Get the shit beaten out of you? Again?”
Bobby was willing to take whatever the demon wanted to give at whatever timetable, but it sounded like Dean had neither the ability nor the desire for waiting. It was time to switch tactics.
“I was married,” he said aloud. “A while back.”
Something scuffed, and Bobby did his best to look at the floor. Far as he could tell, his chair hadn't moved, so Dean was probably squirming in a similar setup .
The black-covered eyes had drifted back to Bobby when he'd spoken. “I can't say that Sam's ever met the missus. Why's that?”
Bobby's eyes narrowed. “Because she's dead.”
Sam's eyes flickered, and brown irises replaced solid black. That did nothing to calm Bobby's nerves. It gave him the impression that Sam was listening, and maybe that was the point: to throw him off his game.
Or, worse, Sam might have actually been listening. Bobby had been in this business a long time and had talked to some of the poor souls with inside knowledge, but he didn't know how possession worked first-hand. And he didn't much want to, but damn if the uncertainty didn't get to him. He knew that the people sometimes got a view of what the demons were doing, but he could never tell if the demons were choosing them and when those moments were, exactly.
“I'm sorry to hear that,” the demon said, frowning a bit. “How'd she die?”
Dean snarled. “Don't give her anything, Bobby.”
Her?
Dean knew the demon...and that meant Bobby probably knew her, too. Probably the one they'd exorcised last year, as if things weren't in the shitter already. But this gave Bobby something new to work with.
His mouth tilted the tiniest bit at the corners. “We've met before, haven't we?”
“You can say that.”
“How was Hell?”
The fake sympathy that the demon had plastered on Sam's face dropped away, and for a moment, Bobby could the blind rage common with demons. Talking about the pit was usually the easiest way to rile them.
Only a second later, Sam looked more bored than pissed. “Fun.”
Bobby chuckled. “Glad to hear it.”
“I'll bet you are.” The demon was back to grinning, but all hints of real amusement were gone. “You'll be down there soon enough.”
“Maybe.”
“Probably.”
Bobby shrugged as best he could through the ropes. To his relief, the motion didn't make him sick.
“Let's just say I'm not as sure a bet as some.” He gave his most winning smirk.
That's when the demon laughed again, the very same laugh it...she had given right before breaking free of the trap. Bobby kept his smirk in place, but his innards sank.
“Now, now,” she said, scratching the back of Sam's head with the handle of the knife. “I have to know this answer.”
“Fucking bitch,” Dean said. He followed up the words with what sounded like a hack and spit. Bobby assumed it was to make a point, but he could have been choking on blood just as easily.
The demon pointed Sam's smile in his brother's direction. “If I didn't know better, I might have said that you hate women, Dean.”
“You're...no woman.” Dean was taking breaths in the middle of sentences. Not good.
Sam's free hand waved over his torso. “Not right now, I'm not.”
“Leave him...leave him the fuck alone!” Another scuffing noise, then another. “It's not about him; it's about me!”
The demon made Sam chuckle. “You honestly think that matters?”
“Fuck you.”
It was only when the demon looked at him that Bobby realized he'd been the one to curse. By accident, sure -- his brains were still rattled - but he could make it work.
“And it looks like Gramps just volunteered.”
Bobby watched the demon step in front of him and kneel. Sam's right sleeve slipped back, and the binding link, probably as red and angry as the day the demon had branded it, came into view again.
“What happened to your wife?”
“Did you hear me?” Bobby asked. “Fuck. You.”
With a pat on Bobby's knee, the demon said, “Oh, I was hoping you'd say that.”
Sam's free hand grabbed Bobby's left. He tried his best to jerk his fingers away as the demon positioned the knife about the main joint in his smallest finger.
“You want to be still for this,” the demon said. “Sloppy cuts are the worst to heal.”
“Bobby! What's she doing?”
“Get the fuck away from me,” Bobby said from between clenched teeth.
“Talk to me, damn it!”
The demon looked up at Bobby, then put more of Sam's weight into pinning Bobby's hand. Bobby gritted his teeth even tighter together and folded his tongue away as best he could. Biting through it really wouldn't help his cause right now.
“Tell me what happened to your wife.”
“No.”
And the demon brought the blade down.
The knife was sharp; Bobby could tell by the way it sliced through his skin without too much pain. But it wasn't a very big knife, and the demon wasn't using any of her supernatural strength -- hell, not even all of Sam's strength -- to drag it through his finger, so when it hit the muscles holding the bones together, it stuck. And the demon made sure to wiggle it around a lot.
Bobby wasn't easily phased by pain. He was pretty sure he'd been through a lot more than this...the only thing that came to mind as he watched the demon biting Sam's lip in concentration (God, but he couldn't look at his fingers) were the healed holes in his torso and arms where bullets and buckshot had been forced in and taken out. And that had hurt like a son of a bitch, probably more than this.
But no past pain, even the worst of it, could have pushed out the sensation of having his fucking finger cut off.
So, yeah, he screamed. He could have held back a little and given the demon less to enjoy, but he was in no mood to martyr himself.
It was only when the blade sunk into the arm of the chair that Bobby managed to shut up. He switched to gasping instead, partially because he couldn't help it, and partially because the pain radiating from his hand seemed more manageable that way.
“Bobby!”
The demon wrenched the knife out of the arm - Bobby could see it out of the corner of his eye - and picked up the severed finger with Sam's other hand. Bobby only knew this because she waved it in his face, and he couldn't help but stare at the ragged edges of skin and exposed bone.
“Tell me what happened,” the demon said, “and this stops, right now.”
Bobby closed his eyes tight. “I'm not telling you shit.”
Because he wasn't looking, he didn't know where the knife was going to be this time, whether it was going to finish off the finger, do another one...hell, slit his throat. But he could tell it was the same hand from the jolt that ran through his left arm when the knife fell through. His elbows and knees jerked around as if he was having a seizure, and because nothing was working right, he gagged.
The second that Bobby regained some control over his muscles, a heave rose in his throat, and he turned his head to the side again. Of course, he only had bile in his stomach now, but that just meant he was dry-heaving more.
As he spit the last of the acid out of his mouth, he felt his hat leave his head and a hand stroke his hair. “You are a stubborn bastard, aren't you? It's not worth it.”
Bobby jerked his head in the direction of the hand, but it didn't leave his head. “That's my decision.”
He heard a choke behind him, and then nothing.
The hand moved from his hair and grasped his chin. It pulled his head forward, and Sam's scowling head snapped into view.
“As much as I'm enjoying this, I'm getting a little bored with your fingers. Do you think Dean could stand to lose a little weight?”
Bobby tried to glare, but he knew it came out looking like a grimace. “I don't know what the hell you've done to him.”
“You tell me what I want to know, and I'll turn you around to look at him.”
He'd only had to lose two fingers to get there, too. “Fine.”
The demon smiled, but didn't say anything in response.
“My wife was possessed. I didn't...I hadn't met any of you yet. So when she attacked me...”
“She attacked you?”
The goddamned thing knew. He should have guessed.
Bobby took a shallow breath, but only because the ropes around his chest wouldn't allow more. “When I realized that things weren't right.”
“And that was?”
His wife (he couldn't even think her name, didn't deserve to) had been disappearing for days at a time, sometimes leaving their bed at night, only to return after he'd awakened. And instead of comforting her, asking what was wrong...he'd screamed at her. Probably one of the last things he'd done to her, too.
But he wasn't going into that.
“The demon...it had found a kid somewhere, brought him home.” Into the living room, for God's sake.
“You were home?”
Bobby exhaled. “I was in the yard, selling some parts. It wasn't until I was coming in for lunch that I heard...heard...”
“Heard?”
Heard the boy choking. He'd been trying to scream with all of his will, but it's mighty hard to yell when a demon's feeding you pieces of your own flesh.
“I went inside, saw my wife with the boy. There was...blood everywhere. I kicked the demon away...”
“You kicked your wife away.”
“I kicked the demon away...” Bobby wouldn't think of it any other way. “And tried to carry the boy out. The demon threw me against a wall, and I dropped the boy.”
“What happened to the boy?”
“He ran out of the house and called the cops.” Good thing, too.
“And then?”
“I chased her into the kitchen. She wouldn't talk to me, though I tried to get her to.”
“The kitchen.”
“I wanted her to tell me what was going on. She wouldn't...she couldn't.”
“But something happened."
“She rushed me.” Had those dirty black eyes while she was doing it, too.
“Your wife tried to kill you?”
Bobby tried to spit, but his mouth was too dry. “The demon tried to kill me.”
“So what did you do to the demon?”
He drew a shaky breath in. “Nothing.”
The demon had the nerve of making Sam's eyes wide. Motherfucker. “Nothing?”
“I didn't know...” He wasn't going to cry. “I couldn't hurt the demon. I didn't know...anything.”
“But you're alive! How could you have survived if you couldn't hurt the demon?”
Bobby hung his head. If he said another word without pulling it together...yeah, he couldn't say another word without losing it. And while he had no problem screaming, there were some things he just wouldn't do for these assholes.
“Just when we were getting to the good part.” The demon took Bobby's chin in Sam's hand again and jerked Bobby's head upward. “Tell me how it ends.”
“You know how it ends.” The words sounded more like a growl than actual speech.
The demon dragged the flat of the knife's blade across Bobby's face. He could feel his own slightly warm blood smear on his cheek. “Maybe I do, but Dean doesn't. Do you?”
“Get...get away from him...” Dean sounded like he was fading in and out.
“Tell him, Bobby,” the demon said, leaning Sam's face close to Bobby's. “Tell him about the kitchen knife you grabbed. Tell him how you stuck it in her, over and over...”
Damn it, he wasn't going to cry. “No...”
“Tell him how much you liked it.”
“I didn't.”
The demon pulled the knife away from his face. “It felt good, knowing you were taking your life from her, ending it all.”
“No!”
“But that didn't kill the demon. Didn't even hurt it. It waited until you were done, kissed you on the mouth, then left. And you held your Angela, and watched the blood trickle from her mouth as she asked you why.”
Bobby couldn't feel the tears dragging streaks in the blood on his face or even see the living room anymore. He could only see feel the kitchen tile cold through his jeans, and Angela (God, Angela) lying across his lap. He could only feel the hot blood under his hand as he pushed down on the wounds on his wife's chest.
Yes, there had been blood coming out of her mouth.. He'd probably punctured a lung, thinking back, and she'd drowned in her own fluids. And she had asked him why, but that wasn't as bad as her last words. He'd almost missed them, considering they were quieter than a sigh and his own shuddering breaths.
“Help me,” she'd whispered.
The chair jerked, and Bobby was back in his living room once more. His eyes were streaming, and the wallpaper and Sam were nothing but colorful blurs in front of him. He sagged his head and did his best to clear them out.
As he did, the chair jerked again, and he had to close his eyes to keep his gorge from rising.
“Here you go,” the demon said from in front of him. “One Dean Winchester.”
Bobby opened his eyes. Sure enough, he was facing Dean. The boy looked worse than he had imagined; the complete left side of his shirt was covered in blood, most of it still wet. As a result, his skin was nearly transparent. The only color on his face were from dark bruises, most of which circled around his nose, and the shadows caused by various swollen areas. Of course, he probably wouldn't have had so many shadows if he wasn't slumped over, but Bobby imagined it would be hard to sit up straight in a state like that.
But Dean wasn't just slumped. He was still.
“Dean,” Bobby said. “Dean!”
With a cough, Dean raised his head a bit and forced his puffy lips into a semblance of a smile. “Good to see you.”
Even before Bobby felt relief, his eyelids fluttered and his head drooped a little. He probably didn't look half as bad as Dean, but he wasn't exactly in good shape, either. He'd probably lost more blood than he'd realized.
“What a pair we are, huh?” Dean said, but there was an edge in his voice. “Right?”
Bobby nodded and forced his eyes open. “Yeah. Real attractive.”
The demon stepped Sam over toward Dean's chair, and Bobby's lip curled.
“What do you guys want to do next?”
“Leave,” Dean said.
The demon looked far too pleased with herself. “Besides that.”
”Try another exorcism,” Bobby said.
“Sorry, Gramps. No do-overs.” The demon made Sam tap the knife against the arm of Dean's chair. “We can either trim you down some more, or I could play with Dean.”
Bobby sat up a little straighter. “Me.”
Without hesitation, the demon turned Sam around, pulled his right hand into a fist, and brought it against Dean's face. Dean grunted, but said nothing.
“Me!” Bobby cried. “I said me!”
“Way too fast,” the demon said without turning around. “This may come as a surprise, but I don't trust you.”
As the demon threw another punch, Bobby began pulling his left arm back as hard as he could. The ropes around his wrists were tight - which actually kept his fingers from bleeding out too fast - but the blood that had come out made his hand slick. Between that and the missing fingers, he managed to drag most of his hand under the ropes.
Dean spoke. “That's right, hit me. You don't have the sac...for anything more.”
“Oh no?”
A third punch landed, and Bobby yelled, “Stop!” It would have been suspicious if he hadn't said anything, but he didn't expect that the demon would turn.
The demon was revving up its fourth punch when Bobby pried his hand free. He slid a knife out from his sleeve - he never did an exorcism without one hidden away -- and started digging into the ropes on his right wrist. When he sliced into the flesh on his wrist, he squeezed his eyes closed and started sawing at the ropes around his shoulders.
When he heard a footstep, Bobby opened his eyes again and switched to his feet; free legs with trapped shoulders was much better than the reverse.
“Anything to say now, Dean? Huh?”
“Fuck you.” That did seem to be the phrase of the day.
Bobby's right leg popped free, and his foot hit the floor with a loud thump. Before he could see if the demon was watching, he switched the knife to his right hand and started cutting as fast as he could go. The wound on his wrist complained, but considering how much more the stumps on his left hand were hurting, he ignored it.
A hand grabbed Bobby's hair, and his head was jerked upward just as the last of the rope on his left leg fell away. He started throwing the hand holding the around, but another hand grabbed his wrist.
The demon snarled and dug Sam's fingers into the cut on Bobby's wrist. “Nice try, but you weren't fast enough.”
Instead of giving an answer, Bobby kicked both his feet forward. His right foot hit Sam's left knee, but his left foot glanced off the side of Sam's right leg. But it was enough; the demon lost her balance and let go of Bobby.
As Sam's body fell forward, Bobby pushed the chair backward. It wasn't very far because Bobby didn't have the strength in his legs, but he didn't need to go back any further. Sam's head bounced on his knees, so Bobby pushed his right one up and clocked him under the chin. That was enough to take Sam's body to the floor.
Bobby cut the last of the rope around his shoulders and rose to his feet. When he stepped forward and got on one knee next to Sam, he went down a little harder than he meant to and had to put his mutilated hand on the ground to gain his balance. Once he steadied, he used that hand to grab Sam by the hair, and he raised the knife in his other hand to about eye level.
The demon laughed around the blood in Sam's mouth. “I knew you liked it.”
Bobby snorted. “You don't know me at all.”
He let go of Sam's hair, grabbed his right arm, and slashed through the binding link branded into his skin. Blood spilled onto the floor in a steady stream, and for a heartbeat, Bobby prayed it was enough.
It was.
Sam's body rolled over, and as a scream tore out of his mouth, the black figure that was the demon spilled out and over to the fireplace behind Dean to make her exit. Bobby let go of Sam and fell back into a sitting position on the floor.
He looked over at Dean. The boy's head was completely slack, and Bobby could see a thread of blood trickling from Dean's mouth.
Bobby tried to push himself up again, but his arms didn't have the strength to do it, and he fell back onto his ass after a couple seconds. It wasn't worth wasting more time over, so he crawled over to Dean's chair. He didn't win any awards for speed, but it was the best he could do.
He collapsed next to Dean, leaning against a chair leg while he caught his breath. It felt like dirt had dug into the open wounds on his hands when he'd crawled, and he pressed his hand against his chest.
“Dean? Dean!”
Bobby looked up. Sam was lying on the floor, his hand pushed over the gash in his arm. His eyes -- their normal hazel, thank the Lord -- were as wide as a couple of hubcaps, and he trembled a little.
“Call 911,” Bobby said. His voice was as dry and raspy as his throat.
Sam's head turned. “Bobby? What...what's going on?”
“I'll tell you later.” Bobby turned to the ropes around Dean's legs and started to cut. The muscles in his arms didn't like it, but there was a lot that he didn't like right now. “We gotta get to a hospital.”
“Your hand...”
“Sam!”
The kid jerked as if he'd been hit, and Bobby half wanted to scream at him. The only thing stopping him was the thought that Sam had been trapped for a good week or so by a demon, and so he brought his voice to a quieter pitch.
“Call the hospital, and get me some towels.”
For some reason, it was after that sentence that Dean groaned. Both Bobby and Sam looked over at him.
“Get me a brew...while you're at it.”
Bobby smiled as Sam ran for the kitchen. As long as they could get patched up - Dean was still with them, if banged up - it was all okay, for now. Bobby wished he could tell the boys that, but they wouldn't get it right now.
That was okay. It would keep.
Extended Notes: Everyone talks about the stories that write themselves and how beautiful the writing experience was. The text above was not one of those stories, which is probably appropriate considering the nature of the story. The problem was not in pecansoda's prompts, luckily; "Born Under A Bad Sign" is one of my favorite episodes, and I relished the chance to try and tackle an AU where things didn't end as smoothly (although I'm sure Dean would object that I would call the ending smooth).
I spent two months starting the story and restarting it. My longest draft ended up being some 3500 words before I scrapped the whole thing. Then, in the last week before the due date, I practically chained myself to the computer when I wasn't busy -- and I had a notebook when I wasn't home -- and forced myself to finish it. It was only on the last day that I even reached the end of a draft, after nearly twenty-four hours of sleep-deprivation, and that's the one I ended up submitting because I was out of time. And let's just say I wasn't happy about sending it out in the state it was in.
The story was posted pretty early in the fest, which made me a little nervous. But then, I noticed something that sent me into full-blown panic mode; the mod who had posted my story had accidentally left my username with it, so anyone who had encountered the story in the first couple hours of it being on the community could see exactly who wrote it. It wasn't a big deal, and it got fixed quickly, but the one thing that got me to the end of the story was the thought that I had time before people knew I wrote it. I did eventually calm down -- I mean, there had to be only two or three people in the community that even knew me outside of the fest.
Anyway, blah blah, tl;dr, cry moar. I will say that reading it again just now wasn't nearly as tough as I thought it was going to be. I would have definitely made some edits if I'd had more time, but as it is, it's relatively solid.
Trigger warnings: Ibzvgvat, rzbgvbany gbegher, rkgerzr culfvpny gbegher, frirerq svatref, rkprffvir oybbq, nyyhfvbaf gb puvyq zheqre naq gbegher (translate)
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R for gore, violence, and language. I'm emphasizing the gore; I was told that it was tough to read. Click here for trigger warnings.
Length: About 4700 words.
Characters/Pairings: Bobby, Dean, Meg!Sam, Sam.
Spoilers: Primarily "Born Under A Bad Sign" and "Dream A Little Dream Of Me", so if you're up through season three, no need to worry about spoilers.
Summary: When Sam is possessed by the demon that originally possessed Meg, Dean isn't the only target for revenge.
Notes: I wrote this story for pecansoda for spn_summergen this past year. The prompt I chose was Born Under A Bad Sign: Bobby breaks the binding link an hour too late. As dark as you like, but no character death please. As I've mentioned, it was originally posted anonymously (because that's how the fic fest worked). Click here to see the original post, and check the end of the story for more extended notes.
The Links That Bind
Bobby's first thought when the ceiling cracked above his head wasn't that he needed to run...or anything at all useful, when he came to it. The only thing that came up during the seconds of quiet that followed was some crap about having to fix the ceiling and repaint the Devil's Trap.
The demon rolled Sam's head on his neck. “There. That's better.”
And then, its gaze focused on Bobby.
With it, a slam of power threw him into the nearest wall and robbed him of his breath. His head hit first, and he felt the band of his hat dig into his scalp as his full weight pressed against it. Funny that it got his attention when his brain rattled in his skull, but that's how it was sometimes.
Before he could dwell on it more, his eyes closed, and he sank into the black behind his eyelids.
--
It was the sound of gagging that brought Bobby back into the waking world, but it was the feel of the beer burning on its way out of his throat that made him fully conscious. His head was mobile enough that he was able to lean it on his shoulder, but the shoulders themselves seemed riveted in place, so he was only able to aim away from his body when he started to vomit.
As his eyelids pried apart, he could see that a lot of the puke attached to the sleeve of his jacket. Some of it had gotten on the chair and the floor, but he was wearing most of it. Better his sleeve than his front, anyway.
Boots stomped, a little far at first, but closer and closer as Bobby's throat finished convulsing. He did his best to spit the acidic taste out of his mouth, but really, it didn't bother him much. There were other things that could leave a man tasting grit, and one of them was still in the room with him.
“Finished?” a voice said.
Bobby said nothing in response, but he did tilt his head back up. His living room rocked around him, but he'd been expecting it, so he let his eyes dance and clenched his teeth shut. Dry heaving would do him no good now.
Sam's body was standing in front of him, leaning against the door frame into the front of the house. His arms were crossed, and Bobby could see something glinting in his hand. His vision wouldn't focus enough to see what it was exactly, but he bet that it was a blade or a firearm. Knife seemed more likely, but Sam's hands were big enough to hide anything.
A smile stretched across Sam's face, which was familiar enough, but the black that obscured his eyes sent chills skipping across Bobby's skin. “Not in a talking mood?”
Bobby did his best to keep his expression composed, but it only took effort because the nausea didn't seem to want to stop. Even if this son of a bitch hadn't been a demon, it took more than a wise-ass punk to get a rise out of him.
Sam's legs moved, and the demon walked him forward in a loping gait that was nothing like the way the boy usually walked. He was never this confident...or, at least, never this aware of it. It stopped a few feet short of Bobby's chair and sunk to Sam's knees, which let Bobby lean his head against his chest. Another dizzy spell hit him, but the muscles in his neck seemed to sing with their release. He had to take what he could get.
“Gramps,” the demon said, using Sam's vocal chords at a higher pitch than their norm, “now you're being rude.”
Bobby did his best to focus on Sam's hands. Sure enough, Sam's fingers stroked up and down the side of a knife. Bobby could hear the blade ring every time the fingertips tested the edge.
He didn't bother raising his eyes back up when he spoke. Maybe the demon would think he was scared, but it didn't really bother him. “Where's Dean?”
“Around. But I was hoping we could have a little chat,” the demon said, stretching the tips of Sam's mouth into a bigger smile. “There's a lot I want to ask you.”
Despite his original plans to play it cool, Bobby frowned. “What in the hell would you want to ask me?”
The demon threw Sam's back and gave the same laugh it had given when the exorcism had failed. Damn creepy, although you would have had to pry Bobby's fingernails off to get him to admit it.
“Bobby, you do have a way with words.”
Some compliment, coming from a demon.
The demon leaned Sam's head against the hand that held the knife. “Were you ever married?”
Even though Bobby's wrists were tied securely to the wide arms of his chair, his hands sat on top of the wood without dangling over to the front or to the sides. It gave him enough room to let his hands shake a bit. A man had to let out tension somehow, after all.
“None of your business.” His words were a little harsh, but what the hell. The demon wasn't stupid.
The demon shrugged, then rose to a standing position without using a handhold. It flipped the knife forward, holding the blade in front instead of against Sam's arm. “Sure about that?”
Bobby watched the knife move forward as best he could with the room's slight churning and considered his options. The demon was going slow, so it didn't want him dead right away. That meant it was either bluffing him into talking, or it was getting ready to torture him and wanted Bobby to know it.
“Hey! Back off!”
Or it was putting on a show for Dean.
The demon clouded Sam's eyes with black and focused on a point somewhere behind Bobby. “Nice of you to join us. Care to weigh in?”
Dean coughed, and it sounded wet. “Leave him alone, you fucking bastard, or I'll...”
“Get the shit beaten out of you? Again?”
Bobby was willing to take whatever the demon wanted to give at whatever timetable, but it sounded like Dean had neither the ability nor the desire for waiting. It was time to switch tactics.
“I was married,” he said aloud. “A while back.”
Something scuffed, and Bobby did his best to look at the floor. Far as he could tell, his chair hadn't moved, so Dean was probably squirming in a similar setup .
The black-covered eyes had drifted back to Bobby when he'd spoken. “I can't say that Sam's ever met the missus. Why's that?”
Bobby's eyes narrowed. “Because she's dead.”
Sam's eyes flickered, and brown irises replaced solid black. That did nothing to calm Bobby's nerves. It gave him the impression that Sam was listening, and maybe that was the point: to throw him off his game.
Or, worse, Sam might have actually been listening. Bobby had been in this business a long time and had talked to some of the poor souls with inside knowledge, but he didn't know how possession worked first-hand. And he didn't much want to, but damn if the uncertainty didn't get to him. He knew that the people sometimes got a view of what the demons were doing, but he could never tell if the demons were choosing them and when those moments were, exactly.
“I'm sorry to hear that,” the demon said, frowning a bit. “How'd she die?”
Dean snarled. “Don't give her anything, Bobby.”
Her?
Dean knew the demon...and that meant Bobby probably knew her, too. Probably the one they'd exorcised last year, as if things weren't in the shitter already. But this gave Bobby something new to work with.
His mouth tilted the tiniest bit at the corners. “We've met before, haven't we?”
“You can say that.”
“How was Hell?”
The fake sympathy that the demon had plastered on Sam's face dropped away, and for a moment, Bobby could the blind rage common with demons. Talking about the pit was usually the easiest way to rile them.
Only a second later, Sam looked more bored than pissed. “Fun.”
Bobby chuckled. “Glad to hear it.”
“I'll bet you are.” The demon was back to grinning, but all hints of real amusement were gone. “You'll be down there soon enough.”
“Maybe.”
“Probably.”
Bobby shrugged as best he could through the ropes. To his relief, the motion didn't make him sick.
“Let's just say I'm not as sure a bet as some.” He gave his most winning smirk.
That's when the demon laughed again, the very same laugh it...she had given right before breaking free of the trap. Bobby kept his smirk in place, but his innards sank.
“Now, now,” she said, scratching the back of Sam's head with the handle of the knife. “I have to know this answer.”
“Fucking bitch,” Dean said. He followed up the words with what sounded like a hack and spit. Bobby assumed it was to make a point, but he could have been choking on blood just as easily.
The demon pointed Sam's smile in his brother's direction. “If I didn't know better, I might have said that you hate women, Dean.”
“You're...no woman.” Dean was taking breaths in the middle of sentences. Not good.
Sam's free hand waved over his torso. “Not right now, I'm not.”
“Leave him...leave him the fuck alone!” Another scuffing noise, then another. “It's not about him; it's about me!”
The demon made Sam chuckle. “You honestly think that matters?”
“Fuck you.”
It was only when the demon looked at him that Bobby realized he'd been the one to curse. By accident, sure -- his brains were still rattled - but he could make it work.
“And it looks like Gramps just volunteered.”
Bobby watched the demon step in front of him and kneel. Sam's right sleeve slipped back, and the binding link, probably as red and angry as the day the demon had branded it, came into view again.
“What happened to your wife?”
“Did you hear me?” Bobby asked. “Fuck. You.”
With a pat on Bobby's knee, the demon said, “Oh, I was hoping you'd say that.”
Sam's free hand grabbed Bobby's left. He tried his best to jerk his fingers away as the demon positioned the knife about the main joint in his smallest finger.
“You want to be still for this,” the demon said. “Sloppy cuts are the worst to heal.”
“Bobby! What's she doing?”
“Get the fuck away from me,” Bobby said from between clenched teeth.
“Talk to me, damn it!”
The demon looked up at Bobby, then put more of Sam's weight into pinning Bobby's hand. Bobby gritted his teeth even tighter together and folded his tongue away as best he could. Biting through it really wouldn't help his cause right now.
“Tell me what happened to your wife.”
“No.”
And the demon brought the blade down.
The knife was sharp; Bobby could tell by the way it sliced through his skin without too much pain. But it wasn't a very big knife, and the demon wasn't using any of her supernatural strength -- hell, not even all of Sam's strength -- to drag it through his finger, so when it hit the muscles holding the bones together, it stuck. And the demon made sure to wiggle it around a lot.
Bobby wasn't easily phased by pain. He was pretty sure he'd been through a lot more than this...the only thing that came to mind as he watched the demon biting Sam's lip in concentration (God, but he couldn't look at his fingers) were the healed holes in his torso and arms where bullets and buckshot had been forced in and taken out. And that had hurt like a son of a bitch, probably more than this.
But no past pain, even the worst of it, could have pushed out the sensation of having his fucking finger cut off.
So, yeah, he screamed. He could have held back a little and given the demon less to enjoy, but he was in no mood to martyr himself.
It was only when the blade sunk into the arm of the chair that Bobby managed to shut up. He switched to gasping instead, partially because he couldn't help it, and partially because the pain radiating from his hand seemed more manageable that way.
“Bobby!”
The demon wrenched the knife out of the arm - Bobby could see it out of the corner of his eye - and picked up the severed finger with Sam's other hand. Bobby only knew this because she waved it in his face, and he couldn't help but stare at the ragged edges of skin and exposed bone.
“Tell me what happened,” the demon said, “and this stops, right now.”
Bobby closed his eyes tight. “I'm not telling you shit.”
Because he wasn't looking, he didn't know where the knife was going to be this time, whether it was going to finish off the finger, do another one...hell, slit his throat. But he could tell it was the same hand from the jolt that ran through his left arm when the knife fell through. His elbows and knees jerked around as if he was having a seizure, and because nothing was working right, he gagged.
The second that Bobby regained some control over his muscles, a heave rose in his throat, and he turned his head to the side again. Of course, he only had bile in his stomach now, but that just meant he was dry-heaving more.
As he spit the last of the acid out of his mouth, he felt his hat leave his head and a hand stroke his hair. “You are a stubborn bastard, aren't you? It's not worth it.”
Bobby jerked his head in the direction of the hand, but it didn't leave his head. “That's my decision.”
He heard a choke behind him, and then nothing.
The hand moved from his hair and grasped his chin. It pulled his head forward, and Sam's scowling head snapped into view.
“As much as I'm enjoying this, I'm getting a little bored with your fingers. Do you think Dean could stand to lose a little weight?”
Bobby tried to glare, but he knew it came out looking like a grimace. “I don't know what the hell you've done to him.”
“You tell me what I want to know, and I'll turn you around to look at him.”
He'd only had to lose two fingers to get there, too. “Fine.”
The demon smiled, but didn't say anything in response.
“My wife was possessed. I didn't...I hadn't met any of you yet. So when she attacked me...”
“She attacked you?”
The goddamned thing knew. He should have guessed.
Bobby took a shallow breath, but only because the ropes around his chest wouldn't allow more. “When I realized that things weren't right.”
“And that was?”
His wife (he couldn't even think her name, didn't deserve to) had been disappearing for days at a time, sometimes leaving their bed at night, only to return after he'd awakened. And instead of comforting her, asking what was wrong...he'd screamed at her. Probably one of the last things he'd done to her, too.
But he wasn't going into that.
“The demon...it had found a kid somewhere, brought him home.” Into the living room, for God's sake.
“You were home?”
Bobby exhaled. “I was in the yard, selling some parts. It wasn't until I was coming in for lunch that I heard...heard...”
“Heard?”
Heard the boy choking. He'd been trying to scream with all of his will, but it's mighty hard to yell when a demon's feeding you pieces of your own flesh.
“I went inside, saw my wife with the boy. There was...blood everywhere. I kicked the demon away...”
“You kicked your wife away.”
“I kicked the demon away...” Bobby wouldn't think of it any other way. “And tried to carry the boy out. The demon threw me against a wall, and I dropped the boy.”
“What happened to the boy?”
“He ran out of the house and called the cops.” Good thing, too.
“And then?”
“I chased her into the kitchen. She wouldn't talk to me, though I tried to get her to.”
“The kitchen.”
“I wanted her to tell me what was going on. She wouldn't...she couldn't.”
“But something happened."
“She rushed me.” Had those dirty black eyes while she was doing it, too.
“Your wife tried to kill you?”
Bobby tried to spit, but his mouth was too dry. “The demon tried to kill me.”
“So what did you do to the demon?”
He drew a shaky breath in. “Nothing.”
The demon had the nerve of making Sam's eyes wide. Motherfucker. “Nothing?”
“I didn't know...” He wasn't going to cry. “I couldn't hurt the demon. I didn't know...anything.”
“But you're alive! How could you have survived if you couldn't hurt the demon?”
Bobby hung his head. If he said another word without pulling it together...yeah, he couldn't say another word without losing it. And while he had no problem screaming, there were some things he just wouldn't do for these assholes.
“Just when we were getting to the good part.” The demon took Bobby's chin in Sam's hand again and jerked Bobby's head upward. “Tell me how it ends.”
“You know how it ends.” The words sounded more like a growl than actual speech.
The demon dragged the flat of the knife's blade across Bobby's face. He could feel his own slightly warm blood smear on his cheek. “Maybe I do, but Dean doesn't. Do you?”
“Get...get away from him...” Dean sounded like he was fading in and out.
“Tell him, Bobby,” the demon said, leaning Sam's face close to Bobby's. “Tell him about the kitchen knife you grabbed. Tell him how you stuck it in her, over and over...”
Damn it, he wasn't going to cry. “No...”
“Tell him how much you liked it.”
“I didn't.”
The demon pulled the knife away from his face. “It felt good, knowing you were taking your life from her, ending it all.”
“No!”
“But that didn't kill the demon. Didn't even hurt it. It waited until you were done, kissed you on the mouth, then left. And you held your Angela, and watched the blood trickle from her mouth as she asked you why.”
Bobby couldn't feel the tears dragging streaks in the blood on his face or even see the living room anymore. He could only see feel the kitchen tile cold through his jeans, and Angela (God, Angela) lying across his lap. He could only feel the hot blood under his hand as he pushed down on the wounds on his wife's chest.
Yes, there had been blood coming out of her mouth.. He'd probably punctured a lung, thinking back, and she'd drowned in her own fluids. And she had asked him why, but that wasn't as bad as her last words. He'd almost missed them, considering they were quieter than a sigh and his own shuddering breaths.
“Help me,” she'd whispered.
The chair jerked, and Bobby was back in his living room once more. His eyes were streaming, and the wallpaper and Sam were nothing but colorful blurs in front of him. He sagged his head and did his best to clear them out.
As he did, the chair jerked again, and he had to close his eyes to keep his gorge from rising.
“Here you go,” the demon said from in front of him. “One Dean Winchester.”
Bobby opened his eyes. Sure enough, he was facing Dean. The boy looked worse than he had imagined; the complete left side of his shirt was covered in blood, most of it still wet. As a result, his skin was nearly transparent. The only color on his face were from dark bruises, most of which circled around his nose, and the shadows caused by various swollen areas. Of course, he probably wouldn't have had so many shadows if he wasn't slumped over, but Bobby imagined it would be hard to sit up straight in a state like that.
But Dean wasn't just slumped. He was still.
“Dean,” Bobby said. “Dean!”
With a cough, Dean raised his head a bit and forced his puffy lips into a semblance of a smile. “Good to see you.”
Even before Bobby felt relief, his eyelids fluttered and his head drooped a little. He probably didn't look half as bad as Dean, but he wasn't exactly in good shape, either. He'd probably lost more blood than he'd realized.
“What a pair we are, huh?” Dean said, but there was an edge in his voice. “Right?”
Bobby nodded and forced his eyes open. “Yeah. Real attractive.”
The demon stepped Sam over toward Dean's chair, and Bobby's lip curled.
“What do you guys want to do next?”
“Leave,” Dean said.
The demon looked far too pleased with herself. “Besides that.”
”Try another exorcism,” Bobby said.
“Sorry, Gramps. No do-overs.” The demon made Sam tap the knife against the arm of Dean's chair. “We can either trim you down some more, or I could play with Dean.”
Bobby sat up a little straighter. “Me.”
Without hesitation, the demon turned Sam around, pulled his right hand into a fist, and brought it against Dean's face. Dean grunted, but said nothing.
“Me!” Bobby cried. “I said me!”
“Way too fast,” the demon said without turning around. “This may come as a surprise, but I don't trust you.”
As the demon threw another punch, Bobby began pulling his left arm back as hard as he could. The ropes around his wrists were tight - which actually kept his fingers from bleeding out too fast - but the blood that had come out made his hand slick. Between that and the missing fingers, he managed to drag most of his hand under the ropes.
Dean spoke. “That's right, hit me. You don't have the sac...for anything more.”
“Oh no?”
A third punch landed, and Bobby yelled, “Stop!” It would have been suspicious if he hadn't said anything, but he didn't expect that the demon would turn.
The demon was revving up its fourth punch when Bobby pried his hand free. He slid a knife out from his sleeve - he never did an exorcism without one hidden away -- and started digging into the ropes on his right wrist. When he sliced into the flesh on his wrist, he squeezed his eyes closed and started sawing at the ropes around his shoulders.
When he heard a footstep, Bobby opened his eyes again and switched to his feet; free legs with trapped shoulders was much better than the reverse.
“Anything to say now, Dean? Huh?”
“Fuck you.” That did seem to be the phrase of the day.
Bobby's right leg popped free, and his foot hit the floor with a loud thump. Before he could see if the demon was watching, he switched the knife to his right hand and started cutting as fast as he could go. The wound on his wrist complained, but considering how much more the stumps on his left hand were hurting, he ignored it.
A hand grabbed Bobby's hair, and his head was jerked upward just as the last of the rope on his left leg fell away. He started throwing the hand holding the around, but another hand grabbed his wrist.
The demon snarled and dug Sam's fingers into the cut on Bobby's wrist. “Nice try, but you weren't fast enough.”
Instead of giving an answer, Bobby kicked both his feet forward. His right foot hit Sam's left knee, but his left foot glanced off the side of Sam's right leg. But it was enough; the demon lost her balance and let go of Bobby.
As Sam's body fell forward, Bobby pushed the chair backward. It wasn't very far because Bobby didn't have the strength in his legs, but he didn't need to go back any further. Sam's head bounced on his knees, so Bobby pushed his right one up and clocked him under the chin. That was enough to take Sam's body to the floor.
Bobby cut the last of the rope around his shoulders and rose to his feet. When he stepped forward and got on one knee next to Sam, he went down a little harder than he meant to and had to put his mutilated hand on the ground to gain his balance. Once he steadied, he used that hand to grab Sam by the hair, and he raised the knife in his other hand to about eye level.
The demon laughed around the blood in Sam's mouth. “I knew you liked it.”
Bobby snorted. “You don't know me at all.”
He let go of Sam's hair, grabbed his right arm, and slashed through the binding link branded into his skin. Blood spilled onto the floor in a steady stream, and for a heartbeat, Bobby prayed it was enough.
It was.
Sam's body rolled over, and as a scream tore out of his mouth, the black figure that was the demon spilled out and over to the fireplace behind Dean to make her exit. Bobby let go of Sam and fell back into a sitting position on the floor.
He looked over at Dean. The boy's head was completely slack, and Bobby could see a thread of blood trickling from Dean's mouth.
Bobby tried to push himself up again, but his arms didn't have the strength to do it, and he fell back onto his ass after a couple seconds. It wasn't worth wasting more time over, so he crawled over to Dean's chair. He didn't win any awards for speed, but it was the best he could do.
He collapsed next to Dean, leaning against a chair leg while he caught his breath. It felt like dirt had dug into the open wounds on his hands when he'd crawled, and he pressed his hand against his chest.
“Dean? Dean!”
Bobby looked up. Sam was lying on the floor, his hand pushed over the gash in his arm. His eyes -- their normal hazel, thank the Lord -- were as wide as a couple of hubcaps, and he trembled a little.
“Call 911,” Bobby said. His voice was as dry and raspy as his throat.
Sam's head turned. “Bobby? What...what's going on?”
“I'll tell you later.” Bobby turned to the ropes around Dean's legs and started to cut. The muscles in his arms didn't like it, but there was a lot that he didn't like right now. “We gotta get to a hospital.”
“Your hand...”
“Sam!”
The kid jerked as if he'd been hit, and Bobby half wanted to scream at him. The only thing stopping him was the thought that Sam had been trapped for a good week or so by a demon, and so he brought his voice to a quieter pitch.
“Call the hospital, and get me some towels.”
For some reason, it was after that sentence that Dean groaned. Both Bobby and Sam looked over at him.
“Get me a brew...while you're at it.”
Bobby smiled as Sam ran for the kitchen. As long as they could get patched up - Dean was still with them, if banged up - it was all okay, for now. Bobby wished he could tell the boys that, but they wouldn't get it right now.
That was okay. It would keep.
Extended Notes: Everyone talks about the stories that write themselves and how beautiful the writing experience was. The text above was not one of those stories, which is probably appropriate considering the nature of the story. The problem was not in pecansoda's prompts, luckily; "Born Under A Bad Sign" is one of my favorite episodes, and I relished the chance to try and tackle an AU where things didn't end as smoothly (although I'm sure Dean would object that I would call the ending smooth).
I spent two months starting the story and restarting it. My longest draft ended up being some 3500 words before I scrapped the whole thing. Then, in the last week before the due date, I practically chained myself to the computer when I wasn't busy -- and I had a notebook when I wasn't home -- and forced myself to finish it. It was only on the last day that I even reached the end of a draft, after nearly twenty-four hours of sleep-deprivation, and that's the one I ended up submitting because I was out of time. And let's just say I wasn't happy about sending it out in the state it was in.
The story was posted pretty early in the fest, which made me a little nervous. But then, I noticed something that sent me into full-blown panic mode; the mod who had posted my story had accidentally left my username with it, so anyone who had encountered the story in the first couple hours of it being on the community could see exactly who wrote it. It wasn't a big deal, and it got fixed quickly, but the one thing that got me to the end of the story was the thought that I had time before people knew I wrote it. I did eventually calm down -- I mean, there had to be only two or three people in the community that even knew me outside of the fest.
Anyway, blah blah, tl;dr, cry moar. I will say that reading it again just now wasn't nearly as tough as I thought it was going to be. I would have definitely made some edits if I'd had more time, but as it is, it's relatively solid.
Trigger warnings: Ibzvgvat, rzbgvbany gbegher, rkgerzr culfvpny gbegher, frirerq svatref, rkprffvir oybbq, nyyhfvbaf gb puvyq zheqre naq gbegher (translate)