Fic: The Hessian of the Hollow: Part V

[jedisapphire]

Masterpost
Part IV

Part V: Ready to Move On Now

Dean woke up screaming.

He couldn’t hear it, though. He couldn’t hear himself. The world was thundering silence, and Dean had never realized how much background noise there was until it was gone. The creak of the Impala’s seats, the squeak of denim on leather, Sam’s breathing.

Dean was still screaming. He knew it because he could feel his throat vibrating with it, feel the ache and the hoarseness, but he couldn’t hear -

And where was Sam?

The screaming changed to words, to Sam’s name, but Dean still couldn’t hear. Was Sam mad? Was Sam busy? Was Sam hurt?

It took him a moment to realize someone was touching his head, and a moment more, struggling and pushing, to figure out that the hands on him were so big and gentle that they could only belong to Sam.

Dean relaxed and let Sam pat him down.

Then he said, “I can’t hear.”

Sam took his hand and traced OK into his palm. Then he patted Dean’s shoulder, and Dean allowed himself to be drawn into a hug, wrapping his own arms around Sam.

And that was when he felt the flinch.

He pulled back quickly, trying not to feel hurt. Sam had flinched from him. Sure Dean was blind and deaf and useless as a hunter, and he’d probably been ridiculously needy and maybe he was getting on Sam’s nerves, but Sam had flinched from him.

Sam grabbed his hand again. Dean tried to pull away - Sam had flinched - but Sam tugged him forward, flattening Dean’s palm over his chest.

Dean hesitated, unsure what Sam was going for, and then Sam breathed in and out and Dean felt the raised texture of stitches through Sam’s shirt.

He sighed, feeling a surprising sense of relief - Sam hadn’t flinched from him, he’d flinched because Dean had pressed down on his injury. It only took a moment, though, for the relief to be pushed aside by horror. What had happened while Dean had been asleep?

He pushed Sam’s shirt up, following the line of the injury. It was about four inches long, and the stitches felt uneven. Sam had probably done them himself. And he hadn’t bandaged it. Little idiot. Dean had been out of it, yeah, but that was why they had things like doctors and clinics.

Dean ran light fingers over Sam’s ribs, frowning when he found another spot that made his brother wince. No stitches or broken skin there, so it was probably just a bruise.

“What else?” Dean demanded.

Sam shifted Dean’s hand to his arm. Dean could feel a few layers of gauze under his shirt.

Someone had hurt Sammy. Some son of a bitch who clearly had a death wish had hurt Sammy.

“Who did it?” Dean growled, hand still resting over the bandage.

Sam pushed his hand down, a clear indication of leave it.

Like hell Dean was going to leave it.

He grabbed Sam’s arm, careful to avoid the injury, and tugged, forcing Sam to stay facing him. “Who did it?”

Dean knew the answer even before the letters J - E - D were traced into his hand.
Sam hadn’t been expecting the vibes of anger and frustration he was getting from Dean. He hadn’t expected Dean to be happy he was hurt, but it really wasn’t that bad. A bullet graze to his arm, a non-fatal cut on his ribs and some bruises, they got hurt worse than that all the time. Normally Dean would have patched Sam up, given him a couple of painkillers, and left it at that.

This time Dean was fuming.

“Dean,” Sam said, and then he realized Dean couldn’t hear.

He did the next best thing, dropping one hand to Dean’s knee in a gesture he knew his brother would read. What’s wrong?

Dean shook his head.

Sam responded with a light squeeze.

Dean shoved him off roughly. Sam knew his big brother didn’t intend to hurt him and if he could possibly have held back his reaction he would have done it. But Dean’s hand pressed down on a particularly painful bruise and Sam couldn’t entirely suppress the little gasp. Dean couldn’t hear it, but he did feel the flinch, if the way he snatched his hands back was any indication.

“Dean, no.” Sam turned to his brother, and the stricken expression on Dean’s face was heartbreaking. “Dean.”

Sam reached out. Dean didn’t push him away this time. Dean didn’t touch him. He just drew back, unseeing green eyes pleading with Sam to back off.

Sam couldn’t refuse.

He sank back, putting his hands on the wheel. The motel first. He really needed to get the scruff off his chin. Then he was going to track down the Hessian’s head.

He had something to go on now, because the clearing where he’d found the body was out of the way, and none of the previous victims had been anywhere near it. That meant Sam had something to go on to find the head. He’d check the cemetery, but he had a feeling the answer wasn’t there. Soldiers who thought Johann von Ahlen was a deserter, soldiers so angry they beheaded him after they shot him and buried him by the roadside like a suicide instead of in consecrated ground, would never have buried his head in the churchyard.

It had to be someplace else. Sam would find it.

Sam had to find it, because Dean’s life depended on it. He wasn’t going to screw this one up.

Dean was stiff when Sam bent to help him out in the motel parking lot. He accepted Sam’s arm around his shoulders, but he was practically breathing discomfort. Sam tried not to take it personally - Dean was fiercely independent, and while he could get clingy when he was sick, this was different. And scary.

Normally when either of them got sick enough to be unable to hunt, they took a break, holed up in a motel somewhere and waited it out.

This time they couldn’t take a break. This time Sam had to get the Horseman, because even if he hadn’t hurt Dean intentionally the fact remained that he’d hurt Dean, and there was only one way this could end. One way to save his brother.

But that meant Sam had to be out, hunting, without Dean watching his back. He’d been lucky with Jed and he knew it. If he’d been accompanied by any of his friends, or if he’d been sober enough to make a kill shot the first time instead of grazing Sam’s arm, Sam would have been dead or dying and Dean would have been helpless.

They might not be that lucky another time.

Jed had been prowling around drunk, searching for his friend. Sam had the feeling that Jed did care about the guy, and he would have felt sorry for him if he hadn’t shot Sam and then proceeded to try to beat him up.

Sam pushed the thoughts aside as he unlocked the door. Dean could shower on his own, but for the rest…

Sam traced SHAVE? into Dean’s palm.

“No,” Dean said, in a voice that was just a little louder than normal. “Chicks dig stubble.”

Sam laughed, guided Dean into the shower stall and handed him the soap. He left Dean fresh clothes on the counter. Then he plugged in his laptop and settled down with Google Maps.
Sam was busy working out where Cody Baker’s route could have intersected Abe Goldberg’s when there was a knock at the door.

He sighed. He hadn’t ordered any food, not that anybody would deliver to a motel out on the highway, so there were pretty much just two people it could be: Jed and maybe-Ichabod. Neither prospect filled Sam with excitement.

The knock came again, louder, and Sam got reluctantly to his feet.

It was neither Jed nor the man who called himself Ichabod. It was a woman. She was fifty or thereabouts, salt-and-pepper hair and big brown eyes. She was pretty, even now; when she’d been younger she’d probably stopped men in their tracks with a look.

“Sam Winchester?”

Sam’s brows drew together. “Who are you?”

“My name is Leah. Can I come in?”

Sam stepped back to let her enter. She made her way across the room to the table where he’d been working. Sam shut the door and followed her, banging on the bathroom door on the way and yelling, “We have company.” He wasn’t sure why he did it; Dean couldn’t hear. But the habit was ingrained.

He pulled out the chair opposite Leah and sat. “What can we do for you?”

“I was told you could help me. I want to know the truth about what happened to my brother.” At Sam’s questioning look, she went on, “Abraham Goldberg.”

Sam nodded, recognizing the name. “He was caught in fog on his way home and subsequently lost his sight, vision and hearing. Then he was found dead in his bathtub -”

“And they insisted it was suicide. Deliberate overdose. Everyone. Even his wife and kids. The police wouldn’t investigate, and the court called it an accidental overdose to spare our feelings, but everyone thought it was suicide.”

“You don’t.”

“I know my brother. Abe would never have killed himself.”

“I understand how you feel, but it must have been difficult for him… Maybe…”

“Abe would never have killed himself,” Leah repeated.

“What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know. They said… I mean… Something must have happened to him, right? That night out in the fog? Maybe he got some virus, or got injected with some drug without his knowing. It could have been a delayed reaction. First the blindness, and then the loss of hearing and… It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” Sam said diplomatically.

“Ike came to me this morning. He said you could help.”

“Ike?” Sam sighed. “Let me guess… Ichabod Crane?”

Leah blushed. “Yes, that’s what he called himself. I always thought he was a bit of a… you know… not all there? He’s been hanging around for years.”

“Yeah?” Sam tried not to sound too eager. “How long’s he been around?”

“Years. I first saw him when Abe had his… accident. He insisted… Oh, I know it sounds crazy, but he insisted there was some stupid ghost story behind it all.”

“The Headless Horseman?”

“Yeah. We didn’t pay him a lot of attention, you know? I see him now and then, though, and when he came to me this morning -”

“Sam?”

Sam looked up. Dean was standing in the bathroom doorway, hair dripping onto his shoulders. He was dressed, but he looked uncomfortable about something.
Dean knew, instinctively, that someone else was in the room. Someone who wasn’t Sammy. He didn’t know who, didn’t know if they were a threat or he was supposed to start throwing punches -

Big, familiar hands, Sam’s hands, were on his arms, drawing him forward, and Sam seemed calm, so whoever this was, there was no danger.

Sam paused, and Dean knew he was supposed to do something, but -

Sam nudged his arm.

Oh.

Dean held out his hand. It was grasped by a dry, warm one that was much smaller and softer. A woman, and a woman who wasn’t used to rough work or handling weapons. Definitely not a threat. Unless of course she was a succubus or a demon - no, Sam wouldn’t be asking him to shake hands with a demon.

The hand was withdrawn. Dean let Sam push him into a chair. Then the hand on Dean’s back was withdrawn. Dean felt a stab of alarm, but a moment later the hand was back, on Dean’s knee this time, and Dean felt calm. Reassured.

It took him a moment to figure out why. Judging by the handshake and where Sam was now, Dean was between Sam and the woman. Of course, if Sam was allowing that, she probably wasn’t any kind of threat, and Sam’s reflexes were fast enough that if she did turn out to be something ugly with too many teeth, he’d have a silver bullet in her long before she could lay a hand on Dean.

All the same, it was reassuring to know that he was between Sam and the potential danger. However much of a non-danger it was.
Leah’s story didn’t add much to what Sam already knew. But she could tell him one thing that hadn’t been in the police reports: her brother hadn’t been on his way home from work when he’d been caught in the fog.

He’d been spending the day with a woman twenty years younger than him.

He hadn’t said so at the time; his wife and children had had no idea. Leah had known, and had tried to talk him out of it, but he’d been insistent. And once he’d died, she hadn’t thought there was any point raking up the past.

She was willing to tell Sam, though, when she realized that Dean had been hit by the same thing that had killed Abe. Sam nodded his gratitude and took notes, and when Leah had finished her story he thanked her and walked her out.

He came back and looked at Dean, and his heart just about broke.

Dean had been fine - better than fine - the entire time Sam had been talking to Leah, but the few minutes it had taken Sam to walk their guest to her car and say goodbye had clearly been too much for him. His hands were clenched on the table, white-knuckled, and his jaw was set in the way that meant he was internally freaking out.

He’d had no way of knowing where Sam had gone or whether he was coming back. It had only been a few minutes, but to Dean, completely alone, unable to see or hear…

Sam was in front of Dean before he’d had time to finish the thought, kneeling by the chair. He gently unclenched his brother’s fists and let him clutch Sam’s shirt instead. Dean gave him a hard shake, one that pulled at his stitches; but Sam, reading the worry and fear and don’t do that to me again in the gesture, only laid an apologetic hand on Dean’s knee.

“Idiot,” Dean snapped, but he shifted his hand up into Sam’s hair.
Sam didn’t even try to preserve manliness, his or Dean’s. With Dean as freaked as he was, he needed reassurance, and Sam wasn’t about to deny him just because Dean would probably want to be all macho and moronic about it later.

He hustled Dean to the couch, and sat next to him while he mapped Abe Goldberg’s route from his girlfriend’s house to his home.

Dean grumbled and muttered and shoved for a minute, but then he accidentally elbowed Sam in the ribs. It didn’t hurt - Dean had miraculously managed to miss the sore spots - but Dean looked stricken, and Sam wanted to reassure him but there wasn’t a lot he could do other than let Dean rub his arm in apology. That seemed to take the argument out of Dean; he stretched out on the couch with his head resting, almost timidly, in the crook of Sam’s elbow.

Sam got comfortable and got to work.

He’d tried this before, tracing all their routes to see if he could find a common point, something that might have disturbed the Horseman, but he’d been missing a couple of facts then. For one thing, he hadn’t known they were searching for two separate locations - the body and the head. Now that he knew -

Cody Baker had been nowhere near where the body was buried. That meant he had probably disturbed the head and woken the ghost, who had -

Sam paused. He’d assumed the Horseman would lead him to his head, and maybe he’d been partly right. Maybe the Horseman was riding back and forth between the head and the body, drawn to both places and unable to be at rest.

He could wait and follow the ghost again, but he couldn’t take the chance of it not appearing.

But he had the routes. He had Google Maps. He had a brother half-dozing against him, a brother who desperately needed Sam to fix this before he became another name on the list for another hunter to look up in twenty years.

Sam could do this.

It took most of the morning, but eventually Sam narrowed it down to a couple of possible locations. One was under a new housing project, and one was a stretch of empty land, one of the few still-wooded areas in the state, according to the map.

Sam decided to try that one first. If that lead didn’t pan out he’d try to figure out how he was going to dig through twelve feet of concrete.
He knew, as soon as he shook Dean and Dean looked up at him with a drowsily befuddled expression, that he couldn’t take his brother with him. He couldn’t expose him to that kind of danger. What if something went wrong, and Sam got killed or otherwise incapacitated? Dean needed to stay somewhere around civilization, somewhere with people who could help him if it came to the worst.

He scribbled his name and phone number on a sheet of paper and tucked it in Dean’s pocket. Dean was silent, trusting, and Sam felt like one of those dads who went out for a gallon of milk and never came home, but…

But he wasn’t abandoning Dean. He was keeping him safe.

He took Dean’s hand, spreading it open and inscribing GHOST in his palm with a fingertip.

“Ganking it?” Dean demanded.

YES

“Awesome. Let’s go.”

Postponing the argument, Sam helped Dean up and out to the Impala. They might as well get lunch. No point ghost-hunting on an empty stomach.

But he should have known his brother wouldn’t fall for it, because they’d barely taken their seats in the small, crowded diner than Dean said, “Go on, Sam.”

Sam reached across the table.

WHAT?

“I’m not stupid. I know you’ve ordered me some ridiculous burger and you’re going to go off on your own to gank the ghost. I can’t help and… I’d probably be in the way.”

Dean’s voice dropped towards the end, like he was sad, or ashamed, and Sam couldn’t bear to hear it. Dean shouldn’t sound like that. Dean wasn’t supposed to sound like that, like he thought he was a liability. Dean had to stay here for his own safety, because Sam couldn’t look out for him and kill the ghost, and Dean needed to stay in a crowded place -

It was a moment before he realized he was kneeling in front of Dean, both hands in his brother’s, conveying everything he felt in the only way he could. People were staring, but Sam really didn’t care, because he needed Dean to understand him.

“Such a girl,” Dean murmured after a moment.

Then a gentle hand ran over Sam’s head, and Sam knew they were OK.

“I’ll be fine,” Dean told him. “Go. Get him.” A light squeeze to the back of Sam’s neck. “Be careful.”
The white fog descended while Sam was digging, and he dived out of the way just in time to keep the Hessian from running through him.

“You want to be more careful?” he grunted, getting to his feet. “Maybe not attack the guy who’s trying to put you back together?”

The Horseman stood over the hole, bending forward over it.

At any rate it looked like Sam had picked the right place.

“You’re not going to attack me, right?” Sam asked, picking up his shovel again. “After all, this was what you wanted.”

The ghost just stood there, not reacting even when Sam started to dig.

Right. Maybe, just maybe, for once he wouldn’t have a problem with the ghost.

He spent about half an hour on it before the edge of the shovel struck something harder than the loose-packed soil. Sam dropped the tool and got to his knees, carefully brushing away the dirt.

There was a skull, almost brown now with age and time spent underground.

Sam let out a breath. “Is this it?”

There was no response. He had no idea why he’d expected one. He dug the skull out, wrapped it in his jacket, and got to his feet.

“OK,” he said, smiling at the ghost. “Let’s do this.” He paused. “You’ll have to get rid of the fog, though.”

He didn’t know if the Horseman understood, or for that matter even heard him, but after a moment the fog dissipated. Sam ran to the Impala. The place where the body was buried was no more than fifteen minutes away if he sped, maybe ten minutes if he drove like Dean in a hurry.

Sam made it in under eight minutes.

It was easy to get to the Horseman’s grave, the dirt loose and light from where he’d dug it up yesterday and just shovelled it over lightly afterwards. The mist came down, but it didn’t matter - Sam knew what he was doing.

He stopped when he felt the coffin under his shovel, crouching to prise up the lid - the few planks of rotting wood came easily this time - and then he scrambled out of the hole. He’d left the skull, still wrapped in his jacket, next to it for easy access. A little fumbling helped him find it, and then he dropped it in the coffin.

The mist thickened, almost pressing into Sam. His clothes felt damp.

And the Horseman, a tall shadow in the fog, was whole.

Sam couldn’t help staring. He couldn’t make out details, but the Hessian definitely had a head. On it he was wearing a hat perched at what had probably been the fashionable angle, and he was sitting straight and proud on his horse.

“Ready to move on now?” Sam asked, pulling a matchbox from his pocket.

With all the dampness in the air, it took a couple of tries to get a match lit. Eventually he managed it, but before he could drop it in the grave, something struck him a sharp blow on the back of the head.

Sam’s world went dark for a moment before he managed to catch himself and turn.

Whoever had attacked him was hidden by the fog. Sam couldn’t see, not even a silhouette in the thick, swirling whiteness -

There was the bite of a knife in his side. He turned, this time glimpsing a shadowy someone before a fist found his jaw.

He stumbled back and dropped the match. It fizzled out on the ground.

Crap.

Before he could light another, his feet were kicked out from under him. He scrambled around, trying desperately to see his attacker, but he couldn’t see anything except the Horseman still standing at the other side of the grave, hand raised as though he wanted to act but wasn’t sure how.

Or maybe he wasn’t sure if he wanted to help Sam or…

A heavy boot came down on Sam’s wrist. He yelped, and the boot was removed, only to slam hard into his gut.

Oh God.

Sam was being attacked by someone, or something, that he couldn’t even see. He couldn’t help the Horseman find peace. He couldn’t help Dean -

He was going to help Dean.

Whoever it was kicked him again, but it didn’t matter. Sam wasn’t even trying to defend himself anymore. He just had to end this -

His fingers found the matches. Thank God.

He felt the knife again, in his shoulder this time, just as he managed to get a match lit. He tossed it into the grave, hoping with all he had that it would catch, that the fog hadn’t made everything too damp to burn.

It did.

Sam pushed himself up to his knees, staring across the flickering flames through the now thinning fog at the Horseman.

The ghost bowed his head, hand going up to the brim of his hat in a casual salute.

Sam nodded.

Then there was another blow to the back of his head, followed immediately by a hand closing around his throat.

Sam’s last thought before the world went dark was that he hoped Dean would be OK.

Part VI