Fic: Black Coffee in Bed
Title: Black Coffee in Bed
Creator: crowroad3
Recipient: verucasalt
Rating : PG-13
Word Count : 2900
Warnings : references to suicidal ideation & depression, spoilers 13 x 11, S13
Author’s Notes: Your prompts all sort of rolled into this, verucasalt-I hope you enjoy! Many, many thanks to M.
Summary : Breakdown in Nebraska, and the mornings after.
Despair is a cup best drunk, like tar-black diesel-fume at a truck stop in the middle of corn, and corn, and highway; fresh meat and old massacre making the dirt so fertile, so rich, richer than it’s ever been before.
*
Sunrise, or the idea of it, gets him between the eyes, makes him roll and groan at the needling; another day of it, Winchester, no hope.
Sam! Dean hollers, cheerful, things frying, eggs and meats and griddles and even milk, sometimes, for those blender things Sam likes. They've got a fancy one now and Sam doesn't care anymore, to let its blades eat carrots before the morning run, or beets and green powder, for after.
Sam? Quieter now; the door cracks. The sheets are hot, then cool, dawn to dusk in a breath.
Sam doesn't answer and Dean hushes. Another hour and he might look closer, ask Sam if he's sick, or cursed, or maybe both, or call him princess or sunshine or some little tweak-you meant to spring him. Up and at 'em, Sammy.
Over and out.
*
Sam's sick. That's it. Or no-it's existential: you'll die you'll die you'll die again-and you'll kill everyone you care for or leave 'em wishing you had.
Sam showers and dry heaves awhile and goes unshaven to the kitchen.
What's eating you, Dean says.
Or maybe he says: I know-I've been there brother, you know I have. Almost offed myself, not too long ago. We've both been-
But that's not it.
Sam can't see it anymore. The one flicker that kept him in the cage, held him after, kept him true, came on even when his anger quailed, failed him, took his tongue. When he was all duct tape, no soul.
Dean puts his cold breakfast on a plate, tells him to come on, man, come on.
*
There’s a case in Nebraska with Donna, truckers and fangs and American Gothic dark-web ingenuity.
It's a bad one, eh, Donna says when she sees Sam. She knows. Sunny Donna.
They find her missing niece and he watches her break, watches her shed (a man, a link to civilian life, tears) and can't even summon a word of comfort.
Monsters that can't cut it, the monster said, when he put Sam up for sale, when Sam flickered onscreen for suburb and flyover, for all those mouths hot for the heart of another monster that can’t cut it.
That-
Sam thinks-
is what I am.
*
I-80 parallel to the Platte is black and flat and Dean rambles in the key of John, or Sam thinks he does, big rigs and the FBI, callsigns and taillights, retroslang maps from Gunspoint to Bingo, suits and ties, radar they're no longer on, demons and virgins; an old, old story.
On the radio, fuzz and fade.
You holding up? Dean says.
A bloody trail, Sam says back, that's where it ends. He hits the window and dreams and dreams-Jody and Claire and the Baneses, dead brothers and dead sisters and dead daughters and dead mothers; a long trail of dead psychics from Maine to California. Missouri. Magda. Mom and Cas and death and the devil; Jack.
Billie'll have the honor of it, maybe, reaping them both. Taking them to the place they've earned, which is who knows where by now, which isn't even a road anymore and that-that's what makes him break.
*
Stop for a time, remember.
Sam’s still dreaming: Dean bandaging him up with something gruff and plain, the grass around them stirring and stirring. They drink bitter brews in the dark. There's no cure but there’s a faith healer, out there somewhere; a revival.
Stop for a time.
Snap out of it, Dean says suddenly, snap the fuck-
He’s talking to himself, not to Sam. He swerves around something in in the road, pulls over and sits there breathing and blinking, petting gently at the dash.
Baby’s not hurt, but she might have been.
You OK, Sam asks, rubs his eyes. His watch says two hours gone-south of Gothenburg, maybe; Willow Island.
Gotta stop for the night, Dean says, and Sam sees him then, his exhausted brother with the stormcells under his eyes, couple of cuts for good measure. Same one who came back to life, heart-healed, here on this road, or somewhere close to Ford City, all those miles and dimensions ago.
Yeah, Sam says, and he doesn’t trust himself to drive, but he does.
*
There’s one Travel Inn, not so far, gas and snacks, cigarette-scented sheets and overo paints in a painting on the wall. Blue-skied morning steers them to breakfast at a whistlestop with corn-color curtains swinging at the door. Sam starts, catches the hunter signs in the windows while Dean goes to check out Baby in daylight, sits down with the only person in there, owner herself, steaming cup and the nine of wands laid out in front of her on the table. Ah, shit.
Saw you coming, she says, Sam Winchester.
Sam thinks to go for one of his defenses, but he doesn’t, just looks at her with the cards and the cup and the thin scars that run ladderish up one arm and down the other. Loose light hair; late 50’s, maybe; clavicle vined with a faded tattoo.
If there’s a case here, some monster-landrace bred in the soyfields, or if god is here, or darkness, or nephilim, or souls tumbled from a spent heaven, well-that’s a vision best fit in a rearview, but that’s not what Sam goes for, with his fingers rolling salt-grains on the table, and the sun shining through.
Show me, Sam hears himself say, show me what I’m looking for-
She cuts and flips her tarot, looking at him, at the horizon, at the ceiling; back again.
The Lovers, she says, eh, overrated. She might just be laughing at him, but he doesn’t think so.
How about this, she says, sweeps the cards aside and spreads both hands out on the table:
A great victory. Wings.
So you’ve got more power than you let on, Sam says.
Well, she says, yes. And you-you’ve had your soul replaced, and your heart-
Sam flinches.
Too soon to talk about it, she says.
Probably, Sam says.
I saw that, she says, what just happened to you up in Oshkosh, and hoped you’d get out of it, you and your brother and your friend-wasn’t much I could do to help.
Sam leans on the table and wonders how much he should hand over.
The curtains move and Dean swings through the door:
Sam-what’re you doing?
Dean looks wary, but not yet angry.
Sam’s tablemate shrugs, gives the cook (who must be a ghost, Sam thinks, because where was he when Sam walked in) a little sign.
Yeah, she says, the monsters are here too, spread out across the county, drinking coffee in their underwear, driving to the Salt & Grain, cussing out their satellite dishes, waiting at the clinic; some of them might stop in here once in awhile. Local hunters get the ones that step out of line, or my brother and I do. Just sorry about the-
Sam’s heart stops the arrow her finger makes.
Did you just-how’d you know about all that? Dean says.
Psychic, she says, and plugged-in, as if it don’t matter which.
And, she says, I know a couple of friends of yours, hunters out of Sioux Falls.
Sam’s not even sure she said that aloud, but she must have, because Dean sits down next to him, shoulder-to-shoulder, like-
whaddya want to do here, Sammy; your call.
Clean up, Sam says, because it feels like the right thing to say, or because he heard her say it.
That’s right, their tablemate says, we do sort of a premonitive cleansing-every week or so. Gotta keep the roadside memorials down, keep as much blood out of the earth as we-well, it’s already bloody enough.
There’s something in it for that, too, she says, for what’s eating you-or at least it might take your mind off of-
She looks heavenward like there ain’t no words for the trouble they’ve got, and there aren’t.
We? Dean asks.
My brother helps, she says, but he’s on a retreat-consulting-this week, way up north at Pine Ridge, on the rez.
Consulting, Dean says, you mean-
One of the cards, facedown, shifts lightly on the table, insinuates itself onto another.
Solar power for one of the tribal youth centers, their host says, but that’s where our maternal grandmother came from.
Sam considers her strawberry blond-ness, the salt-blue eyes.
Yeah, I got the Swedish genes, she says, my brother got the-anyway, are you in? Tonight, out off the highway, couple of the county roads.
She’s gathered her cards into their deck now, and plates of toast and bacon appear; hot fresh cups with cream that they won’t touch.
Dean looks dubious, but (Sam knows) he’s not letting his nearly-auctioned brother run off with a psychic-witch-medicine-woman-hunter straight outta-
What’s your name anyway, Dean says.
Nebraska, she says, looks at him like of course she knows they’ve already got a psychic with a state’s name (or they did, and isn’t she sorry for their loss), Boone.
Eat up, she says, on the house.
*
They’re far from Omaha, far from home, out on the trail that once rode hard for Oregon.
What’s her brother’s name anyway-Dakota? Dean shudders, then brightens: Or Daniel?
Sam hushes him, but it’s not like she didn’t hear. They take her truck, beatup GMC in pine green, scraped-off sticker from someone else’s business, familiar clangs in the back. They drive out in the windy dark, farmhouse flickers on the horizon, because there are things out there they can put an end to-or stop from ending at all.
Not really messing with timelines, she said, more like seeds that won’t come up in spring, only-
Bad seeds, Dean says, and they leave it at that.
The cleansing spell runs a little prairie fire through their hands, puts their organs on high alert, like-late-night on the interstate and the wail of the eastbound manifest on the Union Pacific; sun sinking over the immigrant graveyard and sod-settlers gone wraith. Sam’s wrists start to burn and he’s-
it’s cold out here on the plain. Dean on his left, Nebraska on his right; grain elevator hulked up in the gusts.
How do you even know where you are?
Sam thinks about salvage, detours, dead kids headed to college in the East who aren’t dead anymore. Asleep-at-the-wheels woken in time. Overdose averted. Reckless speeds tamped to stops. Then: Monster dads reading the baseball report. Monster moms who keep their noses clean; all church social and strawberry pie. Serial killers turned from cellars along the railroad line. True-crime tabloids unwritten. People-or things- that will never break.
Dean says something to him, but he doesn’t hear it; feels the wind and the way the psi works it, directional; feels his brother take his shoulder when they climb in the truck, roll to the next mile marker in the dark.
*
Revival is a reaper on a leash.
Sam didn’t think to ask for numbers, how many or what percentage, how much can be washed clean here before its time, how much can be made new. But he should. He should.
There’s a spitting of something on the windshield, and the wipers go once, twice, three times before they fold.
I don’t really know, for sure, Nebraska says, but the country’s gone to hell and you gotta try, right?
Yeah, Sam says, guess so.
Post-post-Dust Bowl, she says, wry-laughs to herself; too many souls.
That store clerk that got killed over in Cozad back in the 90’s, she says, like she’s heard the cold cases rattling their chains in Sam’s attic, was a big mystery at the time, but it wasn’t a human being that did it-
She could trance out, Sam thinks, on old murder, massacres named for ash, grasshopper plagues; black dust and floods and rain-follow-plough. They could salt the whole state for the First Ghosts-and the devils that came after.
Dean makes a sound that means maybe they’ve ridden along far enough, and there Sam is,
with his brother breathing next to him, the herb-and-burn on their shirts and the weapons at their backs. Like old times. Like now.
Get you back to the motel, their driver says.
*
Morning tastes of ashtray; distant snow. When they go for breakfast the cook is not a ghost. He has a fryer burn and a Saltdogs ballcap.
There are few others today, three men and a woman with plates, the special with sausage; copies of the Tri-City and a couple of phones out; talk about the weather.
Hey, Nebraska says, new-morning new. She flips a hoodie up and over, doesn’t sit down at the table with them: no hangover, right?
Dean holds up his hands, waggles his fingers like, no marks on these.
No sign of her cards. Silver rings that weren’t on yesterday.
You’re feeling better, she says to Sam, you want eggs?
Dean’s tolerance for whatever witchery’s gone down is proportional to her bonafides, Sam suspects, the comments she drops about Jody, or maybe to the degree to which Sam slipped last night, from darkness to purpose for the span of a spell. Dean’s eyes are brighter and his hands are steady and he doesn’t say anything about whiskey.
Sam doesn’t want eggs, but he eats, lets Dean sop his own toast and watch him.
Show me-Sam said, and she didn’t show him, not really, but he caught a glimpse; that’s what he tells Dean, when Dean asks.
You’re looking for what you’ll leave behind, she might have said, though it’s obvious.
You gotta care about something, Sammy, Dean says, I mean-
He means something that isn’t going to get them dead, or forced apart, or dead again. He means: think locally, something like.
Stop here, and remember.
Nebraska gives Baby the right kind of look as they’re climbing in, says she’ll see them coming again, if they do (and they will); she tells them to take care, gives them her number and an old-school card through Sam’s window.
Of course that isn’t really her name.
*
The heart of the country is hollower than it should be: emptiness that isn’t nature, that isn’t prairie or god, shuttered towns and burnt lots and empty groceries; end times this side of the rift or the other. They’ve been through here too often, Sam thinks, days when paper maps tumbled from the glove compartment, days when traffic apps carry them to Kansas again. And homeward or wayward, you always miss something, or something misses you.
Highwayside, late dry plants, forb and field. Ghosts of harriers along the central flyway.
On the radio, gospel-rock monster mash. Dean has a moment and jacks it up.
That was weird, Dean says.
That was like, a footnote case, Dean says, I don’t even know what we just did.
But better than asshole vamps and broken hearts and you strapped down on a-Dean says.
Are you OK, Dean says, how’re you feelin’?
Sam looks at him, weary, rubs at rib-bruise. Like wildgrass growin’ up in there, Dean might say, if Dean said stuff like that; maybe he does.
OK, Sam says, getting there.
What’d she say to you anyway, Dean says, in the diner before I got there?
Dean’s always known a vision-aftermath when he sees one.
Sam leans on the window again, dreams.
He doesn't remember, hours later, his brother hauling him from shotgun to bed.
*
It must be close to noon.
You seein’ things again Sammy, Dean asks. Tries to honest-to-god spoon-feed him-after a couple of days in the bunker again, couple of days after a monster tried to put his heart on a block, after they rode out to cleanse highways and byways of the not-yet-dead-tomato without rice, cup of green stuff.
‘Cause you were dream-walkin’ pretty loud, Dean says, and we still have no goddamn idea what happened in Nebraska, not really-
No, Sam says, but I feel- he doesn’t dare say better, but he’s slept, and he’s up, and he’s up.
You-Dean says.
Means: It ain't for sale. Obvious as that is.
Come on, Dean says; lifts the cup and Sam twists up in the sheets, takes a sip.
Let’s go for a drive, Dean says.
*
Baby’s been battered and made again, darkwater shine. A few tiny scratches, birdfeet really, and Dean’ll know-but there, there, the marks they’ve left on her.
Have we ever really one-day-at-a-timed it? Dean says, when he puts them on the road.
Well, yeah-Sam says, but it isn’t really-
Like that, yeah I know, Dean says.
Time is different, this part of the map. Not like Dean doesn’t know. There’s a rift with their mother on the other side, an angel-child that needs saving, if that’s what they decide to do.
Dean says: it don’t always have to end bad, Sammy, not for you. Maybe not for us.
Sam cracks the window and swallows a little air, feels throat and lungs and maybe those rivers inside him running next to highways in the dark. Sun drops warm over distant Wichita.
A great victory.Wings.
Creator: crowroad3
Recipient: verucasalt
Rating : PG-13
Word Count : 2900
Warnings : references to suicidal ideation & depression, spoilers 13 x 11, S13
Author’s Notes: Your prompts all sort of rolled into this, verucasalt-I hope you enjoy! Many, many thanks to M.
Summary : Breakdown in Nebraska, and the mornings after.
Despair is a cup best drunk, like tar-black diesel-fume at a truck stop in the middle of corn, and corn, and highway; fresh meat and old massacre making the dirt so fertile, so rich, richer than it’s ever been before.
*
Sunrise, or the idea of it, gets him between the eyes, makes him roll and groan at the needling; another day of it, Winchester, no hope.
Sam! Dean hollers, cheerful, things frying, eggs and meats and griddles and even milk, sometimes, for those blender things Sam likes. They've got a fancy one now and Sam doesn't care anymore, to let its blades eat carrots before the morning run, or beets and green powder, for after.
Sam? Quieter now; the door cracks. The sheets are hot, then cool, dawn to dusk in a breath.
Sam doesn't answer and Dean hushes. Another hour and he might look closer, ask Sam if he's sick, or cursed, or maybe both, or call him princess or sunshine or some little tweak-you meant to spring him. Up and at 'em, Sammy.
Over and out.
*
Sam's sick. That's it. Or no-it's existential: you'll die you'll die you'll die again-and you'll kill everyone you care for or leave 'em wishing you had.
Sam showers and dry heaves awhile and goes unshaven to the kitchen.
What's eating you, Dean says.
Or maybe he says: I know-I've been there brother, you know I have. Almost offed myself, not too long ago. We've both been-
But that's not it.
Sam can't see it anymore. The one flicker that kept him in the cage, held him after, kept him true, came on even when his anger quailed, failed him, took his tongue. When he was all duct tape, no soul.
Dean puts his cold breakfast on a plate, tells him to come on, man, come on.
*
There’s a case in Nebraska with Donna, truckers and fangs and American Gothic dark-web ingenuity.
It's a bad one, eh, Donna says when she sees Sam. She knows. Sunny Donna.
They find her missing niece and he watches her break, watches her shed (a man, a link to civilian life, tears) and can't even summon a word of comfort.
Monsters that can't cut it, the monster said, when he put Sam up for sale, when Sam flickered onscreen for suburb and flyover, for all those mouths hot for the heart of another monster that can’t cut it.
That-
Sam thinks-
is what I am.
*
I-80 parallel to the Platte is black and flat and Dean rambles in the key of John, or Sam thinks he does, big rigs and the FBI, callsigns and taillights, retroslang maps from Gunspoint to Bingo, suits and ties, radar they're no longer on, demons and virgins; an old, old story.
On the radio, fuzz and fade.
You holding up? Dean says.
A bloody trail, Sam says back, that's where it ends. He hits the window and dreams and dreams-Jody and Claire and the Baneses, dead brothers and dead sisters and dead daughters and dead mothers; a long trail of dead psychics from Maine to California. Missouri. Magda. Mom and Cas and death and the devil; Jack.
Billie'll have the honor of it, maybe, reaping them both. Taking them to the place they've earned, which is who knows where by now, which isn't even a road anymore and that-that's what makes him break.
*
Stop for a time, remember.
Sam’s still dreaming: Dean bandaging him up with something gruff and plain, the grass around them stirring and stirring. They drink bitter brews in the dark. There's no cure but there’s a faith healer, out there somewhere; a revival.
Stop for a time.
Snap out of it, Dean says suddenly, snap the fuck-
He’s talking to himself, not to Sam. He swerves around something in in the road, pulls over and sits there breathing and blinking, petting gently at the dash.
Baby’s not hurt, but she might have been.
You OK, Sam asks, rubs his eyes. His watch says two hours gone-south of Gothenburg, maybe; Willow Island.
Gotta stop for the night, Dean says, and Sam sees him then, his exhausted brother with the stormcells under his eyes, couple of cuts for good measure. Same one who came back to life, heart-healed, here on this road, or somewhere close to Ford City, all those miles and dimensions ago.
Yeah, Sam says, and he doesn’t trust himself to drive, but he does.
*
There’s one Travel Inn, not so far, gas and snacks, cigarette-scented sheets and overo paints in a painting on the wall. Blue-skied morning steers them to breakfast at a whistlestop with corn-color curtains swinging at the door. Sam starts, catches the hunter signs in the windows while Dean goes to check out Baby in daylight, sits down with the only person in there, owner herself, steaming cup and the nine of wands laid out in front of her on the table. Ah, shit.
Saw you coming, she says, Sam Winchester.
Sam thinks to go for one of his defenses, but he doesn’t, just looks at her with the cards and the cup and the thin scars that run ladderish up one arm and down the other. Loose light hair; late 50’s, maybe; clavicle vined with a faded tattoo.
If there’s a case here, some monster-landrace bred in the soyfields, or if god is here, or darkness, or nephilim, or souls tumbled from a spent heaven, well-that’s a vision best fit in a rearview, but that’s not what Sam goes for, with his fingers rolling salt-grains on the table, and the sun shining through.
Show me, Sam hears himself say, show me what I’m looking for-
She cuts and flips her tarot, looking at him, at the horizon, at the ceiling; back again.
The Lovers, she says, eh, overrated. She might just be laughing at him, but he doesn’t think so.
How about this, she says, sweeps the cards aside and spreads both hands out on the table:
A great victory. Wings.
So you’ve got more power than you let on, Sam says.
Well, she says, yes. And you-you’ve had your soul replaced, and your heart-
Sam flinches.
Too soon to talk about it, she says.
Probably, Sam says.
I saw that, she says, what just happened to you up in Oshkosh, and hoped you’d get out of it, you and your brother and your friend-wasn’t much I could do to help.
Sam leans on the table and wonders how much he should hand over.
The curtains move and Dean swings through the door:
Sam-what’re you doing?
Dean looks wary, but not yet angry.
Sam’s tablemate shrugs, gives the cook (who must be a ghost, Sam thinks, because where was he when Sam walked in) a little sign.
Yeah, she says, the monsters are here too, spread out across the county, drinking coffee in their underwear, driving to the Salt & Grain, cussing out their satellite dishes, waiting at the clinic; some of them might stop in here once in awhile. Local hunters get the ones that step out of line, or my brother and I do. Just sorry about the-
Sam’s heart stops the arrow her finger makes.
Did you just-how’d you know about all that? Dean says.
Psychic, she says, and plugged-in, as if it don’t matter which.
And, she says, I know a couple of friends of yours, hunters out of Sioux Falls.
Sam’s not even sure she said that aloud, but she must have, because Dean sits down next to him, shoulder-to-shoulder, like-
whaddya want to do here, Sammy; your call.
Clean up, Sam says, because it feels like the right thing to say, or because he heard her say it.
That’s right, their tablemate says, we do sort of a premonitive cleansing-every week or so. Gotta keep the roadside memorials down, keep as much blood out of the earth as we-well, it’s already bloody enough.
There’s something in it for that, too, she says, for what’s eating you-or at least it might take your mind off of-
She looks heavenward like there ain’t no words for the trouble they’ve got, and there aren’t.
We? Dean asks.
My brother helps, she says, but he’s on a retreat-consulting-this week, way up north at Pine Ridge, on the rez.
Consulting, Dean says, you mean-
One of the cards, facedown, shifts lightly on the table, insinuates itself onto another.
Solar power for one of the tribal youth centers, their host says, but that’s where our maternal grandmother came from.
Sam considers her strawberry blond-ness, the salt-blue eyes.
Yeah, I got the Swedish genes, she says, my brother got the-anyway, are you in? Tonight, out off the highway, couple of the county roads.
She’s gathered her cards into their deck now, and plates of toast and bacon appear; hot fresh cups with cream that they won’t touch.
Dean looks dubious, but (Sam knows) he’s not letting his nearly-auctioned brother run off with a psychic-witch-medicine-woman-hunter straight outta-
What’s your name anyway, Dean says.
Nebraska, she says, looks at him like of course she knows they’ve already got a psychic with a state’s name (or they did, and isn’t she sorry for their loss), Boone.
Eat up, she says, on the house.
*
They’re far from Omaha, far from home, out on the trail that once rode hard for Oregon.
What’s her brother’s name anyway-Dakota? Dean shudders, then brightens: Or Daniel?
Sam hushes him, but it’s not like she didn’t hear. They take her truck, beatup GMC in pine green, scraped-off sticker from someone else’s business, familiar clangs in the back. They drive out in the windy dark, farmhouse flickers on the horizon, because there are things out there they can put an end to-or stop from ending at all.
Not really messing with timelines, she said, more like seeds that won’t come up in spring, only-
Bad seeds, Dean says, and they leave it at that.
The cleansing spell runs a little prairie fire through their hands, puts their organs on high alert, like-late-night on the interstate and the wail of the eastbound manifest on the Union Pacific; sun sinking over the immigrant graveyard and sod-settlers gone wraith. Sam’s wrists start to burn and he’s-
it’s cold out here on the plain. Dean on his left, Nebraska on his right; grain elevator hulked up in the gusts.
How do you even know where you are?
Sam thinks about salvage, detours, dead kids headed to college in the East who aren’t dead anymore. Asleep-at-the-wheels woken in time. Overdose averted. Reckless speeds tamped to stops. Then: Monster dads reading the baseball report. Monster moms who keep their noses clean; all church social and strawberry pie. Serial killers turned from cellars along the railroad line. True-crime tabloids unwritten. People-or things- that will never break.
Dean says something to him, but he doesn’t hear it; feels the wind and the way the psi works it, directional; feels his brother take his shoulder when they climb in the truck, roll to the next mile marker in the dark.
*
Revival is a reaper on a leash.
Sam didn’t think to ask for numbers, how many or what percentage, how much can be washed clean here before its time, how much can be made new. But he should. He should.
There’s a spitting of something on the windshield, and the wipers go once, twice, three times before they fold.
I don’t really know, for sure, Nebraska says, but the country’s gone to hell and you gotta try, right?
Yeah, Sam says, guess so.
Post-post-Dust Bowl, she says, wry-laughs to herself; too many souls.
That store clerk that got killed over in Cozad back in the 90’s, she says, like she’s heard the cold cases rattling their chains in Sam’s attic, was a big mystery at the time, but it wasn’t a human being that did it-
She could trance out, Sam thinks, on old murder, massacres named for ash, grasshopper plagues; black dust and floods and rain-follow-plough. They could salt the whole state for the First Ghosts-and the devils that came after.
Dean makes a sound that means maybe they’ve ridden along far enough, and there Sam is,
with his brother breathing next to him, the herb-and-burn on their shirts and the weapons at their backs. Like old times. Like now.
Get you back to the motel, their driver says.
*
Morning tastes of ashtray; distant snow. When they go for breakfast the cook is not a ghost. He has a fryer burn and a Saltdogs ballcap.
There are few others today, three men and a woman with plates, the special with sausage; copies of the Tri-City and a couple of phones out; talk about the weather.
Hey, Nebraska says, new-morning new. She flips a hoodie up and over, doesn’t sit down at the table with them: no hangover, right?
Dean holds up his hands, waggles his fingers like, no marks on these.
No sign of her cards. Silver rings that weren’t on yesterday.
You’re feeling better, she says to Sam, you want eggs?
Dean’s tolerance for whatever witchery’s gone down is proportional to her bonafides, Sam suspects, the comments she drops about Jody, or maybe to the degree to which Sam slipped last night, from darkness to purpose for the span of a spell. Dean’s eyes are brighter and his hands are steady and he doesn’t say anything about whiskey.
Sam doesn’t want eggs, but he eats, lets Dean sop his own toast and watch him.
Show me-Sam said, and she didn’t show him, not really, but he caught a glimpse; that’s what he tells Dean, when Dean asks.
You’re looking for what you’ll leave behind, she might have said, though it’s obvious.
You gotta care about something, Sammy, Dean says, I mean-
He means something that isn’t going to get them dead, or forced apart, or dead again. He means: think locally, something like.
Stop here, and remember.
Nebraska gives Baby the right kind of look as they’re climbing in, says she’ll see them coming again, if they do (and they will); she tells them to take care, gives them her number and an old-school card through Sam’s window.
Of course that isn’t really her name.
*
The heart of the country is hollower than it should be: emptiness that isn’t nature, that isn’t prairie or god, shuttered towns and burnt lots and empty groceries; end times this side of the rift or the other. They’ve been through here too often, Sam thinks, days when paper maps tumbled from the glove compartment, days when traffic apps carry them to Kansas again. And homeward or wayward, you always miss something, or something misses you.
Highwayside, late dry plants, forb and field. Ghosts of harriers along the central flyway.
On the radio, gospel-rock monster mash. Dean has a moment and jacks it up.
That was weird, Dean says.
That was like, a footnote case, Dean says, I don’t even know what we just did.
But better than asshole vamps and broken hearts and you strapped down on a-Dean says.
Are you OK, Dean says, how’re you feelin’?
Sam looks at him, weary, rubs at rib-bruise. Like wildgrass growin’ up in there, Dean might say, if Dean said stuff like that; maybe he does.
OK, Sam says, getting there.
What’d she say to you anyway, Dean says, in the diner before I got there?
Dean’s always known a vision-aftermath when he sees one.
Sam leans on the window again, dreams.
He doesn't remember, hours later, his brother hauling him from shotgun to bed.
*
It must be close to noon.
You seein’ things again Sammy, Dean asks. Tries to honest-to-god spoon-feed him-after a couple of days in the bunker again, couple of days after a monster tried to put his heart on a block, after they rode out to cleanse highways and byways of the not-yet-dead-tomato without rice, cup of green stuff.
‘Cause you were dream-walkin’ pretty loud, Dean says, and we still have no goddamn idea what happened in Nebraska, not really-
No, Sam says, but I feel- he doesn’t dare say better, but he’s slept, and he’s up, and he’s up.
You-Dean says.
Means: It ain't for sale. Obvious as that is.
Come on, Dean says; lifts the cup and Sam twists up in the sheets, takes a sip.
Let’s go for a drive, Dean says.
*
Baby’s been battered and made again, darkwater shine. A few tiny scratches, birdfeet really, and Dean’ll know-but there, there, the marks they’ve left on her.
Have we ever really one-day-at-a-timed it? Dean says, when he puts them on the road.
Well, yeah-Sam says, but it isn’t really-
Like that, yeah I know, Dean says.
Time is different, this part of the map. Not like Dean doesn’t know. There’s a rift with their mother on the other side, an angel-child that needs saving, if that’s what they decide to do.
Dean says: it don’t always have to end bad, Sammy, not for you. Maybe not for us.
Sam cracks the window and swallows a little air, feels throat and lungs and maybe those rivers inside him running next to highways in the dark. Sun drops warm over distant Wichita.
A great victory.Wings.