FIC: Ride The Skies 9/?
-PART NINE-
Dean's never been very good with words, so it's no surprise to Sam when his brother gives up on trying to coax Ben towards him, and opts for physical communication instead, gently tugging Ben away from ground zero and its fluffy wildlife casualty.
Ben's face has gone startlingly blank, and he doesn't offer any resistance when Dean carefully leads him over to the base of another tree and hauls him into his lap, roughened hand obscuring the side of the kid's face, pressing his cheek into his chest as if to lull the last of Ben's shakes with the sound of his own heart. He rubs circles in the small of the boy's back, practiced neutrality on his face that wavers way more than usual, and he waits.
Dean's always been more show than tell, which is sometimes off-putting, sometimes ridiculously persuasive, depending on its context. One might be inclined to think this flaw would put quite the damper on his social skills, but it doesn't. Sam can talk it out with the best of them if it's really needed but, for all his bemoaning of chick-flick moments, Dean gets yanked around by his heartstrings more than anyone Sam's ever seen. His big brother is just better at exuding safety and reassurance, at connecting with people in his own unorthodox way.
Sam loves and loathes it at random intervals, but now? He just really hopes this absurd big-brother talent finds its crest and shines through to every single dark place Ben and Alec have.
Sam thought he was starting to have the barest inkling, thought he'd imagined and obsessively graphed all the potential breakdowns that could result from their upbringing in his initial stages of panic. This was so not on his list, and now that fluctuating panic has morphed into this horribly numbing calm. He feels like he's been pinned in a wreck, dazed and still waiting for the shock to wear off so he can feel exactly where he's bleeding out.
He holds onto Alec, maybe a little too tightly, as he leans against his own tree on the opposite side of the clearing and watches Dean hold onto Ben. Alec doesn't say anything about it, simply mirrors the clutching and watching from Sam's lap.
They sit under the mutually agreeable veil of silence, minutes stretched over country miles, until a nearby beetle click almost startles Sam right out his skin. He wasn't even aware of the eerie hush that had fallen until it was broken, and it's like a domino effect, everything breaking-crickets regain the courage to chirp, foliage picks up its whisper as the nocturnal resume their business, his anesthetized shell begins to crack, Dean's stoicism falters, and Ben.
Ben splits wide open.
He's shaking like he's cold now, and not like he's riding the Earth while it tries to buck him off, but that's not better. The reanimated night seems to jolt Ben back into himself, and he heaves in a strangled breath, this horrible, shattered sound that precedes the most heartbreaking series of sobs Sam's ever heard.
The humidity-stifled breeze unapologetically carries Ben's garbled pleas across to them, words choking incoherently into Dean's chest, but it's easy enough to pick up on the terror, pain, terror, self-loathing, terror, and god, this is the worst fucking thing. Sam can't take it.
Alec grips Sam's arms harder and Sam reciprocates, like they can keep each other from bolting across the grass to smother Ben into happiness again with hugs and rainbows. Dean isn't trying to look anything but completely lost and anguished now, starts in again with the soothing but commanding tone and tries to decipher what Ben is saying.
It takes a second for Sam to wonder just why in the hell he needs to stay put, and when he can't find an answer, he shoots up and practically teleports to Dean's side with Alec still wrapped around him. Alec immediately shimmies down and throws himself at his brother, barreling into Dean's lap and ducking under the circle of his arms to mold himself around Ben. Sam's too big to fit in Dean's lap so he plunges to his knees and presses a hand to Ben's back. Ben keeps blubbering, fingers twisting in Dean's shirt, and Sam still can't make out what he's saying.
Alec, however, seems to be fluent in sobbing-brother code.
“No, Ben, no. You're not, you're not, you're not,” he mutters against Ben's neck. “You don't hafta go away. No one's sending you back.” Alec's tortured features harden and he snaps a glare to Sam, eyes as sharp as his tone when he says, “Tell him,” and Sam can see the soldier surfacing. Not just one cog in the well-oiled machine, either, but one of the primary pieces, the man breaking formation to assume the role of commanding officer without waiting to be asked or appointed, simply doing what's needed.
As skewed as this temporary hierarchy is, this is one time Sam really doesn't mind taking an order.
“No, fuck no, you're not goin' anywhere, Ben,” Sam assures, staring at Dean, whose face has gone all storm of the century.
“No way in hell. I gotcha now, kiddo. Not lettin' go.” Dean tries his damnedest to melt Ben into him to emphasize this. “You leave now and Sammy here's gonna have an epic meltdown.”
Sam chuffs shakily, but nods and swallows down the lump in his throat. He won't deny the blaring truth, will let Dean put all the blame on him if it makes any one of them feel better.
Sam thinks fuck it, and intrudes on the tight-knit bundle of Deans, loops his long arms around all of them and pushes his head against Dean's shoulder so Ben can see he's there if he deigns to turn his face just a little.
Dean grunts at the extra weight against him and mutters something about being too old for this shit.
“Ben,” Sam tries, doesn't know where to go from there. He sighs, drags a hand up to cup Ben's nape.
Dean draws a breath, and Sam knows what's coming. He's so grateful he can barely breathe over the swell of it, because it's not entirely true that Dean's not good with words. Dean's not comfortable with sharing and caring, but when he reaches the point where he realizes words are inevitable-Sam's a talker and sometimes it's the only way to get through to him-he usually finds the perfect combination.
“When Sam was, like five or six, I think,” Dean says, low baritone rumbling through their bodies, “he used to have this Barbie-“
“I did not!” Sam pulls back just enough to angle his indignant scowl up at his brother, suddenly not so grateful, and Dean just smirks.
“Shh. Sam, don't interrupt story time.”
“Yeah, Sam.” Alec's wearing an identical smirk, and crap, that is just disturbing no matter how much he's adjusted to the Multiplicity twist in their already twisted lives. “Don't interrupt.”
But Alec is smirking, however tremulously, and Ben's sobs are slowly quieting. So Sam shuts up and lets Dean proceed with the embarrass-Sam-to-distract-from-our-woes tactic, because Sam's an awesome brother-uncle-whatever.
“It was the ugliest thing,” Dean goes on. “Had a fucked up arm and half its hair pulled out, but ya know, he found it in the trash. Anyway, kid got stupid attached to the thing. Used to dress it up in these little girl suits he cut outta newspaper. He'd pretend it was at work while he was in school, come home and ask about its day, took it every-fucking-where we went.” Dean shakes his head on a loud exhale. “I was deeply shamed, lemme tell ya. But one day he musta dropped it outside or somethin'. I found it layin' in the middle of the street. Slasher Victim Barbie turned into Roadkill Barbie real quick, and when I broke it to him, Sam cried for a week straight. I tried to buy him a new one, but he didn't want it, so I finally glued that fugly shit back together just to shut him up.”
Sam's scowling again, a little red-faced even if he should be mature enough not to get all humiliated at these childhood revelations anymore. “What's the point of this story, Dean?”
“The point, dear brother, is that you are a million times more attached to Ben, so that means he can't go away.” Dean drops his chin atop Ben's wild hair and gentles his voice a fraction. “I just ain't got that kinda glue. You don't wanna be responsible for breaking Sasquatch Barbie into a bunch of little cry-girly pieces, do you?”
There's a series of hitches in Ben's back, but it's hard to tell if they're more sobs, or something else. And then, muffled against cotton, Ben asks in a tiny voice, “Did you really have a Barbie?”
It's on the tip of Sam's tongue to deny it, to take it to his grave and keep what's left of his dignity, and damn the TV for telling them what a Barbie is anyway. But denying it will nullify Dean's stupid moral, which isn't actually stupid at all, and Sam doesn't know why he has to be all sentimental in the most degrading ways possible.
Sam makes a mental note to super-glue something of Dean's to something else later, and nods. “'Fraid so.”
Dean beams triumphantly while Ben and Alec share a snicker at Sam's expense.
“Shut up,” he says petulantly, but his heart soars for the surface of his pit because Ben can still smile. He's not irreparable, just fucked up like the rest of them.
Ben wiggles around, and Dean reluctantly loosens his hold. Before Sam knows it, he's got a lapful of damaged transgenic, little arms looped tightly around his neck. “I'm not a perfect soldier. M'supposed to be perfect,” Ben admits, voice small and high against Sam's shoulder, and then in an impossibly smaller voice, “You really won't send me back?”
Sam's arms constrict around the lightly trembling little furnace. “Not as long as I live and breathe,” he says fiercely. “Probably not even after I stop. You're ours, little man. Believe me when I say Winchesters do not know how to let go.”
“I don't know how to fix it, Sam,” Ben puffs out, desperately uncertain. “I tried. I don't know why it's not working.”
Sam swallows thickly again, glances at Dean, who's still slumped against the tree, Alec in his lap, nature strewn all over them in dead leaves and twigs. Dean looks pretty jagged, deep shadows around his mouth and eyes. Alec just looks nervous. Sam doesn't want to, but he knows he needs to get to the bottom of this part.
“Why the deer, Ben? What were you trying to do?”
Ben shakes his head. “Didn't work. Why won't she help me?”
Sam barely gets the “Who?” to the tip of his tongue when the woods suddenly animate again, a light whirlwind that picks up the debris from the forest floor and swirls them in a gentle circle. A muted snap, and then a familiar figure is standing there, trenchcoat torn and rumpled, hair like someone dragged a hedgehog through it. The other kids aren't taking to him very well, it appears, not that Sam's surprised.
“You must leave,” Castiel declares. “Now.”
“Kinda in the middle of somethin', Cas.” Dean's understandably grouchy. They've had a crazy, long night and he doesn't want to dive into Ben's psyche anymore than Sam does, but it's needed. They really don't want to drag it out.
For his part, Ben's got that amazed wide-eyed look again, reverence at Castiel's sudden appearance, like a he's the real, live answer to every prayer.
Castiel cocks his head, obviously trying to determine the circumference and what exactly the middle entails. His face wrinkles in frustration when he comes up blank. “Extract yourselves from the middle. They're coming.”
Sam gets pissed in a hurry, because fuck that, fuck no, they are not dealing with that bullshit right now, they can't, and Dean is right there with him, both surging to their feet with their little charges locked in their arms.
“What? How?” Dean demands, paranoid eyes leaping to every shadow, and it's just occurring to Sam to wonder how Castiel found them out here. He didn't come trudging up from the direction of the motel, but flew straight in.
The angel glances around, an anxious furrow between his brows. His gaze falls on the deer, and there's distinct disapproval in the set of his mouth when that piercing blue settles directly on Ben. Ben stiffens and Sam squeezes him, glares hard at Castiel to take that silent accusation somewhere the hell else.
“A ritual sacrifice in the name of any Christian icon tends to draw attention, no matter how ill-conceived or incorrect.”
Ben flinches at that, and Sam's catching on to the fact that descriptors like wrong, incorrect, and bad are powerful words, awful, fear-inflicting words that precede some inconceivable punishment. He doesn't understand the Christian part, or how the hell Ben knows anything about ritual sacrifices when the entire notion of Christmas baffles him, but Sam's about two seconds away from landing a fist right in Castiel's tactless motor mouth if he doesn't knock it off. Ben's idolized Castiel right from the start. Sam won't have him broken up all over again because the angel looked at him funny.
Castiel reads him loud and clear, schools his features and chooses his words carefully. “It's potent magic but it normally merits nothing more than an eye-blink from any of the Host. A sacrifice tapped into your particular signature, however...”
“But the rib art!” Dean growls, stalks up and jabs a finger in the angel's chest. “You fuckin' said-“
“They can't locate you through the usual means, but this is different.” Castiel swats Dean's hand away like a pesky insect, moves over to Sam and thrusts a rattling orange bottle at him. “I believe you requested these.” There's emphasis on request, because yeah, Sam didn't request anything so much as demand and threaten. He can't even believe Cas is getting pissy about his manners.
They're like the universe's most obnoxious drumroll when they approach, the ground quaking and rumbling, the sky suddenly overtaken with the deafening flap of a million giant birds, and Sam quickly becomes distracted with that special oh-shit-we're-so-fucked brand of panic. He stumbles but manages not to fall over, and he knows the imminent arrival is going to be huge, more than one, maybe Lucifer and Michael themselves. His chest is threatening to explode.
“Dean.”
Dean's already staggering to Sam's side, both of them hefting a newly claimed Winchester. His mouth goes tight but his eyes are relieved as Sam hurriedly pushes a few pills into Ben's palm.
“Get us the hell outta here,” Dean clips, one last poke in the angel's chest, “and you're coming back for my car!”
“Dude,” Sam starts, but he doesn't get to complete that thought as a wave of vertigo crashes over him.
The next thing he knows he's clawing for his bearings in Bobby's living room, gray-clad children lining every wall in terrified huddles. The ground is still, the skies silent, and Bobby's rolling across the threshold of the kitchen, all harried and 'about damn time' when he looks up at the sudden appearance.
Sam clutches at Dean's shoulder for balance, distantly processes all of this even as he concludes, “Does Cas even know how to drive?”
Dean's eyes bulge out of his head. “Shit!”
NEXT
Dean's never been very good with words, so it's no surprise to Sam when his brother gives up on trying to coax Ben towards him, and opts for physical communication instead, gently tugging Ben away from ground zero and its fluffy wildlife casualty.
Ben's face has gone startlingly blank, and he doesn't offer any resistance when Dean carefully leads him over to the base of another tree and hauls him into his lap, roughened hand obscuring the side of the kid's face, pressing his cheek into his chest as if to lull the last of Ben's shakes with the sound of his own heart. He rubs circles in the small of the boy's back, practiced neutrality on his face that wavers way more than usual, and he waits.
Dean's always been more show than tell, which is sometimes off-putting, sometimes ridiculously persuasive, depending on its context. One might be inclined to think this flaw would put quite the damper on his social skills, but it doesn't. Sam can talk it out with the best of them if it's really needed but, for all his bemoaning of chick-flick moments, Dean gets yanked around by his heartstrings more than anyone Sam's ever seen. His big brother is just better at exuding safety and reassurance, at connecting with people in his own unorthodox way.
Sam loves and loathes it at random intervals, but now? He just really hopes this absurd big-brother talent finds its crest and shines through to every single dark place Ben and Alec have.
Sam thought he was starting to have the barest inkling, thought he'd imagined and obsessively graphed all the potential breakdowns that could result from their upbringing in his initial stages of panic. This was so not on his list, and now that fluctuating panic has morphed into this horribly numbing calm. He feels like he's been pinned in a wreck, dazed and still waiting for the shock to wear off so he can feel exactly where he's bleeding out.
He holds onto Alec, maybe a little too tightly, as he leans against his own tree on the opposite side of the clearing and watches Dean hold onto Ben. Alec doesn't say anything about it, simply mirrors the clutching and watching from Sam's lap.
They sit under the mutually agreeable veil of silence, minutes stretched over country miles, until a nearby beetle click almost startles Sam right out his skin. He wasn't even aware of the eerie hush that had fallen until it was broken, and it's like a domino effect, everything breaking-crickets regain the courage to chirp, foliage picks up its whisper as the nocturnal resume their business, his anesthetized shell begins to crack, Dean's stoicism falters, and Ben.
Ben splits wide open.
He's shaking like he's cold now, and not like he's riding the Earth while it tries to buck him off, but that's not better. The reanimated night seems to jolt Ben back into himself, and he heaves in a strangled breath, this horrible, shattered sound that precedes the most heartbreaking series of sobs Sam's ever heard.
The humidity-stifled breeze unapologetically carries Ben's garbled pleas across to them, words choking incoherently into Dean's chest, but it's easy enough to pick up on the terror, pain, terror, self-loathing, terror, and god, this is the worst fucking thing. Sam can't take it.
Alec grips Sam's arms harder and Sam reciprocates, like they can keep each other from bolting across the grass to smother Ben into happiness again with hugs and rainbows. Dean isn't trying to look anything but completely lost and anguished now, starts in again with the soothing but commanding tone and tries to decipher what Ben is saying.
It takes a second for Sam to wonder just why in the hell he needs to stay put, and when he can't find an answer, he shoots up and practically teleports to Dean's side with Alec still wrapped around him. Alec immediately shimmies down and throws himself at his brother, barreling into Dean's lap and ducking under the circle of his arms to mold himself around Ben. Sam's too big to fit in Dean's lap so he plunges to his knees and presses a hand to Ben's back. Ben keeps blubbering, fingers twisting in Dean's shirt, and Sam still can't make out what he's saying.
Alec, however, seems to be fluent in sobbing-brother code.
“No, Ben, no. You're not, you're not, you're not,” he mutters against Ben's neck. “You don't hafta go away. No one's sending you back.” Alec's tortured features harden and he snaps a glare to Sam, eyes as sharp as his tone when he says, “Tell him,” and Sam can see the soldier surfacing. Not just one cog in the well-oiled machine, either, but one of the primary pieces, the man breaking formation to assume the role of commanding officer without waiting to be asked or appointed, simply doing what's needed.
As skewed as this temporary hierarchy is, this is one time Sam really doesn't mind taking an order.
“No, fuck no, you're not goin' anywhere, Ben,” Sam assures, staring at Dean, whose face has gone all storm of the century.
“No way in hell. I gotcha now, kiddo. Not lettin' go.” Dean tries his damnedest to melt Ben into him to emphasize this. “You leave now and Sammy here's gonna have an epic meltdown.”
Sam chuffs shakily, but nods and swallows down the lump in his throat. He won't deny the blaring truth, will let Dean put all the blame on him if it makes any one of them feel better.
Sam thinks fuck it, and intrudes on the tight-knit bundle of Deans, loops his long arms around all of them and pushes his head against Dean's shoulder so Ben can see he's there if he deigns to turn his face just a little.
Dean grunts at the extra weight against him and mutters something about being too old for this shit.
“Ben,” Sam tries, doesn't know where to go from there. He sighs, drags a hand up to cup Ben's nape.
Dean draws a breath, and Sam knows what's coming. He's so grateful he can barely breathe over the swell of it, because it's not entirely true that Dean's not good with words. Dean's not comfortable with sharing and caring, but when he reaches the point where he realizes words are inevitable-Sam's a talker and sometimes it's the only way to get through to him-he usually finds the perfect combination.
“When Sam was, like five or six, I think,” Dean says, low baritone rumbling through their bodies, “he used to have this Barbie-“
“I did not!” Sam pulls back just enough to angle his indignant scowl up at his brother, suddenly not so grateful, and Dean just smirks.
“Shh. Sam, don't interrupt story time.”
“Yeah, Sam.” Alec's wearing an identical smirk, and crap, that is just disturbing no matter how much he's adjusted to the Multiplicity twist in their already twisted lives. “Don't interrupt.”
But Alec is smirking, however tremulously, and Ben's sobs are slowly quieting. So Sam shuts up and lets Dean proceed with the embarrass-Sam-to-distract-from-our-woes tactic, because Sam's an awesome brother-uncle-whatever.
“It was the ugliest thing,” Dean goes on. “Had a fucked up arm and half its hair pulled out, but ya know, he found it in the trash. Anyway, kid got stupid attached to the thing. Used to dress it up in these little girl suits he cut outta newspaper. He'd pretend it was at work while he was in school, come home and ask about its day, took it every-fucking-where we went.” Dean shakes his head on a loud exhale. “I was deeply shamed, lemme tell ya. But one day he musta dropped it outside or somethin'. I found it layin' in the middle of the street. Slasher Victim Barbie turned into Roadkill Barbie real quick, and when I broke it to him, Sam cried for a week straight. I tried to buy him a new one, but he didn't want it, so I finally glued that fugly shit back together just to shut him up.”
Sam's scowling again, a little red-faced even if he should be mature enough not to get all humiliated at these childhood revelations anymore. “What's the point of this story, Dean?”
“The point, dear brother, is that you are a million times more attached to Ben, so that means he can't go away.” Dean drops his chin atop Ben's wild hair and gentles his voice a fraction. “I just ain't got that kinda glue. You don't wanna be responsible for breaking Sasquatch Barbie into a bunch of little cry-girly pieces, do you?”
There's a series of hitches in Ben's back, but it's hard to tell if they're more sobs, or something else. And then, muffled against cotton, Ben asks in a tiny voice, “Did you really have a Barbie?”
It's on the tip of Sam's tongue to deny it, to take it to his grave and keep what's left of his dignity, and damn the TV for telling them what a Barbie is anyway. But denying it will nullify Dean's stupid moral, which isn't actually stupid at all, and Sam doesn't know why he has to be all sentimental in the most degrading ways possible.
Sam makes a mental note to super-glue something of Dean's to something else later, and nods. “'Fraid so.”
Dean beams triumphantly while Ben and Alec share a snicker at Sam's expense.
“Shut up,” he says petulantly, but his heart soars for the surface of his pit because Ben can still smile. He's not irreparable, just fucked up like the rest of them.
Ben wiggles around, and Dean reluctantly loosens his hold. Before Sam knows it, he's got a lapful of damaged transgenic, little arms looped tightly around his neck. “I'm not a perfect soldier. M'supposed to be perfect,” Ben admits, voice small and high against Sam's shoulder, and then in an impossibly smaller voice, “You really won't send me back?”
Sam's arms constrict around the lightly trembling little furnace. “Not as long as I live and breathe,” he says fiercely. “Probably not even after I stop. You're ours, little man. Believe me when I say Winchesters do not know how to let go.”
“I don't know how to fix it, Sam,” Ben puffs out, desperately uncertain. “I tried. I don't know why it's not working.”
Sam swallows thickly again, glances at Dean, who's still slumped against the tree, Alec in his lap, nature strewn all over them in dead leaves and twigs. Dean looks pretty jagged, deep shadows around his mouth and eyes. Alec just looks nervous. Sam doesn't want to, but he knows he needs to get to the bottom of this part.
“Why the deer, Ben? What were you trying to do?”
Ben shakes his head. “Didn't work. Why won't she help me?”
Sam barely gets the “Who?” to the tip of his tongue when the woods suddenly animate again, a light whirlwind that picks up the debris from the forest floor and swirls them in a gentle circle. A muted snap, and then a familiar figure is standing there, trenchcoat torn and rumpled, hair like someone dragged a hedgehog through it. The other kids aren't taking to him very well, it appears, not that Sam's surprised.
“You must leave,” Castiel declares. “Now.”
“Kinda in the middle of somethin', Cas.” Dean's understandably grouchy. They've had a crazy, long night and he doesn't want to dive into Ben's psyche anymore than Sam does, but it's needed. They really don't want to drag it out.
For his part, Ben's got that amazed wide-eyed look again, reverence at Castiel's sudden appearance, like a he's the real, live answer to every prayer.
Castiel cocks his head, obviously trying to determine the circumference and what exactly the middle entails. His face wrinkles in frustration when he comes up blank. “Extract yourselves from the middle. They're coming.”
Sam gets pissed in a hurry, because fuck that, fuck no, they are not dealing with that bullshit right now, they can't, and Dean is right there with him, both surging to their feet with their little charges locked in their arms.
“What? How?” Dean demands, paranoid eyes leaping to every shadow, and it's just occurring to Sam to wonder how Castiel found them out here. He didn't come trudging up from the direction of the motel, but flew straight in.
The angel glances around, an anxious furrow between his brows. His gaze falls on the deer, and there's distinct disapproval in the set of his mouth when that piercing blue settles directly on Ben. Ben stiffens and Sam squeezes him, glares hard at Castiel to take that silent accusation somewhere the hell else.
“A ritual sacrifice in the name of any Christian icon tends to draw attention, no matter how ill-conceived or incorrect.”
Ben flinches at that, and Sam's catching on to the fact that descriptors like wrong, incorrect, and bad are powerful words, awful, fear-inflicting words that precede some inconceivable punishment. He doesn't understand the Christian part, or how the hell Ben knows anything about ritual sacrifices when the entire notion of Christmas baffles him, but Sam's about two seconds away from landing a fist right in Castiel's tactless motor mouth if he doesn't knock it off. Ben's idolized Castiel right from the start. Sam won't have him broken up all over again because the angel looked at him funny.
Castiel reads him loud and clear, schools his features and chooses his words carefully. “It's potent magic but it normally merits nothing more than an eye-blink from any of the Host. A sacrifice tapped into your particular signature, however...”
“But the rib art!” Dean growls, stalks up and jabs a finger in the angel's chest. “You fuckin' said-“
“They can't locate you through the usual means, but this is different.” Castiel swats Dean's hand away like a pesky insect, moves over to Sam and thrusts a rattling orange bottle at him. “I believe you requested these.” There's emphasis on request, because yeah, Sam didn't request anything so much as demand and threaten. He can't even believe Cas is getting pissy about his manners.
They're like the universe's most obnoxious drumroll when they approach, the ground quaking and rumbling, the sky suddenly overtaken with the deafening flap of a million giant birds, and Sam quickly becomes distracted with that special oh-shit-we're-so-fucked brand of panic. He stumbles but manages not to fall over, and he knows the imminent arrival is going to be huge, more than one, maybe Lucifer and Michael themselves. His chest is threatening to explode.
“Dean.”
Dean's already staggering to Sam's side, both of them hefting a newly claimed Winchester. His mouth goes tight but his eyes are relieved as Sam hurriedly pushes a few pills into Ben's palm.
“Get us the hell outta here,” Dean clips, one last poke in the angel's chest, “and you're coming back for my car!”
“Dude,” Sam starts, but he doesn't get to complete that thought as a wave of vertigo crashes over him.
The next thing he knows he's clawing for his bearings in Bobby's living room, gray-clad children lining every wall in terrified huddles. The ground is still, the skies silent, and Bobby's rolling across the threshold of the kitchen, all harried and 'about damn time' when he looks up at the sudden appearance.
Sam clutches at Dean's shoulder for balance, distantly processes all of this even as he concludes, “Does Cas even know how to drive?”
Dean's eyes bulge out of his head. “Shit!”
NEXT