Fic: all we are is dust in the wind (Sam/Dean, SPN/His Dark Materials fusion)
Written for tanpopo03 in the spn_j2_xmas exchange, incorporating the suggestions of "some kind of crossover with His Dark Materials (aka boys with dæmons)", future!fic, pining, mild schmoop, and casefiles. ~5800 words, rated PG-13 for violence and language, no other particular warnings.
Set AU post-s5, no spoilers for season 6. Contains mild spoilers for the last book of His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, i.e. information we don't learn until then but nothing that gives away the overall plot arc. I have borrowed only the daemon concept from HDM; no characters from the trilogy appear in this story. The HDM parts are generally book-compliant; I borrowed one visual detail from the movie because it's pretty. *g*
Brief primer: people in this universe have companion animals, called daemons, which are essentially a physical manifestation of their soul/self. More details, including potential book spoilers, here.
Huge thanks to madame_meretrix for listening to me hash out various iterations of this on MSN and for beta-reading on December 24th. Among other things, she commented that this feels like a small glance at a larger story; alas, I feel she's probably right. Thanks also to deirdre_c for convincing me that Tsafira is a fox (I can't think why I'd ever decided against it, but I had) and to affabletoaster for general supportiveness and squee.
all we are is dust in the wind
Dean wonders if he’s imagining it.
He’s taking out the garbage after a late supper the first time he sees it, tiniest flicker of movement in the black density of the hedge. He can’t make out how large it is: stray cat, coyote, lynx… could even be a wolf. It stays and watches him for a long moment, eyes flat and shimmery as a shifter’s.
Lisa calls to him from the back door. It backs away, disappearing in the gloom.
The next time he catches a glimpse of it, slinking around the corner of the garage, it’s evening. Shadows are falling long and it’s easy to be deceived; he blinks and it’s already gone. He is left with a vague impression of smoke and silhouette, lithe gait and subtle gaze.
He sights it a few more times over the next couple of weeks.
“You been feeding a stray?”
“No.” Lisa looks puzzled. “Why, is there one hanging around?”
Dean shrugs.
It’s full dark the next time he spots it. Lisa’s gone up to their bedroom, after an hour spent idly snuggling on the sofa and watching some medical show. He’s taking his customary last turn around the house, checking locks both physical and spiritual.
He bolts the front door, flipping off the porch light, and as he glances through the window he sees it clearly. It’s sitting at the end of the driveway, backlit by the cold glare of the streetlight; he can’t see its eyes from this angle.
It has the look of a daemon, but there’s no one in sight.
He unbolts the door again and steps out onto the porch. His bare feet are silent on the worn boards. Molly’s alert beside him, paws treading equally silently.
The street’s pretty well lit - one of the few good things about suburbia in Dean’s opinion. Still, there are deep puddles of shadow, behind the minivans or under the hedges. It could have hidden. It could run.
It cocks its head, and its ears twitch. He sees the silhouette of its muzzle, and as it stands, the long brush of a fox’s tail.
It can’t be, but he can’t stop himself. Molly is arching her back, fur on end, trembling.
“Sam?” he forces out, voice raw.
It blinks once, then turns and pads away gracefully, and as it passes through the circle of light Dean sees that it isn’t Tsafira, not that it could have been, of course it couldn’t. Tsafira had fallen - no, leapt, throwing herself downwards with Sam into the Pit - and Dean had closed his eyes so as not to see her shimmer out of existence, golden dust dissolving over the earth that swallowed Sam, but he felt her vanish and in that instant Molly keened, screamed in her inhuman voice.
He’d opened his eyes to see the yellowing cemetery grass seal itself; the earth that had moments before been a gaping, sucking hole had closed itself up, just like that, leaving no trace except for the gaping, sucking chest wound in Dean that has never healed.
Sam’s never getting out, Dean knows that, there is no hope, but he can’t stop his treacherous heart from beating and wishing and quickening. He can’t stop himself from thinking, in moments of hilarity or revelation, I gotta tell Sammy about this, and flinching milliseconds later, every time, when his brain tells itself you can’t, he’s gone.
Tsafira’s gone too. And in the darkness one fox may look much like another, but this fox had been grey, ghostlike and silvered under the lamp. Tsafira had been a beautiful red-brown, brilliant in the sun.
He stares into the night for a while, but nothing moves. Eventually the cat crouched beside him licks his toes. The rasp of her tongue brings him back to himself with a start.
The door is triple-locked behind them. Dean pours himself a drink, and then sits and stares at that for a while. Molly is a warm weight in his lap.
“I’m sorry,” she says, finally.
He puts down his glass and scratches behind her ears.
“Yeah.”
“I thought it was too.”
He picks up his glass again, downs most of the contents, and rests it on his knee. She dunks a paw into what remains, then licks it delicately.
“I’ve seen it around,” he says. “Never got a good look at it. I didn’t know it was…”
For the first few months, everything even vaguely fox-shaped had, for the length of a heartbeat, triggered the kind of miraculous hope that led inevitably to near-unbearable disappointment.
“What’s a fox doing around here, anyway?” he says bitterly.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I’m sure it’s a daemon. But how can it be, on its own like that? And you’d have known if there was someone there.”
She dips her paw into his drink again. “Maybe it’s a witch’s daemon?”
Dean’s already considered this, and he’s shaking his head before she gets the words out. “Can’t be. They’re always birds.”
It had been a bone-deep shock, the first time he’d encountered a lone daemon. Fucking witches. It’s unnatural. Being able to send your soul that far away from you… no human should be able to do that. It’s no wonder they’re amoral.
Ghosts, now, he just feels sorry for them. To lose your daemon, that’s got to be worse even than losing your body. The first time Dad told him about them, how they’re the pale shadow of what’s left when soul and body are gone, he’d said with a child’s horror, “But they must be so lonely!”
He’d been scared, the first time he saw one, but he’d pitied it too. Dad and Bobby had warned him he’d likely feel sick. They said the wrongness of a person without a daemon usually took people that way at first. Dean didn’t get that with ghosts, but he sure did with witches. Even after he’d met a couple of the good ones, like when Missouri’s red-tailed hawk came screeching to his assistance that time Dad was ripped into by a bear, he still gave them and their separable daemons a wide berth.
He jumps as Molly digs her claws into his thigh and stretches. “Come back,” she says. “I want to go to bed.”
“So go,” Dean mutters, but he’s already standing. She could go upstairs without him, but he knows she won’t. Neither of them has ever liked being any distance apart, and since…since everything, they tend to stay extra close.
The fox never shows up again after that night. Dean would think he imagined it, hallucination born out of sorrow and futile regret, except that Molly saw it too and he trusts her senses even more than his own.
Their town’s a startlingly quiet place.
Maybe most places are. His experience is skewed all to hell; all he knows are the communities with hauntings and monsters, curses and lore. There’re probably thousands of towns out there just like this one: the most excitement they get is when the minister’s wife has an affair, or some cheerleader gets pregnant.
The most excitement Dean gets is in bed with Lisa, when Molly and Dax are banished to the hallway, and the closest he comes to injury is when the garage hoist glitches and nearly drops Mr. Morrison’s truck on him. It’s a whole different world.
Bobby calls every so often. Dean lets it go to voicemail, then deletes the messages without listening. Eventually Bobby stops leaving messages, though he still calls once a month. Dean appreciates the sentiment, and the persistence, but he doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t hunt. He tells himself it’s because he promised.
He didn’t, really. All he promised was to go to Lisa. He knows what Sam meant by that, the whole big package wrapped up in that. He knows what Sam wanted for him: a life where the biggest worry is making sure Ben doesn’t take up smoking, and the odd scratching noise at night is squirrels in the attic. A life where it is not in fact likely that every day could be your last.
Maybe Sam wanted that for him, but he didn’t spell it out and Dean didn’t promise anything near that specific. He could do the 9 to 5 weekdays, take Lisa out Friday nights, and head out on weekends for local hunts. Keep the area safe.
He doesn’t. The Impala stays under her tarp. Salt and holy water stay in the house. Knives are used for cutting overthick steaks - when Lisa’s not insisting he eat vegetarian casserole.
He’d regretted it then, but now he’s glad he never went back for the amulet. There are enough reminders, and each one is raw and painful in ways that would make Alastair proud. If he starts hunting, there will be nothing but reminders, at every turn.
Sometimes he hears a news story where the subtext is clear, one of those that screams there’s a monster here, and he’ll feel momentary guilt over the deaths that he won’t be preventing. The deaths he dreams of, though, are Mom’s, Dad’s, his own. Tsafira’s. He can’t really feel anything beyond the weight of those.
It’s several months before he realizes the news stories have changed.
They’re still obvious to anyone who knows what to listen for, but they’re no longer unexplained phenomena and bizarre civilian deaths. They’re hunts: unexplained phenomena and bizarre creature deaths.
He spends a couple of weeks wondering, reading the papers and even the Internet thoroughly. There’s no obvious common thread, no ‘Wanted’ descriptions, nothing to identify anyone hunting in the area.
Finally he breaks down and calls Bobby, who thankfully doesn’t bring up the months of radio silence, and asks if he’s heard anything.
He can almost hear Bobby’s forehead furrowing.
“Nobody huntin’ in your neck of the woods that I know of. I can make a few calls.”
But nobody Bobby knows - which means, nobody - knows of another hunter operating in the vicinity.
Dean starts keeping an eye on the guys he knows and any new ones he runs into, throws out the odd line here and there that should net him a second look from anyone in the game. Nobody bites.
Hunters are the solitary sort. It’s not like there’s a Facebook group and invites to this week’s salt ‘n’ burn.
He’s sitting at the kitchen table one night, alone, again. Lisa’s gone to bed, Dax fluttering behind her; Dean’s finishing his drink and flipping through the paper.
Molly jumps up on the table and sits on the paper, neatly blocking the local news.
“Hey,” Dean says, pushing at her.
“Are we just going to read about things?”
He shakes his head warningly at her. “Molly. Don’t.”
“We did good.” She flicks her tail. “You saved a lot of people. I miss it.”
“You helped.” He scratches lightly behind her ears; she arches, pushing her head into his palm. “But that - those days are over.”
She pulls her head back and stands, edging backwards. He looks down. Her front paws are outlining a column describing two missing kids. From Ben’s school.
“It’s never over.”
He tells Lisa he’s going to play cards with some guys from work. It’s not like she doesn’t know there are things that go bump in the night, but he doesn’t want her to worry. It’s a one-time thing, anyway. He’s not going back to hunting, not like that. But she and Ben are all the family he’s got left, and this one’s too close to home.
Scouting the area around the first kid’s house doesn’t show much. At the second, he gets lucky: there’s a patch of raw earth that’s been reseeded, and across it run some unusual footprints. For one thing, they’re bare; for another, they stop abruptly, not at the edge of the lawn but right there in the middle of the patch. Like whatever made them vanished, or left the ground.
Thirty feet away, Molly finds a very large, black feather, with unusual barbs.
“Damn it,” he mutters, and sends a picture to Bobby. Just a picture, no words. Then he starts driving towards the edge of town, trying to figure where something that hit both those houses might be hiding.
Fifteen minutes and several back roads later, he gets back a one word text: Tengu.
He racks his brain for all of ten minutes before giving up and texting back how do i kill it.
Thirty seconds later his phone buzzes. Nothing special. Try cutting off its head. They don’t like mackerel.
“Mackerel?” he says aloud. Molly starts.
“You smell it too?”
“What?”
“Mackerel,” she says. “I didn’t think your nose was that good. It’s pretty faint.”
“What, you smell it now?”
He hits the brakes and pulls off the road.
She leads him into the woods, turning her head, treading daintily and silently as always. She used to love beating him at that during training.
By the time they reach the clearing, even Dean can smell fish. Also, dead Tengu. Its black-feathered, viciously beaked head lies eight feet from the winged, humanoid body. Claw marks on surrounding trees and ruts in the earth attest to a struggle.
He makes the rounds, inspecting the body and the area, while Molly tears into the couple of pounds of fresh, only slightly muddy mackerel fillets scattered around the place.
“This was someone who knew what they were doing.”
Molly makes an inquiring noise through a mouthful of fish.
“I don’t remember ever seeing anything on one of these. Dad’s journal, none of the books, hunts…it’s not local. Whoever got this, they knew how to kill it.”
She swallows. “Hunter.”
“Yeah.” Dean frowns. “Surprised they didn’t burn it, though.”
“Do you need to?”
“I don’t know that you need to,” Dean says, “but it never hurts.”
He tosses the head onto the body and piles some brush around it, douses the whole mess with kerosene and salt, and sets it on fire. The thing’s hollow bird bones crackle, rice-krispie like, in the heat.
“Dean,” Molly hisses, and he sees them: the two kids, stumbling out of the woods towards the fire. They’re bruised and dirty and their shirts are torn where claws gripped them, but they’re here and alive.
“We saw your fire,” the younger one says, and starts to cry. “Can you take us home?”
The older one looks at the now unrecognizable shape in the flames and shudders.
They tell Molly their story during the drive back to town, how the thing snatched them from their yards, how they were locked in an abandoned cabin.
“We heard noises - crashing and a whole lot of screeching - and then it was all quiet. Then the man came and let us out.”
“What man?” Dean says. “What did he look like?”
The older one shrugs. “I couldn’t see. It was really dark. I couldn’t even see his daemon.”
“He was tall,” the younger one says. “He had a nice voice. He told us to head for the fire.”
“The fire?” Dean stares at them in the rear view mirror. Molly, riding shotgun, looks equally perturbed. “But how…”
He’s still puzzling over that when he pulls up outside the first kid’s house. He watches just long enough to be sure the front door opens before driving off.
They drive in silence to the second kid’s house. She climbs out of the car, then leans back in.
“He said you’d take care of us,” she says. “Thank you.”
Dean blinks as she pushes the door shut, using both hands.
“What the fuck?” he says to Molly, pulling away from the curb.
“He knows who you are,” she says. She’s unsettled, fur on end and whiskers twitching. “He knows what we are.”
“We’re not any more,” Dean says firmly, and heads for home. Molly snorts but lets it go.
He makes sure to clear the car of everything that shouldn’t be there, even mud. When he gets in he heads straight for the laundry room and strips off, dumping his clothes in the machine and starting it up.
In the shower, he scrubs the smoke smell from his hair and swears to himself that that’s it. He’s not getting sucked in. Whoever’s out there, they can hunt by themselves.
Before he goes to bed, he texts Bobby once more. Thanks.
He first hears it in the checkout line, as he’s unloading their cart onto the conveyor belt. Lisa’s run back to the produce aisle for an eggplant.
“All on his own. No daemon!” the woman at the checkout says in hushed, horrified tones, ringing through a jumbo carton of laundry detergent.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” her customer says. “People make that stuff up.”
“Fred said he saw him plain as day, and there weren’t no daemon in sight.”
“Fred’s so far inside the bottle half the time, he wouldn’t notice a daemon if it sat on his lap,” the customer snorts. “Man likely had an insect for a daemon. Or a mouse in his pocket. Fred’s always talking nonsense.”
The cashier huffs, and Dean smothers a chuckle as he watches her drop a can of tomatoes onto the loaf of bread already in the shopping bag. Her customer is already digging through her purse and doesn’t notice. “Still. Folks been reporting strange happenings up at the old Murray place for years. There’s something funny there.”
“Hey,” Lisa says, returning with her eggplant, three green peppers and a bag of beets. “Want to go to the movies tonight? I ran into Shelley, she said she’d baby-sit.”
They watch James Bourne or Jason Bond or whoever blow shit up and ski down a waterfall. Molly sits under his chair and bats stray pieces of popcorn at Dax. Dean slings his arm around Lisa’s shoulder and doesn’t think about a ghost here, in his town.
The next time he hears it is on his lunch break. He’s sitting in the park across from the garage, eating a sandwich that is thankfully beet-free. On the next bench, some teenaged girls are alternately talking to each other and tapping at their cell phones. Their daemons, mostly birds and butterflies, zoom around their heads, playing tag.
The name Murray catches his ear.
“They made Phil go up there after dark,” one of them is saying in hushed tones. “They told him everyone on the team had to do it, when they joined. But none of the others actually saw a ghost!”
Her audience is hanging on her every word. Dean chews quietly and tries not to look like he’s listening.
“Phil got as far as the steps, and then he saw him, right in front of him! Standing there, on the front porch! He was about to call out to him and then he realized… there was no daemon!”
The others all gasp.
“Was he like, decaying?” one of them asks.
“Ghosts don’t decay,” another one says. “They look human, just like you or me.”
“Phil said this one was really tall and scary-looking,” the first speaker says. “And he had funny eyes. Like a cat, or a fox. Phil dropped his flashlight and ran for it.”
Dean drops his flask. It clatters on the gravel. The girls look over. He scoops it up, nods and grins, and gets out of there before he starts shaking.
Tall. Fox-eyed.
It can’t be. Obviously. If something’s been haunting the old Murray place for years, it isn’t gonna be somebody who’s been dead less than twelve months.
He drops tools all afternoon at work, too, until the boss finally tells him to leave early and get some rest.
“This means research, doesn’t it?” Molly says as they leave.
“Damn it,” Dean says, and heads for the library. He’s got a couple of hours before Lisa expects him.
He flips through old newspaper files, while Molly scans the microfiche; he reaches out every so often to advance it for her.
He learns that Albert and Susanna Murray were married in 1949 and bought their dream house on the outskirts of town. They lived together for all of seven months before Albert ran off with Susanna’s sister. Susanna Murray stayed in the house, alone and bitter, until her death in 1990. The house was already in bad repair at the time, and in her will she left it to a nephew who never came to fix it up. It’s been slowly falling down ever since, and the legend of its haunting has been slowly growing. Ghost sightings have been reported there on and off over the past couple of decades.
But any reports that go into any description at all say it’s the ghost of old Mrs. Murray.
“Maybe Albert’s finally come back to her,” Molly says.
Dean shakes his head, looking at a picture from their marriage announcement. Albert is barely two inches taller than Susanna, with small, beady eyes. If there is a tall, fox-eyed ghost up at the old Murray place, it’s not Albert Murray.
The last clipping he reads is Susanna Murray’s obituary. She was cremated.
“So either people are scaring themselves into seeing things,” Molly says, “or there’s something of hers in the house.”
Dean’s known, ever since the park, but it doesn’t make saying it any easier. “We’re gonna to have to go out there.”
Molly’s quiet for a minute, then: “Why would he be here?”
Dean closes his eyes.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re here.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe the house is a - a good place to manifest? Because there was already a spirit there?”
“Maybe.”
“Will you rub my tummy?”
Dean does. It makes them both feel better. For a while.
He heads out after dark, escaping to another fictional card game. Molly hunkers down in the seat beside him, flexing her claws.
“Mind the upholstery,” Dean says, and she makes a face at him.
The old Murray place is in a hollow by a turn in the road. He parks a hundred feet away and retrieves his gear from the trunk. Molly lifts her head for the thin, rune-embroidered collar, and he fastens the silver buckle securely.
They approach quietly. The moon is high. The house is a dark silhouette, but Dean thinks there’s a hint of light in the main room. As they tread carefully up the rotting front steps, as quietly as they can, he sees he’s right. Faint light flickers around the edges of the door, short bursts of supernatural static.
He steadies the shotgun, mentally counts to three, and bursts into motion, kicking the door open and swinging in, gun barrel rising up, eyes darting side to side as he scans the room.
The light is still flickering, but it’s warm and continual; a fire burns in the disused grate. The room is cool, but no more so than the night. Nothing that says, ghost.
He takes a step forward, listening.
There’s an ancient, overstuffed sofa pulled near the fireplace, its leather cracked and worn. The imprints in the cushions might be years old, or from someone who just got up and walked out of the room.
Molly creeps past him, ears flattened, teeth bared.
In the far corner, there’s a writing desk. The cupboard above it is open, and two of its drawers are pulled out; several papers litter its surface. Molly leaps onto the desk and pokes gingerly at one with her paw, smoothing it flat.
“Dean - ” she says, but Dean doesn’t hear anything else because, “Dean,” says a voice from his left, and the ghost of Sam steps in from the adjoining room.
He knows it’s a ghost, has to be a ghost, because Sam’s dead and in hell. Because Sam’s here, and Tsafira is nowhere in sight. Because a daemon-less mimicry of his brother is standing in front of him while the temperature falls and his breath is a white cloud in the air in front of him.
A wordless cry rips itself from his throat, all the loss and anger and grief that sears red behind his eyes and burns worse than his own memories of hell trying to break out of his chest, and he raises the gun.
“Dean,” the ghost of Sam says urgently, lunging for him, and Dean chokes out a sob. “Wait, I - ” and Dean’s finger is tightening on the trigger even as he watches a cloud of white huffing from Sam’s mouth together with his words.
That’s important, somehow, but Dean can’t think about it, can’t do anything because at that instant he feels a bone-deep, soul-crushing weariness and pain, and he gasps “Molly,” as he turns.
Behind him, she is thrashing in the hands of old Mrs. Murray’s ghost. She shrieks, twisting and flipping, but the ghost’s claws are already red. Dean can see flashes of white where Molly’s ribs are laid raw.
He tries to swing the gun towards them but the movement is too much and it falls from strengthless fingers. She’s failing, and he with her. His legs give out and he falls to the floor. His vision is darkening.
Dean’s going to die here. Maybe he can be a ghost too. With Sam. It almost seems worth it.
There’s a bang, and a thump as Molly lands on the hearthrug. Dean blinks as the sick feeling recedes slightly.
The ghost of Sam has apparently picked up Dean’s gun and shot the ghost of Mrs. Murray. That’s…odd. Dean’s seen the occasional case of ghost vs. ghost, but he can’t recall any ghost using a rocksalt shotgun.
He can’t recall any ghost breathing either, come to that.
The ghost of Sam is leafing frantically through the papers on the desk. It tears open the remaining drawers, dumps out their contents on the floor and stirs them around.
Molly whimpers and begins dragging herself across the floor towards Dean. The ghost of Sam lifts its head and stretches out a hand to her before checking itself, turning back to the dusty, mildewed contents of the desk.
And Dean knows he’s losing it because he wants, he actually wants the ghost of Sam to lay hands on his daemon. It’s not Sam, but it’s all that’s left of him, and Dean’s soul is worn and heartsick and has been quietly bleeding to death for months anyway.
He rolls over and pushes himself up to hands and knees, steadying himself to stand. He only looks away from the ghost of Sam for a moment but when he looks back, the ghost of Mrs. Murray is rematerializing behind him and Sam has dropped the shotgun.
Sam yells as Mrs. Murray’s claws dig into his shoulder and spin him around, facing her.
Betrayer! it hisses, and its claws are reaching for Sam’s heart.
It’s not Sam, but it’s all that’s left. Dean may have come here to kill his brother, but he’ll be damned if he lets anyone else do it.
He stands, head swimming, and staggers across the room towards them. He has to veer around the couch, and leans on it for support as he passes. His attention is fixed on the struggling ghosts. Mrs. Murray is flickering in and out of frame but Sam is holding steady, looking so real and solid; Dean’s proud of him, even in death.
So it’s a big shock when there’s suddenly movement right next to him, a grey form leaping up on the back of the couch. He looks down and there’s no hesitation in its actions as it lowers its head and butts his hand.
Dean nearly falls down again as warmth and a crazy kind of joy rush into him at its touch.
It’s familiar. It can’t be, but it is.
Tsafira makes an urgent, strangled sort of sound at him, butting his hand again, and that’s when Dean notices she’s carrying something in her mouth.
He turns his hand over and she drops a locket in his open palm.
He doesn’t have to think. He pops the clasp and hurls it into the fire: locket, chain, wedding photo and snippets of hair.
The ghost of Mrs. Murray wails and flares brightly for a moment, before dissolving into a shower of orange sparks and curling, black ash that falls around Sam.
Sam, who gasps, pressing one hand against his bleeding collarbone, and stamps out a couple of smoldering areas on the rug.
Sam. Who’s Sam.
The grey fox leaps down from the back of the couch and heads straight to Molly. Dean feels that same bubble of happiness expanding in his chest, warmth that has nothing to do with the fire, as she wraps herself around Molly and starts licking at her wounds.
“Tsafira,” Sam says in admonishment but he doesn’t sound like he really means it, more like he thinks Dean expects it.
“She needs it,” Tsafira says, “and so do you,” and her stubborn, slightly bitchy tone is so familiar that Dean reels.
“She touched me,” he says to Sam. It’s not even close to the questions he should be asking, but it’s all his mind can focus on right now. “I didn’t… I’m sorry.”
“What?” Sam blinks. “No, Dean, don’t worry, that’s - it’s fine.”
“Didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“It didn’t hurt.”
Dean shakes his head. “Yeah, right. We’ve been in enough fights, Sammy. I know what having your daemon touched does to you.”
“It doesn’t hurt us to touch you,” Tsafira says, and Dean gapes.
“It’s not the first time,” Sam says finally. “I - when she settled. That’s when I knew.”
That’s - wow, that’s a whole other really big something, and Dean’s gonna have to deal with it sometime, but not now. Now there are other questions.
“How long?”
“What?”
“How long you been around here, Sam?”
There’s the minutest hesitation. Sam’s lips shift as a hint of guilt enters his expression.
“Uh. A few weeks, I guess.”
Tsafira snorts. Dean raises his eyebrows at Sam.
“Maybe more like a couple of months,” Sam admits.
“I’ve been around longer than that,” Tsafira says. “You didn’t always see me. Don’t blame Sam. He didn’t know I was coming here, at first.”
“Yeah,” Dean says accusingly. “About that. Sam. What the hell?”
He’s staring down Sam, but Tsafira answers. “Do you know how witches are made?”
“No,” Dean says, “but I’m betting bodily fluids are involved somehow.”
Sam shakes his head. Dean watches the mess of his hair, his profile in the firelight, beloved and familiar and strange, and his chest aches in an altogether new way. Like the pull of healing stitches.
“They separate from their daemons.”
“Well, yeah,” Dean says. “Everybody knows that.”
“No,” Sam says. “I mean, that’s all there is to it. That’s how they do it. They leave their daemon behind and they…cross somewhere the daemon can’t go. They forcibly break the need for physical proximity.”
“But you died,” Dean says. The words sit heavy as stones in his mouth. “Daemons don’t survive that.”
“I didn’t die.” Sam leans forward, spreading his hands; Dean watches them move, shaping the air. “I fell into the Pit. I went to Hell, physically, and Tsafira couldn’t go there. It’s supposed to be a land of the dead, and daemons can’t enter. But I didn’t die, so neither did she.”
“We separated,” she says. “It hurt. A lot.”
Sam’s jaw clenches as he nods.
“You had your eyes closed,” she says, and she’s talking to Molly. “You and Dean. I jumped in too. It was like I was burning. That’s when I changed color.”
“I felt you vanish,” Molly whispers, and Tsafira licks her again. Dean suppresses a gasp and grips the frayed edges of the sofa cushions. He feels it too, an almost physical touch, warmth and caring and Sam. He swallows hard and looks at them, black and white and grey curled up together.
“I found you,” Tsafira says, to both Molly and Dean. “I was keeping an eye on you. But then Sam found out.”
Dean nods. He can’t look at Sam. “You told her to stay away.”
“Yeah,” Sam admits.
“It was you doing the hunts.”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
Sam doesn’t reply.
“You didn’t fucking tell me, Sam,” Dean grits out. He can’t hold it in any longer; he has to get up and move, pacing the rug, narrowly avoiding Molly’s tail. “You got out of the Pit - and I’d love to hear how the hell you pulled that one over Lucifer - and you came back, Tsafira came back, and you couldn’t ring the fucking doorbell and let us know?”
He points at Sam’s chest, arm shaking with fury. “I had a fixed address! I had a goddamn doorbell! You came around my house, you watched me on a hunt, and you decided to let me go on thinking my brother was dead!”
His voice cracks on the last words. Sam is right there in front of him looking guilt-stricken and stubborn and alive.
Dean is wrecked and raw, as if it was his chest, not Molly's, that had been shredded to ribbons. He's a mess of too many emotions to makes sense of and he can't do anything but open his arms.
Sam falls into the hug with such force it nearly knocks Dean over. He’s warm and solid in Dean’s grip, his hair is getting in Dean’s mouth, they’re both breathing in the measured way that fights back tears, and neither makes any move to let go for long moments.
“For heaven’s sake, just lick him,” Tsafira says, and Sam lets out a noise that might be a strangled laugh.
They pull apart. Sam shuffles a hand awkwardly through his hair; Dean straightens his jacket.
“The fire’s nice,” Molly says. “Can we stay a while?”
Dean glances at Sam, who raises an eyebrow at him and drops onto the sofa. “Up to you.”
Like Dean could walk away, now.
He sits, too, and pats the cracked leather between them. “C’mon up.”
The daemons uncurl and walk over. Tsafira helps nudge Molly up onto the sofa, but it’s not Molly who lays her chin on Dean’s thigh. It’s Tsafira, and Molly is worming her way into Sam’s lap.
Sam gasps, and Dean looks over at him. His eyes are wide and dark, his fists clenched at his side.
“We missed you,” Tsafira says. “He missed you. It hurt.” She rubs her head against his leg. “Almost as much as when we got separated.”
Dean looks at her, for a long moment, listening to Sam holding his breath. There are many more questions, wounds to heal and minefields to navigate, but Tsafira’s touch feels like coming home.
“Yeah,” he says, and reaches out to stroke her flank. He looks over at Sam, and nods, and Sam lifts his hand ever so slowly and starts to pet Molly for the first time.
end
Set AU post-s5, no spoilers for season 6. Contains mild spoilers for the last book of His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, i.e. information we don't learn until then but nothing that gives away the overall plot arc. I have borrowed only the daemon concept from HDM; no characters from the trilogy appear in this story. The HDM parts are generally book-compliant; I borrowed one visual detail from the movie because it's pretty. *g*
Brief primer: people in this universe have companion animals, called daemons, which are essentially a physical manifestation of their soul/self. More details, including potential book spoilers, here.
Huge thanks to madame_meretrix for listening to me hash out various iterations of this on MSN and for beta-reading on December 24th. Among other things, she commented that this feels like a small glance at a larger story; alas, I feel she's probably right. Thanks also to deirdre_c for convincing me that Tsafira is a fox (I can't think why I'd ever decided against it, but I had) and to affabletoaster for general supportiveness and squee.
all we are is dust in the wind
Dean wonders if he’s imagining it.
He’s taking out the garbage after a late supper the first time he sees it, tiniest flicker of movement in the black density of the hedge. He can’t make out how large it is: stray cat, coyote, lynx… could even be a wolf. It stays and watches him for a long moment, eyes flat and shimmery as a shifter’s.
Lisa calls to him from the back door. It backs away, disappearing in the gloom.
The next time he catches a glimpse of it, slinking around the corner of the garage, it’s evening. Shadows are falling long and it’s easy to be deceived; he blinks and it’s already gone. He is left with a vague impression of smoke and silhouette, lithe gait and subtle gaze.
He sights it a few more times over the next couple of weeks.
“You been feeding a stray?”
“No.” Lisa looks puzzled. “Why, is there one hanging around?”
Dean shrugs.
It’s full dark the next time he spots it. Lisa’s gone up to their bedroom, after an hour spent idly snuggling on the sofa and watching some medical show. He’s taking his customary last turn around the house, checking locks both physical and spiritual.
He bolts the front door, flipping off the porch light, and as he glances through the window he sees it clearly. It’s sitting at the end of the driveway, backlit by the cold glare of the streetlight; he can’t see its eyes from this angle.
It has the look of a daemon, but there’s no one in sight.
He unbolts the door again and steps out onto the porch. His bare feet are silent on the worn boards. Molly’s alert beside him, paws treading equally silently.
The street’s pretty well lit - one of the few good things about suburbia in Dean’s opinion. Still, there are deep puddles of shadow, behind the minivans or under the hedges. It could have hidden. It could run.
It cocks its head, and its ears twitch. He sees the silhouette of its muzzle, and as it stands, the long brush of a fox’s tail.
It can’t be, but he can’t stop himself. Molly is arching her back, fur on end, trembling.
“Sam?” he forces out, voice raw.
It blinks once, then turns and pads away gracefully, and as it passes through the circle of light Dean sees that it isn’t Tsafira, not that it could have been, of course it couldn’t. Tsafira had fallen - no, leapt, throwing herself downwards with Sam into the Pit - and Dean had closed his eyes so as not to see her shimmer out of existence, golden dust dissolving over the earth that swallowed Sam, but he felt her vanish and in that instant Molly keened, screamed in her inhuman voice.
He’d opened his eyes to see the yellowing cemetery grass seal itself; the earth that had moments before been a gaping, sucking hole had closed itself up, just like that, leaving no trace except for the gaping, sucking chest wound in Dean that has never healed.
Sam’s never getting out, Dean knows that, there is no hope, but he can’t stop his treacherous heart from beating and wishing and quickening. He can’t stop himself from thinking, in moments of hilarity or revelation, I gotta tell Sammy about this, and flinching milliseconds later, every time, when his brain tells itself you can’t, he’s gone.
Tsafira’s gone too. And in the darkness one fox may look much like another, but this fox had been grey, ghostlike and silvered under the lamp. Tsafira had been a beautiful red-brown, brilliant in the sun.
He stares into the night for a while, but nothing moves. Eventually the cat crouched beside him licks his toes. The rasp of her tongue brings him back to himself with a start.
The door is triple-locked behind them. Dean pours himself a drink, and then sits and stares at that for a while. Molly is a warm weight in his lap.
“I’m sorry,” she says, finally.
He puts down his glass and scratches behind her ears.
“Yeah.”
“I thought it was too.”
He picks up his glass again, downs most of the contents, and rests it on his knee. She dunks a paw into what remains, then licks it delicately.
“I’ve seen it around,” he says. “Never got a good look at it. I didn’t know it was…”
For the first few months, everything even vaguely fox-shaped had, for the length of a heartbeat, triggered the kind of miraculous hope that led inevitably to near-unbearable disappointment.
“What’s a fox doing around here, anyway?” he says bitterly.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I’m sure it’s a daemon. But how can it be, on its own like that? And you’d have known if there was someone there.”
She dips her paw into his drink again. “Maybe it’s a witch’s daemon?”
Dean’s already considered this, and he’s shaking his head before she gets the words out. “Can’t be. They’re always birds.”
It had been a bone-deep shock, the first time he’d encountered a lone daemon. Fucking witches. It’s unnatural. Being able to send your soul that far away from you… no human should be able to do that. It’s no wonder they’re amoral.
Ghosts, now, he just feels sorry for them. To lose your daemon, that’s got to be worse even than losing your body. The first time Dad told him about them, how they’re the pale shadow of what’s left when soul and body are gone, he’d said with a child’s horror, “But they must be so lonely!”
He’d been scared, the first time he saw one, but he’d pitied it too. Dad and Bobby had warned him he’d likely feel sick. They said the wrongness of a person without a daemon usually took people that way at first. Dean didn’t get that with ghosts, but he sure did with witches. Even after he’d met a couple of the good ones, like when Missouri’s red-tailed hawk came screeching to his assistance that time Dad was ripped into by a bear, he still gave them and their separable daemons a wide berth.
He jumps as Molly digs her claws into his thigh and stretches. “Come back,” she says. “I want to go to bed.”
“So go,” Dean mutters, but he’s already standing. She could go upstairs without him, but he knows she won’t. Neither of them has ever liked being any distance apart, and since…since everything, they tend to stay extra close.
The fox never shows up again after that night. Dean would think he imagined it, hallucination born out of sorrow and futile regret, except that Molly saw it too and he trusts her senses even more than his own.
Their town’s a startlingly quiet place.
Maybe most places are. His experience is skewed all to hell; all he knows are the communities with hauntings and monsters, curses and lore. There’re probably thousands of towns out there just like this one: the most excitement they get is when the minister’s wife has an affair, or some cheerleader gets pregnant.
The most excitement Dean gets is in bed with Lisa, when Molly and Dax are banished to the hallway, and the closest he comes to injury is when the garage hoist glitches and nearly drops Mr. Morrison’s truck on him. It’s a whole different world.
Bobby calls every so often. Dean lets it go to voicemail, then deletes the messages without listening. Eventually Bobby stops leaving messages, though he still calls once a month. Dean appreciates the sentiment, and the persistence, but he doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t hunt. He tells himself it’s because he promised.
He didn’t, really. All he promised was to go to Lisa. He knows what Sam meant by that, the whole big package wrapped up in that. He knows what Sam wanted for him: a life where the biggest worry is making sure Ben doesn’t take up smoking, and the odd scratching noise at night is squirrels in the attic. A life where it is not in fact likely that every day could be your last.
Maybe Sam wanted that for him, but he didn’t spell it out and Dean didn’t promise anything near that specific. He could do the 9 to 5 weekdays, take Lisa out Friday nights, and head out on weekends for local hunts. Keep the area safe.
He doesn’t. The Impala stays under her tarp. Salt and holy water stay in the house. Knives are used for cutting overthick steaks - when Lisa’s not insisting he eat vegetarian casserole.
He’d regretted it then, but now he’s glad he never went back for the amulet. There are enough reminders, and each one is raw and painful in ways that would make Alastair proud. If he starts hunting, there will be nothing but reminders, at every turn.
Sometimes he hears a news story where the subtext is clear, one of those that screams there’s a monster here, and he’ll feel momentary guilt over the deaths that he won’t be preventing. The deaths he dreams of, though, are Mom’s, Dad’s, his own. Tsafira’s. He can’t really feel anything beyond the weight of those.
It’s several months before he realizes the news stories have changed.
They’re still obvious to anyone who knows what to listen for, but they’re no longer unexplained phenomena and bizarre civilian deaths. They’re hunts: unexplained phenomena and bizarre creature deaths.
He spends a couple of weeks wondering, reading the papers and even the Internet thoroughly. There’s no obvious common thread, no ‘Wanted’ descriptions, nothing to identify anyone hunting in the area.
Finally he breaks down and calls Bobby, who thankfully doesn’t bring up the months of radio silence, and asks if he’s heard anything.
He can almost hear Bobby’s forehead furrowing.
“Nobody huntin’ in your neck of the woods that I know of. I can make a few calls.”
But nobody Bobby knows - which means, nobody - knows of another hunter operating in the vicinity.
Dean starts keeping an eye on the guys he knows and any new ones he runs into, throws out the odd line here and there that should net him a second look from anyone in the game. Nobody bites.
Hunters are the solitary sort. It’s not like there’s a Facebook group and invites to this week’s salt ‘n’ burn.
He’s sitting at the kitchen table one night, alone, again. Lisa’s gone to bed, Dax fluttering behind her; Dean’s finishing his drink and flipping through the paper.
Molly jumps up on the table and sits on the paper, neatly blocking the local news.
“Hey,” Dean says, pushing at her.
“Are we just going to read about things?”
He shakes his head warningly at her. “Molly. Don’t.”
“We did good.” She flicks her tail. “You saved a lot of people. I miss it.”
“You helped.” He scratches lightly behind her ears; she arches, pushing her head into his palm. “But that - those days are over.”
She pulls her head back and stands, edging backwards. He looks down. Her front paws are outlining a column describing two missing kids. From Ben’s school.
“It’s never over.”
He tells Lisa he’s going to play cards with some guys from work. It’s not like she doesn’t know there are things that go bump in the night, but he doesn’t want her to worry. It’s a one-time thing, anyway. He’s not going back to hunting, not like that. But she and Ben are all the family he’s got left, and this one’s too close to home.
Scouting the area around the first kid’s house doesn’t show much. At the second, he gets lucky: there’s a patch of raw earth that’s been reseeded, and across it run some unusual footprints. For one thing, they’re bare; for another, they stop abruptly, not at the edge of the lawn but right there in the middle of the patch. Like whatever made them vanished, or left the ground.
Thirty feet away, Molly finds a very large, black feather, with unusual barbs.
“Damn it,” he mutters, and sends a picture to Bobby. Just a picture, no words. Then he starts driving towards the edge of town, trying to figure where something that hit both those houses might be hiding.
Fifteen minutes and several back roads later, he gets back a one word text: Tengu.
He racks his brain for all of ten minutes before giving up and texting back how do i kill it.
Thirty seconds later his phone buzzes. Nothing special. Try cutting off its head. They don’t like mackerel.
“Mackerel?” he says aloud. Molly starts.
“You smell it too?”
“What?”
“Mackerel,” she says. “I didn’t think your nose was that good. It’s pretty faint.”
“What, you smell it now?”
He hits the brakes and pulls off the road.
She leads him into the woods, turning her head, treading daintily and silently as always. She used to love beating him at that during training.
By the time they reach the clearing, even Dean can smell fish. Also, dead Tengu. Its black-feathered, viciously beaked head lies eight feet from the winged, humanoid body. Claw marks on surrounding trees and ruts in the earth attest to a struggle.
He makes the rounds, inspecting the body and the area, while Molly tears into the couple of pounds of fresh, only slightly muddy mackerel fillets scattered around the place.
“This was someone who knew what they were doing.”
Molly makes an inquiring noise through a mouthful of fish.
“I don’t remember ever seeing anything on one of these. Dad’s journal, none of the books, hunts…it’s not local. Whoever got this, they knew how to kill it.”
She swallows. “Hunter.”
“Yeah.” Dean frowns. “Surprised they didn’t burn it, though.”
“Do you need to?”
“I don’t know that you need to,” Dean says, “but it never hurts.”
He tosses the head onto the body and piles some brush around it, douses the whole mess with kerosene and salt, and sets it on fire. The thing’s hollow bird bones crackle, rice-krispie like, in the heat.
“Dean,” Molly hisses, and he sees them: the two kids, stumbling out of the woods towards the fire. They’re bruised and dirty and their shirts are torn where claws gripped them, but they’re here and alive.
“We saw your fire,” the younger one says, and starts to cry. “Can you take us home?”
The older one looks at the now unrecognizable shape in the flames and shudders.
They tell Molly their story during the drive back to town, how the thing snatched them from their yards, how they were locked in an abandoned cabin.
“We heard noises - crashing and a whole lot of screeching - and then it was all quiet. Then the man came and let us out.”
“What man?” Dean says. “What did he look like?”
The older one shrugs. “I couldn’t see. It was really dark. I couldn’t even see his daemon.”
“He was tall,” the younger one says. “He had a nice voice. He told us to head for the fire.”
“The fire?” Dean stares at them in the rear view mirror. Molly, riding shotgun, looks equally perturbed. “But how…”
He’s still puzzling over that when he pulls up outside the first kid’s house. He watches just long enough to be sure the front door opens before driving off.
They drive in silence to the second kid’s house. She climbs out of the car, then leans back in.
“He said you’d take care of us,” she says. “Thank you.”
Dean blinks as she pushes the door shut, using both hands.
“What the fuck?” he says to Molly, pulling away from the curb.
“He knows who you are,” she says. She’s unsettled, fur on end and whiskers twitching. “He knows what we are.”
“We’re not any more,” Dean says firmly, and heads for home. Molly snorts but lets it go.
He makes sure to clear the car of everything that shouldn’t be there, even mud. When he gets in he heads straight for the laundry room and strips off, dumping his clothes in the machine and starting it up.
In the shower, he scrubs the smoke smell from his hair and swears to himself that that’s it. He’s not getting sucked in. Whoever’s out there, they can hunt by themselves.
Before he goes to bed, he texts Bobby once more. Thanks.
He first hears it in the checkout line, as he’s unloading their cart onto the conveyor belt. Lisa’s run back to the produce aisle for an eggplant.
“All on his own. No daemon!” the woman at the checkout says in hushed, horrified tones, ringing through a jumbo carton of laundry detergent.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” her customer says. “People make that stuff up.”
“Fred said he saw him plain as day, and there weren’t no daemon in sight.”
“Fred’s so far inside the bottle half the time, he wouldn’t notice a daemon if it sat on his lap,” the customer snorts. “Man likely had an insect for a daemon. Or a mouse in his pocket. Fred’s always talking nonsense.”
The cashier huffs, and Dean smothers a chuckle as he watches her drop a can of tomatoes onto the loaf of bread already in the shopping bag. Her customer is already digging through her purse and doesn’t notice. “Still. Folks been reporting strange happenings up at the old Murray place for years. There’s something funny there.”
“Hey,” Lisa says, returning with her eggplant, three green peppers and a bag of beets. “Want to go to the movies tonight? I ran into Shelley, she said she’d baby-sit.”
They watch James Bourne or Jason Bond or whoever blow shit up and ski down a waterfall. Molly sits under his chair and bats stray pieces of popcorn at Dax. Dean slings his arm around Lisa’s shoulder and doesn’t think about a ghost here, in his town.
The next time he hears it is on his lunch break. He’s sitting in the park across from the garage, eating a sandwich that is thankfully beet-free. On the next bench, some teenaged girls are alternately talking to each other and tapping at their cell phones. Their daemons, mostly birds and butterflies, zoom around their heads, playing tag.
The name Murray catches his ear.
“They made Phil go up there after dark,” one of them is saying in hushed tones. “They told him everyone on the team had to do it, when they joined. But none of the others actually saw a ghost!”
Her audience is hanging on her every word. Dean chews quietly and tries not to look like he’s listening.
“Phil got as far as the steps, and then he saw him, right in front of him! Standing there, on the front porch! He was about to call out to him and then he realized… there was no daemon!”
The others all gasp.
“Was he like, decaying?” one of them asks.
“Ghosts don’t decay,” another one says. “They look human, just like you or me.”
“Phil said this one was really tall and scary-looking,” the first speaker says. “And he had funny eyes. Like a cat, or a fox. Phil dropped his flashlight and ran for it.”
Dean drops his flask. It clatters on the gravel. The girls look over. He scoops it up, nods and grins, and gets out of there before he starts shaking.
Tall. Fox-eyed.
It can’t be. Obviously. If something’s been haunting the old Murray place for years, it isn’t gonna be somebody who’s been dead less than twelve months.
He drops tools all afternoon at work, too, until the boss finally tells him to leave early and get some rest.
“This means research, doesn’t it?” Molly says as they leave.
“Damn it,” Dean says, and heads for the library. He’s got a couple of hours before Lisa expects him.
He flips through old newspaper files, while Molly scans the microfiche; he reaches out every so often to advance it for her.
He learns that Albert and Susanna Murray were married in 1949 and bought their dream house on the outskirts of town. They lived together for all of seven months before Albert ran off with Susanna’s sister. Susanna Murray stayed in the house, alone and bitter, until her death in 1990. The house was already in bad repair at the time, and in her will she left it to a nephew who never came to fix it up. It’s been slowly falling down ever since, and the legend of its haunting has been slowly growing. Ghost sightings have been reported there on and off over the past couple of decades.
But any reports that go into any description at all say it’s the ghost of old Mrs. Murray.
“Maybe Albert’s finally come back to her,” Molly says.
Dean shakes his head, looking at a picture from their marriage announcement. Albert is barely two inches taller than Susanna, with small, beady eyes. If there is a tall, fox-eyed ghost up at the old Murray place, it’s not Albert Murray.
The last clipping he reads is Susanna Murray’s obituary. She was cremated.
“So either people are scaring themselves into seeing things,” Molly says, “or there’s something of hers in the house.”
Dean’s known, ever since the park, but it doesn’t make saying it any easier. “We’re gonna to have to go out there.”
Molly’s quiet for a minute, then: “Why would he be here?”
Dean closes his eyes.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re here.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe the house is a - a good place to manifest? Because there was already a spirit there?”
“Maybe.”
“Will you rub my tummy?”
Dean does. It makes them both feel better. For a while.
He heads out after dark, escaping to another fictional card game. Molly hunkers down in the seat beside him, flexing her claws.
“Mind the upholstery,” Dean says, and she makes a face at him.
The old Murray place is in a hollow by a turn in the road. He parks a hundred feet away and retrieves his gear from the trunk. Molly lifts her head for the thin, rune-embroidered collar, and he fastens the silver buckle securely.
They approach quietly. The moon is high. The house is a dark silhouette, but Dean thinks there’s a hint of light in the main room. As they tread carefully up the rotting front steps, as quietly as they can, he sees he’s right. Faint light flickers around the edges of the door, short bursts of supernatural static.
He steadies the shotgun, mentally counts to three, and bursts into motion, kicking the door open and swinging in, gun barrel rising up, eyes darting side to side as he scans the room.
The light is still flickering, but it’s warm and continual; a fire burns in the disused grate. The room is cool, but no more so than the night. Nothing that says, ghost.
He takes a step forward, listening.
There’s an ancient, overstuffed sofa pulled near the fireplace, its leather cracked and worn. The imprints in the cushions might be years old, or from someone who just got up and walked out of the room.
Molly creeps past him, ears flattened, teeth bared.
In the far corner, there’s a writing desk. The cupboard above it is open, and two of its drawers are pulled out; several papers litter its surface. Molly leaps onto the desk and pokes gingerly at one with her paw, smoothing it flat.
“Dean - ” she says, but Dean doesn’t hear anything else because, “Dean,” says a voice from his left, and the ghost of Sam steps in from the adjoining room.
He knows it’s a ghost, has to be a ghost, because Sam’s dead and in hell. Because Sam’s here, and Tsafira is nowhere in sight. Because a daemon-less mimicry of his brother is standing in front of him while the temperature falls and his breath is a white cloud in the air in front of him.
A wordless cry rips itself from his throat, all the loss and anger and grief that sears red behind his eyes and burns worse than his own memories of hell trying to break out of his chest, and he raises the gun.
“Dean,” the ghost of Sam says urgently, lunging for him, and Dean chokes out a sob. “Wait, I - ” and Dean’s finger is tightening on the trigger even as he watches a cloud of white huffing from Sam’s mouth together with his words.
That’s important, somehow, but Dean can’t think about it, can’t do anything because at that instant he feels a bone-deep, soul-crushing weariness and pain, and he gasps “Molly,” as he turns.
Behind him, she is thrashing in the hands of old Mrs. Murray’s ghost. She shrieks, twisting and flipping, but the ghost’s claws are already red. Dean can see flashes of white where Molly’s ribs are laid raw.
He tries to swing the gun towards them but the movement is too much and it falls from strengthless fingers. She’s failing, and he with her. His legs give out and he falls to the floor. His vision is darkening.
Dean’s going to die here. Maybe he can be a ghost too. With Sam. It almost seems worth it.
There’s a bang, and a thump as Molly lands on the hearthrug. Dean blinks as the sick feeling recedes slightly.
The ghost of Sam has apparently picked up Dean’s gun and shot the ghost of Mrs. Murray. That’s…odd. Dean’s seen the occasional case of ghost vs. ghost, but he can’t recall any ghost using a rocksalt shotgun.
He can’t recall any ghost breathing either, come to that.
The ghost of Sam is leafing frantically through the papers on the desk. It tears open the remaining drawers, dumps out their contents on the floor and stirs them around.
Molly whimpers and begins dragging herself across the floor towards Dean. The ghost of Sam lifts its head and stretches out a hand to her before checking itself, turning back to the dusty, mildewed contents of the desk.
And Dean knows he’s losing it because he wants, he actually wants the ghost of Sam to lay hands on his daemon. It’s not Sam, but it’s all that’s left of him, and Dean’s soul is worn and heartsick and has been quietly bleeding to death for months anyway.
He rolls over and pushes himself up to hands and knees, steadying himself to stand. He only looks away from the ghost of Sam for a moment but when he looks back, the ghost of Mrs. Murray is rematerializing behind him and Sam has dropped the shotgun.
Sam yells as Mrs. Murray’s claws dig into his shoulder and spin him around, facing her.
Betrayer! it hisses, and its claws are reaching for Sam’s heart.
It’s not Sam, but it’s all that’s left. Dean may have come here to kill his brother, but he’ll be damned if he lets anyone else do it.
He stands, head swimming, and staggers across the room towards them. He has to veer around the couch, and leans on it for support as he passes. His attention is fixed on the struggling ghosts. Mrs. Murray is flickering in and out of frame but Sam is holding steady, looking so real and solid; Dean’s proud of him, even in death.
So it’s a big shock when there’s suddenly movement right next to him, a grey form leaping up on the back of the couch. He looks down and there’s no hesitation in its actions as it lowers its head and butts his hand.
Dean nearly falls down again as warmth and a crazy kind of joy rush into him at its touch.
It’s familiar. It can’t be, but it is.
Tsafira makes an urgent, strangled sort of sound at him, butting his hand again, and that’s when Dean notices she’s carrying something in her mouth.
He turns his hand over and she drops a locket in his open palm.
He doesn’t have to think. He pops the clasp and hurls it into the fire: locket, chain, wedding photo and snippets of hair.
The ghost of Mrs. Murray wails and flares brightly for a moment, before dissolving into a shower of orange sparks and curling, black ash that falls around Sam.
Sam, who gasps, pressing one hand against his bleeding collarbone, and stamps out a couple of smoldering areas on the rug.
Sam. Who’s Sam.
The grey fox leaps down from the back of the couch and heads straight to Molly. Dean feels that same bubble of happiness expanding in his chest, warmth that has nothing to do with the fire, as she wraps herself around Molly and starts licking at her wounds.
“Tsafira,” Sam says in admonishment but he doesn’t sound like he really means it, more like he thinks Dean expects it.
“She needs it,” Tsafira says, “and so do you,” and her stubborn, slightly bitchy tone is so familiar that Dean reels.
“She touched me,” he says to Sam. It’s not even close to the questions he should be asking, but it’s all his mind can focus on right now. “I didn’t… I’m sorry.”
“What?” Sam blinks. “No, Dean, don’t worry, that’s - it’s fine.”
“Didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“It didn’t hurt.”
Dean shakes his head. “Yeah, right. We’ve been in enough fights, Sammy. I know what having your daemon touched does to you.”
“It doesn’t hurt us to touch you,” Tsafira says, and Dean gapes.
“It’s not the first time,” Sam says finally. “I - when she settled. That’s when I knew.”
That’s - wow, that’s a whole other really big something, and Dean’s gonna have to deal with it sometime, but not now. Now there are other questions.
“How long?”
“What?”
“How long you been around here, Sam?”
There’s the minutest hesitation. Sam’s lips shift as a hint of guilt enters his expression.
“Uh. A few weeks, I guess.”
Tsafira snorts. Dean raises his eyebrows at Sam.
“Maybe more like a couple of months,” Sam admits.
“I’ve been around longer than that,” Tsafira says. “You didn’t always see me. Don’t blame Sam. He didn’t know I was coming here, at first.”
“Yeah,” Dean says accusingly. “About that. Sam. What the hell?”
He’s staring down Sam, but Tsafira answers. “Do you know how witches are made?”
“No,” Dean says, “but I’m betting bodily fluids are involved somehow.”
Sam shakes his head. Dean watches the mess of his hair, his profile in the firelight, beloved and familiar and strange, and his chest aches in an altogether new way. Like the pull of healing stitches.
“They separate from their daemons.”
“Well, yeah,” Dean says. “Everybody knows that.”
“No,” Sam says. “I mean, that’s all there is to it. That’s how they do it. They leave their daemon behind and they…cross somewhere the daemon can’t go. They forcibly break the need for physical proximity.”
“But you died,” Dean says. The words sit heavy as stones in his mouth. “Daemons don’t survive that.”
“I didn’t die.” Sam leans forward, spreading his hands; Dean watches them move, shaping the air. “I fell into the Pit. I went to Hell, physically, and Tsafira couldn’t go there. It’s supposed to be a land of the dead, and daemons can’t enter. But I didn’t die, so neither did she.”
“We separated,” she says. “It hurt. A lot.”
Sam’s jaw clenches as he nods.
“You had your eyes closed,” she says, and she’s talking to Molly. “You and Dean. I jumped in too. It was like I was burning. That’s when I changed color.”
“I felt you vanish,” Molly whispers, and Tsafira licks her again. Dean suppresses a gasp and grips the frayed edges of the sofa cushions. He feels it too, an almost physical touch, warmth and caring and Sam. He swallows hard and looks at them, black and white and grey curled up together.
“I found you,” Tsafira says, to both Molly and Dean. “I was keeping an eye on you. But then Sam found out.”
Dean nods. He can’t look at Sam. “You told her to stay away.”
“Yeah,” Sam admits.
“It was you doing the hunts.”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
Sam doesn’t reply.
“You didn’t fucking tell me, Sam,” Dean grits out. He can’t hold it in any longer; he has to get up and move, pacing the rug, narrowly avoiding Molly’s tail. “You got out of the Pit - and I’d love to hear how the hell you pulled that one over Lucifer - and you came back, Tsafira came back, and you couldn’t ring the fucking doorbell and let us know?”
He points at Sam’s chest, arm shaking with fury. “I had a fixed address! I had a goddamn doorbell! You came around my house, you watched me on a hunt, and you decided to let me go on thinking my brother was dead!”
His voice cracks on the last words. Sam is right there in front of him looking guilt-stricken and stubborn and alive.
Dean is wrecked and raw, as if it was his chest, not Molly's, that had been shredded to ribbons. He's a mess of too many emotions to makes sense of and he can't do anything but open his arms.
Sam falls into the hug with such force it nearly knocks Dean over. He’s warm and solid in Dean’s grip, his hair is getting in Dean’s mouth, they’re both breathing in the measured way that fights back tears, and neither makes any move to let go for long moments.
“For heaven’s sake, just lick him,” Tsafira says, and Sam lets out a noise that might be a strangled laugh.
They pull apart. Sam shuffles a hand awkwardly through his hair; Dean straightens his jacket.
“The fire’s nice,” Molly says. “Can we stay a while?”
Dean glances at Sam, who raises an eyebrow at him and drops onto the sofa. “Up to you.”
Like Dean could walk away, now.
He sits, too, and pats the cracked leather between them. “C’mon up.”
The daemons uncurl and walk over. Tsafira helps nudge Molly up onto the sofa, but it’s not Molly who lays her chin on Dean’s thigh. It’s Tsafira, and Molly is worming her way into Sam’s lap.
Sam gasps, and Dean looks over at him. His eyes are wide and dark, his fists clenched at his side.
“We missed you,” Tsafira says. “He missed you. It hurt.” She rubs her head against his leg. “Almost as much as when we got separated.”
Dean looks at her, for a long moment, listening to Sam holding his breath. There are many more questions, wounds to heal and minefields to navigate, but Tsafira’s touch feels like coming home.
“Yeah,” he says, and reaches out to stroke her flank. He looks over at Sam, and nods, and Sam lifts his hand ever so slowly and starts to pet Molly for the first time.
end