Fic: A Little Wheel Run By Faith 1/2
Title: A Little Wheel Run By Faith
Fandom: Supernatural
Genre: Sci-fi, angst and friendship, Wee!chesters
Pairing(s): Gen
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~12500
Warnings: Abuse of the Book of Ezekiel.
Notes: Written for the dc_everafter prompt "Flight of the Navigator", no movie knowledge required. Set just before the flashback events in A Very Supernatural Christmas. Thanks as always to my amazing and lightning fast beta ezazahaz
It's August in Louisiana and Dean Winchester is melting.
They're on a little road somewhere north of Baton Rouge, with the sun making mirages on the cracked asphalt and the air thick and heavy with heat and humidity. The car's air conditioning gave out back in Shreveport and by the time they passed Natchitoches Dean had been banished to the back seat for messing around with the controls. Now they're a hundred miles further south and it feels like every single mile is putting them closer to an active volcano, or the surface of the sun. A wet, liquid, swampy sun.
Dean sticks his face out the window, hunting in vain for a breeze that isn't a hundred degrees. His dad rolled all the windows down hours ago but it's pointless; Dean's still sitting in a disgusting puddle of his own sweat, the vinyl car seat sealed to his skin wherever it touches. They're going to need a spatula to get him out.
He wants to be back in Illinois. At least in Illinois he didn't feel like he was breathing hot water. And he'd had friends, sort of. He even had a yearbook. Okay, it's not like his picture's in it, and it's not like Dad would let him keep something like that to weigh them down, but still. A yearbook. Some of the other kids even signed it.
But Bobby had called and said they needed Dad in Louisiana, so here they are. Melting.
Sammy wanted to stay in Illinois too, but he's louder about it than Dean. It's not the kid's fault, he just doesn't understand about what their Dad does. That he's a hero. Sammy will understand when he's older.
Doesn't stop Dean from wanting to knock him sideways.
"Why couldn't we stay in Pontiac?" Sammy whines, for probably the eighth time since they crossed state lines.
Dean answers, because he can tell from the way Dad's gripping the steering wheel that he's running out of patience. "Because Dad has work."
"Can't he sell things in Illinois? Why do we have to come down here?"
"Because we do," Dean says.
"But why?"
"Knock it off," Dad says, glancing in the rear view mirror.
That keeps Sammy down for about a minute. "But it's so hot here. And it feels like I'm breathing a lake."
Dean does not need to be reminded of that fact. "Stop being such a little bitch."
"Don't call your brother a bitch, Dean." Dad says, eyes still on the road.
"But he's being one!"
"Yeah, well you're being a jerk. Knock it off."
"Yeah, you're being a jerk!" Sam echoes gleefully.
"Don't call your brother a jerk, Sam."
"But you just--"
Dad fixes them both with his best no-nonsense stare, undiminished by being reflected in the tiny box of the rearview mirror. "I can call people jerks because I'm a grown-up. I can even call people assholes. But you two can't. Now do your homework."
Dean doesn't want to do his homework. It doesn't matter, it's not like his teachers in Illinois will care if he does his summer reading. They're on their way to a new town, a new school, a new class with new assignments. Dean's had to read To Kill a Mockingbird for three different schools so far. He's going to kill something bigger than a mockingbird if one more teacher assigns him that stupid book.
Sammy the brainiac actually pulls out a book. Little freak always does his homework even if he knows he'll never turn it in. It's just one more way of annoying Dean, just like the way he manages to take up ninety percent of the backseat, his arms and legs way too long for any eight-year-old and they hang over into Dean's space like the whole seat belongs to him. Right now he's got a pointy elbow jammed right into Dean's leg.
Dean ignores him. He's almost thirteen, almost a grown-up, and he's not going to play Sam's stupid games any more. He pulls out a book but doesn't open it; even if he cared, he can't read in the car. He has to look out the window even if there's nothing out there but boring green fields and ratty wire fences.
He thinks he sees a flash of something silver in the distant trees, something shining and metallic. It looks like it's moving. He squints, interested, but then a clearing breaks through the trees and he can see the rest of the water tower.
He slouches a little lower.
"Sit up straight, Dean," his Dad says, watching them in the mirror again.
Dean sits up straight, but long before they make it to Pontchatoula he's slouching again.
~~~~~
It's a shifter, Dean thinks. He's getting pretty good at guessing what his dad is hunting, just based on his behavior. Some things are easy -- silver means some kind of shifter, maybe a werewolf, stakes mean a forest spirit, tasers mean a rawhead. Other stuff is harder, he has to catch glimpses of the newspaper articles and books his dad brings back from the library.
Dad left with the silver this time, which means a shifter.
So when Dean takes Sammy out for dinner to the cheap dinner next door, he has one of his dad's silver knives tucked into his boot. He's not kidding himself that he could actually take out a shifter himself -- though he daydreams about it occasionally -- but he can at least make sure he and Sammy aren't taken by surprise by some monster pretending to be a motel clerk or one of Sammy's teachers or even their Dad.
Dean's thinking about making his dad test himself with silver when he gets back from the hunt. There's a chance it would make him proud to see how well Dean's learned his lessons, how careful he is about taking care of Sammy. There's also a chance it'll get his butt whooped. He hasn't decided which way to go yet.
Across the table, Sammy's excitedly informing him about the book he was reading in the car, something about spaceships and aliens and a plot that Dean tunes out after about a minute, though he keeps nodding. The kid loves to talk.
"Here you go, honey," the waitress says, dropping off a bowl of semi-melted vanilla ice cream. "On the house."
"Thank you, ma'am," Dean says, with a charming smile. It just gets him a ruffle of his hair, but he needs the practice for the girls at his new school, wherever it's going to be.
"Awesome!" Sammy crows, digging in. Dean lets him have it, looking out the window at the falling twilight. It's getting dark, he needs to get Sammy back to the motel soon.
Something flashes outside. Dean freezes up, eyes locked on to that tiny flicker of movement. There's another flash, and it's just a cat, jumping off the lid of a metal garbage can and making it sway under the yellow streetlights.
But there's still something off, a feeling on the back of his neck, something's not right. "Trust your gut," his dad always says, so Dean does.
"Time to go," he says, imitating his dad's best Marine voice. He slides out of the booth and stands up.
"I haven't finished the ice cream yet!" Sammy protests.
"You're too fat anyway," Dean says. It gets him a punch in the stomach but at least it gets Sammy up and out of the booth. He drops a twenty on the table and pushes his brother to the door. The waitress gives them a friendly wave that Sammy returns but Dean just ignores. The feeling's getting worse. It's like a hum in the back of his head now.
He has to get Sammy out of here. It's too exposed, and his gun is back in the motel room. "You remember the way back to the room, right?"
Sammy nods. "Sure, it's only like, one block. Stop pushing me!"
"Want to race?" Dean says, hurriedly, the hum getting more urgent. "First one back to the room picks the TV channel."
Sammy takes off like a shot, not even waiting for a countdown, the little bitch. Dean starts running after him, but the kid's fast. How he can run so fast after packing away so much food is a complete mystery.
Sammy's about twenty feet ahead when he rounds the corner to the motel. Dean doesn't want to let him out of his sight so he puts on an extra burst of speed, but the hum is getting loud, turning into a high-pitched whine that's hurting his ears and it's screwing with his balance. Just before he reaches the corner he trips, lands hard and everything goes black.
~~~~~
Dean blinks his eyes open, pain pounding through his head. He's still lying sprawled on the pavement, the last bit of daylight is still fading around him -- he's only been out for a few seconds, maybe a minute. Not long enough for anyone to have come by and seen him. Not long enough for Sammy to get worried.
He pushes himself up to his feet. Something feels strange, like the street isn't quite the same height as it used to be. The lights are all too bright. He really hopes he doesn't have a concussion; Dad's not going to like it if he has to take Dean to the doctor because he tripped over his own two feet.
A quick check shows no blood, not even a bump. His head doesn't even hurt in one particular place, just an all-over ache like he imagines his dad's hangovers must feel like. But it's already fading, and he starts jogging toward the motel room. Sammy's probably already in there with the TV set to some doofy show like Full House that Dean's going to have to put up with all evening.
The hum is gone now, as is the ominous feeling, but Dean still moves at as fast a pace as his head can handle, turning the corner and heading down the long row of doors toward their room. The Impala's not out front, so Dad must still be on the hunt. The lights are off in Room 303 -- maybe Sammy just went to bed? Maybe he's hiding, hoping to surprise Dean? The bad feeling comes back. Dean slides the silver knife out of his boot.
Sam had the key, as always, so Dean knocks on the door. Two taps, pause, two taps.
Nothing. He knocks again. Still nothing. Heart pounding, he shouts through the door, "Sammy? Are you okay in there? Let me in!"
He hears some rustling sounds and sags in relief. Until the lock clicks and the door opens and a complete stranger answers the door.
"What the hell, kid?" the stranger growls. "What do you want?"
Dean's frozen for a moment of paralyzed fear and then he's slamming his hand on the door, shoving it wide open and forcing his way in. The stranger stumbles back out of his way, shouting in surprise but Dean ignores him. "Sammy! Where are you!"
The room is empty. More than just empty, it's all wrong, all of it -- their stuff is all gone, the papers missing from the table, missing from the wall, their bags are gone, the salt lines are gone. Dean leaps for the second bed, ignoring the stranger's yells, and thrusts his hand under the pillow. No gun.
"Beat it, kid!" the stranger shouts. "Get the hell out of my room!"
Dean holds up the knife and the stranger's eyes widen. "Wait, wait, I don't --"
"Where's Sammy?" Dean demands, heart in his throat. He has no idea what's happening but he knows he saw Sam turn the corner, he knows Sammy came back here. "Where's my brother?"
"You've got the wrong room! I haven't seen your brother!"
"Don't lie to me," Dean growls, wishing he was more like his dad, that he could get the truth out of someone with just a look. "Where is he?"
"I swear, I don't know. There isn't anyone else here, I drove in all the way from Florida this morning and I just went to bed and I haven't seen anyone. Are you sure this is the right room? 303?" The stranger looks like he's telling the truth. Dean wavers. "Jesus Christ, kid, you scared the shit out of me. You want me to call your parents for you?"
The guy said Christ, he can't be a demon. He could be a shifter, but what's the point of pretending to be a stranger? He'd be pretending to be Sammy, or Dad. He couldn't have touched the salt lines if he was a spirit. Dean's head is pounding again. Nothing is making sense. "What are you?"
"I'm a guy who is trying to get some sleep," the stranger says, emboldened now that Dean's lowered the knife. "Seriously, kid, go find your own room. I'll call the desk and maybe they can find your parents."
He steps away from the door to reach for the phone, but Dean's already moving. He's out the door and running before the stranger can dial the first number. If his dad and Sammy are gone, there's trouble, and Dean can't afford to get caught up in the good will of adults trying to help him. He needs to find his family. They need him.
He goes looking for a phone booth. It takes a long time, longer than it should, because he has to keep from getting noticed and because they all seem to be out of order, broken a long time ago and never fixed. He finds one eventually, calls the motel desk, asks to speak to Mr. Pavaronian.
"No one by that name here," the clerk says, bored.
"We checked in yesterday!" Dean tries. "Come on, you remember, an old guy, two kids?"
"Nope. Think you have the wrong motel," the clerk says and hangs up.
Dean stares at the phone for a minute. He forces himself to calm down. Okay. Think. Something happened to the motel room while they were at the diner. Maybe something went wrong on the hunt, and Dad came back to the room and cleared everything out. Then Sammy ran into him and they took off. Why would they leave me? Doesn't matter. It must have been too dangerous. They had to run, had to protect Sammy. Dad knows I can take care of myself.
And he can. He knows it. His dad prepared him for this kind of thing, drilled him. They have contingency plans. He just has to keep it together and follow procedure.
He can keep it together. He can do it. Then he'll find his family, and everything will be okay again.
He picks up the phone book and opens to the list of motels, looking for the first name in the book.
~~~~~
Two days later, Dean reaches his limit.
He's found the right motel. (He's checked three times, it's the first one in every book.) He checked in under the right name (H.M. Murdock). But there's still no sign of Dad or Sammy. His emergency credit cards are all dead -- he had to pay for the room with the wad of cash in his shoe. He's called his Dad's answering service over and over again but the number is disconnected. It's like his family is just gone.
Which is not true. It's not. They're out there, they're just...they're just running.
Dean follows procedure for two days, laying low, curtains drawn, staying out of sight of anyone who might want to know where his parents are. Waiting for his dad to come for him.
Then, after two days of slowly freaking out, he breaks down and calls Bobby.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Bobby, it's Dean. I can't get a hold of my dad." Dean swallows, not sure if he actually wants the answer to this question. "Do you know where he is?"
There's a pause. Dean knows Bobby's there, he can hear him breathing.
"Bobby?"
"Who is this?" It's definitely Bobby's voice, but it doesn't sound right. Rougher.
"I told you, it's Dean! Dean Winchester. Come on, Uncle Bobby, what's going on?"
"If this is some kind of prank, it ain't funny."
Dean's getting frustrated. "It's not a prank, what the hell? I don't understand what's going on. I went back to the motel yesterday and Dad and Sammy were gone. Dad's answering service is dead and I can't find him."
There's an even longer pause. "...God help me, boy, it really does sound like you."
"Of course it sounds like me, it is me! What, you think I'm a shifter? I can't prove I'm me over the phone. I don't know, ask me something only I would know."
"No, I believe you." Bobby doesn't sound like he believes him, but Dean will take what he can get. "It's good to hear your voice, boy."
"Um, thanks? Look, can you tell me where my dad is? I'm at the Ace Motel in Pontchatoula, like we planned, but he isn't here."
"That's because he ain't in Pontchatoula anymore. He's moved on, Dean."
Dean stares at the wall, shocked. "They...moved on? Why? Did something happen? Sammy, did something happen to Sammy? Is he okay?"
Another pause; Dean's getting worried about Bobby now too. "...Sam's fine, son. You're the one everybody's been worried about."
Dean blinks. "Me? I was right behind Sammy, they're the ones who left me behind. Didn't he tell Dad?"
"It's complicated, Dean." There's a rustling of papers. "Look, where are you? I'll get hold of your Dad and he'll come get you."
Dean breathes out. He's embarassed at the tears that spring to his eyes in relief. "Thanks, Bobby."
He gives Bobby his location. Bobby says it'll be a few days, but Dean can wait.
~~~~~
Dad comes a lot faster than Dean expects, actually. It's barely been a day since he called Bobby, and he's sitting on the sofa watching the news (which makes even less sense than usual) and eating a bag of chips from the vending machine when the door suddenly bursts open, sending chips flying and Dean surging to his feet.
"Freeze!" his dad yells, in that voice that Dean knows better than to disobey. He freezes, hands in the air.
"Dad? What's going on?"
"Don't move," Dad says.
Dean's dad is pointing a gun at him.
"I don't understand," Dean says, shaken and uncertain. "Dad?"
"I said don't move." His dad moves closer, still aiming that gun at Dean's head like he's a monster, like he's something they hunt. There's no recognition in his face.
And his face looks different. He has a beard. Can you grow a beard in three days? Dean doesn't know. But he looks older. A lot older. And angry.
There's a crash behind Dean, from the bathroom, and suddenly there's someone else in the room. Some high school kid, gangly and awkward with long hair falling in his eyes, but he's got a gun as well, pointed right at Dean.
Dean's starting to get scared. "Who the hell are you?"
The teenager at least looks at Dean like he recognizes him. "Dean?" he says, and there's something almost familiar about it.
"Shut up, both of you," Dad barks. "Now tell me who you are."
"What? I'm DEAN, Dad, I'm your son, and I've been waiting for you for two days. Why did you leave me here? What's going on? Where's Sammy?"
The teenager makes a noise and lowers his gun, until Dad snaps a sharp command at him. "Sam! Gun up!"
"Sam?" Dean says, incredulous. "Sam?"
"Dean--" his dad tries, but Dean isn't having it.
"No way, you are kidding me. Sammy is a kid, he's eight, I don't know what you're trying to pull but this is not funny!"
He steps back, away from these people pretending to be his family.
"It's me, Dean," the teenager says. "Sammy. It's really me."
"Yeah, and I'm the Pope," Dean tries to sneer, but it comes out shaky.
"Both of you, knock it off," Dad says, and they do. He takes one hand off his gun, reaches slowly into a pocket, and pulls out a silver knife. He drops it on the floor and kicks it to Dean.
"Prove yourself," he says.
Dean looks down at it. His dad has never made him do this before, not even when he lost track of a shifter he was hunting. Never. It was a line he wouldn't cross.
Fine, if that's how it's going to be. Dean pulls out his own silver knife and kicks it over to his dad. "You too."
He almost thinks he sees a tiny smile on his dad's face at that. "Fine."
They both reach down and pick up the knives, covered by the gangly high-schooler and his gun. Dean pushes up his sleeve, and slices a thin red line across his forearm. It burns like fire and he can't hold back a small sound of pain. His dad doesn't flinch, either at the sound or at the red line he cuts into his own arm.
"There. Happy?" Dean says bitterly. He isn't, even if he knows his dad isn't a shifter. It still doesn't feel like his dad.
"It is you," the teenager who isn't Sammy says in a weird voice, lowering his gun. "Dean."
He's really starting to creep Dean out. "Fine, I'll believe you're my dad, but this isn't Sammy. It can't be."
"I am, I swear," Not-Sammy says. "Dean, listen. Remember the last time you saw me? We were at the diner. The waitress gave us free ice cream. And you said you'd race me back to the motel. I won."
"You cheated," Dean says, automatically, but his brain is stuck in first gear. "Anyone could know that."
"You were scared of something, that's why you made us leave before I could finish my ice cream. That's why you wanted me to run. But you didn't want to scare me, that's why you made it a race."
"I didn't think you noticed," Dean says.
"I noticed. I noticed a lot of things. You were always looking out for me, Dean, and I'm sorry I didn't go back for you. I'm so sorry."
"I don't understand," Dean whispers. "Sammy?"
"You've been gone for eight years, Dean." Dad says, finally. "You disappeared before you got to that motel room."
Dean shakes his head. "I just fell. I hit my head. It was only a minute."
"That's why the room was cleared out. That's why we'd left Pontchatoula."
"We waited for you, Dean," Sammy says. "We looked for you. But we couldn't stay forever."
"Eight years." Dean can't process it. That's why the phone numbers didn't work. That's why the clerk didn't remember him. That's why the news didn't make sense. "So you're..."
"I'm sixteen." Sammy ducks his head shyly. "I go by 'Sam' now."
"And you're taller than me now," Dean's brain stutters onto that random fact. The kid's grown up to be a giant. "I guess I'm not your big brother anymore."
Sam takes two big steps and suddenly Dean's enfolded in a hug. A huge, warm hug, gangly limbs wrapped around him like an octopus. It's just like the hugs Sammy used to give when one of them was upset, all arms and legs and need and comfort. There's no way this could be anyone but Sammy.
"It'll be all right, Sammy," Dean says automatically. It's like instinct, no matter how big Sam is.
"Of course you're still my big brother," Sam snuffles. Apparently he's still a crier.
Dad watches them, his face giving away nothing, his gun lowered but not put away. Dean shuts his eyes to stop looking at him. He wraps his arms around Sam's waist, familiar and unfamiliar, and tucks his face into his big little brother's shoulder.
"It's going to be fine, Dean," Sam promises him. "You're back with us now, everything's okay. We're going to find out what happened to you. It's all going to be fine."
~~~~~
They take Dean to Bobby's.
It's a nineteen-hour drive conducted almost entirely without speaking. Sam tries to tell Dean some of what's happened in the world in the last eight years, but Dean can't take it in and the conversation can't stand up in the face of their dad's aggressive silence.
Dean just stares out the window. Dad won't look at him and Sam is suddenly a stranger. He found his family, but everything's still all screwed up.
At least Bobby greets him with a rib-cracking hug and a shake of Dean's shoulders. "Where have you been, boy?"
"I have no idea, Bobby," Dean manages to grin. "Hoping you can tell me."
"I'll do my best, you know that." Bobby hasn't changed at all and Dean is grateful for it.
"Bobby," Dad interrupts. He's still not looking at Dean. He hasn't touched him since they found him.
Bobby nods. "Right. First things first. Come on, Dean."
Bobby takes Dean to his study and shuts the door, and Dean gets the most thorough test of his humanity ever devised. Silver, bronze, holy water, rituals...He's pretty sure half his teachers wouldn't pass it. Then the test turns into one of identity. More rituals, questions, hypnosis, more questions.
It takes hours. In the end, Bobby opens the door and announces, "It's him. God only knows how, but it's him."
And then Dean is grabbed and hauled into his Dad's arms. He's wrapped up in another hug, this one so tight it hurts, his dad's face buried in his hair. After the robot his father has been it's almost frightening.
"I looked for you, Dean," his dad says to the top of his head. "I swear I looked everywhere for you."
"I know, Dad." Dean hangs on for dear life.
"I would never have stopped looking. But Sammy--"
"It's okay, Dad, I know. It's okay."
And it is. Finally. It's all okay.
~~~~~
Bobby manages to prove Dean's identity but that's as far as his answers go.
"Sorry, kid," he says one night, as they're all sitting in the library pouring over books. "There's just nothing in here. I don't know why you'd go missing eight years."
Sam tosses his book down as well. "What about demon possession? They can stop their hosts from dying, can they stop them from aging?"
Bobby shakes his head. "Eight years would leave a mark, I'd have seen it. And the hosts remember everything."
"Fairies? People who fall asleep in fairy rings can come back years later."
"What, the sidewalk was a fairy ring?" Dad snorts.
"I was not with any fairies," Dean declares.
"You are a fairy," Sam grins.
Snap. Kid's gotten sharp while Dean was gone.
"What about a dybbuk?" Bobby holds up an illustration of a woodcut. "Wait, no, that wouldn't work."
Dad slams his book shut in frustration. "We're just grasping at straws here."
"You know what I think it was," Sam says quietly.
"We're not discussing that again," Dad shuts him down. "End of story."
"But Dad --"
"I said that's enough." Dad gets up and leaves, storming out the doors and heading for the kitchen, with its seemingly endless supply of beer.
In the silence, Bobby says apologetically, "Don't mind him, kid. It just seems like he never gets the answers to the things happening to his family."
Like me, Dean thinks. Like Mom. He's become another mystery to torture his father.
"I know," Sam says. "I shouldn't have brought it up."
Bobby gets up and goes after their dad, patting them both on the shoulder as he passes. They can hear him in the kitchen, giving Dad an earful.
"Think he's getting the lecture on counting his blessings that you're back, or the one on not being an ass?" Sam grins.
"Knowing Bobby, both." Dean smiles back, but he's not going to let this go. "Sam, what do you think happened to me?"
Sam's smile fades. "I'm not supposed to talk about it. Dad thinks I'm crazy."
"Come on, I have to know. We're talking about fairies and magic spell here, it can't be much worse."
Sam looks over his shoulder, checks that the adults are still busy, and leans closer. "I think..."
He pauses dramatically. "I think you were abducted by aliens."
Dean's pretty sure the look on his face gives away his opinion of that theory.
"No, hear me out! When you disappeared...I was running, and I got all the way to the motel door, but right when I got inside I heard this sound. Like a high-pitched whine. And I looked out the window and there was this bright light, like blindingly bright. It was only for a second and then it was gone, but..."
"But that's when I disappeared." It still feels strange to Dean to say it.
"Yeah. So I thought...maybe it was aliens. Like Mulder's sister on the X-Files."
Dean's blank on that one. Man, he has so much TV to catch up on.
"Dad doesn't think so?"
"He thinks I'm just, I don't know, hiding from reality or something. I don't think it's any crazier than demons and witches or any of the other things we hunt."
"I guess not." Aliens. Dean saw Close Encounters. Maybe it makes sense. "When'd you find out about all that, anyway? When I left we were still telling you Dad was a salesman."
Sam gives a bitter laugh that hurts Dean to hear. "About two days after you vanished. Dad lost his mind, Dean. Just lost it. First Mom, and then suddenly you were gone and no one could explain what had happened to you. He went a bit nuts. I got a crash course in hunting, weapons, everything, and I started going with him on hunts because he would barely let me out of his sight. I think Dad was terrified of losing me too."
Dean looks at the closed door leading to the kitchen. He can hear his Dad laugh at something Bobby is saying, but the picture Sam is painting is too easy to believe. "Yeah. He was kind of like that after Mom, too."
Sam sighs. "I'm glad you're back. I mean, I'm glad you're back anyway, but now he seems almost like he used to be. Maybe things will get back to how they were before."
Dean doesn't answer. He remembers how things really were "before" -- before the fire. Before Mom. He knows things are never going back.
A phone rings out in the kitchen, and after a minute the door opens.
"Pack up, boys," Dad says. "Bobby got a call from someone who might be able to help."
~~~~~
They drive another four hours back the way they came, Bobby following in his truck, until they come to a little side road in rural Nebraska. They pull up in front of a saloon called "Harvelle's Roadhouse."
"I can't believe she called you," Dad says, standing by the car looking at it, almost like he doesn't want to go in.
"I can't say she's forgiven you, but she told me once that she wouldn't hold back if she found out anything, anything at all, about two things. Mary, and Dean." Bobby claps him on the shoulder. "Now let me go in first so she don't shoot you on sight."
He gets two paces ahead, then stops and turns to Dean. "You come too, boy. Might help distract her from murdering your dad."
Dean frowns. He's not sure he likes the sound of this Harvelle, whoever she is. "Why are we here if she wants to kill Dad?"
"Because she might be able to help us figure out what happened to you. And because your dad deserves it."
The inside of the saloon is brown and dusty, smelling like Budweiser and beer nuts. It's weirdly homey to someone like Dean.
"Ellen?" Bobby calls. "You in here?"
A woman his dad's age pops out of the back, followed by a blonde girl Sam's age who is stunningly beautiful. Dean's jaw drops.
Bobby elbows him. "Try not to hit puberty while you're standing there."
"Bobby Singer," the woman says. "And who's this?"
"This is Dean Winchester," Bobby says, pushing him forward. "Dean, meet Ellen Harvelle and her daughter Jo."
"Hi," Dean waves, trying out that charming smile on Jo, who flips her hair and walks away.
"Dean? This is Dean?" Ellen looks at him hard. "You really did get him back."
"Turned up back in Pontchatoula two weeks ago. Not a day older."
"I don't believe it," she says.
Dean shrugs. "Believe it, lady."
Bobby elbows him again, but Ellen just laughs. "You really do take after your dad."
Dean preens, but he gets the feeling it wasn't a compliment.
"He here?" Ellen continues.
Bobby nods. "Out front. He's grateful you called him, Ellen. Now's the time for the two of you to mend fences if you can."
"With John Winchester I don't know if anyone can. I called him because there's someone in the back who can help you. New guy, just got here from back East. Name's Ash."
Bobby nods and starts heading towards the back of the saloon. Dean goes to follow, but Ellen stops him. "I know you don't know me, kid, but I'm glad you're back. Your dad was enough of a mess already."
Ellen heads outside to deal with his dad. Two minutes later, Sam dashes inside to join him, followed by the sound of yelling.
"I think your mom really hates our dad," Dean says to Jo, who punches him in the arm.
~~~~~
Ash turns out to be a mulleted twenty-year-old who is staying at the Roadhouse because he got kicked out of MIT mid-semester.
"MIT?" Dean asks. "Did that turn into a rodeo college while I was gone?"
"Nope. I was studying neural networks, till I got in a barfight over fuzzy logic and they kicked me out." Ash doesn't seem fazed at all by Dean's story or his attitude. Completely unflappable. He just listened to Dad's explanation and said, "Whoa."
"Why did you say you had information for us?" Dad asks, shortly.
"Because of this." Ash turns around his computer, which is showing a map of the US covered in red lines, a net spread out over the entire country.
"What's that?" Sam asks, leaning his giant head in to look at it and blocking everyone's view.
"Let me see!" Dean shoves him aside. "It looks like a spiderweb."
"It's a tracking program."
"What's it tracking?
"I don't know."
Dad scowls. "Great. Thanks for calling us, Ellen."
"Shut up, John, and hear the boy out."
"There's some kind of weird energy that keeps popping up around the country. Sometimes it even makes a sound --" Ash does something to the computer, and it starts emitting a hum that turns into a high-pitched whine that sets Dean's teeth on edge.
"That's it!" he exclaims. "I heard that. That's what I heard that night, why I made Sammy leave the diner."
"I heard it too," Sam says, "right when Dean disappeared."
Ash nods. "There was a big spike in Pontchatoula on August 5, 1991."
"The day I vanished," Dean says. He's even starting to think of it that way himself, even if it didn't feel that way to him.
"And there was another spike there," Ash taps some keys, bringing up another map with a different shape, "two weeks last Thursday."
"When I came back," Dean finishes.
"So this energy, this is what took Dean?" Sam asks.
"It's a marker. An omen. Of what, I don't know, but it's been around for years and it's getting more and more frequent. Something big is happening."
"And we need to know what," Bobby says. "You think you can figure it out?"
Ash nods. "Absolutely, hombre. Just give me a little time, and this little dude."
He puts a hand on Dean's shoulder. "I just need to borrow your brain."
Dean swallows.
~~~~~
Fortunately it doesn't involve actually removing his brain. But it does involve hooking him up to a bunch of electrodes and sensors and a computer system that looks like a Nintendo tried to have sex with a VCR.
"Made it out of a Nintendo and a VCR," Ash says proudly, "but she'll do the job."
"What job is that?" Dean says, nervously trying to see the wires glued to his forehead.
"To see inside your brain, compadre."
That really doesn't make Dean feel any better.
Ash goes to sit beside his mutated laptop, now hooked up to the brain-viewing machine, and Bobby, Sam, Ellen and Dad are standing around. Jo has been banished to the bar to clean glasses on the basis that none of them want to see what's in Dean's brain when she's around.
"Okay," Ash says. "Turning on."
Dean feels a little tingle. "Weird."
"Dean, I'm going to ask you some questions, okay?" Bobby asks. He was elected as the questioner since he was the one who would be the most neutral for Dean. Dad had been angry about that, which didn't really reinforce his argument.
"What's your name?"
"Dean Winchester."
The machine beeps, needles moving on paper, numbers appearing on a screen. Ash gives a thumbs up.
"How old are you?"
"Twelve. Or twenty." Dean says with a weak smile. "Does that mean I can drink next year?"
"No," answer Bobby, Ellen and Dad.
"Who's president of the US?"
"Bush. Or I guess it's some new guy now."
"What's your favorite band?"
"Led Zeppelin."
Ash furrows his brow. "I thought you said he went missing for eight years, not twenty-eight."
"Shut up, Zeppelin rules."
"No argument here," Ash holds up his hands.
"Where were you for the last eight years?"
"I don't know," Dean answers, but the machinery goes nuts. There's a frantic scritching of the needles on paper, and the chatter of a printer somewhere in the back of the room. "What was that?"
Ash makes a 'keep rolling' gesture. Bobby doesn't look so sure, but he continues.
"What happened the day you disappeared?"
"Dad was out hunting a shifter. I stayed at the motel with Sammy. We went to the diner. Then I got a bad feeling, like a hum in the back of my head. I wanted to get Sammy home, so I told him to race me."
The machines are chattering more loudly now. The screens are displaying a wall of text in a language Dean has never seen. "What's happening?"
"Keep going," Ash says.
Dean tries, but it's getting hard to concentrate. He can kind of hear the humming again now. "Sammy ran off ahead of me, and I followed, but he's faster than me. Then he turned the corner. The hum got louder" -- like now, the hum is getting louder now, can't anybody else hear it? -- "and then I tripped, and fell and I must have hit my head because I don't remember---"
The hum turns into a whine, high-pitched and piercing. Dean claps his hands over his heads, shaking loose some of the electrodes. Suddenly it seems like other people can hear it too as Dad yells at Ash to stop the machines, the machines that are going crazy and Dean can't hear anything anymore over the ringing --
Suddenly the windows behind them shatter. The computer screens fizzle out and explode. Hands are grabbing Dean and he's pulled to the floor, covered by a body to protect him from the flying glass. It's his dad.
Then everything goes quiet. After a minute, Ash asks, "All y'all okay?"
"Fine," Sam says from under a table.
"This was a damn fool idea," Bobby grumbles. "Ellen?"
"Fine."
Dad sits up a bit, pulling Dean out from beneath him. "Dean? Are you all right? Dean, answer me. Right now."
Dean can barely hear him over the ringing in his head. He pulls his hands away from his ears. There's blood on them.
Dad grabs his hands, then hauls Dean close to check his ears. "Can you hear me, son?"
"I can hear you, Dad," Dean manages. He's fine. He thinks.
Dad puts a hand on the back of Dean's neck and glares up at Ash. "We are not doing this again."
Ash holds up his hands. "No more. But you might want to take a look at this."
He holds out a printout of something from one of the machines, but when Dad doesn't move he stands up and brings it over. It's a line of symbols Dean's never seen before.
Apparently Dad hasn't either.
"What are those?" he asks.
"Enochian," Ash answers. "The language of angels."
~~~~~
After that there's a lot of yelling and some broken glasses, but nothing really gets decided. It's definitely Enochian on the pages. There is no Enochian font on Ash's computer. It most definitely came out of Dean's head. And none of them can read it, not even Dean. Beyond that, they still don't know anything.
Dean convinces everyone that he's okay, he doesn't need to see a doctor, he can hear just fine and his eardrums haven't burst. It takes his dad a long time to believe him, but eventually he's left alone to sleep it off.
He dreams. He's not sure about what, exactly. When he wakes up, he remembers nothing but golden light and a pair of blue eyes.
They end up staying at the Roadhouse for almost a month. Bobby tries to translate the flood of Enochian that poured out of Dean's head. Ash works on upgrading his tracking program. Dean occasionally sits down for questions or tests but it's all carefully supervised by a very intimidating John Winchester and nothing as dramatic as the first time happens again. Dean flirts with Jo, who flirts with Sam, who spends all his time hanging over Ash's shoulder trying to learn what he's doing.
Dean keeps dreaming. He doesn't remember much, ever, except the light and the eyes. Sometimes the eyes are attached to a man his dad's age with messy black hair, sometimes to the same man in his early twenties, sometimes to a boy Dean's age, sometimes even to a young blond girl. The owner of the eyes speaks to him, sometimes, but Dean can never understand the words. Once he wakes up with blood on his pillow. He cleans it up and doesn't tell his dad.
He doesn't tell anyone about the dreams at all, actually. Partially because he knows there'd be more tests, partially because it would freak his dad out, but mostly because it's his. He doesn't want to share it.
Then one night he can hear Blue Eyes speak. It's the boy this time, Dean's age. "Come with me," he says, and Dean can feel it in his bones. "I will," he tries to say, but he wakes up before he can.
"Hey, amigos, we got a big one," Ash says that morning at breakfast. "Something is spiking out in Illinois."
"Where?" Dad barks, and they're off. Ellen and Ash stay behind but Bobby comes with them, following the Impala in his truck. "I need to see this through," he says if anyone asks. "And John's an idjit who's going to get himself killed."
They drive all day and into the night. Sam offers Dean the front seat but he doesn't take it. Instead he lies on the backseat and dozes.
"Dean," says his dream. It's the young girl today. "Dean."
"I'm coming," Dean says.
"What did you say?" his dad asks from the front seat.
"Nothing," Dean says. He turns over but he can't get back to sleep. They spend the night in a motel and Dean doesn't dream.
~~~~~
They don't find anything in Illinois. They're right on top of the spike, Ash says over Dad's cell phone -- there's been some big changes since Dean's been gone, in technology at least -- but there's nothing here.
"Maybe it hasn't happened yet," Sam offers. "Maybe it's like, omens or something."
That doesn't make Dad any happier. They all end up sleeping in the same room that night, the grownups on the beds and the youngsters on a roll-away. Dean doesn't think he'll ever fall asleep.
"Dean," says the voice from his dream. "Come with me."
Dean rolls over and sits up. He's awake. He knows he's awake. But he can hear it.
Dean
"I'm coming," he whispers. "Wait."
It's hard to get out. He has to shift his weight slowly so he doesn't wake Sam. He has to walk quietly, grab his clothes without a rustle of sound, unlock the door so slowly his wrist aches. He slides out into the night.
"I'm here," he whispers again. "Where are you?"
Dean
It sounds like it's coming from the parking lot. He slinks along the row of motel rooms, silent like his dad always taught him. He gets to the row of cars and goes to the Impala. She's the only thing that hasn't changed at all. He sits on her hood, facing the deserted parking lot.
"Okay," he whispers. There's no one here but he still can't speak aloud. "Okay. I'm here."
He hears the hum again, the one he heard the first time back in that diner, but this time he doesn't flinch from it. It isn't a bad feeling this time. It's...familiar. It gets stronger, turns into the high-pitched whine, but it doesn't hurt. Maybe he's used to it now.
A light starts to grow. It's shining down from above. He looks up but he can't see anything, just light, getting brighter and brighter. He shields his eyes with his hand.
The light comes together at a point, hovering in the air in the parking lot in front of Dean. Then it grows again, but different -- there's fire now, fire and a core of liquid metal. Dean can see something spinning, wheels within wheels, and there are impressions of wings and eyes and faces and he can't look at it, can't look away, can't blink and he thinks he's going crazy. The wheels revolve into each other impossibly and the faces are always facing him, whichever way they turn.
It's completely insane and his ears are bleeding again and maybe his eyes too, but this is still more familiar then the face of his now-older brother.
Dean, it says, and Dean can hear it somewhere inside his head. Come with me.
"How?" he asks, as if he's going to say yes instead of running as fast as he can. "What are you?"
The wheels spin differently, as if they're thinking. Then the fires die out, the wings and eyes and faces fade into a mirrored surface like liquid metal and melt into the core of the thing. It's silver now, and shining, and it reflects everything around it but Dean can't see a single thing he recognizes in the perfect metal surface.
The silver thing slides down until it's almost at the ground. Part of it melt, opens, slides down to make steps but the steps are held up by nothing but air. Come with me.
Dean should run away, should go and call his dad and Bobby and Sam and Ash and make them figure out what this thing is and why it's calling him. He should shoot it with the gun his dad gave him. He should yell for help.
He gets up from the Impala, walks over to the silver thing and climbs the steps inside.
On to Part 2
Fandom: Supernatural
Genre: Sci-fi, angst and friendship, Wee!chesters
Pairing(s): Gen
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~12500
Warnings: Abuse of the Book of Ezekiel.
Notes: Written for the dc_everafter prompt "Flight of the Navigator", no movie knowledge required. Set just before the flashback events in A Very Supernatural Christmas. Thanks as always to my amazing and lightning fast beta ezazahaz
It's August in Louisiana and Dean Winchester is melting.
They're on a little road somewhere north of Baton Rouge, with the sun making mirages on the cracked asphalt and the air thick and heavy with heat and humidity. The car's air conditioning gave out back in Shreveport and by the time they passed Natchitoches Dean had been banished to the back seat for messing around with the controls. Now they're a hundred miles further south and it feels like every single mile is putting them closer to an active volcano, or the surface of the sun. A wet, liquid, swampy sun.
Dean sticks his face out the window, hunting in vain for a breeze that isn't a hundred degrees. His dad rolled all the windows down hours ago but it's pointless; Dean's still sitting in a disgusting puddle of his own sweat, the vinyl car seat sealed to his skin wherever it touches. They're going to need a spatula to get him out.
He wants to be back in Illinois. At least in Illinois he didn't feel like he was breathing hot water. And he'd had friends, sort of. He even had a yearbook. Okay, it's not like his picture's in it, and it's not like Dad would let him keep something like that to weigh them down, but still. A yearbook. Some of the other kids even signed it.
But Bobby had called and said they needed Dad in Louisiana, so here they are. Melting.
Sammy wanted to stay in Illinois too, but he's louder about it than Dean. It's not the kid's fault, he just doesn't understand about what their Dad does. That he's a hero. Sammy will understand when he's older.
Doesn't stop Dean from wanting to knock him sideways.
"Why couldn't we stay in Pontiac?" Sammy whines, for probably the eighth time since they crossed state lines.
Dean answers, because he can tell from the way Dad's gripping the steering wheel that he's running out of patience. "Because Dad has work."
"Can't he sell things in Illinois? Why do we have to come down here?"
"Because we do," Dean says.
"But why?"
"Knock it off," Dad says, glancing in the rear view mirror.
That keeps Sammy down for about a minute. "But it's so hot here. And it feels like I'm breathing a lake."
Dean does not need to be reminded of that fact. "Stop being such a little bitch."
"Don't call your brother a bitch, Dean." Dad says, eyes still on the road.
"But he's being one!"
"Yeah, well you're being a jerk. Knock it off."
"Yeah, you're being a jerk!" Sam echoes gleefully.
"Don't call your brother a jerk, Sam."
"But you just--"
Dad fixes them both with his best no-nonsense stare, undiminished by being reflected in the tiny box of the rearview mirror. "I can call people jerks because I'm a grown-up. I can even call people assholes. But you two can't. Now do your homework."
Dean doesn't want to do his homework. It doesn't matter, it's not like his teachers in Illinois will care if he does his summer reading. They're on their way to a new town, a new school, a new class with new assignments. Dean's had to read To Kill a Mockingbird for three different schools so far. He's going to kill something bigger than a mockingbird if one more teacher assigns him that stupid book.
Sammy the brainiac actually pulls out a book. Little freak always does his homework even if he knows he'll never turn it in. It's just one more way of annoying Dean, just like the way he manages to take up ninety percent of the backseat, his arms and legs way too long for any eight-year-old and they hang over into Dean's space like the whole seat belongs to him. Right now he's got a pointy elbow jammed right into Dean's leg.
Dean ignores him. He's almost thirteen, almost a grown-up, and he's not going to play Sam's stupid games any more. He pulls out a book but doesn't open it; even if he cared, he can't read in the car. He has to look out the window even if there's nothing out there but boring green fields and ratty wire fences.
He thinks he sees a flash of something silver in the distant trees, something shining and metallic. It looks like it's moving. He squints, interested, but then a clearing breaks through the trees and he can see the rest of the water tower.
He slouches a little lower.
"Sit up straight, Dean," his Dad says, watching them in the mirror again.
Dean sits up straight, but long before they make it to Pontchatoula he's slouching again.
~~~~~
It's a shifter, Dean thinks. He's getting pretty good at guessing what his dad is hunting, just based on his behavior. Some things are easy -- silver means some kind of shifter, maybe a werewolf, stakes mean a forest spirit, tasers mean a rawhead. Other stuff is harder, he has to catch glimpses of the newspaper articles and books his dad brings back from the library.
Dad left with the silver this time, which means a shifter.
So when Dean takes Sammy out for dinner to the cheap dinner next door, he has one of his dad's silver knives tucked into his boot. He's not kidding himself that he could actually take out a shifter himself -- though he daydreams about it occasionally -- but he can at least make sure he and Sammy aren't taken by surprise by some monster pretending to be a motel clerk or one of Sammy's teachers or even their Dad.
Dean's thinking about making his dad test himself with silver when he gets back from the hunt. There's a chance it would make him proud to see how well Dean's learned his lessons, how careful he is about taking care of Sammy. There's also a chance it'll get his butt whooped. He hasn't decided which way to go yet.
Across the table, Sammy's excitedly informing him about the book he was reading in the car, something about spaceships and aliens and a plot that Dean tunes out after about a minute, though he keeps nodding. The kid loves to talk.
"Here you go, honey," the waitress says, dropping off a bowl of semi-melted vanilla ice cream. "On the house."
"Thank you, ma'am," Dean says, with a charming smile. It just gets him a ruffle of his hair, but he needs the practice for the girls at his new school, wherever it's going to be.
"Awesome!" Sammy crows, digging in. Dean lets him have it, looking out the window at the falling twilight. It's getting dark, he needs to get Sammy back to the motel soon.
Something flashes outside. Dean freezes up, eyes locked on to that tiny flicker of movement. There's another flash, and it's just a cat, jumping off the lid of a metal garbage can and making it sway under the yellow streetlights.
But there's still something off, a feeling on the back of his neck, something's not right. "Trust your gut," his dad always says, so Dean does.
"Time to go," he says, imitating his dad's best Marine voice. He slides out of the booth and stands up.
"I haven't finished the ice cream yet!" Sammy protests.
"You're too fat anyway," Dean says. It gets him a punch in the stomach but at least it gets Sammy up and out of the booth. He drops a twenty on the table and pushes his brother to the door. The waitress gives them a friendly wave that Sammy returns but Dean just ignores. The feeling's getting worse. It's like a hum in the back of his head now.
He has to get Sammy out of here. It's too exposed, and his gun is back in the motel room. "You remember the way back to the room, right?"
Sammy nods. "Sure, it's only like, one block. Stop pushing me!"
"Want to race?" Dean says, hurriedly, the hum getting more urgent. "First one back to the room picks the TV channel."
Sammy takes off like a shot, not even waiting for a countdown, the little bitch. Dean starts running after him, but the kid's fast. How he can run so fast after packing away so much food is a complete mystery.
Sammy's about twenty feet ahead when he rounds the corner to the motel. Dean doesn't want to let him out of his sight so he puts on an extra burst of speed, but the hum is getting loud, turning into a high-pitched whine that's hurting his ears and it's screwing with his balance. Just before he reaches the corner he trips, lands hard and everything goes black.
~~~~~
Dean blinks his eyes open, pain pounding through his head. He's still lying sprawled on the pavement, the last bit of daylight is still fading around him -- he's only been out for a few seconds, maybe a minute. Not long enough for anyone to have come by and seen him. Not long enough for Sammy to get worried.
He pushes himself up to his feet. Something feels strange, like the street isn't quite the same height as it used to be. The lights are all too bright. He really hopes he doesn't have a concussion; Dad's not going to like it if he has to take Dean to the doctor because he tripped over his own two feet.
A quick check shows no blood, not even a bump. His head doesn't even hurt in one particular place, just an all-over ache like he imagines his dad's hangovers must feel like. But it's already fading, and he starts jogging toward the motel room. Sammy's probably already in there with the TV set to some doofy show like Full House that Dean's going to have to put up with all evening.
The hum is gone now, as is the ominous feeling, but Dean still moves at as fast a pace as his head can handle, turning the corner and heading down the long row of doors toward their room. The Impala's not out front, so Dad must still be on the hunt. The lights are off in Room 303 -- maybe Sammy just went to bed? Maybe he's hiding, hoping to surprise Dean? The bad feeling comes back. Dean slides the silver knife out of his boot.
Sam had the key, as always, so Dean knocks on the door. Two taps, pause, two taps.
Nothing. He knocks again. Still nothing. Heart pounding, he shouts through the door, "Sammy? Are you okay in there? Let me in!"
He hears some rustling sounds and sags in relief. Until the lock clicks and the door opens and a complete stranger answers the door.
"What the hell, kid?" the stranger growls. "What do you want?"
Dean's frozen for a moment of paralyzed fear and then he's slamming his hand on the door, shoving it wide open and forcing his way in. The stranger stumbles back out of his way, shouting in surprise but Dean ignores him. "Sammy! Where are you!"
The room is empty. More than just empty, it's all wrong, all of it -- their stuff is all gone, the papers missing from the table, missing from the wall, their bags are gone, the salt lines are gone. Dean leaps for the second bed, ignoring the stranger's yells, and thrusts his hand under the pillow. No gun.
"Beat it, kid!" the stranger shouts. "Get the hell out of my room!"
Dean holds up the knife and the stranger's eyes widen. "Wait, wait, I don't --"
"Where's Sammy?" Dean demands, heart in his throat. He has no idea what's happening but he knows he saw Sam turn the corner, he knows Sammy came back here. "Where's my brother?"
"You've got the wrong room! I haven't seen your brother!"
"Don't lie to me," Dean growls, wishing he was more like his dad, that he could get the truth out of someone with just a look. "Where is he?"
"I swear, I don't know. There isn't anyone else here, I drove in all the way from Florida this morning and I just went to bed and I haven't seen anyone. Are you sure this is the right room? 303?" The stranger looks like he's telling the truth. Dean wavers. "Jesus Christ, kid, you scared the shit out of me. You want me to call your parents for you?"
The guy said Christ, he can't be a demon. He could be a shifter, but what's the point of pretending to be a stranger? He'd be pretending to be Sammy, or Dad. He couldn't have touched the salt lines if he was a spirit. Dean's head is pounding again. Nothing is making sense. "What are you?"
"I'm a guy who is trying to get some sleep," the stranger says, emboldened now that Dean's lowered the knife. "Seriously, kid, go find your own room. I'll call the desk and maybe they can find your parents."
He steps away from the door to reach for the phone, but Dean's already moving. He's out the door and running before the stranger can dial the first number. If his dad and Sammy are gone, there's trouble, and Dean can't afford to get caught up in the good will of adults trying to help him. He needs to find his family. They need him.
He goes looking for a phone booth. It takes a long time, longer than it should, because he has to keep from getting noticed and because they all seem to be out of order, broken a long time ago and never fixed. He finds one eventually, calls the motel desk, asks to speak to Mr. Pavaronian.
"No one by that name here," the clerk says, bored.
"We checked in yesterday!" Dean tries. "Come on, you remember, an old guy, two kids?"
"Nope. Think you have the wrong motel," the clerk says and hangs up.
Dean stares at the phone for a minute. He forces himself to calm down. Okay. Think. Something happened to the motel room while they were at the diner. Maybe something went wrong on the hunt, and Dad came back to the room and cleared everything out. Then Sammy ran into him and they took off. Why would they leave me? Doesn't matter. It must have been too dangerous. They had to run, had to protect Sammy. Dad knows I can take care of myself.
And he can. He knows it. His dad prepared him for this kind of thing, drilled him. They have contingency plans. He just has to keep it together and follow procedure.
He can keep it together. He can do it. Then he'll find his family, and everything will be okay again.
He picks up the phone book and opens to the list of motels, looking for the first name in the book.
~~~~~
Two days later, Dean reaches his limit.
He's found the right motel. (He's checked three times, it's the first one in every book.) He checked in under the right name (H.M. Murdock). But there's still no sign of Dad or Sammy. His emergency credit cards are all dead -- he had to pay for the room with the wad of cash in his shoe. He's called his Dad's answering service over and over again but the number is disconnected. It's like his family is just gone.
Which is not true. It's not. They're out there, they're just...they're just running.
Dean follows procedure for two days, laying low, curtains drawn, staying out of sight of anyone who might want to know where his parents are. Waiting for his dad to come for him.
Then, after two days of slowly freaking out, he breaks down and calls Bobby.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Bobby, it's Dean. I can't get a hold of my dad." Dean swallows, not sure if he actually wants the answer to this question. "Do you know where he is?"
There's a pause. Dean knows Bobby's there, he can hear him breathing.
"Bobby?"
"Who is this?" It's definitely Bobby's voice, but it doesn't sound right. Rougher.
"I told you, it's Dean! Dean Winchester. Come on, Uncle Bobby, what's going on?"
"If this is some kind of prank, it ain't funny."
Dean's getting frustrated. "It's not a prank, what the hell? I don't understand what's going on. I went back to the motel yesterday and Dad and Sammy were gone. Dad's answering service is dead and I can't find him."
There's an even longer pause. "...God help me, boy, it really does sound like you."
"Of course it sounds like me, it is me! What, you think I'm a shifter? I can't prove I'm me over the phone. I don't know, ask me something only I would know."
"No, I believe you." Bobby doesn't sound like he believes him, but Dean will take what he can get. "It's good to hear your voice, boy."
"Um, thanks? Look, can you tell me where my dad is? I'm at the Ace Motel in Pontchatoula, like we planned, but he isn't here."
"That's because he ain't in Pontchatoula anymore. He's moved on, Dean."
Dean stares at the wall, shocked. "They...moved on? Why? Did something happen? Sammy, did something happen to Sammy? Is he okay?"
Another pause; Dean's getting worried about Bobby now too. "...Sam's fine, son. You're the one everybody's been worried about."
Dean blinks. "Me? I was right behind Sammy, they're the ones who left me behind. Didn't he tell Dad?"
"It's complicated, Dean." There's a rustling of papers. "Look, where are you? I'll get hold of your Dad and he'll come get you."
Dean breathes out. He's embarassed at the tears that spring to his eyes in relief. "Thanks, Bobby."
He gives Bobby his location. Bobby says it'll be a few days, but Dean can wait.
~~~~~
Dad comes a lot faster than Dean expects, actually. It's barely been a day since he called Bobby, and he's sitting on the sofa watching the news (which makes even less sense than usual) and eating a bag of chips from the vending machine when the door suddenly bursts open, sending chips flying and Dean surging to his feet.
"Freeze!" his dad yells, in that voice that Dean knows better than to disobey. He freezes, hands in the air.
"Dad? What's going on?"
"Don't move," Dad says.
Dean's dad is pointing a gun at him.
"I don't understand," Dean says, shaken and uncertain. "Dad?"
"I said don't move." His dad moves closer, still aiming that gun at Dean's head like he's a monster, like he's something they hunt. There's no recognition in his face.
And his face looks different. He has a beard. Can you grow a beard in three days? Dean doesn't know. But he looks older. A lot older. And angry.
There's a crash behind Dean, from the bathroom, and suddenly there's someone else in the room. Some high school kid, gangly and awkward with long hair falling in his eyes, but he's got a gun as well, pointed right at Dean.
Dean's starting to get scared. "Who the hell are you?"
The teenager at least looks at Dean like he recognizes him. "Dean?" he says, and there's something almost familiar about it.
"Shut up, both of you," Dad barks. "Now tell me who you are."
"What? I'm DEAN, Dad, I'm your son, and I've been waiting for you for two days. Why did you leave me here? What's going on? Where's Sammy?"
The teenager makes a noise and lowers his gun, until Dad snaps a sharp command at him. "Sam! Gun up!"
"Sam?" Dean says, incredulous. "Sam?"
"Dean--" his dad tries, but Dean isn't having it.
"No way, you are kidding me. Sammy is a kid, he's eight, I don't know what you're trying to pull but this is not funny!"
He steps back, away from these people pretending to be his family.
"It's me, Dean," the teenager says. "Sammy. It's really me."
"Yeah, and I'm the Pope," Dean tries to sneer, but it comes out shaky.
"Both of you, knock it off," Dad says, and they do. He takes one hand off his gun, reaches slowly into a pocket, and pulls out a silver knife. He drops it on the floor and kicks it to Dean.
"Prove yourself," he says.
Dean looks down at it. His dad has never made him do this before, not even when he lost track of a shifter he was hunting. Never. It was a line he wouldn't cross.
Fine, if that's how it's going to be. Dean pulls out his own silver knife and kicks it over to his dad. "You too."
He almost thinks he sees a tiny smile on his dad's face at that. "Fine."
They both reach down and pick up the knives, covered by the gangly high-schooler and his gun. Dean pushes up his sleeve, and slices a thin red line across his forearm. It burns like fire and he can't hold back a small sound of pain. His dad doesn't flinch, either at the sound or at the red line he cuts into his own arm.
"There. Happy?" Dean says bitterly. He isn't, even if he knows his dad isn't a shifter. It still doesn't feel like his dad.
"It is you," the teenager who isn't Sammy says in a weird voice, lowering his gun. "Dean."
He's really starting to creep Dean out. "Fine, I'll believe you're my dad, but this isn't Sammy. It can't be."
"I am, I swear," Not-Sammy says. "Dean, listen. Remember the last time you saw me? We were at the diner. The waitress gave us free ice cream. And you said you'd race me back to the motel. I won."
"You cheated," Dean says, automatically, but his brain is stuck in first gear. "Anyone could know that."
"You were scared of something, that's why you made us leave before I could finish my ice cream. That's why you wanted me to run. But you didn't want to scare me, that's why you made it a race."
"I didn't think you noticed," Dean says.
"I noticed. I noticed a lot of things. You were always looking out for me, Dean, and I'm sorry I didn't go back for you. I'm so sorry."
"I don't understand," Dean whispers. "Sammy?"
"You've been gone for eight years, Dean." Dad says, finally. "You disappeared before you got to that motel room."
Dean shakes his head. "I just fell. I hit my head. It was only a minute."
"That's why the room was cleared out. That's why we'd left Pontchatoula."
"We waited for you, Dean," Sammy says. "We looked for you. But we couldn't stay forever."
"Eight years." Dean can't process it. That's why the phone numbers didn't work. That's why the clerk didn't remember him. That's why the news didn't make sense. "So you're..."
"I'm sixteen." Sammy ducks his head shyly. "I go by 'Sam' now."
"And you're taller than me now," Dean's brain stutters onto that random fact. The kid's grown up to be a giant. "I guess I'm not your big brother anymore."
Sam takes two big steps and suddenly Dean's enfolded in a hug. A huge, warm hug, gangly limbs wrapped around him like an octopus. It's just like the hugs Sammy used to give when one of them was upset, all arms and legs and need and comfort. There's no way this could be anyone but Sammy.
"It'll be all right, Sammy," Dean says automatically. It's like instinct, no matter how big Sam is.
"Of course you're still my big brother," Sam snuffles. Apparently he's still a crier.
Dad watches them, his face giving away nothing, his gun lowered but not put away. Dean shuts his eyes to stop looking at him. He wraps his arms around Sam's waist, familiar and unfamiliar, and tucks his face into his big little brother's shoulder.
"It's going to be fine, Dean," Sam promises him. "You're back with us now, everything's okay. We're going to find out what happened to you. It's all going to be fine."
~~~~~
They take Dean to Bobby's.
It's a nineteen-hour drive conducted almost entirely without speaking. Sam tries to tell Dean some of what's happened in the world in the last eight years, but Dean can't take it in and the conversation can't stand up in the face of their dad's aggressive silence.
Dean just stares out the window. Dad won't look at him and Sam is suddenly a stranger. He found his family, but everything's still all screwed up.
At least Bobby greets him with a rib-cracking hug and a shake of Dean's shoulders. "Where have you been, boy?"
"I have no idea, Bobby," Dean manages to grin. "Hoping you can tell me."
"I'll do my best, you know that." Bobby hasn't changed at all and Dean is grateful for it.
"Bobby," Dad interrupts. He's still not looking at Dean. He hasn't touched him since they found him.
Bobby nods. "Right. First things first. Come on, Dean."
Bobby takes Dean to his study and shuts the door, and Dean gets the most thorough test of his humanity ever devised. Silver, bronze, holy water, rituals...He's pretty sure half his teachers wouldn't pass it. Then the test turns into one of identity. More rituals, questions, hypnosis, more questions.
It takes hours. In the end, Bobby opens the door and announces, "It's him. God only knows how, but it's him."
And then Dean is grabbed and hauled into his Dad's arms. He's wrapped up in another hug, this one so tight it hurts, his dad's face buried in his hair. After the robot his father has been it's almost frightening.
"I looked for you, Dean," his dad says to the top of his head. "I swear I looked everywhere for you."
"I know, Dad." Dean hangs on for dear life.
"I would never have stopped looking. But Sammy--"
"It's okay, Dad, I know. It's okay."
And it is. Finally. It's all okay.
~~~~~
Bobby manages to prove Dean's identity but that's as far as his answers go.
"Sorry, kid," he says one night, as they're all sitting in the library pouring over books. "There's just nothing in here. I don't know why you'd go missing eight years."
Sam tosses his book down as well. "What about demon possession? They can stop their hosts from dying, can they stop them from aging?"
Bobby shakes his head. "Eight years would leave a mark, I'd have seen it. And the hosts remember everything."
"Fairies? People who fall asleep in fairy rings can come back years later."
"What, the sidewalk was a fairy ring?" Dad snorts.
"I was not with any fairies," Dean declares.
"You are a fairy," Sam grins.
Snap. Kid's gotten sharp while Dean was gone.
"What about a dybbuk?" Bobby holds up an illustration of a woodcut. "Wait, no, that wouldn't work."
Dad slams his book shut in frustration. "We're just grasping at straws here."
"You know what I think it was," Sam says quietly.
"We're not discussing that again," Dad shuts him down. "End of story."
"But Dad --"
"I said that's enough." Dad gets up and leaves, storming out the doors and heading for the kitchen, with its seemingly endless supply of beer.
In the silence, Bobby says apologetically, "Don't mind him, kid. It just seems like he never gets the answers to the things happening to his family."
Like me, Dean thinks. Like Mom. He's become another mystery to torture his father.
"I know," Sam says. "I shouldn't have brought it up."
Bobby gets up and goes after their dad, patting them both on the shoulder as he passes. They can hear him in the kitchen, giving Dad an earful.
"Think he's getting the lecture on counting his blessings that you're back, or the one on not being an ass?" Sam grins.
"Knowing Bobby, both." Dean smiles back, but he's not going to let this go. "Sam, what do you think happened to me?"
Sam's smile fades. "I'm not supposed to talk about it. Dad thinks I'm crazy."
"Come on, I have to know. We're talking about fairies and magic spell here, it can't be much worse."
Sam looks over his shoulder, checks that the adults are still busy, and leans closer. "I think..."
He pauses dramatically. "I think you were abducted by aliens."
Dean's pretty sure the look on his face gives away his opinion of that theory.
"No, hear me out! When you disappeared...I was running, and I got all the way to the motel door, but right when I got inside I heard this sound. Like a high-pitched whine. And I looked out the window and there was this bright light, like blindingly bright. It was only for a second and then it was gone, but..."
"But that's when I disappeared." It still feels strange to Dean to say it.
"Yeah. So I thought...maybe it was aliens. Like Mulder's sister on the X-Files."
Dean's blank on that one. Man, he has so much TV to catch up on.
"Dad doesn't think so?"
"He thinks I'm just, I don't know, hiding from reality or something. I don't think it's any crazier than demons and witches or any of the other things we hunt."
"I guess not." Aliens. Dean saw Close Encounters. Maybe it makes sense. "When'd you find out about all that, anyway? When I left we were still telling you Dad was a salesman."
Sam gives a bitter laugh that hurts Dean to hear. "About two days after you vanished. Dad lost his mind, Dean. Just lost it. First Mom, and then suddenly you were gone and no one could explain what had happened to you. He went a bit nuts. I got a crash course in hunting, weapons, everything, and I started going with him on hunts because he would barely let me out of his sight. I think Dad was terrified of losing me too."
Dean looks at the closed door leading to the kitchen. He can hear his Dad laugh at something Bobby is saying, but the picture Sam is painting is too easy to believe. "Yeah. He was kind of like that after Mom, too."
Sam sighs. "I'm glad you're back. I mean, I'm glad you're back anyway, but now he seems almost like he used to be. Maybe things will get back to how they were before."
Dean doesn't answer. He remembers how things really were "before" -- before the fire. Before Mom. He knows things are never going back.
A phone rings out in the kitchen, and after a minute the door opens.
"Pack up, boys," Dad says. "Bobby got a call from someone who might be able to help."
~~~~~
They drive another four hours back the way they came, Bobby following in his truck, until they come to a little side road in rural Nebraska. They pull up in front of a saloon called "Harvelle's Roadhouse."
"I can't believe she called you," Dad says, standing by the car looking at it, almost like he doesn't want to go in.
"I can't say she's forgiven you, but she told me once that she wouldn't hold back if she found out anything, anything at all, about two things. Mary, and Dean." Bobby claps him on the shoulder. "Now let me go in first so she don't shoot you on sight."
He gets two paces ahead, then stops and turns to Dean. "You come too, boy. Might help distract her from murdering your dad."
Dean frowns. He's not sure he likes the sound of this Harvelle, whoever she is. "Why are we here if she wants to kill Dad?"
"Because she might be able to help us figure out what happened to you. And because your dad deserves it."
The inside of the saloon is brown and dusty, smelling like Budweiser and beer nuts. It's weirdly homey to someone like Dean.
"Ellen?" Bobby calls. "You in here?"
A woman his dad's age pops out of the back, followed by a blonde girl Sam's age who is stunningly beautiful. Dean's jaw drops.
Bobby elbows him. "Try not to hit puberty while you're standing there."
"Bobby Singer," the woman says. "And who's this?"
"This is Dean Winchester," Bobby says, pushing him forward. "Dean, meet Ellen Harvelle and her daughter Jo."
"Hi," Dean waves, trying out that charming smile on Jo, who flips her hair and walks away.
"Dean? This is Dean?" Ellen looks at him hard. "You really did get him back."
"Turned up back in Pontchatoula two weeks ago. Not a day older."
"I don't believe it," she says.
Dean shrugs. "Believe it, lady."
Bobby elbows him again, but Ellen just laughs. "You really do take after your dad."
Dean preens, but he gets the feeling it wasn't a compliment.
"He here?" Ellen continues.
Bobby nods. "Out front. He's grateful you called him, Ellen. Now's the time for the two of you to mend fences if you can."
"With John Winchester I don't know if anyone can. I called him because there's someone in the back who can help you. New guy, just got here from back East. Name's Ash."
Bobby nods and starts heading towards the back of the saloon. Dean goes to follow, but Ellen stops him. "I know you don't know me, kid, but I'm glad you're back. Your dad was enough of a mess already."
Ellen heads outside to deal with his dad. Two minutes later, Sam dashes inside to join him, followed by the sound of yelling.
"I think your mom really hates our dad," Dean says to Jo, who punches him in the arm.
~~~~~
Ash turns out to be a mulleted twenty-year-old who is staying at the Roadhouse because he got kicked out of MIT mid-semester.
"MIT?" Dean asks. "Did that turn into a rodeo college while I was gone?"
"Nope. I was studying neural networks, till I got in a barfight over fuzzy logic and they kicked me out." Ash doesn't seem fazed at all by Dean's story or his attitude. Completely unflappable. He just listened to Dad's explanation and said, "Whoa."
"Why did you say you had information for us?" Dad asks, shortly.
"Because of this." Ash turns around his computer, which is showing a map of the US covered in red lines, a net spread out over the entire country.
"What's that?" Sam asks, leaning his giant head in to look at it and blocking everyone's view.
"Let me see!" Dean shoves him aside. "It looks like a spiderweb."
"It's a tracking program."
"What's it tracking?
"I don't know."
Dad scowls. "Great. Thanks for calling us, Ellen."
"Shut up, John, and hear the boy out."
"There's some kind of weird energy that keeps popping up around the country. Sometimes it even makes a sound --" Ash does something to the computer, and it starts emitting a hum that turns into a high-pitched whine that sets Dean's teeth on edge.
"That's it!" he exclaims. "I heard that. That's what I heard that night, why I made Sammy leave the diner."
"I heard it too," Sam says, "right when Dean disappeared."
Ash nods. "There was a big spike in Pontchatoula on August 5, 1991."
"The day I vanished," Dean says. He's even starting to think of it that way himself, even if it didn't feel that way to him.
"And there was another spike there," Ash taps some keys, bringing up another map with a different shape, "two weeks last Thursday."
"When I came back," Dean finishes.
"So this energy, this is what took Dean?" Sam asks.
"It's a marker. An omen. Of what, I don't know, but it's been around for years and it's getting more and more frequent. Something big is happening."
"And we need to know what," Bobby says. "You think you can figure it out?"
Ash nods. "Absolutely, hombre. Just give me a little time, and this little dude."
He puts a hand on Dean's shoulder. "I just need to borrow your brain."
Dean swallows.
~~~~~
Fortunately it doesn't involve actually removing his brain. But it does involve hooking him up to a bunch of electrodes and sensors and a computer system that looks like a Nintendo tried to have sex with a VCR.
"Made it out of a Nintendo and a VCR," Ash says proudly, "but she'll do the job."
"What job is that?" Dean says, nervously trying to see the wires glued to his forehead.
"To see inside your brain, compadre."
That really doesn't make Dean feel any better.
Ash goes to sit beside his mutated laptop, now hooked up to the brain-viewing machine, and Bobby, Sam, Ellen and Dad are standing around. Jo has been banished to the bar to clean glasses on the basis that none of them want to see what's in Dean's brain when she's around.
"Okay," Ash says. "Turning on."
Dean feels a little tingle. "Weird."
"Dean, I'm going to ask you some questions, okay?" Bobby asks. He was elected as the questioner since he was the one who would be the most neutral for Dean. Dad had been angry about that, which didn't really reinforce his argument.
"What's your name?"
"Dean Winchester."
The machine beeps, needles moving on paper, numbers appearing on a screen. Ash gives a thumbs up.
"How old are you?"
"Twelve. Or twenty." Dean says with a weak smile. "Does that mean I can drink next year?"
"No," answer Bobby, Ellen and Dad.
"Who's president of the US?"
"Bush. Or I guess it's some new guy now."
"What's your favorite band?"
"Led Zeppelin."
Ash furrows his brow. "I thought you said he went missing for eight years, not twenty-eight."
"Shut up, Zeppelin rules."
"No argument here," Ash holds up his hands.
"Where were you for the last eight years?"
"I don't know," Dean answers, but the machinery goes nuts. There's a frantic scritching of the needles on paper, and the chatter of a printer somewhere in the back of the room. "What was that?"
Ash makes a 'keep rolling' gesture. Bobby doesn't look so sure, but he continues.
"What happened the day you disappeared?"
"Dad was out hunting a shifter. I stayed at the motel with Sammy. We went to the diner. Then I got a bad feeling, like a hum in the back of my head. I wanted to get Sammy home, so I told him to race me."
The machines are chattering more loudly now. The screens are displaying a wall of text in a language Dean has never seen. "What's happening?"
"Keep going," Ash says.
Dean tries, but it's getting hard to concentrate. He can kind of hear the humming again now. "Sammy ran off ahead of me, and I followed, but he's faster than me. Then he turned the corner. The hum got louder" -- like now, the hum is getting louder now, can't anybody else hear it? -- "and then I tripped, and fell and I must have hit my head because I don't remember---"
The hum turns into a whine, high-pitched and piercing. Dean claps his hands over his heads, shaking loose some of the electrodes. Suddenly it seems like other people can hear it too as Dad yells at Ash to stop the machines, the machines that are going crazy and Dean can't hear anything anymore over the ringing --
Suddenly the windows behind them shatter. The computer screens fizzle out and explode. Hands are grabbing Dean and he's pulled to the floor, covered by a body to protect him from the flying glass. It's his dad.
Then everything goes quiet. After a minute, Ash asks, "All y'all okay?"
"Fine," Sam says from under a table.
"This was a damn fool idea," Bobby grumbles. "Ellen?"
"Fine."
Dad sits up a bit, pulling Dean out from beneath him. "Dean? Are you all right? Dean, answer me. Right now."
Dean can barely hear him over the ringing in his head. He pulls his hands away from his ears. There's blood on them.
Dad grabs his hands, then hauls Dean close to check his ears. "Can you hear me, son?"
"I can hear you, Dad," Dean manages. He's fine. He thinks.
Dad puts a hand on the back of Dean's neck and glares up at Ash. "We are not doing this again."
Ash holds up his hands. "No more. But you might want to take a look at this."
He holds out a printout of something from one of the machines, but when Dad doesn't move he stands up and brings it over. It's a line of symbols Dean's never seen before.
Apparently Dad hasn't either.
"What are those?" he asks.
"Enochian," Ash answers. "The language of angels."
~~~~~
After that there's a lot of yelling and some broken glasses, but nothing really gets decided. It's definitely Enochian on the pages. There is no Enochian font on Ash's computer. It most definitely came out of Dean's head. And none of them can read it, not even Dean. Beyond that, they still don't know anything.
Dean convinces everyone that he's okay, he doesn't need to see a doctor, he can hear just fine and his eardrums haven't burst. It takes his dad a long time to believe him, but eventually he's left alone to sleep it off.
He dreams. He's not sure about what, exactly. When he wakes up, he remembers nothing but golden light and a pair of blue eyes.
They end up staying at the Roadhouse for almost a month. Bobby tries to translate the flood of Enochian that poured out of Dean's head. Ash works on upgrading his tracking program. Dean occasionally sits down for questions or tests but it's all carefully supervised by a very intimidating John Winchester and nothing as dramatic as the first time happens again. Dean flirts with Jo, who flirts with Sam, who spends all his time hanging over Ash's shoulder trying to learn what he's doing.
Dean keeps dreaming. He doesn't remember much, ever, except the light and the eyes. Sometimes the eyes are attached to a man his dad's age with messy black hair, sometimes to the same man in his early twenties, sometimes to a boy Dean's age, sometimes even to a young blond girl. The owner of the eyes speaks to him, sometimes, but Dean can never understand the words. Once he wakes up with blood on his pillow. He cleans it up and doesn't tell his dad.
He doesn't tell anyone about the dreams at all, actually. Partially because he knows there'd be more tests, partially because it would freak his dad out, but mostly because it's his. He doesn't want to share it.
Then one night he can hear Blue Eyes speak. It's the boy this time, Dean's age. "Come with me," he says, and Dean can feel it in his bones. "I will," he tries to say, but he wakes up before he can.
"Hey, amigos, we got a big one," Ash says that morning at breakfast. "Something is spiking out in Illinois."
"Where?" Dad barks, and they're off. Ellen and Ash stay behind but Bobby comes with them, following the Impala in his truck. "I need to see this through," he says if anyone asks. "And John's an idjit who's going to get himself killed."
They drive all day and into the night. Sam offers Dean the front seat but he doesn't take it. Instead he lies on the backseat and dozes.
"Dean," says his dream. It's the young girl today. "Dean."
"I'm coming," Dean says.
"What did you say?" his dad asks from the front seat.
"Nothing," Dean says. He turns over but he can't get back to sleep. They spend the night in a motel and Dean doesn't dream.
~~~~~
They don't find anything in Illinois. They're right on top of the spike, Ash says over Dad's cell phone -- there's been some big changes since Dean's been gone, in technology at least -- but there's nothing here.
"Maybe it hasn't happened yet," Sam offers. "Maybe it's like, omens or something."
That doesn't make Dad any happier. They all end up sleeping in the same room that night, the grownups on the beds and the youngsters on a roll-away. Dean doesn't think he'll ever fall asleep.
"Dean," says the voice from his dream. "Come with me."
Dean rolls over and sits up. He's awake. He knows he's awake. But he can hear it.
Dean
"I'm coming," he whispers. "Wait."
It's hard to get out. He has to shift his weight slowly so he doesn't wake Sam. He has to walk quietly, grab his clothes without a rustle of sound, unlock the door so slowly his wrist aches. He slides out into the night.
"I'm here," he whispers again. "Where are you?"
Dean
It sounds like it's coming from the parking lot. He slinks along the row of motel rooms, silent like his dad always taught him. He gets to the row of cars and goes to the Impala. She's the only thing that hasn't changed at all. He sits on her hood, facing the deserted parking lot.
"Okay," he whispers. There's no one here but he still can't speak aloud. "Okay. I'm here."
He hears the hum again, the one he heard the first time back in that diner, but this time he doesn't flinch from it. It isn't a bad feeling this time. It's...familiar. It gets stronger, turns into the high-pitched whine, but it doesn't hurt. Maybe he's used to it now.
A light starts to grow. It's shining down from above. He looks up but he can't see anything, just light, getting brighter and brighter. He shields his eyes with his hand.
The light comes together at a point, hovering in the air in the parking lot in front of Dean. Then it grows again, but different -- there's fire now, fire and a core of liquid metal. Dean can see something spinning, wheels within wheels, and there are impressions of wings and eyes and faces and he can't look at it, can't look away, can't blink and he thinks he's going crazy. The wheels revolve into each other impossibly and the faces are always facing him, whichever way they turn.
It's completely insane and his ears are bleeding again and maybe his eyes too, but this is still more familiar then the face of his now-older brother.
Dean, it says, and Dean can hear it somewhere inside his head. Come with me.
"How?" he asks, as if he's going to say yes instead of running as fast as he can. "What are you?"
The wheels spin differently, as if they're thinking. Then the fires die out, the wings and eyes and faces fade into a mirrored surface like liquid metal and melt into the core of the thing. It's silver now, and shining, and it reflects everything around it but Dean can't see a single thing he recognizes in the perfect metal surface.
The silver thing slides down until it's almost at the ground. Part of it melt, opens, slides down to make steps but the steps are held up by nothing but air. Come with me.
Dean should run away, should go and call his dad and Bobby and Sam and Ash and make them figure out what this thing is and why it's calling him. He should shoot it with the gun his dad gave him. He should yell for help.
He gets up from the Impala, walks over to the silver thing and climbs the steps inside.
On to Part 2