Fic: Searching for Home
Artist: talulababy
Art Masterlist: talulababy.livejournal.com/135617.html
Fic Title: Searching for Home
Author: faithburke
Fandom/Genre: SPN, Drama
Pairing(s): Gen
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5500
Warnings: Gore, violence, a little cursing
Summary: After everything, Dean looks for his brother.
Dean didn’t allow himself to relax a fraction until every wall, door, window or vent was blocked by a thick line of salt. Once that was done, he dropped down to the floor, despite complaining knees and an aching back, to draw a devil’s trap in front of every door. With the salt in place, he was comfortable enough to set his sword aside to take care of that part.
With those basic defenses in place, Dean concentrated on preparing his latest shelter for the night. Tonight’s dwelling had a fireplace (one of the reasons he’d chosen it in the first place), so he broke up some furniture and rustled up a stack of old newspapers and got a fire going once he was satisfied that everything was secure. Tonight he would have a hot meal and maybe even get clean. Out of all of the mundane things from before that Lucifer’s presence had disrupted, Dean thought he missed hot running water the most.
He was carefully not thinking about the convenience and comfort of the Impala. His baby was swaddled under a tarp at Bobby’s, exchanged with a more practical (and more fuel-efficient) motorcycle that he could bring into whatever house he was currently squatting in. This increased the probability of finding his transportation still there the next morning. If what was left of the world didn’t get more refineries going, he’d probably have to follow the current trend, ditch the bike and pick up a horse, which would get a little awkward when it came to bedding down for the night. As it was, he stood out like a sore thumb when he drove his Scout into a new town.
Once the dining room table started to smolder and his little fire began to combat the ever-present chill, Dean shrugged out of the battered duster, laying it carefully across the arm of the slightly mildewed couch. Finding a coat that could double as a blanket was hard to arrange these days. He’d had to patch this one twice in the last month alone and wasn’t looking forward to the next repair.
With his coat safely out of the way, Dean reached for his bag and the sword at his feet. The blade was stained with blood. Flecks of rust-red lightly speckled the hilt before giving way to more sinister patterns further toward the tip. He wasn’t worried about it rusting; that probably wasn’t even possible. But he’d been raised by John Winchester and if there was one thing that his father had drilled into his head, it had been to take care of his weapons.
He took his time while the fire settled into something a little more constant, carefully cleaning the blade until all traces of blood were gone. After he’d made sure it was clean, Dean pulled out a whetstone and began to hone it with smooth, practiced motions. It probably didn’t need sharpening any more than it needed cleaned, but the action was calming. He’d always been soothed by the action of weapon maintenance. Taking care of the sword gave him something to focus on, and made the sword belong to him a little more.
He snorted in the quiet of the abandoned house. Hell, it wasn’t like anyone else was going to claim it at this point. As far as Dean could tell, there was no one around to claim it. The angels were gone, either dead like Cas and Gabriel or simply returned to heaven, unwilling to fight for earth now that their general was defeated. Given the reaction most demons seemed to have to Michael’s Sword, he had a feeling none of them could use the thing.
Once the sword was cared for and tucked away, he rummaged through the bag and pulled out a can of . . .something. He honestly had no idea what was in the thing, and he didn’t care. It would only taste of ash and blood, like everything else since Lucifer had taken Sam. Dean didn’t eat for enjoyment these days. He ate because he had to, because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to complete this last task.
He ate every bite of what turned out to be canned ravioli with a mechanical disinterest before unfolding the map and studying it. The limp pasta sat heavy in his stomach as he carefully marked Chesterland, OH on the map, dug out his journal, and started writing down this particular day’s findings.
Despite what his source had told him, Lucifer had never been here. For one thing, there were still people trying to eke out a living. Not a lot of them, obviously, since no one had protested when he blatantly took over this house, but enough that the fallen angel couldn’t possible have walked through this town. Lucifer killed hope, and these people still had a little. And if Lucifer hadn’t been here, he hadn’t left Sam here either.
Not for the first time, he wished his life had continued on happily without the presence of the frigging angels, fallen or otherwise. When Lucifer had taken Sam as an insurance policy after his little brother had stuck to his guns and continued to refuse the Morningstar, Dean hadn’t expected it to take quite so long to track the guy down. It was Lucifer, for crying out loud. The guy didn’t exactly do subtle. But the longer it took to find Sam, the more desperate Dean got.
And then he said yes to Michael.
He wasn’t proud of it, not really, but it became obvious that Michael was the only one who could stop Lucifer, the only one who could help Sam, and by that point it had narrowed down to that focus alone. Screw the world, he needed to protect his little brother.
Things were a little foggy after that. He knew that Lucifer had killed both Castiel and Gabriel because he remembered Michael’s sorrow when they discovered their bodies. He knew that a good-sized chunk of the world had burned to ashes while Michael pursued his wayward brother. He knew that Michael had caught up with Lucifer eventually, and that the archangel had won the fight.
He also knew that despite Michael’s victory, there was no heaven on earth. The angels had disappeared back to heaven as soon as they realized that little pipe dream wasn’t coming true. Michael and his pals left a mess behind worthy of Axl Rose at his worst without bothering to tip the housekeeping staff on their way out.
What he still didn’t know was where the Devil had stashed Sammy. Dean’s brother had evidently never agreed to become a vessel, since Dean had woken up in a singed field next to that other guy’s quickly deteriorating corpse. After six months of searching, Dean still hadn’t found any sign of his brother. Granted, that search was agonizingly slow as he attempted to retrace Lucifer’s steps without the benefit of the Internet, but Dean couldn’t help but think that he should have found at least some trace of Sam by now. He just hoped Satan hadn’t left his brother tied up in some basement in Bulgaria or wherever; it would be a bitch getting out of the country right now.
He discarded the idea of a hot semi-shower when he failed to find anything that would hold more than a gallon of water at a time, settling for a tepid sponge bath instead. Afterwards he bedded down for the night. The flickering embers of the dining room table illuminated a worn sleeping bag in front of the fire and he lay down fully dressed. There were beds upstairs, he knew, but it was far too cold to sleep there and he didn’t feel like dragging a mattress down a flight of stairs. The floor would do.
Sleep, fitful as it was, brought the usual problems with it. Dean tossed and turned on the hard floor, reliving snatches of his time in Hell that became mixed with the bits and pieces that he remembered from Michael’s possession. He gave up on sleep before dawn and built up the fire just enough to heat up some water. Coffee was scarce, but he’d managed to scrounge up a jar of instant not too long ago and he savored a cup of it now. A year ago he would have snorted at it in disgust, but caffeine was caffeine.
Before he left he searched the house carefully, looking for anything useful that he could fit in the saddlebags of his bike or the pockets of his coat. There were some dried fruit and a few other non-perishable food items still in the basement, but he had the feeling the house had already been plundered. There was an old wool blanket folded up in a cupboard that he added to his bedroll and a bar of soap tucked away in a corner of the mildewed bathroom that he added to his meager pile.
He filled up the bags methodically, making sure that nothing truly sensitive to heat would be leaning against a warmer part of the bike, and made one last sweep to make sure that he had left nothing behind. The sword was settled into its sheath on the bike, something Dean had modified from a shotgun holster. He settled the duster onto his shoulders, letting his hand linger on the amulet hanging around his neck. Sometimes he worried that he would lose it again, the last tie he had with his brother, and nearly strangled himself with the cord checking for its presence. With his mind already on the next place on his list (Erie, PA, actually on his not very likely list, but he was relatively close and it couldn’t hurt to check), Dean rolled the bike out onto the street, got onto it and drove into the early-morning sunshine.
In the old days, the trip would have taken maybe an hour and a half on the interstate. As it stood now, Dean just managed to get there in time to find a place to hole up for the night. He’d had to stop and walk the bike several different times during the course of the day, and even when the way had been clear enough to ride through there were multiple road blocks along the highway, set up at every exit. Bureaucracy had apparently recovered from the apocalypse and hooked up with martial law. This was the first he’d seen of any of these kinds of road blocks since he started looking for Sam, and it was a little worrying. He really didn’t need any more delays. Every minute he spent dealing with some moron who didn’t know how to assess a threat was a minute Dean’s brother was alone.
After a chilly night spent in a drafty, creaking barn, Dean performed the familiar ritual of packing up his shit and heading out to explore the town.
Despite his ‘not likely’ label, Dean could tell the instant he set foot in the town that Lucifer had been there. It was probably something left over from Michael, but he could practically smell the Devil’s presence, too sweet and cloying and just off, like rotting strawberries. Better yet, he could also tell that Michael hadn’t been here. Erie, PA lacked the almost clean feel of dry desert air and ozone. And if Michael hadn’t been through here on his brother’s heels, Sam might be hidden somewhere. Hopefully with food and water. Even if he hadn’t developed this particular awareness, he could have seen Lucifer’s fingerprints in the way the place had been decimated.
There were still pieces and parts of rotting corpses in the ditches and streets, their condition varying from skeleton to oddly fresh, which probably meant that not all of the bodies were human. Lucifer hadn’t been too picky about what he destroyed; human or god, demon or angel, they were all dismantled with the kind of glee that would put a serial killer to shame.
There were crows gathered thickly, pecking tenaciously at the occasional dismembered arm or torso of whatever monsters Lucifer had killed in this particular town. They seemed to glare at him sullenly as he drove past them, somehow creepier than the body parts of varying levels of decomposition strewn across the landscape. The birds were the only living things that he could see as he traveled through the city streets. It was, all in all, pretty much the freakiest thing Dean had ever seen in his long and storied career, and if it weren’t for the fact that Sam could be stashed somewhere in this wrecked town he would never have set foot here willingly. Even a hunter had to have his limits somewhere. Dean could feel the wrongness of the place even now, wanted to be anywhere but this desolate ruin, but Lucifer had been here. Sam might be here, tucked away in one of these houses for safe-keeping.
Dean would stay until he’d turned over every stone looking for his brother, no matter how long it took. This was the first truly solid possibility that he’d had in a long time, and he wasn’t leaving until he was sure that Sam wasn’t here.
He found a house to set up in, one that was clear of rotting human remains, painted a slightly more permanent set of Devil’s Traps and Seals of Solomon near all the doors and in front of the chimney, and took the time to lay down heavy salt lines on all the outside walls. Dean wouldn’t be surprised if all sorts of things would be attracted to the putrid scent that Lucifer had left behind, even if it gave him a migraine. Then he went out and got started.
He’d cleared the immediate neighborhood before sunset, steering clear of the eerily pristine body parts until he’d developed a plan of attack for disposing of them. Dean had a feeling he was going to need a set of barbecue tongs and a wheelbarrow when he could clear out a good spot for a salt and burn. It was a bad idea to leave this many potential ghosts hanging around, and clearing them out would probably go a long way toward making the area palatable again. As it was, even Dean was having a hard time staying here with Lucifer’s stench hanging over everything. It was no wonder the place was deserted. Anyone who had survived had retreated.
The next day began a routine. He scrounged up a wheelbarrow from one of the houses and would collect bones and . . .other things as he checked each building to make sure Sam wasn’t trapped somewhere inside. About an hour before sunset he’d set up a burial pit and salt and burn what he’d collected throughout the day. It was hard, back-breaking work, more mind-numbing than anything he’d done in a long time, but he plodded through the town methodically.
Dean was aware that even if he did find Sam, at this point it was likely to be a moldering corpse wearing a familiar jacket or a dried-out, desiccated husk because he’d been easy prey for some creature or another. He knew that the chances of finding his brother alive grew smaller every day, but he still looked. It was Sam. He’d keep looking for his brother until he dropped dead, and then he was planning on staking out heaven until Sammy showed up so he could give his brother hell about disappearing like this.
It didn’t matter if it took the rest of his life to find his brother, Dean Winchester was going to do it.
It took two weeks to determine that Sam was not in Erie, possibly had never been in Erie. As he began to undo the damage that had been done to the town by putting the souls of the people who’d been killed to rest, the overwhelming miasma of Lucifer’s influence began to lift and he could pinpoint exactly where the son of a bitch had been. Those places showed unbelievable damage, but no sign of his little brother. He was back at square one.
***
As was his new habit, Dean left Erie shortly after dawn once the place had been cleared. There were lots of things that were at least a little hampered by sunlight, and he liked to give himself every advantage these days. Michael and Lucifer had done a number on the planet, stirring up all sorts of things that had been dormant for a long time, and things got dicey pretty quickly when you were alone, which was something Dean was not thinking about right now.
Damn it.
He missed Sam like someone had torn out his kidney, that went without saying, but it wasn’t just his brother’s loss that hurt. Cas was dead, killed by Lucifer because he’d gotten in the way. Bobby had gone out in a blaze of glory, taking the Croatoan virus and the king of the crossroads with him. A lot of hunters had died in the aftermath of Michael and Lucifer’s mess, and the few who were alive wanted nothing to do with Dean Winchester. They’d all gotten hunter’s funerals, salted and burned and the ashes spread the way it should be.
All of this demonstrated exactly why he needed to find Sam. No one else was going to look for him. There probably weren’t many people left who even knew who Sam Winchester was, let alone why and how he’d been able to at least partially derail the apocalypse. Dean was the only person left who cared about what happened to Sam. Even if the conclusion to all of this was Sam’s funeral pyre, it would be worth it. They’d gotten a preview of the afterlife just before he’d said yes, and he’d see Sam there.
He managed to trap a demon two days out of Erie, in Barboursville, WV. It was stupid and greedy and had recognized Dean from that hit Lucifer had put out on him more than a year ago, but somehow had missed out on the memo that Lucifer was dead and unable to pay out on that hit. It broke into the barn that he’d chosen for the night and stumbled right into a devil’s trap. Dean had never believed in Divine Providence, and he was pretty sure that there was no one looking out for him anymore, but he had no problem accepting an opportunity when it jumped into the frying pan on its own.
Luckily, in this case, stupid also turned out to be easily intimidated. Just the presence of Michael’s Sword, held casually in his hand while Dean asked his questions, was enough to make stunt demon #44 spill everything he knew. Dean hadn’t even needed to break out the holy water.
It wasn’t much, since he hadn’t been close enough to the action to even know that his boss had been dead for months. It was so cut off from the gossip chain that Dean almost felt bad for it, and it had no idea where Lucifer might have stashed Sam, or even where the devil might have been before Dean had powered up with Michael. Really, it knew even less than Dean, with the exception of one priceless piece of information: the name of the current head of deal-making and crossroads.
Dean thanked his captive for that prize with a quick slash of the sword. The host was long-dead, given the damage he could see to the body. The demons couldn’t afford to be too choosy with their meatsuits these days. People were more cautious in the aftermath of the averted apocalypse. The tattoo over his heart was becoming a very popular design, along with a number of other options that served the same purpose. Besides, an exorcism would just leave an enemy at his back somewhere down the road. If he couldn’t save a life, there was no point in wasting the breath to speak the Latin.
He dragged the body out to a clearing in the woods and performed a salt and burn over the corpse of the teenager before wearily packing up his things and heading off on his bike. He doubted that anyone was still looking for the teenager, but this community was actually pretty tightly-knit compared to some of the ones he’d seen in his recent travels (the reason behind his decision to camp out in an old barn) and someone would probably spot the smoke and come to investigate. Dean needed to be long gone before that happened if he wanted to avoid the kind of frontier justice that was becoming the norm pretty much everywhere.
It took another day or so of riding south and west until he found a place he was comfortable staying while he made his plans and preparations. The cabin was in good condition and very conveniently isolated, but the area surrounding was completely free of any demonic influence. He could use that neutrality. There was no point in giving a potentially powerful enemy any advantage by allowing this to happen at one of Lucifer’s hotspots.
And then he called up the new King of the Crossroads.
He’d actually recognized the name from his time in the pit. Alistair had always spoken disparagingly of Septimus, but then Alistair didn’t care about much but torture and had very little patience for any demon that spent more time jockeying for position than rending souls. Septimus had liked to collect information and then trade it for the only commodity that hell really had: souls. Everything boiled down to the number of souls a demon had managed to ensnare.
Dean had no intention of selling his soul again. He wasn’t even sure that they would want it if he should make the offer, well aware that he was damaged goods because he’d already been broken on the rack. But there were other things, useful even to demons, and he had one of them hidden away in the bottom of his saddlebag. He had a feeling Septimus would deal with him, if the demon could come up with his end of the bargain.
He was so close to finding Sammy, he could tell, could practically fucking taste it in the pleasantly cool air around him.
“Well,” came the voice behind him. “This is a surprise, Dean.”
Dean turned to face the demon. Septimus hadn’t bothered to find an attractive woman like most crossroads demons did. He’d probably just grabbed the first reasonably healthy body he could find and hightailed it out here to the cabin, which meant that he was currently possessing a sturdy woman who was probably in her fifties. “Septimus.”
“Have you finally decided to take the position your brother opened up?” There was a sly, darkly amused expression that was utterly foreign to the woman’s face. “You were pretty much the best of the old bastard’s protégés. They tended to have pretty short shelf lives once Alistair remade them. Brittle, every single one of them.”
“Not interested, thanks. I might have something else that you’d like to get your hands on, though. If you were willing to make a trade.”
He saw a flicker in the demon’s eyes and knew that the bait was working, at least a little. “Now what could you possibly have that I would want?”
Dean stared at Septimus dispassionately and reached behind him, unhooking the knife from the sheath at the small of his back and holding it in front of him. “How about this?”
Septimus tilted the head of the woman he was wearing, studying the weapon with greedy eyes. “Now why would I need that?”
“Think of it as an insurance policy. Right now, there isn’t a demon in existence that this thing can’t kill.” Michael had made sure of that, and that part Dean remembered. The upper levels of Hell had been cleared, probably to ensure the chaos that resulted. “Now that might change in a hundred years or so, but until then this would probably come in handy as a little bit of leverage.”
“Hmm. And what would you want in exchange for that little trinket?” Septimus was trying to act coy, but the demon’s eyes hadn’t left the blade since it had made its appearance.
“Information.” Dean flipped the blade in the air, tossing it back and forth rhythmically without taking his eyes off the demon. “I want to know where my brother Sam is right now.”
Septimus tore his eyes away from the knife and met Dean’s. “You must be joking,” he said incredulously.
“Can you find out?”
“Of course.”
“Come back here in twenty-four hours and the knife is yours if you tell me exactly where Sam is.” Dean grinned at the eagerness he could detect in the demon, but the expression was dark rather than bright and he could feel the demon flinch. “And Septimus? The information better be good. Because if it isn’t, I’m going to summon you up and remind exactly why I was Alistair’s star pupil. I am not fucking around with you right now.”
The demon was gone between one blink and the next, the smug look on his face reverberating in Dean’s memory. He was going to have to put the next step of the plan in place or the knife wouldn’t be enough leverage.
Septimus returned in twenty-two hours, not twenty-four. He was probably trying to catch Dean unaware, but the hunter had been in the business for far too long and had been waiting for him for most of the day. The demon had taken the time to switch meatsuits, exchanging the body of the older woman with a far younger and more attractive model. She wasn’t dressed in a black cocktail dress the way crossroads demons had preferred back in the old days, as such impractical clothing had fallen by the wayside, but she was wearing a smart pantsuit that screamed ‘urban professional.’ That particular tactic didn’t really work on Dean, since he’d seen the ugliness of Septimus’ true face before.
“Do you have what I want?” There was no point in wasting time being coy and diplomatic at this point. If this gambit didn’t work, Dean would probably never find his brother in this lifetime. He was tired of the games.
“Of course, I have it. But I’m afraid the price has gone up.”
Dean raised one eyebrow. “Really? You don’t really sound that broken up about it, Septimus.”
The demon sighed, the shapely bosom of its host rising dramatically with the movement. “I know. I’m working on my acting skills, but I’m not quite where I need to be.”
“Yeah, I can see that. You’re sure the info’s good?”
There was a sly, sharp smile. “Oh, it’s good. Sam Winchester is alive, and I know exactly where my father had him stashed. I can even give you precise instructions on how to avoid any of the more eclectic guardians that have been set up.”
“Let me guess. You’d like my soul in exchange for all that goodwill.”
Septimus shuddered. “Not a chance. I have a feeling that you’d have my job with a year. No, I want the sword as well.”
Dean blinked. That was unexpected. “I’m pretty sure that no demons can actually touch it.”
“I’d settle for it being destroyed,” Septimus offered.
“Nice try, but how about a counter offer? You tell me where Sam is, I’ll give you the knife, and I let you walk away.”
Septimus sniffed. “Your counter offer sounds remarkably like your original offer.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and leave the table, then.” Dean’s face was impassive, though he was smiling inside. “I’ll find someone else I can deal with.”
“No one else will deal with you if I tell them not to,” Septimus said, his tone and bearing confident.
“Really? You sure about that? ‘Cause I have a hard time believing that you’ve got that tight of a control on every single demon.” He glared at the demon, hard eyes boring into it. “Do you think I’ve forgotten how Hell works, Septimus? You and I both know that Invidia would love to get a hold of this thing, and it’s going for a bargain price as it is.”
“Fine,” Septimus bit out, reaching into the clutch bag tucked under one slender arm. Dean accepted the folded sheaf of papers, flipping through them to see the maps and notes about the place. “He’s in a root cellar in Virginia. Lucifer brought a house down on top of it, but it was pretty well-stocked. If you can manage to get there in time, he should make it.”
“And the guardians?”
“There aren’t any. I lied.” The demon made an odd gesture before its borrowed face was filled with rage. “What did you do?”
Dean grinned, feeling suddenly light. “No kiss necessary, thanks. It’s pretty hard for me to forget what you really look like.” He dropped the knife point-down into the dirt at his feet. It was a shame to lose it, but he had a feeling that the extra stuff left over from Mike’s possession told him how to make a new one. He was actually looking forward to that experience, once he got his brother to Bobby’s.
“You told me I was free to go!”
“Relax,” Dean said, walking out of the demon’s line of sight. He loosened a couple of bolts and pulled the iron bar that closed the devil’s trap free from its place on the symbol. “I needed to make sure that you would stay where I needed you until we were done. Go.” He ignored the hateful look the demon sent him, already focusing on what he would need when he found his brother.
He was almost home.
***
Every time the debris shifted, Sam heard it. There wasn’t much else to do or pay attention to down here. It hadn’t taken long to commit every inch of the place to memory by feel; the space was too small for it to be otherwise. He’d mentally reviewed every book he could remember, up to and including Chuck’s little travesties, but eventually what details he could remember became worn around the edges. Sometimes it seemed like there had never been a before, that there was only this place and its dirt walls that were exactly three steps long and insects that crawled over his exposed skin and jars of unknown substances that he was forced to eat to survive. Other times he decided that he’d died and was in Hell, that he would be here in this small space for all eternity with no light and no company. Lucifer had a decent sense of irony, from what he could tell, and Sam had spent a good part of his life asking to be left alone. Only the occasional shifting above him convinced him that he was wrong on both counts.
There had been more noise recently. Sam had no idea how long that had been going on; he had lost all sense of day and night long ago and measured time in how many jars with dubious contents he had gone through compared to how many he could feel on the shelf (one jar of some kind of fruit, eaten very slowly and then sipping the liquid until every drop was gone, eight jars still on the shelf). It sounded like it was directly overhead, but Sam’s mind and hearing had played tricks on him like that before.
Then he heard a solid, distinct thump against the wooden doors directly overhead, followed by another and then a third, each one accompanied by scraping and scratching and a light shower of dirt raining down through the cracks. Sam’s heart rhythm ratcheted up instantly until his pulse pounded in his ears.
The quiet that followed the jarring noises was almost painful before a familiar voice filled it. “Sam?”
Dean. Dean was here. Sam felt tears prick his eyes. He tried to answer his brother, but ended up choking on the dust.
“Sam, I’m getting you out of there. Hang on.” The sounds around the doors grew more concentrated, louder and more fierce with every pass, until finally one and then the other came free from their moorings and he was breathing fresh air.
He was expecting unbearable brightness, but the light was dim and he had a wild, panicked moment that he’d gone blind or that something had happened to the sun. Then he caught a glimpse of the full moon overhead and realized it was night.
His brother was backlit by the moonlight, face in shadow, but Sam knew it was Dean. He felt scarred, calloused hands brush past his gnarled, unkempt beard and hair, strong arms locking underneath his own and lifting him out like he was a little kid. “Dean,” he finally managed.
“It’s OK, Sammy. I’ve got you.”
And Sam was finally home.