SPN FIC - Journey (Chapter 9, part 2 of 3)
JOURNEY began here: http://ficwriter1966.livejournal.com/9849.html#cutid1
Chapter 9 continues...
Journey
By Carol Davis
Chapter Nine
Convergence (continued)
What Sam liked was reading. Asking people questions about weather and local history. Watching educational programs on cable TV when they could get the right channels. He was a little pudgy bookworm geek. And what was the harm?
“I can -“ Dean began. “I’ll do it.”
“Do what?”
“You know. Watch Sam’s back.”
Dad made a noise Dean couldn’t quite figure out because he couldn’t see Dad’s face. It was mournful, sort of. Sad. But when Dad turned back to look at him, he was frowning. Wearing the “Would you do what you’re goddamn told” expression. “He needs to be trained,” he said, and that was that.
In spite of all Dad’s training, Sam could sleep like the dead. Could wake up fast, all the way up, like somebody had flipped a switch in his brain, but if he was out he was out.
Dean sat on the edge of his bed and watched Sam sleep for a while. How the baby he, as a four-year-old, had been able to carry in his arms had turned out to be so freaking enormous, he couldn’t fathom. Maybe all the mac-and-cheese had done some good, somehow.
“There is good, Dean.”
There might or might not be Good, capital G, but there was right, and what was right, here and now, was letting Sammy sleep.
Letting him sit this one out.
Because there was just something totally wrong about his brother sitting there on the bed, not at all horrified about what Dean had done to Babykay. A bunch of years ago Sam had had a shrieking conniption fit because Dean had plugged a pigeon - easy-squeezy, like it was a video game, sight the thing, pull the trigger, absorb the recoil, watch the headless corpse go flopping into the dirt.
“It was a pigeon, Sam.”
Sam’s eyebrows were jammed together in a big knot in the middle of his forehead. “Supernatural stuff,” he insisted. “We kill supernatural stuff. Not birds.”
“It wasn’t a bird, it was a pigeon.”
Sam stirred once as Dean padded toward the door, then settled in again. He was used to Dean moving around during the night - running the water, flushing the toilet, turning the TV on, sifting through the contents of his duffel. Even the soft creak of the door opening wouldn’t rouse him, because Dean had left their room a hundred times: to walk off his restlessness, check on the car, get himself a drink.
Dean pulled the door shut gently and stood there with his hand on the knob. It had been good, having Sam around to watch his back - they’d fallen into a rhythm, this last couple of years, something they’d never had when the three of them were hunting. Or when he was hunting with Dad and Sam was sulking in the car.
It’d felt good, right, natural.
And that was all kinds of fucked up, because Sam had never wanted this.
It was a gift, Dean thought, to walk away, to let Sam go on sleeping, to do this on his own. He should have done that in the first place - let Sam stay at the Marriott, waiting for Sarah to come back. Except that that was all screwed up, too, by whatever had been walking Sarah around like a marionette. He moved silently away from the door thinking that there was not a single part of this that was not monumentally screwed up.
It was a couple of miles to Torini Brothers, and he covered it in less than half an hour, moving steadily but not particularly fast. He left the Impala behind this time, letting the walk prepare him, help him find his center.
The place was dark, silent, empty.
Dean let the door drift shut behind him and moved carefully inside, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the lack of light. The dirty windows let in enough moonlight for him to make out the bulky shapes of the old machinery and avoid them. He pulled the Glock from his belt more for the comfort of having something to hold than any other reason and kept going until he was midway into the room.
A couple of years ago, people had worked here. Dozens of them, probably, putting in their eight hours a day.
The place had been filled with the hum and grind and whirr of machinery, with voices, with movement, with life.
And death, of course.
Maybe an accident or two, because that always happened around machinery.
Voices. Camaraderie. Practical jokes and hazing and commiseration and concern and bitching both good-natured and not.
People coming and going, retiring, taking vacations, going off somewhere with spouses and kids and then coming back, doing it all again. Celebrating quitting time with a beer, shuffling in to start the day’s shift with early-morning bleary eyes.
Getting promoted, getting fired, getting called on the carpet.
All gone now.
The place was silent except for a rustling sound Dean assumed was rats. And a dripping. Dripping, because when he looked toward the conveyor belt he could see a dark shape hanging from one of the hooks above it. A dark shape that wasn’t really there, was only the phantom of Jack Curtis being conjured for his benefit.
“I’m here, you babykilling fuck,” Dean said sharply. “Come on out and play.”
He didn’t have to say it twice. Footsteps tapped against the floor behind him: the soles of fine leather shoes connecting with the cement.
“Dean,” the demon crooned. “How nice of you to stop by.”
Dean turned. There was no point in doing it quickly, trying to draw a bead on the thing; the demon would see it coming. So he simply turned, found his footing, and let the Glock hang at hip level.
“You’ve been busy with that, haven’t you?”
“Why?” Dean demanded.
The demon leaned against a piece of battered, useless equipment from which one of the protective panels had been pulled away. A large yellow sign over his head screamed Caution, which would have been funny, except that…it wasn’t. He seemed to be examining his shoes, resting his weight on his heels so he could swivel his toes back and forth. “Ah, Dean,” he offered bemusedly. “Because it’s fun.”
“Why her?”
“No particular reason.”
“Where’s the other one? The one we got rid of?”
“Got rid of?” That made the thing laugh. “Because Sam did that bit of gobbledygook, you think you got rid of my little friend? Hardly. She’s around. Waiting for the opportunity to try on a new suit. She’ll pop up when she’s ready.”
“Pop her up now.”
“So you can take on both of us? That’s ambitious.”
“I want it over. Now. Tonight.”
“I know you do,” the demon said. He glanced up at the ceiling, smiling when the light fixtures began to come to life. Half of them were broken, but that seemed to make no difference; they all gave off a pale red-yellow glow, like firelight. “Better,” he announced.
Dean could see him now, better than he’d been able to back in the liquor store parking lot. Could see the black eyes that drew in light and held onto it.
“So…alone?” the demon asked.
“Alone.”
“You must think you have a reasonable chance of coming out of this.”
“Whatever.”
“And if you don’t…then it’s a good death? Is that what you think? You’ll draw your last breath trying to take me down, and that makes it worthwhile? Dean, Dean,” the demon chuckled. “It’s like walking in front of a bus.”
Dean stared him down. “What’s it like?”
“Hmm?”
“Being so freaking sure you’ll win?”
“I don’t know, Dean. You tell me. Oh, but that’s right - you’re never sure you’ll win, are you? Unless you’re taking down something that’s smaller than you. Or slower, or dumber. Basically…an animal. Otherwise you just go in with guns blazing and hope that when the smoke clears, one of the parties that’s still vertical will be you.” The demon paused, swiveling his left foot. “It’s been a long time since you were sure of yourself, hasn’t it? Just about - ah, I can pick a date. Since before your father gave himself up for you. You’ve been floundering a lot since then. Letting your anger fly blindly. Beheading things. Stabbing things. And that helps, doesn’t it? The killing. Watching the breath go out of something, with the reassurance that it’s okay, it’s not human. Shame about tonight. About that little girl you killed.”
“You miserable son of a bitch,” Dean spat.
“I would think there’d be more gratitude involved,” the demon said. “After all - haven’t you been wondering these last few months how much worse your life could possibly get? Losing your father, and being burdened with what he told you, more or less on his deathbed? Knowing that the” - he pitched his voice melodramatically - “forces of evil are after little Sammy, and that you’re charged with protecting him? You, Dean Winchester, who by your own admission are not Superman. That’s quite the load to carry. So you slogged on, day after day, wondering how many floors further down that escalator was going to go. I believe my little friend and I helped you find out just how many. And I would think you’d be at least a little grateful to us for answering the question. Because mysteries can drag on for just so long before they become tedious and uninteresting.”
“Jesus, the monologuing. Do you all do that? You take a class in it, or what?”
Grinning, the demon crossed his legs at the ankles. “I’ll give you that. I suppose it’s a consequence of going too long without someone to talk to. It all gets stored up and does tend to come out in a sort of verbal diarrhea.”
Dean took a step toward him.
And the demon beckoned to him. “Bring it on, Deano.”
Another step. The demon wasn’t moving; it was an easy shot.
But the Glock seemed to weigh fifty pounds.
“Dean,” said the demon. “Now this is a surprise. You’re the last person I would suspect of having erectile difficulties. But I understand. I look human, don’t I? Because of my mode of transportation.”
Even in the dim light Dean could see the demon’s eyes change. They weren’t black now; they were blue.
“Let me introduce you to the artist formerly known as Adam Dawes.”
For an instant, it was Adam Dawes - whoever he was, or had been - looking out of those eyes. Terrified, helpless. How much the demon had let the man see since the possession had taken place, Dean could only guess, but the level of panic in that glimpse seized Dean like a violent cramp.
The eyes blinked, turned black again. “And therein lies the rub,” the demon sighed. “Shoot me, you murder Adam Dawes. Some might ask the question: is there any hope at all for Mr. Dawes? Do I intend to send him on his merry way once I’ve finished making use of his admittedly well-tended body? Or is the situation the same as it was for poor little Katherine Ellis? That was her real name, you know. Katherine.”
“Bastard,” Dean whispered.
“Because we made you do it? Come on, Dean. We didn’t make you do anything.”
“You could have left her alone.”
“Why? So she could continue that storybook life of hers? How long do you think it would have lasted? Do you have any clue how much disease is crawling around in that four-walled toilet she called a home? How much disease was crawling around inside of her?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
The Glock had drooped down so that it was level with Dean’s groin. Noting that made the demon chuckle. “If not disease, then drugs. If not drugs, then something else. All we did was set in front of you a difficult choice, and you did choose. Let yourself understand: it wasn’t the choice itself that was the test. It’s what you say to yourself afterwards.” Moving with an easy grace, he pushed away from the broken machinery and began to circle around Dean. When he stood in front of Dean he feigned a grab for the gun - enough of a prompt to make Dean almost unconsciously jerk the Glock up and aim it. “Good boy,” the demon beamed. “Still a little bounce left in you yet. Your daddy would be proud.”
“Shut up about my dad,” Dean hissed.
“Suuuuuch a sore spot. Even though you have no idea where your father is. For all you know, Hell could be better than this place.”
“Yeah? Is that why everybody wants out?”
“Don’t they want out of here? Granted, you’re not intimately familiar with a lot of the souls trudging through this earthly existence, but you do watch the news now and then. Half of them are dying of starvation of one kind or another. And a very impressive number are beaten and abused every single day by” - the demon smirked - “loved ones. Maybe it’s me, but that doesn’t seem very Norman Rockwell-ish. Tell me, am I wrong? Are you under the impression that everyone else on this earth is delirious with joy, and you’re the only one whose life is a gigantic, festering pile of shit? That would be fabulously egocentric of you, young Mr. Winchester.”
He resumed his circling then, letting Dean struggle with the gun as if it was a cannon. He’d walked a few steps when he noticed an old scrap of paper lying on the floor and began teasing at it with the toe of one shoe. When he tired of that he went on walking.
“‘I got plenty o’ nothin’,” he sang softly, almost under his breath.
The Glock bobbled up and down.
“The thing is, Dean, I can hand you a mind-bogglingly long list of people who are wandering through life mumbling ‘I hate this fucking job.’ People who have no home. People who have watched family members die in hideous pain. You belong to a not terribly discriminating club - and yet you insist on claiming that you’re alone. Misery builds walls, doesn’t it? Builds them high and wide and deep. Makes you stamp your foot and howl, ‘My life does suck, dammit! It does, it does, it really sucks!’ To which I respond: spare me.”
“Walk away, then,” Dean said in a voice that trembled far more than he had hoped it would. “If I bore you so frigging much, get out of my life.”
“But then what would you learn?”
“I don’t need to learn anything from you,” Dean snarled.
“Why? Because I’m eeeeeeevil?”
“Because you’re a thing.”
“So the lesson would only be valuable if it were coming from…say, Sam? All righty, then. Let’s take a little trip in the old Wayback Machine.”
The demon flicked the fingers of both hands, then grinned, pleased with his own theatricality. Nothing happened for a moment.
“I can’t talk to you now, Dean.”
Sam’s voice, coming out of the air, as if out of some non-existent tape player. “Remember?” the demon asked. “December of 2002. Sam’s freshman year at Stanford. Daddy Dearest had taken off again for parts unknown, and you were bored. So you called Sam. And he said…”
Again: “I can’t talk to you now, Dean.”
“Why? You got someplace to be?”
“Actually, I do.”
“Then call me when you get back.”
“Why? So you can tell me more about how you got chewed up by that thing? No, I don’t think it’s funny that if it’d bit down one more time, you would’ve lost a finger. That’s not funny, it’s sickening. And I don’t want to hear anything more about Ronnie or Roxie or whatever the hell her name was. I have to go, Dean.”
“Yeah. Okay, whatever.”
“Dean…”
“I said okay.”
“Just walk, man. Walk away from it. It’s not a life, Dean.”
“It’s my life, Sam. The job. I’m helping people.”
“Do you even hear yourself? You wander around after Dad like some kind of dimwitted dog. He’s got you scammed, Dean! Walk away from it. Get a real job. Someplace to live. Friends, man. A girlfriend who’s got a last name.”
“Some kind of dimwitted dog,” the demon said. “That’s touching. Considering how much you gave up for him. Nothing worse than an ungrateful child, is there?”
Dean had no comeback. The best he could manage was to turn away.
“So here you are. Afraid to connect to anyone because it’s hell when your affection isn’t returned.”
“I do fine.”
“Reeeeeally?” the demon squealed. Then his voice dropped an octave. “How’s the weather in Denial, Deano? Tell me - how many times did you call him at Stanford and get nothing but voicemail? How many nights did you sit and listen to your father rant about Sam - wanting to run, but knowing Sam wouldn’t take you in?”
“I didn’t want to leave my dad.”
“You didn’t want to leave your Daddy. I believe there’s a distinction there.”
Dean’s head bobbed up. “Why don’t you -“
“Why don’t I what, Dean?”
And Dean’s answer hung there in the air as if he had spoken it aloud: Kill me.
“Before you can fail. That’s what it boils down to, doesn’t it? Your father left you with one final challenge, and you’re afraid you’re not up to it.” The demon huffed out a breath laden with wry humor. “Dean Winchester, legendary badass. Barely more than a shadow as you roll from town to town in search of evil to vanquish and innocent souls to rescue. Needing nothing more than a little booze and the occasional quickie in the back seat to smooth over the rough edges. The classic hero, leaving people behind to wonder, ‘Who was that masked man?’”
He resumed strolling the circle with Dean at its center. “Your father taught you to ask for nothing. No gushing show of gratitude, and certainly no monetary reward. What would you do with it, anyway? Buy yourself an island?”
The mockery made Dean glare at him.
“Ah, Dean,” he said, undaunted. “A hug, a murmur of thanks, and off you go. Just like your father taught you.”
“I don’t need nothin’,” Dean muttered. “I help people.”
“Hmm. Even when the coffers are empty, you give. Remarkable, really, the way you keep paying out when nothing’s coming back in. One would have thought you’d run dry long before this. Tell me, Dean - what does ‘six days’ mean to you?”
Dean frowned, shook his head.
“Are you sure?”
It took a moment for the answer to come. “Thought it the other night. Six days since anything bad happened.”
“And that’s it? That’s all it means.”
“What the hell else would it mean?”
“Then you don’t remember Boise?”
Dean stared at the demon in its Adam Dawes suit for a moment, blank and puzzled. Then, to the demon’s amusement, Dean’s expression shifted violently before he spun on one heel and began to walk away. Toward the door, toward the rest of the world.
“Deeeaaaaan,” the demon called.
And Dean kept walking.
“May of 1990?” the demon persisted. “Outside of Boise, Idaho. You and Dad and Sam were staying at the Three Forks Motel, I believe. Except that…it was really just you and Sam, wasn’t it?”
Dean had gotten halfway to the door.
Smiling, hands in the pockets of his jacket, the demon strolled over to join him. “You remember that, don’t you, Dean?”
“Got nothing to do with anything.”
“Dad went off hunting. Not a problem - he’d done that a million times. Left you a handful of ones and some change to buy food. Being - what, eleven? - you weren’t that good at budgeting. Or maybe you just figured he’d be back in a day or two, as usual.”
Dean muttered something inaudibly, prompting the demon to toss him a look that, if his face had still belonged to Adam Dawes, would have been sympathetic.
“The money was gone on the third day. But Dad didn’t come back. The fourth day, you had nothing to eat except a couple of crackers. You went into the coffee shop and scooped half a sandwich off somebody’s plate when they went to the rest room. That was lunch. Dinnertime, you went back over there, but it was closed.” The sympathetic look deepened, prompting Dean to stare at the floor. “When you got back to the room and told Sam there was no food, he told you -“
“I hate you. I want supper. I want Dad.”
“Shut up,” Dean snarled.
“He started that terrible howling you hated. You wanted to smack him, make him stop, but you knew he was hungry. He was being peevish because he was hungry. So you walked down the highway, all alone, in the dark. To the mini-mart at the gas station.”
“I said SHUT UP!”
The demon looked Dean straight in the eye. “You met someone there. Someone who solved your problem. You thought afterwards, you were lucky he didn’t kill you. Or…maybe not.”
Dean had the Glock in one hand, nothing in the other. The empty hand curled into a fist. He could have used either one to shut the demon up.
But the memory curled into his mind.
Six days…
No one had taught him; he’d learned it on his own.
The careful sizing up of the clerk on duty - the way the clerk’s attention was mostly on the portable TV on the counter behind the rack of batteries, where something that sounded like a ball game was playing.
Then, the examination of the rest of the store, one aisle at a time.
A package of Hostess cupcakes would quiet Sammy down, and it was small - he could take a couple of them, tuck them into his jacket. And…yes. They had little cartons of milk. He wasn’t sure he could open the cooler door without making a noise that would alert the clerk, but he’d have to chance it. The cupcakes weren’t enough for supper. Sammy would need something good for him. He’d take two of the cartons of milk and try to convince Sammy to drink both. If they were chocolate, Sammy wouldn’t argue much.
The cupcakes disappeared into his jacket and Dean tried to ignore the way his heart went thumpa thumpa thumpa.
Okay, the milk.
He grasped the cooler door’s handle and gently eased it open, exhaling only when the door made a soft ffffpwock and nothing more. The cold feel of the waxed-paper cartons through his shirt made him shudder, and he had to brace an arm across his belly to keep everything from falling out the bottom of his jacket. Slowly, he eased the door closed.
Now…
“Do you have the money to pay for those?” a voice asked him softly.
Dean bit back the sound that jumped into his throat and turned his head. There was a guy standing at the end of the pet-food-and-paper-products aisle, hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking at him. Younger than Dad. Too young to be the owner, and he wasn’t wearing a nametag. Just a customer. Just a lousy, nosy customer.
“Do you?” the guy prompted.
“‘S for my brother,” Dean muttered.
“What’s your name?”
Chapter 9 concludes here: http://ficwriter1966.livejournal.com/18233.html#cutid1
Chapter 9 continues...
Journey
By Carol Davis
Chapter Nine
Convergence (continued)
What Sam liked was reading. Asking people questions about weather and local history. Watching educational programs on cable TV when they could get the right channels. He was a little pudgy bookworm geek. And what was the harm?
“I can -“ Dean began. “I’ll do it.”
“Do what?”
“You know. Watch Sam’s back.”
Dad made a noise Dean couldn’t quite figure out because he couldn’t see Dad’s face. It was mournful, sort of. Sad. But when Dad turned back to look at him, he was frowning. Wearing the “Would you do what you’re goddamn told” expression. “He needs to be trained,” he said, and that was that.
In spite of all Dad’s training, Sam could sleep like the dead. Could wake up fast, all the way up, like somebody had flipped a switch in his brain, but if he was out he was out.
Dean sat on the edge of his bed and watched Sam sleep for a while. How the baby he, as a four-year-old, had been able to carry in his arms had turned out to be so freaking enormous, he couldn’t fathom. Maybe all the mac-and-cheese had done some good, somehow.
“There is good, Dean.”
There might or might not be Good, capital G, but there was right, and what was right, here and now, was letting Sammy sleep.
Letting him sit this one out.
Because there was just something totally wrong about his brother sitting there on the bed, not at all horrified about what Dean had done to Babykay. A bunch of years ago Sam had had a shrieking conniption fit because Dean had plugged a pigeon - easy-squeezy, like it was a video game, sight the thing, pull the trigger, absorb the recoil, watch the headless corpse go flopping into the dirt.
“It was a pigeon, Sam.”
Sam’s eyebrows were jammed together in a big knot in the middle of his forehead. “Supernatural stuff,” he insisted. “We kill supernatural stuff. Not birds.”
“It wasn’t a bird, it was a pigeon.”
Sam stirred once as Dean padded toward the door, then settled in again. He was used to Dean moving around during the night - running the water, flushing the toilet, turning the TV on, sifting through the contents of his duffel. Even the soft creak of the door opening wouldn’t rouse him, because Dean had left their room a hundred times: to walk off his restlessness, check on the car, get himself a drink.
Dean pulled the door shut gently and stood there with his hand on the knob. It had been good, having Sam around to watch his back - they’d fallen into a rhythm, this last couple of years, something they’d never had when the three of them were hunting. Or when he was hunting with Dad and Sam was sulking in the car.
It’d felt good, right, natural.
And that was all kinds of fucked up, because Sam had never wanted this.
It was a gift, Dean thought, to walk away, to let Sam go on sleeping, to do this on his own. He should have done that in the first place - let Sam stay at the Marriott, waiting for Sarah to come back. Except that that was all screwed up, too, by whatever had been walking Sarah around like a marionette. He moved silently away from the door thinking that there was not a single part of this that was not monumentally screwed up.
It was a couple of miles to Torini Brothers, and he covered it in less than half an hour, moving steadily but not particularly fast. He left the Impala behind this time, letting the walk prepare him, help him find his center.
The place was dark, silent, empty.
Dean let the door drift shut behind him and moved carefully inside, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the lack of light. The dirty windows let in enough moonlight for him to make out the bulky shapes of the old machinery and avoid them. He pulled the Glock from his belt more for the comfort of having something to hold than any other reason and kept going until he was midway into the room.
A couple of years ago, people had worked here. Dozens of them, probably, putting in their eight hours a day.
The place had been filled with the hum and grind and whirr of machinery, with voices, with movement, with life.
And death, of course.
Maybe an accident or two, because that always happened around machinery.
Voices. Camaraderie. Practical jokes and hazing and commiseration and concern and bitching both good-natured and not.
People coming and going, retiring, taking vacations, going off somewhere with spouses and kids and then coming back, doing it all again. Celebrating quitting time with a beer, shuffling in to start the day’s shift with early-morning bleary eyes.
Getting promoted, getting fired, getting called on the carpet.
All gone now.
The place was silent except for a rustling sound Dean assumed was rats. And a dripping. Dripping, because when he looked toward the conveyor belt he could see a dark shape hanging from one of the hooks above it. A dark shape that wasn’t really there, was only the phantom of Jack Curtis being conjured for his benefit.
“I’m here, you babykilling fuck,” Dean said sharply. “Come on out and play.”
He didn’t have to say it twice. Footsteps tapped against the floor behind him: the soles of fine leather shoes connecting with the cement.
“Dean,” the demon crooned. “How nice of you to stop by.”
Dean turned. There was no point in doing it quickly, trying to draw a bead on the thing; the demon would see it coming. So he simply turned, found his footing, and let the Glock hang at hip level.
“You’ve been busy with that, haven’t you?”
“Why?” Dean demanded.
The demon leaned against a piece of battered, useless equipment from which one of the protective panels had been pulled away. A large yellow sign over his head screamed Caution, which would have been funny, except that…it wasn’t. He seemed to be examining his shoes, resting his weight on his heels so he could swivel his toes back and forth. “Ah, Dean,” he offered bemusedly. “Because it’s fun.”
“Why her?”
“No particular reason.”
“Where’s the other one? The one we got rid of?”
“Got rid of?” That made the thing laugh. “Because Sam did that bit of gobbledygook, you think you got rid of my little friend? Hardly. She’s around. Waiting for the opportunity to try on a new suit. She’ll pop up when she’s ready.”
“Pop her up now.”
“So you can take on both of us? That’s ambitious.”
“I want it over. Now. Tonight.”
“I know you do,” the demon said. He glanced up at the ceiling, smiling when the light fixtures began to come to life. Half of them were broken, but that seemed to make no difference; they all gave off a pale red-yellow glow, like firelight. “Better,” he announced.
Dean could see him now, better than he’d been able to back in the liquor store parking lot. Could see the black eyes that drew in light and held onto it.
“So…alone?” the demon asked.
“Alone.”
“You must think you have a reasonable chance of coming out of this.”
“Whatever.”
“And if you don’t…then it’s a good death? Is that what you think? You’ll draw your last breath trying to take me down, and that makes it worthwhile? Dean, Dean,” the demon chuckled. “It’s like walking in front of a bus.”
Dean stared him down. “What’s it like?”
“Hmm?”
“Being so freaking sure you’ll win?”
“I don’t know, Dean. You tell me. Oh, but that’s right - you’re never sure you’ll win, are you? Unless you’re taking down something that’s smaller than you. Or slower, or dumber. Basically…an animal. Otherwise you just go in with guns blazing and hope that when the smoke clears, one of the parties that’s still vertical will be you.” The demon paused, swiveling his left foot. “It’s been a long time since you were sure of yourself, hasn’t it? Just about - ah, I can pick a date. Since before your father gave himself up for you. You’ve been floundering a lot since then. Letting your anger fly blindly. Beheading things. Stabbing things. And that helps, doesn’t it? The killing. Watching the breath go out of something, with the reassurance that it’s okay, it’s not human. Shame about tonight. About that little girl you killed.”
“You miserable son of a bitch,” Dean spat.
“I would think there’d be more gratitude involved,” the demon said. “After all - haven’t you been wondering these last few months how much worse your life could possibly get? Losing your father, and being burdened with what he told you, more or less on his deathbed? Knowing that the” - he pitched his voice melodramatically - “forces of evil are after little Sammy, and that you’re charged with protecting him? You, Dean Winchester, who by your own admission are not Superman. That’s quite the load to carry. So you slogged on, day after day, wondering how many floors further down that escalator was going to go. I believe my little friend and I helped you find out just how many. And I would think you’d be at least a little grateful to us for answering the question. Because mysteries can drag on for just so long before they become tedious and uninteresting.”
“Jesus, the monologuing. Do you all do that? You take a class in it, or what?”
Grinning, the demon crossed his legs at the ankles. “I’ll give you that. I suppose it’s a consequence of going too long without someone to talk to. It all gets stored up and does tend to come out in a sort of verbal diarrhea.”
Dean took a step toward him.
And the demon beckoned to him. “Bring it on, Deano.”
Another step. The demon wasn’t moving; it was an easy shot.
But the Glock seemed to weigh fifty pounds.
“Dean,” said the demon. “Now this is a surprise. You’re the last person I would suspect of having erectile difficulties. But I understand. I look human, don’t I? Because of my mode of transportation.”
Even in the dim light Dean could see the demon’s eyes change. They weren’t black now; they were blue.
“Let me introduce you to the artist formerly known as Adam Dawes.”
For an instant, it was Adam Dawes - whoever he was, or had been - looking out of those eyes. Terrified, helpless. How much the demon had let the man see since the possession had taken place, Dean could only guess, but the level of panic in that glimpse seized Dean like a violent cramp.
The eyes blinked, turned black again. “And therein lies the rub,” the demon sighed. “Shoot me, you murder Adam Dawes. Some might ask the question: is there any hope at all for Mr. Dawes? Do I intend to send him on his merry way once I’ve finished making use of his admittedly well-tended body? Or is the situation the same as it was for poor little Katherine Ellis? That was her real name, you know. Katherine.”
“Bastard,” Dean whispered.
“Because we made you do it? Come on, Dean. We didn’t make you do anything.”
“You could have left her alone.”
“Why? So she could continue that storybook life of hers? How long do you think it would have lasted? Do you have any clue how much disease is crawling around in that four-walled toilet she called a home? How much disease was crawling around inside of her?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
The Glock had drooped down so that it was level with Dean’s groin. Noting that made the demon chuckle. “If not disease, then drugs. If not drugs, then something else. All we did was set in front of you a difficult choice, and you did choose. Let yourself understand: it wasn’t the choice itself that was the test. It’s what you say to yourself afterwards.” Moving with an easy grace, he pushed away from the broken machinery and began to circle around Dean. When he stood in front of Dean he feigned a grab for the gun - enough of a prompt to make Dean almost unconsciously jerk the Glock up and aim it. “Good boy,” the demon beamed. “Still a little bounce left in you yet. Your daddy would be proud.”
“Shut up about my dad,” Dean hissed.
“Suuuuuch a sore spot. Even though you have no idea where your father is. For all you know, Hell could be better than this place.”
“Yeah? Is that why everybody wants out?”
“Don’t they want out of here? Granted, you’re not intimately familiar with a lot of the souls trudging through this earthly existence, but you do watch the news now and then. Half of them are dying of starvation of one kind or another. And a very impressive number are beaten and abused every single day by” - the demon smirked - “loved ones. Maybe it’s me, but that doesn’t seem very Norman Rockwell-ish. Tell me, am I wrong? Are you under the impression that everyone else on this earth is delirious with joy, and you’re the only one whose life is a gigantic, festering pile of shit? That would be fabulously egocentric of you, young Mr. Winchester.”
He resumed his circling then, letting Dean struggle with the gun as if it was a cannon. He’d walked a few steps when he noticed an old scrap of paper lying on the floor and began teasing at it with the toe of one shoe. When he tired of that he went on walking.
“‘I got plenty o’ nothin’,” he sang softly, almost under his breath.
The Glock bobbled up and down.
“The thing is, Dean, I can hand you a mind-bogglingly long list of people who are wandering through life mumbling ‘I hate this fucking job.’ People who have no home. People who have watched family members die in hideous pain. You belong to a not terribly discriminating club - and yet you insist on claiming that you’re alone. Misery builds walls, doesn’t it? Builds them high and wide and deep. Makes you stamp your foot and howl, ‘My life does suck, dammit! It does, it does, it really sucks!’ To which I respond: spare me.”
“Walk away, then,” Dean said in a voice that trembled far more than he had hoped it would. “If I bore you so frigging much, get out of my life.”
“But then what would you learn?”
“I don’t need to learn anything from you,” Dean snarled.
“Why? Because I’m eeeeeeevil?”
“Because you’re a thing.”
“So the lesson would only be valuable if it were coming from…say, Sam? All righty, then. Let’s take a little trip in the old Wayback Machine.”
The demon flicked the fingers of both hands, then grinned, pleased with his own theatricality. Nothing happened for a moment.
“I can’t talk to you now, Dean.”
Sam’s voice, coming out of the air, as if out of some non-existent tape player. “Remember?” the demon asked. “December of 2002. Sam’s freshman year at Stanford. Daddy Dearest had taken off again for parts unknown, and you were bored. So you called Sam. And he said…”
Again: “I can’t talk to you now, Dean.”
“Why? You got someplace to be?”
“Actually, I do.”
“Then call me when you get back.”
“Why? So you can tell me more about how you got chewed up by that thing? No, I don’t think it’s funny that if it’d bit down one more time, you would’ve lost a finger. That’s not funny, it’s sickening. And I don’t want to hear anything more about Ronnie or Roxie or whatever the hell her name was. I have to go, Dean.”
“Yeah. Okay, whatever.”
“Dean…”
“I said okay.”
“Just walk, man. Walk away from it. It’s not a life, Dean.”
“It’s my life, Sam. The job. I’m helping people.”
“Do you even hear yourself? You wander around after Dad like some kind of dimwitted dog. He’s got you scammed, Dean! Walk away from it. Get a real job. Someplace to live. Friends, man. A girlfriend who’s got a last name.”
“Some kind of dimwitted dog,” the demon said. “That’s touching. Considering how much you gave up for him. Nothing worse than an ungrateful child, is there?”
Dean had no comeback. The best he could manage was to turn away.
“So here you are. Afraid to connect to anyone because it’s hell when your affection isn’t returned.”
“I do fine.”
“Reeeeeally?” the demon squealed. Then his voice dropped an octave. “How’s the weather in Denial, Deano? Tell me - how many times did you call him at Stanford and get nothing but voicemail? How many nights did you sit and listen to your father rant about Sam - wanting to run, but knowing Sam wouldn’t take you in?”
“I didn’t want to leave my dad.”
“You didn’t want to leave your Daddy. I believe there’s a distinction there.”
Dean’s head bobbed up. “Why don’t you -“
“Why don’t I what, Dean?”
And Dean’s answer hung there in the air as if he had spoken it aloud: Kill me.
“Before you can fail. That’s what it boils down to, doesn’t it? Your father left you with one final challenge, and you’re afraid you’re not up to it.” The demon huffed out a breath laden with wry humor. “Dean Winchester, legendary badass. Barely more than a shadow as you roll from town to town in search of evil to vanquish and innocent souls to rescue. Needing nothing more than a little booze and the occasional quickie in the back seat to smooth over the rough edges. The classic hero, leaving people behind to wonder, ‘Who was that masked man?’”
He resumed strolling the circle with Dean at its center. “Your father taught you to ask for nothing. No gushing show of gratitude, and certainly no monetary reward. What would you do with it, anyway? Buy yourself an island?”
The mockery made Dean glare at him.
“Ah, Dean,” he said, undaunted. “A hug, a murmur of thanks, and off you go. Just like your father taught you.”
“I don’t need nothin’,” Dean muttered. “I help people.”
“Hmm. Even when the coffers are empty, you give. Remarkable, really, the way you keep paying out when nothing’s coming back in. One would have thought you’d run dry long before this. Tell me, Dean - what does ‘six days’ mean to you?”
Dean frowned, shook his head.
“Are you sure?”
It took a moment for the answer to come. “Thought it the other night. Six days since anything bad happened.”
“And that’s it? That’s all it means.”
“What the hell else would it mean?”
“Then you don’t remember Boise?”
Dean stared at the demon in its Adam Dawes suit for a moment, blank and puzzled. Then, to the demon’s amusement, Dean’s expression shifted violently before he spun on one heel and began to walk away. Toward the door, toward the rest of the world.
“Deeeaaaaan,” the demon called.
And Dean kept walking.
“May of 1990?” the demon persisted. “Outside of Boise, Idaho. You and Dad and Sam were staying at the Three Forks Motel, I believe. Except that…it was really just you and Sam, wasn’t it?”
Dean had gotten halfway to the door.
Smiling, hands in the pockets of his jacket, the demon strolled over to join him. “You remember that, don’t you, Dean?”
“Got nothing to do with anything.”
“Dad went off hunting. Not a problem - he’d done that a million times. Left you a handful of ones and some change to buy food. Being - what, eleven? - you weren’t that good at budgeting. Or maybe you just figured he’d be back in a day or two, as usual.”
Dean muttered something inaudibly, prompting the demon to toss him a look that, if his face had still belonged to Adam Dawes, would have been sympathetic.
“The money was gone on the third day. But Dad didn’t come back. The fourth day, you had nothing to eat except a couple of crackers. You went into the coffee shop and scooped half a sandwich off somebody’s plate when they went to the rest room. That was lunch. Dinnertime, you went back over there, but it was closed.” The sympathetic look deepened, prompting Dean to stare at the floor. “When you got back to the room and told Sam there was no food, he told you -“
“I hate you. I want supper. I want Dad.”
“Shut up,” Dean snarled.
“He started that terrible howling you hated. You wanted to smack him, make him stop, but you knew he was hungry. He was being peevish because he was hungry. So you walked down the highway, all alone, in the dark. To the mini-mart at the gas station.”
“I said SHUT UP!”
The demon looked Dean straight in the eye. “You met someone there. Someone who solved your problem. You thought afterwards, you were lucky he didn’t kill you. Or…maybe not.”
Dean had the Glock in one hand, nothing in the other. The empty hand curled into a fist. He could have used either one to shut the demon up.
But the memory curled into his mind.
Six days…
No one had taught him; he’d learned it on his own.
The careful sizing up of the clerk on duty - the way the clerk’s attention was mostly on the portable TV on the counter behind the rack of batteries, where something that sounded like a ball game was playing.
Then, the examination of the rest of the store, one aisle at a time.
A package of Hostess cupcakes would quiet Sammy down, and it was small - he could take a couple of them, tuck them into his jacket. And…yes. They had little cartons of milk. He wasn’t sure he could open the cooler door without making a noise that would alert the clerk, but he’d have to chance it. The cupcakes weren’t enough for supper. Sammy would need something good for him. He’d take two of the cartons of milk and try to convince Sammy to drink both. If they were chocolate, Sammy wouldn’t argue much.
The cupcakes disappeared into his jacket and Dean tried to ignore the way his heart went thumpa thumpa thumpa.
Okay, the milk.
He grasped the cooler door’s handle and gently eased it open, exhaling only when the door made a soft ffffpwock and nothing more. The cold feel of the waxed-paper cartons through his shirt made him shudder, and he had to brace an arm across his belly to keep everything from falling out the bottom of his jacket. Slowly, he eased the door closed.
Now…
“Do you have the money to pay for those?” a voice asked him softly.
Dean bit back the sound that jumped into his throat and turned his head. There was a guy standing at the end of the pet-food-and-paper-products aisle, hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking at him. Younger than Dad. Too young to be the owner, and he wasn’t wearing a nametag. Just a customer. Just a lousy, nosy customer.
“Do you?” the guy prompted.
“‘S for my brother,” Dean muttered.
“What’s your name?”
Chapter 9 concludes here: http://ficwriter1966.livejournal.com/18233.html#cutid1