Traces - Part 2
Title: Traces
Fandom: Supernatural
Author: Freya922
Characters: Dean, Sam, John, Castiel, Pastor Jim, Bobby
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 for adult language and character death (sort of)
Disclaimer: Obviously, I own nothing, but am grateful to walk in this astounding world others have created.
This continues the story begun in Part 1
It seemed so wrong now, hoarding memories of her and not sharing them with the little boy she’d left so young he had no memory of her at all. Why had they done that? It was Dad they’d shielded with silence, not Sam, Dean thought. They’d stonewalled Sam until he stopped asking, forced to mourn his loss in confused solitude.
Gazing at Sam’s ashen face, Dean laced his fingers with his brother’s and began to speak. A few words at first, then more as the logjam of forbidden remembrance shook loose.
“Mom was beautiful, Sammy,” he began. “Even more than in the pictures. She had the prettiest smile, and she smelled nice when she hugged you. She was always making good things to eat. Tomato rice soup when you were sick, and grilled cheese sandwiches with the crust off when you weren’t. And really awesome pie… She loved you so much, and when she was changing your diaper, she’d tickle your tummy and smile at you and you would smile and laugh in this funny baby gurgle back at her. And me. Because I was right there helping, sometimes. When you’re better, I’ll tell you everything. Everything I can remember, okay?”
***
Even after there was some sun to illuminate his way, it took John forever to get back to the Impala. He kept propelling himself forward, but his steps were weighted and his thought process hazy. Twice, he realized he’d veered off the trail and headed the wrong direction before awareness returned and, with a curse, he retraced his steps and willed himself to focus. By the time the car came into view, he cared about precisely three things: a drink of water, painkillers, and sleep.
His hands were shaking so hard it took him four tries to unlock the trunk. At last, he popped it open, snagging a bottle of water and some ibuprofen from his duffle. The pressure he had to exert to get the child-proof cap off the friggin’ meds hurt like a mother. He cursed, promising himself he would never purchase drugs with child-proof anything in the future, then opened the back door, shut it firmly behind him, and collapsed on the back bench seat, asleep in seconds.
***
Dean picked at the roast beef sandwich the social worker had insisted he eat. He had no stomach for it; the whole ensemble seemed tasteless and dry. He wrapped it in a paper towel and shoved it in the trash so they’d just leave him alone about it.
He had a job to do.
Dean squeezed Sam’s good shoulder gingerly before taking up the book Mrs. Taylor had given him. “How about I read the parts with lots of action?” he proposed.
Seeing no need to start at the beginning, he dove into the Battle of the Pelennor. With relish, he read of the Witch King’s demise: “…and a cry went up into the shuddering air, and faded to a shrill wailing, passing with the wind, a voice bodiless and thin that died, and was swallowed up, and was never heard again in that age of this world.” He paused. “Huh. These guys were kind of like hunters, weren’t they, Sammy?”
Gandalf was rushing to rescue Faramir from his pyre when all the sleepless, tension-filled hours of the day and night before overtook him. Head resting against the back of the chair, he dozed nearly half an hour before an incoherent mutter escaped Sam’s lips, snapping him awake.
“I’m here.” He rose to bring his face into Sam’s view.
“Dea--?” Sam, eyes slitted against the light, forced the name through a throat dry as dust.
“Hang on… I’ve got ice right here…”
Not bothering with a spoon, Dean pinched an ice chip between his thumb and forefinger and steered it towards Sam’s mouth. Instinctively, Sam tried to lift his head and shoulders from the pillow to meet him then cried out, falling back.
“Easy.” Dean’s heart twisted at the bewilderment on his brother’s wan face. “You’ve got a broken leg and a hurt shoulder and… just stay still, okay?” He brushed the clump of ice that had ended up on the pillow to the floor.
Pain had cleared some of the fog from Sam’s eyes. They flicked from one side of the bed to the other, taking in the monitors, the IV, the twist of ID bracelet on his wrist. Comprehension dawned. Hospital.
Hand behind Sam’s head, Dean gently touched a second ice chip to Sam’s mouth. Sam gratefully sucked on the melting clump, swallowing cool liquid.
“Dean,” he rasped, hazel eyes nearly brown in the dim light. “I don’t feel good.”
“I know, Sammy.” Dean tenderly pushed his brother’s bangs from his brow, desolation tamped down tight so Sam wouldn’t see. “It’ll be better soon. The docs here’ll fix you up.”
Sam dropped his chin to glance down his sternum towards the large bandage on his chest, a shadow crossing his face.
Dean could guess what memory was surfacing. “Do you know what hurt you?”
“It… it was a lady.” Fear darkened Sam’s expression, the corners of his mouth turned down.
“What kind of lady?”
“Like a…a principal.”
Dean frowned. What the hell?
“She… hated me.” Sam’s gaze rose to meet Dean’s, his voice thin with pain.
Dean could hear the unspoken word, Sam’s favorite word, lurking beneath that statement.
Why?
He pressed Sam’s hand to his heart. “Dad and I are gonna finish her, so you don’t have to worry about her ever again, Sammy. I promise.”
Sam gave the slightest nod before his eyes fluttered closed and he sank back into sleep.
Dean gently placed his brother’s hand at his side, then ground his fist into his own breastbone, stomach roiling. His words had been utter crap. He hadn’t kept Sam safe, and he still didn’t have a clue what unnatural piece of filth had done this to his brother.
Not a freakin’ clue. He’d never felt so utterly lost.
***
Jim made sure to arrive with the collar on. For some people it was a turn off, but he needed the legitimacy it conferred. Like Bobby, he was tied down to a specific place and a real identity he needed to protect, but he had a few fake ones for occasions such as this. He was Jim Steiner this go-round, with a fictitious church called East Havistock Lutheran, if anybody asked, though he hoped they wouldn’t. If they did, and called the number on his business card, they’d get one Robert Singer playing the role of church deacon on the other end of the line.
He first ran interference with Mrs. Taylor, painting John “Hammond” as a dedicated parent whose job made it difficult to get in touch, which is why the family’s pastor was on tap in times of need. He easily gained entry to the PICU. Mrs. Taylor authorized it without hesitation, in complete agreement that Dean was in need of support.
Jim was no coward, but he wasn’t altogether sure he wanted to see what awaited him in that hospital room. Steeling himself, he walked through the door.
Dean, back bowed, sat beside the bed with a book in his hands.
“…in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale,” he read, voice clotted with weariness and worry. “There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him…” He faltered, overcome.
“Dean.” Jim approached, and Dean’s gaze flew to him, full of ill-disguised need. Help me. Fix this. Make this better. The man of faith put an arm around the teenager’s shoulders, offering comfort even as his stomach dropped at his first sight of Sam: bruised, battered, and all too still. He laid a hand on the top of Sam’s head, closed his eyes, and sent up a silent prayer.
Please. Please…not Sammy. Not now. If the universe can unfold as it must, if it doesn’t interfere with Your plan, please… Mercy for this boy, his brother, his father. Please.
Then he turned to Dean full of urgent questions. Dean did his best to answer them, describing the condition in which he’d found his brother, the injuries…the man.
“He was a white guy in a raincoat… that tan kind of coat.”
“It’s important you tell me absolutely everything you remember,” Jim stressed, voice low. “The smallest detail could contain the clue that tells us what did this.”
“I told you,” Dean said. “He was kneeling next to Sammy’s…body. He had a hand on him, over his heart where that bandage is now, and he was touching Sammy’s forehead with two fingers of his other hand, like this…” Dean demonstrated, bringing the index and middle finger of his right hand to rest lightly on Jim’s brow.
“Did he speak to you?”
“Yeah…” Dean closed his eyes, concentrating. Jim watched, driven to glean any notion of what had happened. “He said…he couldn’t completely heal him, and he was sorry, but that he’d fixed his heart.”
Jim’s eyes widened. “He fixed his heart?”
Dean shrugged, helpless. “That’s what he said. And now… the docs make it sound like there… like there should’ve been a hole…” His words faded.
“In Sam’s heart,” Jim supplied. “Like he was run through and then…”
“Yeah.”
Jim rubbed the back of his neck, baffled. “I don’t have the slightest idea what did this. Nothing fits. No lore I’ve ever encountered.”
Dean waited, knowing there would be more.
Jim collected himself, taking charge of what he could. “Look, take this voucher from the social worker and get a taxi back to the hotel…”
Dean firmed his stance. “No.”
“Dean, you won’t do him any good if you’re too tired to function. You need some rest and a shower at the very least. Get cleaned up, clear your head, and then come back. I’ll watch over him while you’re gone.”
Dean shook his head stubbornly. “I can’t.”
Jim studied the person before him -the one he’d seen transform from a tow-headed child into this tall, indomitable youth. Taking his measure, he sighed in defeat. “All right. Look, I’m not going far, but I want to speak to the doctor, if he’ll talk to me, and then make some calls, try to figure out what we’re dealing with. I’ll be downstairs for a little bit. If anything changes or you need anything at all, have them fetch me and I’ll be here in an instant, understand?”
He squeezed Dean’s shoulder, wishing he could promise everything would be okay, but afraid to do so after seeing how bad it was. He’d call Bobby, and update him on Sam’s condition. He’d call every hunter he thought might lend any insight into this attack. He was loath to leave Dean alone, but they needed answers.
He glanced back once as he exited the room to see Dean perched once again in the bedside chair gazing down at Sam, the very picture of devotion.
***
Two hours passed after Jim left. Dean paced, made a quick trip to the restroom, but always returned to his station, drawn to Sam as if by gravity.
He had begun to hope that his brother would mend. He had woken up a few times, hadn’t he? Said a few words? Those had to be good signs.
His hand wrapped around Sam’s wrist as before, he had fallen into an exhausted semi-sleep when a fitful moan roused him. He registered the tremors running through Sam’s arm and body at the same moment he glanced up to see a sheen of moisture on his brother’s face, bangs damp with sweat. He laid the back of his hand on his brother’s forehead in a gesture he’d performed countless times over the course of their lives.
Sam was burning up.
***
John gripped the back of the front seat with his right hand, pulling himself up. He had a horrendous crick in his neck and a dull, throbbing ache in his arm.
Fuck.
He needed to get the hell out of these backwoods. He half fell from the Chevy’s rear seat, slammed the rear door closed, and opened the front one, throwing himself behind the steering wheel. One-handed, he started her up and put her into gear. The lacerations across the back of his arm were still oozing and he was faint from blood loss but he gunned the car down the torturous mountain road with the tenacity that was his by nature. Still, it was nearly an hour before he reached a gas station and a payphone.
He let his useless left arm hang at his side, holding the receiver between ear and shoulder as he awkwardly fed coins into the ancient contraption.
“I’m in the Ozarks and I need a doc, Bobby. Got tore up and can’t reach the wound.” Fearing he was about to keel, John wasted no time on preamble.
Bobby’s response was just as curt. “Where in the nine circles of hell have you been?!”
“Been a bit busy,” the elder Winchester snapped. “Thought I was after a water panther, but ended up chasing a werewolf all over these damn--“
“Sam’s injured. Bad.”
John’s mind whited out, stubbled jaw literally dropping. He was stunned into silence for one beat, two.
“Wh… what did you say?”
On the other end of the line, Bobby took a deep breath.
“Sam’s injured,” he repeated. “I’ve got the address and number of the hospital. You fit to drive?”
“What got my son? What--” John’s voice broke.
“We don’t know. Jim’s with the boys to keep CPS at bay, but it’s been a whole day and night already and they need you.”
John leaned heavily against the grimy side of the phone booth, bowels turned to water. No, no, no. Numbly, he managed to scribble the digits Bobby read off on the back of a book of matches.
“John…” Bobby’s speech slowed as if he were choosing each word with care. “Dean’s been through the wringer. Go eas--”
John hung up before Bobby could finish, manically dialing the distant hospital room.
Dean answered on the first ring.
“How’s Sammy?”
“Dad.” There was relief but also trepidation in his son’s voice, whether over the news he’d have to impart or fear of John’s judgment, John didn’t know.
“Please…” The word, so rarely spoken to his boys, fell from John’s lips. “Report.”
“Sammy’s alive, Dad. He’s hurt… Something… put a hole in his chest and back, broke his leg…”
Nausea swamped John, bile literally squirting up his throat. Pain throbbed in his wounded triceps in time with the beat of his panicked heart. Bobby had begged him to be mindful of the strains Dean had been under, but John was far from up to par and not in the habit of worrying about such things. He lashed out, his voice edged with steel.
“What the hell happened, Dean? I depend on you to watch out for your brother.”
***
Dean sat stiffly in the chair that had become his post for as long as this nightmare continued to play out, his expression going flat under the combined assault of inadequacy and shame.
It was nothing more or less than he’d expected.
“Watch out for Sammy” was the one admonition that had been repeated daily since he was four, and his utter failure to shield his brother -as witnessed by the unmoving form in the hospital bed- gutted him. One subdued inner voice protested, asking how anyone can protect anyone without encasing them in bubble wrap and locking them in a closet. Another -more ruthless, louder, and somehow vibrating with the timbre of John Winchester’s deep voice-silenced the first. This was your job. Yours. And you fucked it up.
“I’m sorry, Dad…” Dean’s neck and shoulders tensed to the point of pain. “I just… I’m sorry, but you’ve got to hurry.” He could barely push the words past the lump in his throat.
He placed the receiver back in its cradle, then glanced up to find Sam gazing back at him, fever-bright eyes catching him naked, defenses crumbled to dust.
For the first time since Dean had begun his vigil, Sam strained to lift his hand, reaching for him. Dean captured it, held it. Weakly, Sam squeezed Dean’s fingers. “Not your fault,” he murmured, eyes alight with all he couldn’t convey in words.
Dean mustered a faint smile for his brother’s sake, his heart shattering in a million pieces.
***
The Christmas Dean told Sam the truth things began to change between them. He didn’t realize it at first, but as weeks and months slipped by, it became clear that Sam was seeing everything with new eyes, making judgments he hadn’t made before, and relating to Dean -and Dad-in new ways.
That summer they were holed up in a remote cabin in the Eastern Sierras. Something had spooked Dad. Whether it was something supernatural, social services, or the law, Dean wasn’t sure, but he recognized his father in go-to-ground mode. All through June and July, they rarely returned to anything resembling civilization except in case of need. As defined by their father, “need” meant they were out of ammo, liquor, or food - in that precise order of importance.
Dad was putting them through their paces, training-wise. Now that he knew the score Sammy wasn’t spared any of it. Push-ups, pull-ups, grueling double-time hikes up and down steep canyons, pistol practice, rifle practice, crossbow practice, hand-to-hand combat, orienteering, and wilderness survival drills… Their days were full, and they fell into their cots at night, completely done in.
The activity level plunged, however, whenever Dad took off. Then Dean became restless and edgy. He cleaned every weapon their father had left behind. He broke down and reassembled the walkie-talkies Dad had said he could mess with a dozen times over. He read the same stack of Hot Rod magazines -and the other magazines his father pretended not to know about- until he had them memorized. His thirteen year old body, used to hours of exercise, itched for action and needed to move.
By the time their father’s latest absence had dragged into its fourth day, Dean decided to do something Dad would value and fulfill some other desires at the same time. He invited Sam to join him in an adventure. They would tackle a major hike, heading over a high ridge and down some barely marked fire trails. Their goal would be a tiny town eight miles distant, backed right up against the mountains, and sporting a single burger joint. They would put all their skills to use, Dean persuaded, and get a decent meal to boot. He had fifteen bucks on him -money earned helping Pastor Jim build book shelves for the Sunday school- enough for fries and burgers, anyway. Dad would rather they went on a sixteen mile trek than sit around reading old magazines, right?
Sam endorsed the idea with enthusiasm.
They left a note and strode into the wilderness on what turned out to be a spectacular ramble. Thanks to some recent storms, the creeks were overflowing, pounding down the mountain, the spray as they hiked alongside a relief in the summer heat. Wildlife was everywhere; birdsong filled the forest. They joked and laughed, the malaise of the days stuck in the cabin melting away. They got out their compasses and figured out how to reach the burger joint, their expectation of the feast to come adding to their sense of joy. They were in great physical shape; inside of four hours, even given the stops for orienteering or to splash water from the creek on overheated necks and faces, they were sitting at a roughhewn table with burgers and some truly amazing chili fries spread out before them.
They were in the midst of Rock-Paper-Scissors over who would get the last fry when John arrived. They looked up to see their father standing there, body taut, face a thundercloud black with threat. Sam sat rooted to the spot, eyes wide. Dean rose immediately, a lieutenant standing for his captain in anticipation of a reaming out.
He got one.
“Who told you that you could leave what I had determined to be a secure location?”
Dean swallowed, eyes to the ground. “No one. I thought-“
“Whatever the hell you thought, you thought wrong.” John scanned the small restaurant, uncomfortable to find one middle-aged biker and a clustered family of four aware of their presence. “Get in the car.”
John yanked open the driver’s side front door. Sam didn’t open the rear one. He put his back to the Impala and leaned against it, telegraphing his intention not to get in, not to obey. Stupefied, John spun around to glower down at his youngest.
“It was a good idea,” Sam declared, meeting his father’s gaze without flinching. “Dean’s idea was great. He was training us, like you always want.” His lips were pursed, and the volumes more he could say if he dared filled the air between father and son like a thick, combustible fog.
Dean gaped at his little brother, partly impressed and partly horrified. Sam had just come to his defense by defying, however mildly, their father.
Holy crap.
Said father was not pleased. “Get in the car, Sammy,” he spat.
Although no one spoke on the ride back to the cabin, Sam snuck his hand through from the rear seat to squeeze Dean’s arm. Dean glanced back, eyes questioning. Sam’s lips quirked up in a brittle smile as he mouthed, “It was awesome.”
It was the first time Dean understood that he wasn’t the only one who had his brother’s back.
***
Scattered showers had soaked the bed of moldering leaves beneath Castiel; the entire wood was redolent with the scent of damp plant life and rain. The expanse of lowering clouds above had turned to black as night fell all at once.
Castiel lay quiet, though he despaired. Always aware of Sam, he registered the fever consuming what was left of his strength, the toxic smear Adriel’s blade had borne insuring the fulfillment of her mission. He would have to move soon, he knew, or all would be for naught. He still wasn’t recovered enough to heal the boy; to wipe the memories of all involved; to return to the future.
And Sam was dying.
His body preternaturally still, he wracked his millennia old mind for options.
The increasingly agitated demon, never far from Sam, moved to the center of Castiel’s awareness. The creature did have power of his own, polluted as it might be; perhaps it could be used?
More essential was the fact that the demon wanted Sam to live as much as Castiel did. Sam’s death would mean the demon’s failure and likely his end once his masters got wind of it. That made the two of them natural allies.
The angel shuddered at the thought. Unclean? Yes. But it was time for desperate measures.
***
Pastor Jim at his back, Dean watched, helpless, as the medical team tried one intervention after another.
They couldn’t get Sam’s fever down. Dr. Bigby thought whatever infection had taken hold despite the antibiotics was probably associated with the wounds in Sam’s chest and back. The pericardium -the sac containing the heart- was inflamed, but worse than that, Sammy was going septic, his white count through the roof, his breath hitching out of rhythm so that they had to sedate and intubate him.
More than anything, the sight of that plastic tube shoved down his senseless brother’s throat told Dean they were losing ground. He clutched Sam’s hand tight, gazing at his face, memorizing it, sickly familiar with how quickly someone could be gone forever.
A kaleidoscope of memories spun through Dean’s mind, vivid and more real than the helpless figure in the hospital bed. He clung to them: Sam on his back in his crib fizzing with laughter as Dean tugged the string of a silver helium balloon to make it bounce and sway above him. Sam pouting as a toddler when Dean pried his tiny fingers open and took away the Play Doh he was trying to eat. Sam grinning as a little kid when Dean shoved blue and yellow Peeps chicks in the microwave, transmuting them into a heaving marshmallow mass. Sam solemnly declaring “I want you to have it” as he gifted Dean with the amulet he’d worn around his neck ever since. The one who looked up to him, the one he was here to care for. His charge since Mom told him he was going to be a big brother. His responsibility since he’d carried him from the inferno that had once been their home. His Sam.
An alarm bleated and Dean recoiled. Sam was flat lining.
Hands pushed Dean firmly away as a resuscitation team, led by Nurse Gray, surrounded the bed, two of them starting CPR while a third manned the charging defibrillator.
Dean could not, would not look away. He watched in impotent anguish as they pounded on his brother’s chest then removed their hands as paddles were placed to either side of his heart. With the shock, Sam’s body convulsed obscenely, arching off the bed only to fall limply back again. Dean’s fingernails cut into his palms, his mouth pulled down in a rictus of grief. He didn’t really feel Jim’s arm around him as the medical staff alternated between CPR and zapping their patient’s heart. Again. And again.
The line on the monitor remained unremittingly horizontal. The edges of Dean’s vision began to go dark. He raised his arm, reaching, as though to stop Bigby from saying it...
“Time of death: six fifty-nine p.m.”
No.
Dad didn’t get here, Dean thought dully. And Sammy’s gone.
The subdued team members deftly detached the IVs and catheter, pulled out the breathing tube. Except for Nurse Gray, they then soundlessly filed out. Bigby approached Jim and Dean, his manner muted. “You can go to him now. I’m very, very sorry for your loss.”
Dean was moving the second the doctor gave leave, lifting Sammy from the bed, cradling his head against his shoulder, fingers twined in soft brown hair, rocking the smaller body as he’d done when they were little.
“Please, Sammy. No…” Tears flooded his eyes, shimmering against brilliant green before spilling over. “No.”
Jim waited, stricken, but unwilling to enter the intimate space occupied by the boys. He turned only when he heard a gruff shout from the hallway.
John.
There was a babble of voices then John was staggering through the door. Jim blocked it, needing to prepare him.
One look at Jim’s face and John knew. He cried out his horror and loss as he pitched forward. Jim caught him, awkwardly held him, John fixated on the scene over his friend’s shoulder: Dean, Sam in his arms, brokenly weeping. John felt the world end, a chasm opening beneath him, bottomless, infinite, and making a joke of every defense he’d spent a decade fortifying. He crashed at last to his knees and covered his face with his hands.
***
Jim faltered and nearly fell; his vision swam. When things at last came into focus he found his surroundings surreal as a peyote-induced hallucination.
In a frozen tableau were the Winchesters: Dean, clutching his brother’s body; John, collapsed at his feet. The man in the raincoat, in contrast, was very much in motion. He approached, placing his face within inches of Jim’s, dark blue eyes aglow with a terrible, ecstatic light.
“I am Castiel, an angel of the Lord.”
For the space of a breath, Jim glimpsed vast ebony wings fold close around the man’s shoulders, the tops of them brushing the ceiling. Jim didn’t need to see anything more. He knelt, hands folded.
“Are you here to take Sammy to Heaven?” he whispered, overcome, even as he wondered if he was losing his mind.
A sad smile lit Castiel’s features, his glance going to the boys. “No. Peace will be a long time coming for Sam. He isn’t meant to die in this place.”
Jim understood then that they were not having this conversation because he’d been a devout man who merited knowledge or comfort. He began to be afraid. “What do you want of me?” he trembled. Whatever it was, he knew there would be no refusing.
“We need your soul,” the PICU nurse said in a lilting soprano voice, her eyes flashing black.
Jim lurched back on his heels. She’d been so still, he’d thought her immobilized along with the Winchesters.
The angel grimaced. “What’s happening here… what must happen… is cosmic. Even the demons know Sam must live, have been keeping watch. Tristan here is one of them.”
Stupefied, Jim looked from angel to demon and back again.
“I have been fighting long, and have been hurt,” Castiel continued. “My power is not enough to resurrect, do you understand?”
Jim nodded, afire with hope, yet cold. A thousand cautionary tales flitted through his mind. The question “why?” blazed within, though he was too intimidated to voice it.
Tristan, incongruous in berry-colored scrubs, stepped closer. “I can help the angel. But the rules are clear. For one of us to bring someone back…takes a deal.”
Jim slowly rose to his feet, the hunter in him eclipsing the supplicant. “You need a soul,” he stated, his voice sounding distant to his own ears. “And…” His glance went to John. “…you want to spare the father.”
“Yes,” Castiel answered simply. He would not burden this human with the knowledge that John would need his soul to save another dying son in a future rife with pain.
Jim felt faint as the true scope of what they were asking hit home. But his choice was clear.
“Take me.”
“Your soul will be collected when you die,” Castiel explained. “Tristan has agreed that you will live as long as you were meant, many years yet. And so will Sam, thanks to your sacrifice. And…after…I promise I will do all I can to rescue you from the pit. Someday. In the meantime, you won’t remember any of this, nor will they. Do you understand and consent?”
Feeling detached from his body, Jim nodded.
Tristan stepped forward, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “The deal’s gotta be sealed with a kiss. Good thing I’m wearing ‘cute’ today, isn’t it?”
***
Sam curled into his favorite spot in the backseat: pressed against the passenger side door. The Impala’s windshield wipers swept back and forth, a hypnotic dual metronome keeping time to the song currently up on Dad’s cassette: Boston’s “Peace of Mind.” Dean, riding shotgun, was humming along off-key.
It wasn’t that late -only eight thirty or so- but Sam felt completely done in, bruised almost, from the inside out. He guessed that’s what happens when you’re hit by a soccer mom cruising the motel parking lot while yelling at the kids fighting in the backseat. He was lucky she’d been going parking-lot-slow when her bumper took him down, but the whole thing had still ended up in a visit to the hospital.
He hated hospitals.
Dad had ended his hunt and come back because of it. Pastor Jim had been there, too…
He blinked, trying to pin the memory down, but the second he thought to question Jim’s presence over a minor accident the thought turned to mist and slipped through cracks in his consciousness, wisping away like the remnants of a dream.
On impulse, he passed his hand through the gap to the front seat. Dean noticed. No longer humming, he reached awkwardly back to give Sam’s hand a firm squeeze, casting a glance over his shoulder and gifting Sam with a sweet, genuine smile - one that very few people ever experienced. Sam smiled back, cheeks dimpling before they released each other, their father unaware of the entire interaction.
Weariness wrapped around Sam, and he pulled over the old blanket lying on the other side of the bench seat, unfolding it and tugging it up to his chin. He felt tired and… grateful. Dad was here, and Dean, and they were together with the music, and the rainy night, and the sound of the Impala’s wheels speeding them down the highway.
***
Epilogue - February, 2010
Castiel had overextended himself in his eagerness to return to the future. He materialized in the tawdry motel room with the hideous burnt orange and brown décor only to careen sideways.
“Castiel, heh! Heh! Woah, woah, woah…” A six-foot-four version of Sam spun around, catching him as he fell.
“Cas!” Dean grasped Castiel’s arm, the brothers propping him up between them.
“I’ve gotcha…” Sam soothed.
“You son of a bitch, you made it,” Dean marveled.
“I…I did. I’m very surprised…” Castiel glanced at Dean, then Sam, his gaze lingering on the younger Winchester before consciousness fled and the brothers ferried him to the bed.
He never told Sam and Dean he had spent all he had, and more, before returning to them from the past. He didn’t tell them he had scanned the time line after the attack on their parents, fearing another assault against them, or against Sam, and that he had been right to do so.
He could still feel eleven-year-old Sam lifeless under his hands.
Castiel’s bond was with Dean, and he had always fought to save Sam for Dean’s sake, the love that burned in Dean’s heart for his brother like the nuclear fire at the heart of a star. After communing with Sam, knowing his essence for the first time, Castiel finally understood Dean’s love. Sam had been good, innocent, and gentle, if strong-willed. Whatever taint he bore was alien, infecting him but not of him… That was what Dean believed, what he knew, about his brother. Now Castiel knew it, too.
He regretted that the Winchesters would never learn of Jim’s sacrifice. He regretted all that had happened before he’d been able to restore their lives to what passed for normal. Even though he’d wiped their memories, he sensed that the experiences of those abysmal days had not been fully erased from time, or from the Winchesters’ psyches. They coursed too strongly along pathways already carved, leaving indelible traces.
John: driven beyond obsession to forge his sons into soldiers - the only way to keep them protected no matter where he was or what happened to him.
Sam: yearning for “normal,” and for “safe.”
Dean: soul alight with a single mission: Keep Sammy safe. Bring Sammy home. Beneath it all, a faint echo: Don’t leave me.
Castiel had one comfort. The knowledge that he had and would fulfill his own imperative, and it wasn’t that different from his friend’s. He had to keep Dean safe, protect Dean’s soul, stand with Dean against Destiny.
No matter the cost.
***
Passages from “The Return of the King” are of course by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Fandom: Supernatural
Author: Freya922
Characters: Dean, Sam, John, Castiel, Pastor Jim, Bobby
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 for adult language and character death (sort of)
Disclaimer: Obviously, I own nothing, but am grateful to walk in this astounding world others have created.
This continues the story begun in Part 1
It seemed so wrong now, hoarding memories of her and not sharing them with the little boy she’d left so young he had no memory of her at all. Why had they done that? It was Dad they’d shielded with silence, not Sam, Dean thought. They’d stonewalled Sam until he stopped asking, forced to mourn his loss in confused solitude.
Gazing at Sam’s ashen face, Dean laced his fingers with his brother’s and began to speak. A few words at first, then more as the logjam of forbidden remembrance shook loose.
“Mom was beautiful, Sammy,” he began. “Even more than in the pictures. She had the prettiest smile, and she smelled nice when she hugged you. She was always making good things to eat. Tomato rice soup when you were sick, and grilled cheese sandwiches with the crust off when you weren’t. And really awesome pie… She loved you so much, and when she was changing your diaper, she’d tickle your tummy and smile at you and you would smile and laugh in this funny baby gurgle back at her. And me. Because I was right there helping, sometimes. When you’re better, I’ll tell you everything. Everything I can remember, okay?”
***
Even after there was some sun to illuminate his way, it took John forever to get back to the Impala. He kept propelling himself forward, but his steps were weighted and his thought process hazy. Twice, he realized he’d veered off the trail and headed the wrong direction before awareness returned and, with a curse, he retraced his steps and willed himself to focus. By the time the car came into view, he cared about precisely three things: a drink of water, painkillers, and sleep.
His hands were shaking so hard it took him four tries to unlock the trunk. At last, he popped it open, snagging a bottle of water and some ibuprofen from his duffle. The pressure he had to exert to get the child-proof cap off the friggin’ meds hurt like a mother. He cursed, promising himself he would never purchase drugs with child-proof anything in the future, then opened the back door, shut it firmly behind him, and collapsed on the back bench seat, asleep in seconds.
***
Dean picked at the roast beef sandwich the social worker had insisted he eat. He had no stomach for it; the whole ensemble seemed tasteless and dry. He wrapped it in a paper towel and shoved it in the trash so they’d just leave him alone about it.
He had a job to do.
Dean squeezed Sam’s good shoulder gingerly before taking up the book Mrs. Taylor had given him. “How about I read the parts with lots of action?” he proposed.
Seeing no need to start at the beginning, he dove into the Battle of the Pelennor. With relish, he read of the Witch King’s demise: “…and a cry went up into the shuddering air, and faded to a shrill wailing, passing with the wind, a voice bodiless and thin that died, and was swallowed up, and was never heard again in that age of this world.” He paused. “Huh. These guys were kind of like hunters, weren’t they, Sammy?”
Gandalf was rushing to rescue Faramir from his pyre when all the sleepless, tension-filled hours of the day and night before overtook him. Head resting against the back of the chair, he dozed nearly half an hour before an incoherent mutter escaped Sam’s lips, snapping him awake.
“I’m here.” He rose to bring his face into Sam’s view.
“Dea--?” Sam, eyes slitted against the light, forced the name through a throat dry as dust.
“Hang on… I’ve got ice right here…”
Not bothering with a spoon, Dean pinched an ice chip between his thumb and forefinger and steered it towards Sam’s mouth. Instinctively, Sam tried to lift his head and shoulders from the pillow to meet him then cried out, falling back.
“Easy.” Dean’s heart twisted at the bewilderment on his brother’s wan face. “You’ve got a broken leg and a hurt shoulder and… just stay still, okay?” He brushed the clump of ice that had ended up on the pillow to the floor.
Pain had cleared some of the fog from Sam’s eyes. They flicked from one side of the bed to the other, taking in the monitors, the IV, the twist of ID bracelet on his wrist. Comprehension dawned. Hospital.
Hand behind Sam’s head, Dean gently touched a second ice chip to Sam’s mouth. Sam gratefully sucked on the melting clump, swallowing cool liquid.
“Dean,” he rasped, hazel eyes nearly brown in the dim light. “I don’t feel good.”
“I know, Sammy.” Dean tenderly pushed his brother’s bangs from his brow, desolation tamped down tight so Sam wouldn’t see. “It’ll be better soon. The docs here’ll fix you up.”
Sam dropped his chin to glance down his sternum towards the large bandage on his chest, a shadow crossing his face.
Dean could guess what memory was surfacing. “Do you know what hurt you?”
“It… it was a lady.” Fear darkened Sam’s expression, the corners of his mouth turned down.
“What kind of lady?”
“Like a…a principal.”
Dean frowned. What the hell?
“She… hated me.” Sam’s gaze rose to meet Dean’s, his voice thin with pain.
Dean could hear the unspoken word, Sam’s favorite word, lurking beneath that statement.
Why?
He pressed Sam’s hand to his heart. “Dad and I are gonna finish her, so you don’t have to worry about her ever again, Sammy. I promise.”
Sam gave the slightest nod before his eyes fluttered closed and he sank back into sleep.
Dean gently placed his brother’s hand at his side, then ground his fist into his own breastbone, stomach roiling. His words had been utter crap. He hadn’t kept Sam safe, and he still didn’t have a clue what unnatural piece of filth had done this to his brother.
Not a freakin’ clue. He’d never felt so utterly lost.
***
Jim made sure to arrive with the collar on. For some people it was a turn off, but he needed the legitimacy it conferred. Like Bobby, he was tied down to a specific place and a real identity he needed to protect, but he had a few fake ones for occasions such as this. He was Jim Steiner this go-round, with a fictitious church called East Havistock Lutheran, if anybody asked, though he hoped they wouldn’t. If they did, and called the number on his business card, they’d get one Robert Singer playing the role of church deacon on the other end of the line.
He first ran interference with Mrs. Taylor, painting John “Hammond” as a dedicated parent whose job made it difficult to get in touch, which is why the family’s pastor was on tap in times of need. He easily gained entry to the PICU. Mrs. Taylor authorized it without hesitation, in complete agreement that Dean was in need of support.
Jim was no coward, but he wasn’t altogether sure he wanted to see what awaited him in that hospital room. Steeling himself, he walked through the door.
Dean, back bowed, sat beside the bed with a book in his hands.
“…in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale,” he read, voice clotted with weariness and worry. “There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him…” He faltered, overcome.
“Dean.” Jim approached, and Dean’s gaze flew to him, full of ill-disguised need. Help me. Fix this. Make this better. The man of faith put an arm around the teenager’s shoulders, offering comfort even as his stomach dropped at his first sight of Sam: bruised, battered, and all too still. He laid a hand on the top of Sam’s head, closed his eyes, and sent up a silent prayer.
Please. Please…not Sammy. Not now. If the universe can unfold as it must, if it doesn’t interfere with Your plan, please… Mercy for this boy, his brother, his father. Please.
Then he turned to Dean full of urgent questions. Dean did his best to answer them, describing the condition in which he’d found his brother, the injuries…the man.
“He was a white guy in a raincoat… that tan kind of coat.”
“It’s important you tell me absolutely everything you remember,” Jim stressed, voice low. “The smallest detail could contain the clue that tells us what did this.”
“I told you,” Dean said. “He was kneeling next to Sammy’s…body. He had a hand on him, over his heart where that bandage is now, and he was touching Sammy’s forehead with two fingers of his other hand, like this…” Dean demonstrated, bringing the index and middle finger of his right hand to rest lightly on Jim’s brow.
“Did he speak to you?”
“Yeah…” Dean closed his eyes, concentrating. Jim watched, driven to glean any notion of what had happened. “He said…he couldn’t completely heal him, and he was sorry, but that he’d fixed his heart.”
Jim’s eyes widened. “He fixed his heart?”
Dean shrugged, helpless. “That’s what he said. And now… the docs make it sound like there… like there should’ve been a hole…” His words faded.
“In Sam’s heart,” Jim supplied. “Like he was run through and then…”
“Yeah.”
Jim rubbed the back of his neck, baffled. “I don’t have the slightest idea what did this. Nothing fits. No lore I’ve ever encountered.”
Dean waited, knowing there would be more.
Jim collected himself, taking charge of what he could. “Look, take this voucher from the social worker and get a taxi back to the hotel…”
Dean firmed his stance. “No.”
“Dean, you won’t do him any good if you’re too tired to function. You need some rest and a shower at the very least. Get cleaned up, clear your head, and then come back. I’ll watch over him while you’re gone.”
Dean shook his head stubbornly. “I can’t.”
Jim studied the person before him -the one he’d seen transform from a tow-headed child into this tall, indomitable youth. Taking his measure, he sighed in defeat. “All right. Look, I’m not going far, but I want to speak to the doctor, if he’ll talk to me, and then make some calls, try to figure out what we’re dealing with. I’ll be downstairs for a little bit. If anything changes or you need anything at all, have them fetch me and I’ll be here in an instant, understand?”
He squeezed Dean’s shoulder, wishing he could promise everything would be okay, but afraid to do so after seeing how bad it was. He’d call Bobby, and update him on Sam’s condition. He’d call every hunter he thought might lend any insight into this attack. He was loath to leave Dean alone, but they needed answers.
He glanced back once as he exited the room to see Dean perched once again in the bedside chair gazing down at Sam, the very picture of devotion.
***
Two hours passed after Jim left. Dean paced, made a quick trip to the restroom, but always returned to his station, drawn to Sam as if by gravity.
He had begun to hope that his brother would mend. He had woken up a few times, hadn’t he? Said a few words? Those had to be good signs.
His hand wrapped around Sam’s wrist as before, he had fallen into an exhausted semi-sleep when a fitful moan roused him. He registered the tremors running through Sam’s arm and body at the same moment he glanced up to see a sheen of moisture on his brother’s face, bangs damp with sweat. He laid the back of his hand on his brother’s forehead in a gesture he’d performed countless times over the course of their lives.
Sam was burning up.
***
John gripped the back of the front seat with his right hand, pulling himself up. He had a horrendous crick in his neck and a dull, throbbing ache in his arm.
Fuck.
He needed to get the hell out of these backwoods. He half fell from the Chevy’s rear seat, slammed the rear door closed, and opened the front one, throwing himself behind the steering wheel. One-handed, he started her up and put her into gear. The lacerations across the back of his arm were still oozing and he was faint from blood loss but he gunned the car down the torturous mountain road with the tenacity that was his by nature. Still, it was nearly an hour before he reached a gas station and a payphone.
He let his useless left arm hang at his side, holding the receiver between ear and shoulder as he awkwardly fed coins into the ancient contraption.
“I’m in the Ozarks and I need a doc, Bobby. Got tore up and can’t reach the wound.” Fearing he was about to keel, John wasted no time on preamble.
Bobby’s response was just as curt. “Where in the nine circles of hell have you been?!”
“Been a bit busy,” the elder Winchester snapped. “Thought I was after a water panther, but ended up chasing a werewolf all over these damn--“
“Sam’s injured. Bad.”
John’s mind whited out, stubbled jaw literally dropping. He was stunned into silence for one beat, two.
“Wh… what did you say?”
On the other end of the line, Bobby took a deep breath.
“Sam’s injured,” he repeated. “I’ve got the address and number of the hospital. You fit to drive?”
“What got my son? What--” John’s voice broke.
“We don’t know. Jim’s with the boys to keep CPS at bay, but it’s been a whole day and night already and they need you.”
John leaned heavily against the grimy side of the phone booth, bowels turned to water. No, no, no. Numbly, he managed to scribble the digits Bobby read off on the back of a book of matches.
“John…” Bobby’s speech slowed as if he were choosing each word with care. “Dean’s been through the wringer. Go eas--”
John hung up before Bobby could finish, manically dialing the distant hospital room.
Dean answered on the first ring.
“How’s Sammy?”
“Dad.” There was relief but also trepidation in his son’s voice, whether over the news he’d have to impart or fear of John’s judgment, John didn’t know.
“Please…” The word, so rarely spoken to his boys, fell from John’s lips. “Report.”
“Sammy’s alive, Dad. He’s hurt… Something… put a hole in his chest and back, broke his leg…”
Nausea swamped John, bile literally squirting up his throat. Pain throbbed in his wounded triceps in time with the beat of his panicked heart. Bobby had begged him to be mindful of the strains Dean had been under, but John was far from up to par and not in the habit of worrying about such things. He lashed out, his voice edged with steel.
“What the hell happened, Dean? I depend on you to watch out for your brother.”
***
Dean sat stiffly in the chair that had become his post for as long as this nightmare continued to play out, his expression going flat under the combined assault of inadequacy and shame.
It was nothing more or less than he’d expected.
“Watch out for Sammy” was the one admonition that had been repeated daily since he was four, and his utter failure to shield his brother -as witnessed by the unmoving form in the hospital bed- gutted him. One subdued inner voice protested, asking how anyone can protect anyone without encasing them in bubble wrap and locking them in a closet. Another -more ruthless, louder, and somehow vibrating with the timbre of John Winchester’s deep voice-silenced the first. This was your job. Yours. And you fucked it up.
“I’m sorry, Dad…” Dean’s neck and shoulders tensed to the point of pain. “I just… I’m sorry, but you’ve got to hurry.” He could barely push the words past the lump in his throat.
He placed the receiver back in its cradle, then glanced up to find Sam gazing back at him, fever-bright eyes catching him naked, defenses crumbled to dust.
For the first time since Dean had begun his vigil, Sam strained to lift his hand, reaching for him. Dean captured it, held it. Weakly, Sam squeezed Dean’s fingers. “Not your fault,” he murmured, eyes alight with all he couldn’t convey in words.
Dean mustered a faint smile for his brother’s sake, his heart shattering in a million pieces.
***
The Christmas Dean told Sam the truth things began to change between them. He didn’t realize it at first, but as weeks and months slipped by, it became clear that Sam was seeing everything with new eyes, making judgments he hadn’t made before, and relating to Dean -and Dad-in new ways.
That summer they were holed up in a remote cabin in the Eastern Sierras. Something had spooked Dad. Whether it was something supernatural, social services, or the law, Dean wasn’t sure, but he recognized his father in go-to-ground mode. All through June and July, they rarely returned to anything resembling civilization except in case of need. As defined by their father, “need” meant they were out of ammo, liquor, or food - in that precise order of importance.
Dad was putting them through their paces, training-wise. Now that he knew the score Sammy wasn’t spared any of it. Push-ups, pull-ups, grueling double-time hikes up and down steep canyons, pistol practice, rifle practice, crossbow practice, hand-to-hand combat, orienteering, and wilderness survival drills… Their days were full, and they fell into their cots at night, completely done in.
The activity level plunged, however, whenever Dad took off. Then Dean became restless and edgy. He cleaned every weapon their father had left behind. He broke down and reassembled the walkie-talkies Dad had said he could mess with a dozen times over. He read the same stack of Hot Rod magazines -and the other magazines his father pretended not to know about- until he had them memorized. His thirteen year old body, used to hours of exercise, itched for action and needed to move.
By the time their father’s latest absence had dragged into its fourth day, Dean decided to do something Dad would value and fulfill some other desires at the same time. He invited Sam to join him in an adventure. They would tackle a major hike, heading over a high ridge and down some barely marked fire trails. Their goal would be a tiny town eight miles distant, backed right up against the mountains, and sporting a single burger joint. They would put all their skills to use, Dean persuaded, and get a decent meal to boot. He had fifteen bucks on him -money earned helping Pastor Jim build book shelves for the Sunday school- enough for fries and burgers, anyway. Dad would rather they went on a sixteen mile trek than sit around reading old magazines, right?
Sam endorsed the idea with enthusiasm.
They left a note and strode into the wilderness on what turned out to be a spectacular ramble. Thanks to some recent storms, the creeks were overflowing, pounding down the mountain, the spray as they hiked alongside a relief in the summer heat. Wildlife was everywhere; birdsong filled the forest. They joked and laughed, the malaise of the days stuck in the cabin melting away. They got out their compasses and figured out how to reach the burger joint, their expectation of the feast to come adding to their sense of joy. They were in great physical shape; inside of four hours, even given the stops for orienteering or to splash water from the creek on overheated necks and faces, they were sitting at a roughhewn table with burgers and some truly amazing chili fries spread out before them.
They were in the midst of Rock-Paper-Scissors over who would get the last fry when John arrived. They looked up to see their father standing there, body taut, face a thundercloud black with threat. Sam sat rooted to the spot, eyes wide. Dean rose immediately, a lieutenant standing for his captain in anticipation of a reaming out.
He got one.
“Who told you that you could leave what I had determined to be a secure location?”
Dean swallowed, eyes to the ground. “No one. I thought-“
“Whatever the hell you thought, you thought wrong.” John scanned the small restaurant, uncomfortable to find one middle-aged biker and a clustered family of four aware of their presence. “Get in the car.”
John yanked open the driver’s side front door. Sam didn’t open the rear one. He put his back to the Impala and leaned against it, telegraphing his intention not to get in, not to obey. Stupefied, John spun around to glower down at his youngest.
“It was a good idea,” Sam declared, meeting his father’s gaze without flinching. “Dean’s idea was great. He was training us, like you always want.” His lips were pursed, and the volumes more he could say if he dared filled the air between father and son like a thick, combustible fog.
Dean gaped at his little brother, partly impressed and partly horrified. Sam had just come to his defense by defying, however mildly, their father.
Holy crap.
Said father was not pleased. “Get in the car, Sammy,” he spat.
Although no one spoke on the ride back to the cabin, Sam snuck his hand through from the rear seat to squeeze Dean’s arm. Dean glanced back, eyes questioning. Sam’s lips quirked up in a brittle smile as he mouthed, “It was awesome.”
It was the first time Dean understood that he wasn’t the only one who had his brother’s back.
***
Scattered showers had soaked the bed of moldering leaves beneath Castiel; the entire wood was redolent with the scent of damp plant life and rain. The expanse of lowering clouds above had turned to black as night fell all at once.
Castiel lay quiet, though he despaired. Always aware of Sam, he registered the fever consuming what was left of his strength, the toxic smear Adriel’s blade had borne insuring the fulfillment of her mission. He would have to move soon, he knew, or all would be for naught. He still wasn’t recovered enough to heal the boy; to wipe the memories of all involved; to return to the future.
And Sam was dying.
His body preternaturally still, he wracked his millennia old mind for options.
The increasingly agitated demon, never far from Sam, moved to the center of Castiel’s awareness. The creature did have power of his own, polluted as it might be; perhaps it could be used?
More essential was the fact that the demon wanted Sam to live as much as Castiel did. Sam’s death would mean the demon’s failure and likely his end once his masters got wind of it. That made the two of them natural allies.
The angel shuddered at the thought. Unclean? Yes. But it was time for desperate measures.
***
Pastor Jim at his back, Dean watched, helpless, as the medical team tried one intervention after another.
They couldn’t get Sam’s fever down. Dr. Bigby thought whatever infection had taken hold despite the antibiotics was probably associated with the wounds in Sam’s chest and back. The pericardium -the sac containing the heart- was inflamed, but worse than that, Sammy was going septic, his white count through the roof, his breath hitching out of rhythm so that they had to sedate and intubate him.
More than anything, the sight of that plastic tube shoved down his senseless brother’s throat told Dean they were losing ground. He clutched Sam’s hand tight, gazing at his face, memorizing it, sickly familiar with how quickly someone could be gone forever.
A kaleidoscope of memories spun through Dean’s mind, vivid and more real than the helpless figure in the hospital bed. He clung to them: Sam on his back in his crib fizzing with laughter as Dean tugged the string of a silver helium balloon to make it bounce and sway above him. Sam pouting as a toddler when Dean pried his tiny fingers open and took away the Play Doh he was trying to eat. Sam grinning as a little kid when Dean shoved blue and yellow Peeps chicks in the microwave, transmuting them into a heaving marshmallow mass. Sam solemnly declaring “I want you to have it” as he gifted Dean with the amulet he’d worn around his neck ever since. The one who looked up to him, the one he was here to care for. His charge since Mom told him he was going to be a big brother. His responsibility since he’d carried him from the inferno that had once been their home. His Sam.
An alarm bleated and Dean recoiled. Sam was flat lining.
Hands pushed Dean firmly away as a resuscitation team, led by Nurse Gray, surrounded the bed, two of them starting CPR while a third manned the charging defibrillator.
Dean could not, would not look away. He watched in impotent anguish as they pounded on his brother’s chest then removed their hands as paddles were placed to either side of his heart. With the shock, Sam’s body convulsed obscenely, arching off the bed only to fall limply back again. Dean’s fingernails cut into his palms, his mouth pulled down in a rictus of grief. He didn’t really feel Jim’s arm around him as the medical staff alternated between CPR and zapping their patient’s heart. Again. And again.
The line on the monitor remained unremittingly horizontal. The edges of Dean’s vision began to go dark. He raised his arm, reaching, as though to stop Bigby from saying it...
“Time of death: six fifty-nine p.m.”
No.
Dad didn’t get here, Dean thought dully. And Sammy’s gone.
The subdued team members deftly detached the IVs and catheter, pulled out the breathing tube. Except for Nurse Gray, they then soundlessly filed out. Bigby approached Jim and Dean, his manner muted. “You can go to him now. I’m very, very sorry for your loss.”
Dean was moving the second the doctor gave leave, lifting Sammy from the bed, cradling his head against his shoulder, fingers twined in soft brown hair, rocking the smaller body as he’d done when they were little.
“Please, Sammy. No…” Tears flooded his eyes, shimmering against brilliant green before spilling over. “No.”
Jim waited, stricken, but unwilling to enter the intimate space occupied by the boys. He turned only when he heard a gruff shout from the hallway.
John.
There was a babble of voices then John was staggering through the door. Jim blocked it, needing to prepare him.
One look at Jim’s face and John knew. He cried out his horror and loss as he pitched forward. Jim caught him, awkwardly held him, John fixated on the scene over his friend’s shoulder: Dean, Sam in his arms, brokenly weeping. John felt the world end, a chasm opening beneath him, bottomless, infinite, and making a joke of every defense he’d spent a decade fortifying. He crashed at last to his knees and covered his face with his hands.
***
Jim faltered and nearly fell; his vision swam. When things at last came into focus he found his surroundings surreal as a peyote-induced hallucination.
In a frozen tableau were the Winchesters: Dean, clutching his brother’s body; John, collapsed at his feet. The man in the raincoat, in contrast, was very much in motion. He approached, placing his face within inches of Jim’s, dark blue eyes aglow with a terrible, ecstatic light.
“I am Castiel, an angel of the Lord.”
For the space of a breath, Jim glimpsed vast ebony wings fold close around the man’s shoulders, the tops of them brushing the ceiling. Jim didn’t need to see anything more. He knelt, hands folded.
“Are you here to take Sammy to Heaven?” he whispered, overcome, even as he wondered if he was losing his mind.
A sad smile lit Castiel’s features, his glance going to the boys. “No. Peace will be a long time coming for Sam. He isn’t meant to die in this place.”
Jim understood then that they were not having this conversation because he’d been a devout man who merited knowledge or comfort. He began to be afraid. “What do you want of me?” he trembled. Whatever it was, he knew there would be no refusing.
“We need your soul,” the PICU nurse said in a lilting soprano voice, her eyes flashing black.
Jim lurched back on his heels. She’d been so still, he’d thought her immobilized along with the Winchesters.
The angel grimaced. “What’s happening here… what must happen… is cosmic. Even the demons know Sam must live, have been keeping watch. Tristan here is one of them.”
Stupefied, Jim looked from angel to demon and back again.
“I have been fighting long, and have been hurt,” Castiel continued. “My power is not enough to resurrect, do you understand?”
Jim nodded, afire with hope, yet cold. A thousand cautionary tales flitted through his mind. The question “why?” blazed within, though he was too intimidated to voice it.
Tristan, incongruous in berry-colored scrubs, stepped closer. “I can help the angel. But the rules are clear. For one of us to bring someone back…takes a deal.”
Jim slowly rose to his feet, the hunter in him eclipsing the supplicant. “You need a soul,” he stated, his voice sounding distant to his own ears. “And…” His glance went to John. “…you want to spare the father.”
“Yes,” Castiel answered simply. He would not burden this human with the knowledge that John would need his soul to save another dying son in a future rife with pain.
Jim felt faint as the true scope of what they were asking hit home. But his choice was clear.
“Take me.”
“Your soul will be collected when you die,” Castiel explained. “Tristan has agreed that you will live as long as you were meant, many years yet. And so will Sam, thanks to your sacrifice. And…after…I promise I will do all I can to rescue you from the pit. Someday. In the meantime, you won’t remember any of this, nor will they. Do you understand and consent?”
Feeling detached from his body, Jim nodded.
Tristan stepped forward, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “The deal’s gotta be sealed with a kiss. Good thing I’m wearing ‘cute’ today, isn’t it?”
***
Sam curled into his favorite spot in the backseat: pressed against the passenger side door. The Impala’s windshield wipers swept back and forth, a hypnotic dual metronome keeping time to the song currently up on Dad’s cassette: Boston’s “Peace of Mind.” Dean, riding shotgun, was humming along off-key.
It wasn’t that late -only eight thirty or so- but Sam felt completely done in, bruised almost, from the inside out. He guessed that’s what happens when you’re hit by a soccer mom cruising the motel parking lot while yelling at the kids fighting in the backseat. He was lucky she’d been going parking-lot-slow when her bumper took him down, but the whole thing had still ended up in a visit to the hospital.
He hated hospitals.
Dad had ended his hunt and come back because of it. Pastor Jim had been there, too…
He blinked, trying to pin the memory down, but the second he thought to question Jim’s presence over a minor accident the thought turned to mist and slipped through cracks in his consciousness, wisping away like the remnants of a dream.
On impulse, he passed his hand through the gap to the front seat. Dean noticed. No longer humming, he reached awkwardly back to give Sam’s hand a firm squeeze, casting a glance over his shoulder and gifting Sam with a sweet, genuine smile - one that very few people ever experienced. Sam smiled back, cheeks dimpling before they released each other, their father unaware of the entire interaction.
Weariness wrapped around Sam, and he pulled over the old blanket lying on the other side of the bench seat, unfolding it and tugging it up to his chin. He felt tired and… grateful. Dad was here, and Dean, and they were together with the music, and the rainy night, and the sound of the Impala’s wheels speeding them down the highway.
***
Epilogue - February, 2010
Castiel had overextended himself in his eagerness to return to the future. He materialized in the tawdry motel room with the hideous burnt orange and brown décor only to careen sideways.
“Castiel, heh! Heh! Woah, woah, woah…” A six-foot-four version of Sam spun around, catching him as he fell.
“Cas!” Dean grasped Castiel’s arm, the brothers propping him up between them.
“I’ve gotcha…” Sam soothed.
“You son of a bitch, you made it,” Dean marveled.
“I…I did. I’m very surprised…” Castiel glanced at Dean, then Sam, his gaze lingering on the younger Winchester before consciousness fled and the brothers ferried him to the bed.
He never told Sam and Dean he had spent all he had, and more, before returning to them from the past. He didn’t tell them he had scanned the time line after the attack on their parents, fearing another assault against them, or against Sam, and that he had been right to do so.
He could still feel eleven-year-old Sam lifeless under his hands.
Castiel’s bond was with Dean, and he had always fought to save Sam for Dean’s sake, the love that burned in Dean’s heart for his brother like the nuclear fire at the heart of a star. After communing with Sam, knowing his essence for the first time, Castiel finally understood Dean’s love. Sam had been good, innocent, and gentle, if strong-willed. Whatever taint he bore was alien, infecting him but not of him… That was what Dean believed, what he knew, about his brother. Now Castiel knew it, too.
He regretted that the Winchesters would never learn of Jim’s sacrifice. He regretted all that had happened before he’d been able to restore their lives to what passed for normal. Even though he’d wiped their memories, he sensed that the experiences of those abysmal days had not been fully erased from time, or from the Winchesters’ psyches. They coursed too strongly along pathways already carved, leaving indelible traces.
John: driven beyond obsession to forge his sons into soldiers - the only way to keep them protected no matter where he was or what happened to him.
Sam: yearning for “normal,” and for “safe.”
Dean: soul alight with a single mission: Keep Sammy safe. Bring Sammy home. Beneath it all, a faint echo: Don’t leave me.
Castiel had one comfort. The knowledge that he had and would fulfill his own imperative, and it wasn’t that different from his friend’s. He had to keep Dean safe, protect Dean’s soul, stand with Dean against Destiny.
No matter the cost.
***
Passages from “The Return of the King” are of course by J.R.R. Tolkien.