Humble Pie [7/20]
‘What the fuck?’ Dean’s gun is out and he’s exiting Ash’s office before the first word has left his mouth, and he’s fast enough to see the police cars outside in the parking lot. He turns back around and grabs Sam, who’s slightly slower on the uptake but has a weapon out now too, and shoves him through the doorway and out into the bar, moving quickly. The bar’s a mess of tension, and even though you wouldn’t know to look at them, Dean knows everyone’s on red alert, even if they haven’t started a stampede for the door yet. That really would give the cops a reason to arrest them, whereas right now there’s a chance they’re not the ones the cops have come looking for.
“We need to get out of here,” Dean says, loudly enough to be heard over the noise of the bar while trying not to yell.
And then, suddenly, the Roadhouse’s door bangs open. Cops. Damn. They have to get out.
“What can I do for you boys?” Ellen approaches the cops with an easy smile and a cloth thrown casually over one shoulder, the picture of confidence and hospitality, but the cops aren’t having any of it and Dean knows it’s only a matter of time before this turns nasty.
It might be paranoia. It might be a sixth sense. It doesn’t matter. He can just tell these guys have come for him and Sam.
He casts around for another doorway - there’s one at the back, he’s sure - there! It’s across the other side of the room from him, they’ll have to be quick if they’re going to make it across before the cops decide they’ve had enough of playing nice and just start arresting anyone who looks at them funny.
Running away is not something Dean does a lot. It’s not something he likes to do, not something he feels proud of when he has to. But this is certainly a moment when it’s necessary.
He glances across to Sam, and all it takes is a quick meeting of eyes to convey his plan. Sam nods, almost imperceptibly.
And then they walk casually but purposefully towards the door.
Dean’s the picture of calm but inside his heart is hammering because this shit just got real and it’s all confusing and creepy and whatever, but right now he just has to concentrate on walking slowly so as not to draw attention to him or Sam, when every nerve in his body is yelling at him to run, you fucker.
They nearly make it, too.
“Hey! Over there by the corner, you can’t go out there.”
And Dean’s a meter away from the door so he ignores the shouts following him and picks up his pace, closing the gap to freedom at a run and crashing against the door with his shoulder-
And then they’re out in the parking lot, Ash a half-meter behind them, and thank God he parked the Impala around this side because there are police out front, so they leap in and reverse out, shouts and bullets following them, and then they’re away, speeding away down the highway, leaving the Roadhouse and everyone inside it far behind.
They don’t realize that Ash isn’t with them until it’s too late.
For a moment, they’re silent, and then Dean gets the familiar euphoria a close shave always seems to bring, and he feels like laughing. A heartbeat later and it’s passed, and it’s now that he wonders just how far down the shit they’re in goes.
And his shoulder hurts from where it hit the door.
“What the hell was that, man?” Sam asks when they’re far enough away to know they’re not being followed. (Thank fuck the police are so sloppy today, huh.)
Dean doesn’t even know what’s going on himself, but he gives it his best shot. “The police just took down the Roadhouse.”
Which he never thought would fucking happen. Because of several reasons, the first being that Ellen Harvelle doesn’t actually do anything illegal. Unless serving beer to criminals counts. A lot of criminals. And sometimes those criminals illegally trade black market goods in her parking lot. But she runs a tight ship and keeps everything on her turf all clean, so Dean never thought he’d see the day when the Roadhouse got taken out.
Another reason: half the people who frequent the Roadhouse work for Divinity Inc.. And this is a big company we’re talking about here, not some independent bookstore. These guys have pull. They have influence everywhere. Including the police. If they don’t want their guys to be taken out, their guys don’t get taken out. So the Roadhouse is usually a pretty safe bet for a place that’s not about to get its ass kicked.
Which means … Which means that the company just withdrew its protection.
Probably because one - or two - of their employees just pissed them off.
By, I don’t know, looking at classified stuff or something.
Like they just did.
Fuck.
He looks back to Sam, and his face is saying ‘oh boy, little brother, but we are royally screwed to hell right now’.
Sam gets it. “Yeah, thanks for the update, I kinda got that part. But, how did you know to check outside? Before anyone else, I mean? Back there?”
How did he …
The phone call.
“Shit,” he mutters, fumbling in his pocket until he finds his cell. The call history comes up, showing the last incoming call as from a ‘withheld number’. “Shit,” he says again, before chucking it over to Sam.
“What’s this?”
“A guy calls me, okay, says we’ve got twenty seconds to get out the building before all hell breaks loose.”
“What, like a tip-off?”
“Yeah, or something.”
“Hey, where are you going?”
Dean doesn’t even realize he’s made the turn until he pulls the car to a stop in his usual place beside their apartment building. “Uh…”
“We should keep going. Chances are they know where we live. If it’s Divinity, I mean.”
Dean nods sharply, but doesn’t reverse back into the street. “Castiel,” he says suddenly.
“What?”
Dean has no idea. “Uh, Castiel. Y’know. He’s … he’s worth a hell of a lot of money. Are we just going to leave him behind?”
Sam looks him up and down for a moment, as if trying to decide if he actually understands what his brother’s saying. “Okay, fine. I’ll go get him. You turn the car around, and keep the engine running.”
“Sure thing.”
Sam’s damn fast and makes it back in under ten minutes, Castiel in tow. A moment later, they’re both in the Impala, and Dean guns the engine, pulling away from the apartment that has been their home these past few weeks. They always move around eventually, so Dean’s used to looking at places with complete emotional detachment. It’s a shame, though - he can’t pretend that the landlord, Chuck Shurley, wasn’t a good guy. Eccentric, sure. But he was cool with late rent payments, so that makes him practically God in Dean’s book.
He glances in the mirror, and his eyes meet Castiel’s again. Damn. He’s got to stop doing that.
“I’ll call Bobby.”
He blinks, brought back to reality with a slight bump. “Huh?”
Sam rolls his eyes. “I said, I’ll call Bobby. He might have something on Divinity. And we can always lie low over at his for a couple of days.”
Dean shakes his head. “No can do. We spend too much time over at his as it is. Someone’s bound to notice, and then we’re all fucked. Let’s just hole up somewhere in some seedy motel and wait this one out. But yeah, call him. He might know something.”
Actually, chances are they should’ve just called him in the first place. Bobby Singer is one of those guys who just knowseverything.
Sam takes his cell away from his ear and looks across at Dean.
“Well?”
“Bobby has nothing on Divinity,” Sam sighs. “But he said he’d take a look into the records he’s got, see if he can piece together a decent picture or something. I’m not going to lie: it’s a real drawback that we never got to see what Ash found.”
Dean’s been thinking about that, too, kicking himself for taking the phone call - not that it would’ve made any difference, of course - it wasn’t the phone call that made the police descend on them like a pack of rabid squirrels. But still. If they knew what Ash had wanted to tell them, they’d at least have some idea of what they’re running from. As it is, not only did they not see it but it’s unlikely that they’re ever going to see it, as Ash managed to fall behind when they were legging it for the car. Which probably means he took a bullet, will be arrested, and will have all his stuff confiscated. In the meantime, they’re completely blind, and that’s not a position Dean likes to be in at the best of times, and especially not when his brother’s life is on the line.
“He also swore a lot and says we should lay low for awhile,” finishes Sam.
“Yeah, I kind of figured that part out myself. Any other pearls of wisdom?”
“Not that I can make out. He’s got a safe-house not far from here, says we can hole up there for a couple of days, maybe head over the state border tomorrow or the day after, put some miles in between us and Divinity.”
“Sounds good,” Dean says, and he’s pleased at how confident and laid-back he sounds. After all, they have just been nearly taken out by the police and it’s highly likely that it’s because Divinity Inc. discovered that they know about the slave transportation or smuggling, or whatever the fuck they’re doing, and has decided that they know too much and are now expendable.
It feels like something out of a bad mafia or gangster movie. Only Dean knows it so isn’t.
’Cause the thing is, their dad got taken out on a gig like this.
He doesn’t know the details - hell, he doesn’t know very many details about his father’s life, period. John Winchester was a private man, strong, definite, driven, passionate, good at what he did, not the best father, but hey, you can’t have everything, right? And the fact that their mom died so young has a lot to do with the way the boys were brought up; into this, the underbelly of America, doing shady deals, taking out targets, smuggling and stealing and, sometimes, killing, and all for a few hundred dollar bills passed surreptitiously around in unmarked envelopes.
John was working a job for some high ranking guys, and it went south. Way south. And all Dean knows is that, one day, Dean’s in hospital, barely alive thanks to those guys, and Sam comes home to find their father in their apartment, dead.
When their dad died, things changed. John and Sam had never been particularly … Well, they’d never really seen eye to eye. They clashed a lot, especially over Sam going to college. And Dean? Dean had always wanted to be enough for their dad, he’d always wanted to make him proud, and maybe he had. But there was just never any telling with John Winchester. He loved his boys, but his work always came first. Always. And it had taken Dean a long time to realize that it wasn’t the same with him. For him, his work can go screw itself, because Sam takes priority over everyone and everything else.
He tries not to think about the similarities between his father’s death and the situation they’re in now. It’s not a thought process that’s going anywhere nice.
He glances back up into the rearview mirror and catches Castiel’s eye. It’s not a surprise to him anymore that the guy’s been watching him, although he doesn’t get the thinking behind it. Not that he cares; it’s just weird. But not exactly unsettling or unexpected, not anymore.
Which is also weird, so he doesn’t think about that too deeply, either.
“Hey,” he says. “Cas. Were you sold by Divinity Inc.?”
Sam looks surprised. “What?”
“Not you - I’m talking to Cas. Castiel. The guy in the back seat. The angel.” When Sam still looks blank, Dean sighs and clarifies. “He’s a slave, right? I just figured, he might know something.” He shrugs. “Got to be worth a try.”
Sam frowns. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
Dean smirks. “Of course you hadn’t. That’s why I’m the brains and the looks of the operation.”
“Jerk.”
“Bitch.” He glances back to Castiel, who is by now looking thoroughly confused. “Well?”
“I was sold by Divinity, yes,’ he says , frowning faintly. “But I don’t believe I know anything of import.”
Dean slumps in his seat, turning his attention back to the road. Of course it wasn’t going to yield any useful information. Things are never that easy.
“Well, did Divinity ever get up to anything … dodgy?” Sam asks, persistent.
Castiel’s frown deepens. “What do you mean?”
“He means like turning freeborn people into slaves,” Dean says tiredly. “Look, Sam, I told you there was nothing in it-”
“Just shut up a minute and let him answer. Castiel?”
The man looks away, staring out through the window, an unreadable expression on his face. “I …” he begins haltingly, then trails off. He pauses for another moment, before finally taking a steadying breath and saying: “No. Not to my knowledge.”
He doesn’t meet Dean’s eye.
The pause that follows lasts for roughly two and a half hours, during which Dean glares at every passing motorist like they personally are responsible for the heap of shit he’s currently in and tries to ignore the nagging feeling that Castiel was lying.
They drive through the night, taking turns at the wheel, pulling over and nudging the other awake when the driver feels themselves dropping off. They drive through the night, and Dean splits his time between sleeping and driving, and he makes sure that this leaves no time for thinking, wiping his brain clean and concentrating on the road. Thinking is not something he wants to be doing right now. Because if he does, he just knows he’ll think of something that’s not good.
But when he sleeps, it’s worse than thinking. He dreams of his mother.
It’s an old dream, one he used to get a lot when he was a kid, but he hasn’t had it for many years now. It plagued him half-heartedly for about a month after their dad died, and then again when he nearly lost Sammy over Jess’ death, just because they brought up so many parallels that he really didn’t want to read into. But not since then.
The dream is so familiar it almost feels like home.
He’s standing in his old house, and Mary Winchester is leaning over Sammy’s cot, long white nightgown brushing her ankles, blonde hair trailing loose over her shoulders. The dream has been the same, always the same, ever since he first had it, so he knows without looking that Mary is smiling.
“Mom?” he asks, and she turns round, her face lighting up at the sight of him, and even though he knows it’s a dream, and he knows he’s going to wake up in a minute and he’ll still be in Totally Screwed Alley, it feels so good to see her again.
“Dean,” she says, and her voice sounds like safety.
I would love to tell you that they embrace and have some soppy chick-flick moment that Dean tries to avoid with all costs, and then he wakes up and the world seems like a better place than it did before, but if I told you all that then I’d be lying. Because this is the moment when the dream turns bad. This is the moment when the dream turns into his mother’s death, playing out in front of his eyes again and again, because even though he never saw it himself, he heard about it enough times, and he saw enough to be able to piece the jigsaw together, and whether this dream is an accurate representation of his mother’s last moments or not kind of doesn’t matter because it feels true, it feels like she’s dying, and it’s felt like that ever since he first had the nightmare.
But this time, something different happens. This time, the dream goes batshit insane.
Dean can’t tell the moment when it actually happens, maybe he looks away, maybe he blinks, or maybe it happens so subtly that he would never be able to tell the edges anyway, even if he held his eyes open with matchsticks, but one moment he’s standing there looking at his mom, and the next his mom isn’t his mom.
She changes. Into Meg.
And suddenly this is weird. And more than a little embarrassing. ’Cause, let’s face it, he was just dreaming about his mom, and now she’s turned into someone else and the way this person - Meg, not-mom - is looking at him, he’s got an unsettling feeling that this might be about to turn into a wet dream. Or an even worse nightmare. One of the two.
Meg grins at him, and her teeth are pointy. “Hey there, sugarpuff,” she purrs, turning on her heel and walking back to the crib. “Enjoying my present?”
Dean swallows down the angry retort that comes to mind. Mary may only be a dream, but if there’s any chance dream-her is still hanging around, he’d still rather not murder anyone. Just in case.
He looks towards the cot, and a strange noise catches his attention: ragged breathing, coupled with… whimpering? What the actual fuck?
“What’re you doing to my brother, you sick bitch?” he growls, and in a moment he’s by Meg’s side, looking down into the cot, searching desperately for Sam.
Except it’s not a cot anymore. It’s a cage. And looking up from the bottom, which is suddenly very far away, are a pair of blue eyes.
“I asked you whether you were enjoying it,” Meg breathes in his ear, and he wants to rip her throat out for that.
Castiel is lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood, and there are two long, deep gashes down his back, from his shoulder blades to his pelvis in a long, gory V. There is no doubt those noises Dean heard were coming from him, because even from this distance, Dean can tell he’s dying.
And he raises his eyes to Dean’s, but there’s no accusation in those eyes, nor any plea for help. Just emptiness.
And that’s the moment when Dean wakes up.