Fic: Time Won't Find the Lost (2/3, complete)
Time Won't Find the Lost Part 2 (4,209 words)
Summary: In 2006, Sam walks away from his brother and heads to California to find their father. He winds up going a lot farther than he intended. (13,000+ words, complete)
Warnings: Torture, language, dark themes
Note: This was inspired by a scene in season 2's Hunted, in which Gordon reminisces about torturing a demon and killing the host in the process, and Dean is horrified and appalled. That amused me a lot.
1/3
-3-
The darkness greys around the edges, softening and falling away in pieces. He becomes aware of his skin, of the tips of his fingers, of the bones in his shoulders. His arms ache in new places, and the ever-present pain in his wrists has faded.
He’s not in the chair.
He drags his eyelids apart. Everything’s heavy and the light that slides between his lids is muted, hazy. He rolls his head, pushes his thick tongue around in his mouth. Dry. His mouth is dry and he parts his lips and pants, tries not to cough, or choke. It’s strangely silent, wherever he is. He’d gotten used to the noise, the screaming and the sounds of footsteps and muted voices. All of that’s gone, now.
He’s propped up on a mattress, he realizes as his awareness creeps back, his legs crossed and tied to the footboard, his wrists cuffed in front of him. He shifts, squirms around, and his wrists slide in the cuffs but don’t ache the way they should. He squints down, tries to corral his bleary gaze, to focus as much as possible on the ends of his arms. They’ve been wrapped in soft towels and, underneath, he can see the edges of medical gauze peeking out.
He groans, can’t help it, rolls his head a little and pulls on the cuffs. They don’t go far-a jerk and a rattle and he’s stopped short. The cuffs are attached to the bonds on his legs. He’s not going anywhere.
He pulls in air through his nose. Once, twice, three times. Struggles to get his head under control, to force away the clouds. A needle. There was a needle. The thing with his brother’s face shoved a needle in the crook of his arm. Jesus. No wonder he feels like shit.
“Sorry,” it’d said, and sounded genuine.
Just his luck to get kidnapped by the nicest psychopathic monsters in the world.
Christ.
He breathes for a while. Twists his wrists idly in their new bonds because it’s become a habit, because it’s comforting. He barely registers the action at all. The quiet is eerie.
His head doesn’t hurt so much, he realizes. He wonders if that’s due to time, or to the effects of whatever the thing stuck him with. He doesn’t feel particularly high, or woozy. Just cloudy, like his head’s been stuffed full of batting. He’s such a cliché.
“Fuckin’…Christ,” he mumbles, and blinks heavily at the sound of his own voice. He sounds a lot more drugged than he feels.
He stays like that for a while, idly twisting his arms, blinking and breathing and trying to force the world into some semblance of stability. It’s probably a good thirty minutes before he remembers that he can lift his head, and when he does he opens his eyes fully and looks right into the face of Kara’s torturer.
“Oh shit,” he mumbles. It looks so much like Dean. So goddamn much like him that his heart gives a traitorous little leap at the sight of that familiar gaze. It’s a small mercy that he at least manages not to smile.
It doesn’t sit like Dean, though. Dean is restless energy and barely-contained mayhem, joy in all things sensuous, a wild combination of violence and glee. This thing sits as still as a dead man, a half-empty beer bottle propped on one knee, its eyes hooded and considering. It doesn’t move even when Sam stares openly, unable to tear his gaze away.
“You look like him,” Sam croaks, eventually, unable to wrench the words back before they’re spilling out in the open air. “Look like ‘im. But’cher not.”
It sits for another few moments, inhuman in its stillness. Then it blows air out through its nose, sets down its beer, and comes to sit on the bare mattress beside Sam, a water bottle in one hand. Sam peers down, going almost cross-eyed as he looks for familiar scars-the cut across the knuckles that needed ten stitches when Dean was fifteen, the spots from being spattered with hot grease at the age of twelve, the shiny patches of skin accumulated from a lifetime spent far too close to open flame.
None of those scars are there. But there are others, marks that Sam doesn’t recognize.
Not-Dean opens the bottle and waves it vaguely in Sam’s face. He makes an aborted attempt to reach for it, and the thing smirks slightly.
“Open your mouth. ‘S just water, I promise.”
Sam tries on a glare, just to see what happens, but it doesn’t have much effect. He slumps a little.
“Better,” the thing says, and Sam’s amazed at the sudden softness of its voice. It’s still wrong, of course, but it’s…quiet. Almost gentle. “Open up. Come on.”
Someone took the time to treat his wrists, and wrap them.
It’s quiet.
No one is screaming.
He opens his mouth. For the second time, someone pours water down his throat. It’s cold and he shuts his eyes in sudden bliss. He can’t help it.
“Now,” D-Not-Dean puts the cap back on the half-empty bottle and gets up again. “You think you can keep down some food?”
Sam hasn’t eaten since the gas station, and he managed to throw that up a while ago. He doesn’t even know how long it’s been, what with the head injuries and drugging and periods of unconsciousness and the extreme craziness.
“Feel like shit,” he manages, and now he’s not so dry he can hear how much he’s slurring. He just needs his goddamn tongue to cooperate already.
“Yeah, ‘course you do. Blood sugar’s in the basement and you got knocked in the head pretty good back there. Come on, open up.”
Sam’s eyes go wide. A cracker is being waved in front of his face.
Seriously? He thinks, hysterically. Seriously?
Apparently his captor is very serious. The cracker’s not going away. He tries to see if there’s blood caked under Not-Dean’s nails, but they’re clean. Very clean.
He gives up and opens his mouth. Lets himself be fed, which he doesn’t think has happened to him since he was about a year old. The thing feeding him wears a look of calm concentration. Sam forces down another flutter of warmth, of fondness. He’s tied to a bare mattress eating crackers from the hand of a torturer, for fuck’s sake.
“Couple more bites. Come on.”
He manages, somehow, and gets a few more sips of water as his reward. His stomach remains quiet, for the most part, and he surprises himself by not vomiting all over his lap.
“I’m not-” he swallows, “You’re not. Not Dean. Not m’brother.”
It doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even look at him. Stares down at its hands and flexes them, slowly. Sam can see the veins sliding over tendons. Watches the strange scars catch the light.
The room is quiet, and no one is screaming.
No one at all.
Sam says, “Are you…” and trails off. He wants to ask. He needs to ask…something. But he doesn’t know what. Can barely see the edges of whatever it is he’s trying to understand.
“What day is it?” he asks, instead. Softly, afraid to break the stillness in the room. Afraid to bring back that terrifying creature he saw when he was tied to the chair. The barely-human monster that looked as if it could skin him alive without any hesitation at all.
The thing flinches. Says, “Tuesday,” and cuts its eyes at him as if that’s supposed to mean something.
Sam says, “Oh.” Pauses. “What’s the date?”
“The twelfth,” it says. “September.”
Sam wants to ask. He wants to ask but he can’t. He knows the question is in the air between them and he can see the tension in the…in its body. The thing’s body.
Only it’s not a thing, Sam thinks, and can’t go any further with the thought. The world doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t.
“I’m not going to tell you the year,” it whispers, and Sam knows.
He knows.
“Dean,” he whispers. “God, no.”
_____________________________
You’re a selfish bastard, you know that?
He’s twisting his wrists because he doesn’t have anything better to do. The thing with his brother’s face-his brother, no, not his brother, not ever, please God not ever-left him alone without another word, went out into the dark hallway and shut the door behind him. Sam heard him pacing up and down for a long time. Eventually, he heard his voice, short and angry, and guessed he was on the phone with someone.
Dad? He thinks wildly. Is Dad around somewhere too?
No. It’s not possible. John Winchester may be a lot of things, but there’s no way he’d stand by and let his son torture someone. No matter what the reason.
No matter what.
Which means-what? Dad’s dead? Sam’s dead? Is this some kind of crazy vision? A future, a possible future, a merry jaunt through Hell?
Sam’s leaning toward the last one, actually. Because that’s not Dean. Not really. Not the man he knows, not his brother. It’s not. Sam can’t even imagine the circumstances that would have created that man who’s wearing Dean’s face. That would turn his brother into something so far from the Dean that Sam knows.
He bangs his head back against the wall, swallows. He’s not going to be sick all over himself. He’s barely got anything in his gut to be sick with.
In the hall, Dean says something. Sam can’t make out the words, but he sounds upset. Worried. The voice that answers him is sudden, unfamiliar and harsh. Sam furrows his brow, turns his head toward the door. Listens.
There’s a man in the hall telling Dean something he doesn’t want to hear. That much is clear. The rest? Sam can’t make any sense of it at all.
Something tickles his lip. He licks at it, tastes salt.
Tears.
He’s Rip Van fucking Winkle. Walked away from his brother and didn’t see him again until he’d turned into someone…something else.
I will leave your ass, you hear me?
“That’s what I want you to do,” he whispers, and hears the echo of his own words underneath. A handful of hours ago. An unknown number of years ago.
He shuts his eyes. I just want to see my brother again, he prays. Please, I just want to see him again.
When the door opens, he reflects that maybe he should have been a little more specific in his wording. Except that it’s not Dean standing in the doorway, leaning on the jamb.
It’s Sam.
Other-Sam, anyway, and Sam flinches away from the look the older man is giving him. Calm, thoughtful. Calculating. He’s got something on his mind. That much is clear.
He thinks of Kara, and blood on the floor. Tries to imagine himself standing by, letting Dean tear her apart, and can’t. He can’t.
“I’m not going to turn into you,” Sam tells the other man. Shifts uneasily in his bonds when Other-Sam narrows his eyes a little.
“Dean told you, did he?”
Sam shakes his head. “No. I-I figured it out.” Sort of. But not really.
Other-Sam’s smile is humorless. His eyes glitter.
“Of course you did,” he says, pacing into the room, hauling a chair over beside the mattress, settling himself comfortably. “We always were the smart one.”
He says it with so much bitterness Sam can taste it in the air.
“What happened to you?” he whispers, can’t stop himself, even though an alarm in his head is screaming shutupshutupshutup. “What happened to us?”
Other-Sam lifts a hand. “Don’t. Don’t you dare. You keep your little…” he waves a hand, “Your judgments to yourself, understand?”
Sam stares at him. Looks for the similarities, for evidence that it’s still him in there. The features are basically the same, but exaggerated. He’s just…bigger all around.
Sam suddenly feels like a gangling kid again, skinny and untested. This guy, whatever his history, has seen things and done things, a lot of which Sam is willing to bet he’s not too proud of.
“Look,” he says, “I get that you’re…whatever, pissed at me or, or something. Okay. But…is Kara…I mean, you’re not a killer, man. She’s not…she’s gonna be okay, right?”
His double pinches the bridge of his nose. “For fuck’s sake. She’s a demon, you idiot.”
He says it so casually. It falls right off his tongue as if it’s nothing extraordinary. In his whole life Sam’s seen a grand total of one demon, and that experience nearly killed him. And…hell, it’d been possessing people.
Possessing people.
Possessing people.
“She’s…a demon,” Sam says slowly. “In a human…she’s possessed.” He swallows, throat suddenly tight. “She’s a possessed girl.”
Other-Sam lifts his chin a little. Doesn’t say anything.
Sam can’t say anything either. He can’t even think of any words.
The silence stretches between them.
Finally the older man leans forward. Reaches out, lays long fingers on the side of Sam’s face. Turns him a little toward the light. Shakes his head.
“Amazing,” he says softly. Sam clenches his fists, and waits. Finally the larger man releases him. Says, “What were you doing, before you turned up here?”
“I was asleep,” Sam bites out, glowering. Other-Sam laughs and shakes his head.
“Asshole,” he says, almost fondly. “I meant where were you asleep? Motel? Car? Ditch along the side of the road, what?”
“Bus station,” he snaps, irritated for reasons he can’t quite figure out. Other-Sam’s brow furrows.
“What were you-Oh!” he snaps his fingers. “God, I almost forgot-Meg, the bus station. The…God, was it that thing with the scarecrow? The Vanir?”
“The...what? What are you-?”
Other-Sam leans forward, stares at him so intently Sam tries to shift away. God, he is fucking creepy.
“You don’t know, yet. You…you just ditched Dean to do the job by himself. You actually…you left. You actually left.” He stares like he can’t believe what he’s seeing, like Sam’s some kind of creature with a mind so alien he can’t begin to process its motivations.
“I-”
“Fuck, you left him so you could chase Dad and your revenge all the way to California. You haven’t even-you haven’t even talked to him yet. Wow. Just…this whole thing is blowing my goddamn mind.”
He leans back, and Sam doesn’t feel a whole lot better.
“Are you saying I should go back?” he mutters, just for something to say.
Other-Sam shrugs. “I’m not saying anything. You’ll do what you want, same’s always.”
What I want, Sam thinks bitterly. He looks down at his older self’s big, scarred hands, where they rest on denim-clad knees. He can’t stop the next question that spills out of his mouth, though he thinks he probably should have tried.
“Did you ever-did we ever go back to school?”
Other-Sam stares at him, eyes widening in a way that should be funny. Sudden color highlights his cheeks, and he shakes his head sharply with eyes fixed on something beyond Sam’s face, something that isn’t in the room with them.
Suddenly the other man is right up in Sam’s face, grabbing him on both sides of his head, talking fast and low and intense.
“Now you listen to me you self-righteous little shit, I don’t care what you think you deserve or what you think the world owes you, because I’m here to tell you you’re not getting it, you can’t have it, and the world does not owe you jack shit. You’re not going back to school and if you think that’s your biggest problem then you better go outside and find yourself a goddamn lucky star and pray to who-the-fuck-ever it is you pray to that it’s not an airplane because I’m here to tell you that you have no idea what’s waiting for you, no fucking idea what’s coming down the line.”
He releases Sam almost violently. Points back at the door and in a soft voice adds, “And you know something else? Letting Dean work over that little girl downstairs is a long, long way from being the worst thing I have ever done. And god knows what I still might do.”
Sam stares up into his own face. It’s possibly the worst thing he’s ever seen. He’s frozen-physically unable to move the muscles in his body. Up until this point he hadn’t realized that was actually possible, that it was anything other than a metaphor.
It’s not me, he thinks, in wild despair, It’s not. Please. Not ever.
“Sam.”
They both look to the door. There’s no ignoring that tone, from that voice. Other-Sam straightens up. Sam leans away from him as much as possible.
Dean jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “Out,” he snarls, and it’s a genuine snarl. He’s furious.
Other-Sam folds his arms, glares.
Dean isn’t fazed. “Don’t you dare give me that look. I already told you. You remember me telling you? Get out.”
He pushes into the room, trailed by a man in a trench coat that Sam doesn’t recognize, and as they pass Other-Sam the newcomer says, in a startlingly deep voice, “It’s a paradox, Sam. It wouldn’t work anyway.”
Dean throws up his hands. “Cas!” he nearly whines, and in any other situation his exasperation would be hilarious. The third man looks mildly chagrined. Other-Sam looks like he could start generating his own storm system at any moment.
“I swear to God, Sammy,” Dean grinds out, fast and tight, “You don’t walk yourself out of this room in the next five seconds I will drop-kick your ass out, and don’t think you’re so big now that I can’t. I’m warning you.”
Other-Sam squares his jaw. “Dean-!” he snaps out, and Dean gestures sharply toward the door.
“Three seconds, Sam.”
The larger man is ready to knock somebody’s head off, Sam can tell-he’s never seen that particular expression in the mirror, but he knows what it feels like, knows he’s worn it himself on more than one occasion. Other-Sam finally flings up his hands and storms past Dean, but in the doorway he pauses and turns.
“You think about Gordon Walker, Dean. You think about what he said.”
Dean scowls. “This conversation is over. Go.”
He slams out of the room. Dean winces a little as dust drifts down. Sam breathes a sigh of relief that’s apparently audible to the other two occupants of the room, who turn their heads simultaneously to look at him. Great. More creepiness.
“He uh-he doesn’t seem to like me a whole lot.” Even to his own ears, Sam’s voice is faint.
The newcomer-Cas?-nods. “He has ‘anger issues’,” he intones, and the statement is so awkward that Sam can hear the quotation marks clunk into place.
Dean barks a startled laugh.
“Chrissakes, Cas. He really doesn’t need to know that, okay? Just-can we stick with the plan here? And can the conversation?”
“Of course.”
“Good.” Dean gives the other man a strangely proprietary nod. To Sam he says, “Listen, I got a couple questions for you, help us try and get to the bottom of,” he waves a hand vaguely in the air, “This..whatever-it-is. You feel up to talking?”
If I don’t, will you put me back in the chair? He wants to ask, but can’t bring himself to. In this moment, Dean looks so much like the brother Sam remembers, so separate from the man who shot him full of sedative and made a demon beg for mercy. He knows that he’s staring, looking for pieces of the Dean he knows, the right Dean. He heard it in the unexpected bark of laughter and now he sees it in the way the other man stands, the softer expression on his face, his body language. Dean’s uneasy, concerned about what the other Sam said. Worried that he might be a threat.
Worried about both of them.
Dean sits down on the footboard, hands clasped in his lap, twisted to face Sam. It makes him seem smaller, less threatening.
He says, “Have you had any dreams, since you got here?”
Sam blinks. “Have I-huh?” Then he realizes, maybe this Dean knows. The big secret (Oh God, Jess I should have stopped it)-maybe to him it’s not a secret at all.
“You mean like…like about things that haven’t happened yet?” He’s whispering. He can barely get the words out.
Dean waves a dismissing hand. “Not like a vision, no.” He brushes it off so casually, so matter-of-factly, that Sam stares. “Like, about Jess, maybe. Or a guy you don’t know, kinda,” he waves a hand at his own head, “light-colored hair, skin’s sorta…rotting? Talks real quiet, makes a buncha promises. You seen anybody like that?”
He’s still stuck on Not like a vision. It takes him a moment to reorient himself to this bizarre line of questioning. “Rotting skin? Dean I’ve been unconscious, I haven’t been able to dream anything. About anything.”
“You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure! Why would I lie about that?”
“Alright.” Dean licks his lips. “Alright. Don’t get your panties in a bunch. That-this is good. That’s good news.”
Sam opens and closes his hands in the cuffs. “What do you know about…about visions?”
Dean shoots a glance at Cas. The other man has remained standing throughout the entire exchange. He meets Dean’s eyes, briefly. Sam can’t tell if he shakes his head but something is communicated, silently. Again, creepy.
Dean says, “It’s better if I don’t tell you anything. Better if you don’t know. You’ll find out about it anyway, eventually.”
“You’re outside of your time,” Cas says-declares, really. He doesn’t have a voice made for conversation. He seems better suited to making pronouncements, sharp absolute statements that can’t be contradicted. It’s an odd thought. Sam wonders where it came from.
“I think he’s figured that out, thanks,” Dean observes dryly. Cas glares a little. It’s disturbingly intense. Dean seems unperturbed.
“Wait a minute.” Sam leans forward, as best he can. “It’s-are you sure that’s what this is? Maybe it’s, like, some crazy dream or a weird v-vision. I’ve been…I mean, I saw…with Jess-”
“I know,” Dean says, and the gentleness is startling. “Don’t think about that, okay? It’s not…that’s not what this is.”
“Well what is it, then?” Sam demands, manages not to shriek.
“It’s exactly what Cas said. Someone picked you up, out of wherever you were-”
“Bus station,” Sam mutters.
“Bus-okay, yeah, bus station-seriously? Anyway, yeah, someone snatched you up and dumped you here, for some damn reason. I’ve got a few theories, but you don’t need to worry about what those are.”
“Well if it’s got to do with me, shouldn’t I-”
“No,” Dean says, firmly, fiercely. Sam blinks at him.
“Cas, get over here.”
The other man circles the bed and Sam instinctively leans away. Cas looks at him, annoyed.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says flatly. Sam isn’t hugely reassured. He takes in the suit-and-tie ensemble, the unwashed trench coat, the long fingers.
“You’re not a hunter.”
“No. I’m a…a specialist,” Cas says, glancing in Dean’s direction, as if looking for approval, or reassurance. He’s obviously lying, and Sam’s eyes narrow.
“Oh yeah? A specialist in what, exactly?”
“Lotsa stuff,” Dean snaps, irritated. “Can we move things along here, please?” When Sam continues to lean away he adds, “He’s like a kind of psychic, okay? He’s not gonna hurt you, he’s just gonna figure out some stuff.”
“What do you mean, ‘psychic’?”
“What do I-Sam, do you have to question everything? I mean we need to know some stuff so we can figure out how to kick you back to your own time! That’s it! Now shut your damn eyes and let the man work!”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Cas repeats, no less awkward the second time.
“Don’t make me sedate you again,” Dean adds darkly, and Sam can’t really tell if he’s serious or not.
Sam works his jaw, but he’s out of options. He shut his eyes, cracks one until Dean smacks his bound feet, and closes it again.
He expects something. Laying on of hands, maybe. Chanting. What he gets is a deep, intense silence, and a sense of being stared at. His skin prickles, but that’s it.
Finally, Cas says, “He is hidden. Lu-the…others, they won’t be able to find him. But it’s not the same as-there are no marks, not like yours, anywhere on his body.” He sounds bemused, hesitates a moment before adding, “Whatever is behind this, it has its own agenda.”
“Oh,” Dean’s voice is wry, “Goody.”
“Can I open my eyes now?”
“There’s nothing more I can do at this point,” Cas states. When Sam opens his eyes Dean is already on his feet, heading for the door and waving Cas over.
“We need to have a little chat. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t, Sammy.”
“You could at least untie me!” he calls after their retreating backs. Neither man so much as glances in his direction. His only answer is the closing door, and the sound of the lock.
_____________________________
-4-, epilogue
_____________________________
Summary: In 2006, Sam walks away from his brother and heads to California to find their father. He winds up going a lot farther than he intended. (13,000+ words, complete)
Warnings: Torture, language, dark themes
Note: This was inspired by a scene in season 2's Hunted, in which Gordon reminisces about torturing a demon and killing the host in the process, and Dean is horrified and appalled. That amused me a lot.
1/3
-3-
The darkness greys around the edges, softening and falling away in pieces. He becomes aware of his skin, of the tips of his fingers, of the bones in his shoulders. His arms ache in new places, and the ever-present pain in his wrists has faded.
He’s not in the chair.
He drags his eyelids apart. Everything’s heavy and the light that slides between his lids is muted, hazy. He rolls his head, pushes his thick tongue around in his mouth. Dry. His mouth is dry and he parts his lips and pants, tries not to cough, or choke. It’s strangely silent, wherever he is. He’d gotten used to the noise, the screaming and the sounds of footsteps and muted voices. All of that’s gone, now.
He’s propped up on a mattress, he realizes as his awareness creeps back, his legs crossed and tied to the footboard, his wrists cuffed in front of him. He shifts, squirms around, and his wrists slide in the cuffs but don’t ache the way they should. He squints down, tries to corral his bleary gaze, to focus as much as possible on the ends of his arms. They’ve been wrapped in soft towels and, underneath, he can see the edges of medical gauze peeking out.
He groans, can’t help it, rolls his head a little and pulls on the cuffs. They don’t go far-a jerk and a rattle and he’s stopped short. The cuffs are attached to the bonds on his legs. He’s not going anywhere.
He pulls in air through his nose. Once, twice, three times. Struggles to get his head under control, to force away the clouds. A needle. There was a needle. The thing with his brother’s face shoved a needle in the crook of his arm. Jesus. No wonder he feels like shit.
“Sorry,” it’d said, and sounded genuine.
Just his luck to get kidnapped by the nicest psychopathic monsters in the world.
Christ.
He breathes for a while. Twists his wrists idly in their new bonds because it’s become a habit, because it’s comforting. He barely registers the action at all. The quiet is eerie.
His head doesn’t hurt so much, he realizes. He wonders if that’s due to time, or to the effects of whatever the thing stuck him with. He doesn’t feel particularly high, or woozy. Just cloudy, like his head’s been stuffed full of batting. He’s such a cliché.
“Fuckin’…Christ,” he mumbles, and blinks heavily at the sound of his own voice. He sounds a lot more drugged than he feels.
He stays like that for a while, idly twisting his arms, blinking and breathing and trying to force the world into some semblance of stability. It’s probably a good thirty minutes before he remembers that he can lift his head, and when he does he opens his eyes fully and looks right into the face of Kara’s torturer.
“Oh shit,” he mumbles. It looks so much like Dean. So goddamn much like him that his heart gives a traitorous little leap at the sight of that familiar gaze. It’s a small mercy that he at least manages not to smile.
It doesn’t sit like Dean, though. Dean is restless energy and barely-contained mayhem, joy in all things sensuous, a wild combination of violence and glee. This thing sits as still as a dead man, a half-empty beer bottle propped on one knee, its eyes hooded and considering. It doesn’t move even when Sam stares openly, unable to tear his gaze away.
“You look like him,” Sam croaks, eventually, unable to wrench the words back before they’re spilling out in the open air. “Look like ‘im. But’cher not.”
It sits for another few moments, inhuman in its stillness. Then it blows air out through its nose, sets down its beer, and comes to sit on the bare mattress beside Sam, a water bottle in one hand. Sam peers down, going almost cross-eyed as he looks for familiar scars-the cut across the knuckles that needed ten stitches when Dean was fifteen, the spots from being spattered with hot grease at the age of twelve, the shiny patches of skin accumulated from a lifetime spent far too close to open flame.
None of those scars are there. But there are others, marks that Sam doesn’t recognize.
Not-Dean opens the bottle and waves it vaguely in Sam’s face. He makes an aborted attempt to reach for it, and the thing smirks slightly.
“Open your mouth. ‘S just water, I promise.”
Sam tries on a glare, just to see what happens, but it doesn’t have much effect. He slumps a little.
“Better,” the thing says, and Sam’s amazed at the sudden softness of its voice. It’s still wrong, of course, but it’s…quiet. Almost gentle. “Open up. Come on.”
Someone took the time to treat his wrists, and wrap them.
It’s quiet.
No one is screaming.
He opens his mouth. For the second time, someone pours water down his throat. It’s cold and he shuts his eyes in sudden bliss. He can’t help it.
“Now,” D-Not-Dean puts the cap back on the half-empty bottle and gets up again. “You think you can keep down some food?”
Sam hasn’t eaten since the gas station, and he managed to throw that up a while ago. He doesn’t even know how long it’s been, what with the head injuries and drugging and periods of unconsciousness and the extreme craziness.
“Feel like shit,” he manages, and now he’s not so dry he can hear how much he’s slurring. He just needs his goddamn tongue to cooperate already.
“Yeah, ‘course you do. Blood sugar’s in the basement and you got knocked in the head pretty good back there. Come on, open up.”
Sam’s eyes go wide. A cracker is being waved in front of his face.
Seriously? He thinks, hysterically. Seriously?
Apparently his captor is very serious. The cracker’s not going away. He tries to see if there’s blood caked under Not-Dean’s nails, but they’re clean. Very clean.
He gives up and opens his mouth. Lets himself be fed, which he doesn’t think has happened to him since he was about a year old. The thing feeding him wears a look of calm concentration. Sam forces down another flutter of warmth, of fondness. He’s tied to a bare mattress eating crackers from the hand of a torturer, for fuck’s sake.
“Couple more bites. Come on.”
He manages, somehow, and gets a few more sips of water as his reward. His stomach remains quiet, for the most part, and he surprises himself by not vomiting all over his lap.
“I’m not-” he swallows, “You’re not. Not Dean. Not m’brother.”
It doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even look at him. Stares down at its hands and flexes them, slowly. Sam can see the veins sliding over tendons. Watches the strange scars catch the light.
The room is quiet, and no one is screaming.
No one at all.
Sam says, “Are you…” and trails off. He wants to ask. He needs to ask…something. But he doesn’t know what. Can barely see the edges of whatever it is he’s trying to understand.
“What day is it?” he asks, instead. Softly, afraid to break the stillness in the room. Afraid to bring back that terrifying creature he saw when he was tied to the chair. The barely-human monster that looked as if it could skin him alive without any hesitation at all.
The thing flinches. Says, “Tuesday,” and cuts its eyes at him as if that’s supposed to mean something.
Sam says, “Oh.” Pauses. “What’s the date?”
“The twelfth,” it says. “September.”
Sam wants to ask. He wants to ask but he can’t. He knows the question is in the air between them and he can see the tension in the…in its body. The thing’s body.
Only it’s not a thing, Sam thinks, and can’t go any further with the thought. The world doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t.
“I’m not going to tell you the year,” it whispers, and Sam knows.
He knows.
“Dean,” he whispers. “God, no.”
_____________________________
You’re a selfish bastard, you know that?
He’s twisting his wrists because he doesn’t have anything better to do. The thing with his brother’s face-his brother, no, not his brother, not ever, please God not ever-left him alone without another word, went out into the dark hallway and shut the door behind him. Sam heard him pacing up and down for a long time. Eventually, he heard his voice, short and angry, and guessed he was on the phone with someone.
Dad? He thinks wildly. Is Dad around somewhere too?
No. It’s not possible. John Winchester may be a lot of things, but there’s no way he’d stand by and let his son torture someone. No matter what the reason.
No matter what.
Which means-what? Dad’s dead? Sam’s dead? Is this some kind of crazy vision? A future, a possible future, a merry jaunt through Hell?
Sam’s leaning toward the last one, actually. Because that’s not Dean. Not really. Not the man he knows, not his brother. It’s not. Sam can’t even imagine the circumstances that would have created that man who’s wearing Dean’s face. That would turn his brother into something so far from the Dean that Sam knows.
He bangs his head back against the wall, swallows. He’s not going to be sick all over himself. He’s barely got anything in his gut to be sick with.
In the hall, Dean says something. Sam can’t make out the words, but he sounds upset. Worried. The voice that answers him is sudden, unfamiliar and harsh. Sam furrows his brow, turns his head toward the door. Listens.
There’s a man in the hall telling Dean something he doesn’t want to hear. That much is clear. The rest? Sam can’t make any sense of it at all.
Something tickles his lip. He licks at it, tastes salt.
Tears.
He’s Rip Van fucking Winkle. Walked away from his brother and didn’t see him again until he’d turned into someone…something else.
I will leave your ass, you hear me?
“That’s what I want you to do,” he whispers, and hears the echo of his own words underneath. A handful of hours ago. An unknown number of years ago.
He shuts his eyes. I just want to see my brother again, he prays. Please, I just want to see him again.
When the door opens, he reflects that maybe he should have been a little more specific in his wording. Except that it’s not Dean standing in the doorway, leaning on the jamb.
It’s Sam.
Other-Sam, anyway, and Sam flinches away from the look the older man is giving him. Calm, thoughtful. Calculating. He’s got something on his mind. That much is clear.
He thinks of Kara, and blood on the floor. Tries to imagine himself standing by, letting Dean tear her apart, and can’t. He can’t.
“I’m not going to turn into you,” Sam tells the other man. Shifts uneasily in his bonds when Other-Sam narrows his eyes a little.
“Dean told you, did he?”
Sam shakes his head. “No. I-I figured it out.” Sort of. But not really.
Other-Sam’s smile is humorless. His eyes glitter.
“Of course you did,” he says, pacing into the room, hauling a chair over beside the mattress, settling himself comfortably. “We always were the smart one.”
He says it with so much bitterness Sam can taste it in the air.
“What happened to you?” he whispers, can’t stop himself, even though an alarm in his head is screaming shutupshutupshutup. “What happened to us?”
Other-Sam lifts a hand. “Don’t. Don’t you dare. You keep your little…” he waves a hand, “Your judgments to yourself, understand?”
Sam stares at him. Looks for the similarities, for evidence that it’s still him in there. The features are basically the same, but exaggerated. He’s just…bigger all around.
Sam suddenly feels like a gangling kid again, skinny and untested. This guy, whatever his history, has seen things and done things, a lot of which Sam is willing to bet he’s not too proud of.
“Look,” he says, “I get that you’re…whatever, pissed at me or, or something. Okay. But…is Kara…I mean, you’re not a killer, man. She’s not…she’s gonna be okay, right?”
His double pinches the bridge of his nose. “For fuck’s sake. She’s a demon, you idiot.”
He says it so casually. It falls right off his tongue as if it’s nothing extraordinary. In his whole life Sam’s seen a grand total of one demon, and that experience nearly killed him. And…hell, it’d been possessing people.
Possessing people.
Possessing people.
“She’s…a demon,” Sam says slowly. “In a human…she’s possessed.” He swallows, throat suddenly tight. “She’s a possessed girl.”
Other-Sam lifts his chin a little. Doesn’t say anything.
Sam can’t say anything either. He can’t even think of any words.
The silence stretches between them.
Finally the older man leans forward. Reaches out, lays long fingers on the side of Sam’s face. Turns him a little toward the light. Shakes his head.
“Amazing,” he says softly. Sam clenches his fists, and waits. Finally the larger man releases him. Says, “What were you doing, before you turned up here?”
“I was asleep,” Sam bites out, glowering. Other-Sam laughs and shakes his head.
“Asshole,” he says, almost fondly. “I meant where were you asleep? Motel? Car? Ditch along the side of the road, what?”
“Bus station,” he snaps, irritated for reasons he can’t quite figure out. Other-Sam’s brow furrows.
“What were you-Oh!” he snaps his fingers. “God, I almost forgot-Meg, the bus station. The…God, was it that thing with the scarecrow? The Vanir?”
“The...what? What are you-?”
Other-Sam leans forward, stares at him so intently Sam tries to shift away. God, he is fucking creepy.
“You don’t know, yet. You…you just ditched Dean to do the job by himself. You actually…you left. You actually left.” He stares like he can’t believe what he’s seeing, like Sam’s some kind of creature with a mind so alien he can’t begin to process its motivations.
“I-”
“Fuck, you left him so you could chase Dad and your revenge all the way to California. You haven’t even-you haven’t even talked to him yet. Wow. Just…this whole thing is blowing my goddamn mind.”
He leans back, and Sam doesn’t feel a whole lot better.
“Are you saying I should go back?” he mutters, just for something to say.
Other-Sam shrugs. “I’m not saying anything. You’ll do what you want, same’s always.”
What I want, Sam thinks bitterly. He looks down at his older self’s big, scarred hands, where they rest on denim-clad knees. He can’t stop the next question that spills out of his mouth, though he thinks he probably should have tried.
“Did you ever-did we ever go back to school?”
Other-Sam stares at him, eyes widening in a way that should be funny. Sudden color highlights his cheeks, and he shakes his head sharply with eyes fixed on something beyond Sam’s face, something that isn’t in the room with them.
Suddenly the other man is right up in Sam’s face, grabbing him on both sides of his head, talking fast and low and intense.
“Now you listen to me you self-righteous little shit, I don’t care what you think you deserve or what you think the world owes you, because I’m here to tell you you’re not getting it, you can’t have it, and the world does not owe you jack shit. You’re not going back to school and if you think that’s your biggest problem then you better go outside and find yourself a goddamn lucky star and pray to who-the-fuck-ever it is you pray to that it’s not an airplane because I’m here to tell you that you have no idea what’s waiting for you, no fucking idea what’s coming down the line.”
He releases Sam almost violently. Points back at the door and in a soft voice adds, “And you know something else? Letting Dean work over that little girl downstairs is a long, long way from being the worst thing I have ever done. And god knows what I still might do.”
Sam stares up into his own face. It’s possibly the worst thing he’s ever seen. He’s frozen-physically unable to move the muscles in his body. Up until this point he hadn’t realized that was actually possible, that it was anything other than a metaphor.
It’s not me, he thinks, in wild despair, It’s not. Please. Not ever.
“Sam.”
They both look to the door. There’s no ignoring that tone, from that voice. Other-Sam straightens up. Sam leans away from him as much as possible.
Dean jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “Out,” he snarls, and it’s a genuine snarl. He’s furious.
Other-Sam folds his arms, glares.
Dean isn’t fazed. “Don’t you dare give me that look. I already told you. You remember me telling you? Get out.”
He pushes into the room, trailed by a man in a trench coat that Sam doesn’t recognize, and as they pass Other-Sam the newcomer says, in a startlingly deep voice, “It’s a paradox, Sam. It wouldn’t work anyway.”
Dean throws up his hands. “Cas!” he nearly whines, and in any other situation his exasperation would be hilarious. The third man looks mildly chagrined. Other-Sam looks like he could start generating his own storm system at any moment.
“I swear to God, Sammy,” Dean grinds out, fast and tight, “You don’t walk yourself out of this room in the next five seconds I will drop-kick your ass out, and don’t think you’re so big now that I can’t. I’m warning you.”
Other-Sam squares his jaw. “Dean-!” he snaps out, and Dean gestures sharply toward the door.
“Three seconds, Sam.”
The larger man is ready to knock somebody’s head off, Sam can tell-he’s never seen that particular expression in the mirror, but he knows what it feels like, knows he’s worn it himself on more than one occasion. Other-Sam finally flings up his hands and storms past Dean, but in the doorway he pauses and turns.
“You think about Gordon Walker, Dean. You think about what he said.”
Dean scowls. “This conversation is over. Go.”
He slams out of the room. Dean winces a little as dust drifts down. Sam breathes a sigh of relief that’s apparently audible to the other two occupants of the room, who turn their heads simultaneously to look at him. Great. More creepiness.
“He uh-he doesn’t seem to like me a whole lot.” Even to his own ears, Sam’s voice is faint.
The newcomer-Cas?-nods. “He has ‘anger issues’,” he intones, and the statement is so awkward that Sam can hear the quotation marks clunk into place.
Dean barks a startled laugh.
“Chrissakes, Cas. He really doesn’t need to know that, okay? Just-can we stick with the plan here? And can the conversation?”
“Of course.”
“Good.” Dean gives the other man a strangely proprietary nod. To Sam he says, “Listen, I got a couple questions for you, help us try and get to the bottom of,” he waves a hand vaguely in the air, “This..whatever-it-is. You feel up to talking?”
If I don’t, will you put me back in the chair? He wants to ask, but can’t bring himself to. In this moment, Dean looks so much like the brother Sam remembers, so separate from the man who shot him full of sedative and made a demon beg for mercy. He knows that he’s staring, looking for pieces of the Dean he knows, the right Dean. He heard it in the unexpected bark of laughter and now he sees it in the way the other man stands, the softer expression on his face, his body language. Dean’s uneasy, concerned about what the other Sam said. Worried that he might be a threat.
Worried about both of them.
Dean sits down on the footboard, hands clasped in his lap, twisted to face Sam. It makes him seem smaller, less threatening.
He says, “Have you had any dreams, since you got here?”
Sam blinks. “Have I-huh?” Then he realizes, maybe this Dean knows. The big secret (Oh God, Jess I should have stopped it)-maybe to him it’s not a secret at all.
“You mean like…like about things that haven’t happened yet?” He’s whispering. He can barely get the words out.
Dean waves a dismissing hand. “Not like a vision, no.” He brushes it off so casually, so matter-of-factly, that Sam stares. “Like, about Jess, maybe. Or a guy you don’t know, kinda,” he waves a hand at his own head, “light-colored hair, skin’s sorta…rotting? Talks real quiet, makes a buncha promises. You seen anybody like that?”
He’s still stuck on Not like a vision. It takes him a moment to reorient himself to this bizarre line of questioning. “Rotting skin? Dean I’ve been unconscious, I haven’t been able to dream anything. About anything.”
“You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure! Why would I lie about that?”
“Alright.” Dean licks his lips. “Alright. Don’t get your panties in a bunch. That-this is good. That’s good news.”
Sam opens and closes his hands in the cuffs. “What do you know about…about visions?”
Dean shoots a glance at Cas. The other man has remained standing throughout the entire exchange. He meets Dean’s eyes, briefly. Sam can’t tell if he shakes his head but something is communicated, silently. Again, creepy.
Dean says, “It’s better if I don’t tell you anything. Better if you don’t know. You’ll find out about it anyway, eventually.”
“You’re outside of your time,” Cas says-declares, really. He doesn’t have a voice made for conversation. He seems better suited to making pronouncements, sharp absolute statements that can’t be contradicted. It’s an odd thought. Sam wonders where it came from.
“I think he’s figured that out, thanks,” Dean observes dryly. Cas glares a little. It’s disturbingly intense. Dean seems unperturbed.
“Wait a minute.” Sam leans forward, as best he can. “It’s-are you sure that’s what this is? Maybe it’s, like, some crazy dream or a weird v-vision. I’ve been…I mean, I saw…with Jess-”
“I know,” Dean says, and the gentleness is startling. “Don’t think about that, okay? It’s not…that’s not what this is.”
“Well what is it, then?” Sam demands, manages not to shriek.
“It’s exactly what Cas said. Someone picked you up, out of wherever you were-”
“Bus station,” Sam mutters.
“Bus-okay, yeah, bus station-seriously? Anyway, yeah, someone snatched you up and dumped you here, for some damn reason. I’ve got a few theories, but you don’t need to worry about what those are.”
“Well if it’s got to do with me, shouldn’t I-”
“No,” Dean says, firmly, fiercely. Sam blinks at him.
“Cas, get over here.”
The other man circles the bed and Sam instinctively leans away. Cas looks at him, annoyed.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says flatly. Sam isn’t hugely reassured. He takes in the suit-and-tie ensemble, the unwashed trench coat, the long fingers.
“You’re not a hunter.”
“No. I’m a…a specialist,” Cas says, glancing in Dean’s direction, as if looking for approval, or reassurance. He’s obviously lying, and Sam’s eyes narrow.
“Oh yeah? A specialist in what, exactly?”
“Lotsa stuff,” Dean snaps, irritated. “Can we move things along here, please?” When Sam continues to lean away he adds, “He’s like a kind of psychic, okay? He’s not gonna hurt you, he’s just gonna figure out some stuff.”
“What do you mean, ‘psychic’?”
“What do I-Sam, do you have to question everything? I mean we need to know some stuff so we can figure out how to kick you back to your own time! That’s it! Now shut your damn eyes and let the man work!”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Cas repeats, no less awkward the second time.
“Don’t make me sedate you again,” Dean adds darkly, and Sam can’t really tell if he’s serious or not.
Sam works his jaw, but he’s out of options. He shut his eyes, cracks one until Dean smacks his bound feet, and closes it again.
He expects something. Laying on of hands, maybe. Chanting. What he gets is a deep, intense silence, and a sense of being stared at. His skin prickles, but that’s it.
Finally, Cas says, “He is hidden. Lu-the…others, they won’t be able to find him. But it’s not the same as-there are no marks, not like yours, anywhere on his body.” He sounds bemused, hesitates a moment before adding, “Whatever is behind this, it has its own agenda.”
“Oh,” Dean’s voice is wry, “Goody.”
“Can I open my eyes now?”
“There’s nothing more I can do at this point,” Cas states. When Sam opens his eyes Dean is already on his feet, heading for the door and waving Cas over.
“We need to have a little chat. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t, Sammy.”
“You could at least untie me!” he calls after their retreating backs. Neither man so much as glances in his direction. His only answer is the closing door, and the sound of the lock.
_____________________________
-4-, epilogue
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