The Change, It Had To Come (the Hoodoo remix)
Over on hoodie_time, we're having a remix challenge. An authour offers a story to be remixed -- and we ask if we can do it. mad_server posted a story called "Hoodoo", which is about Sam and Dean slowly switching places thanks to a hoodoo priest putting a whammy on Dean. (Story can be found here.
She gave me gracious permission to remix it. I wanted to explore the rationale behind it all - and ended up with a fun AU take on things!
Apologies to the Who for stealing a lyric for a title.
When Dean wakes up, Sam isn't there.
He's been acting really strange lately. Distracted. Vanishing. And now he's gone. Again.
In the middle of a damned case.
The hoodoo priest they're chasing has pulled a vanishing act and now, so has Sam.
Dean has reached the end of his tether.
He jerks on his clothes and heads out to the last known location of the hoodoo priest. Alone.
Always alone lately.
Funny. Earth was supposed to be better than Hell.
Lately, it seems like just another branch of it.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Dean is halfway through picking the lock when the door opens. The man smiling at him is only a few years older.
Dean slowly gets to his feet. He locks eyes with the man and hears his own voice as if from the bottom of a well. "I know who you are."
"Good." The man smiles larger. "Because I know who you are, too."
"Oh, really?"
"Really." A hand comes up and Dean curses as he inhales a faceful of blown powder. As his knees buckle, he feels strong arms surround him and hears the hoodoo priest whisper in his ear.
"You are the one who never lets himself be cared for.
You are the one who needs to be cared for.
You are the one who would do anything at all for his brother.
You are the one who will get all these things.
Become what you need to be to get these things.
And remember this, Winchester."
He feels a hand card through his hair and the whisper resonates with power.
"Not all hoodoo is used for evil."
Then there is darkness.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
When Ruby drops him off, Dean is gone. That fact alone drives the warm buzz right out of Sam's system.
He knows where Dean had to have gone - the priest's house. He finds the Impala still there and realises Dean must have walked off his frustration and rage.
Sam takes the car, desperation overriding frustration. He's nearly to the hoodoo priest's house when he sees it.
Dean is half-in and half-out of the frozen lake. It looks like he's passed out while walking and rolled onto his back. Fortunately, his face is out of the water and he's in no danger of drowning.
But it's damned near freezing out here and if he doesn't get changed and inside, Dean is going to freeze to death.
Sam gets him in the passenger seat and gets him back to the motel. He gets some water into him and pulls dry, warm clothing onto his brother.
".......wha' 'appened?" Dean asks, his eyes half-masting and his speech slurring badly through the chattering teeth.
"You decided to go for a swim," Sam informs him as he pulls covers over the quaking form.
"Sh-sh-shit," Dean gasps. "......c-c-cold...."
"You'll warm up. I've got soup waiting when you wake up."
A slow nod and the glazed jade eyes close. "Th-Th-Thanks....thanks, D-Dean..."
And Sam double-takes as the world suddenly shifts under his feet into something he doesn't quite understand.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Dean seems to improve over the next few hours. He keeps soup down and manages to hold competent conversations.
Except that he keeps calling Sam "Dean" and seems to think that he - Dean - is "Sam".
It's making Sam's head hurt.
Sam starts to feel strangely protective of his addled little -- of his addled brother. He's always used this as lip service for all the dark things he has recently been doing, but now he feels it under his skin.
Like his brother is his purpose.
It confuses Sam. It makes very little sense.
Around dawn, Dean's mood begins to deteriorate. When he wakes, he is cranky. Swearing. Picking apart Sam's motivations and wishes.
Sam feels his own control over his temper slipping. He goes out for breakfast, just to get away for a few minutes.
He finds himself almost literally biting his tongue so as not to trigger his brother's acid words.
Sam only realises something is very off when he finds himself outside the motel room with a half-smoked cigarette in his hand and the acrid taste of tobacco in his mouth.
Sam stares at the cigarette in his fingers, eyes going ridiculously huge.
Sam doesn't smoke. At all.
But Dean occasionally does, when too stressed.
Throwing the cigarette down and grinding it out with his heel, Sam claws his phone out of his pocket and calls Bobby. "Something's wrong," he pants into the phone when Bobby answers. "Something's very, very wrong and I can't--" He glances into the window to see Dean trembling as if he's in the grip of a frigid wind.
Racing into the room, he gives Bobby a laundry list of Dean's symptoms.
His own problems be damned. His brother needs him!
Sam finds a knit hat stuffed in the bottom of one of their duffels and pulls it onto Dean's head. He wraps Dean up in the quilts and sits by him, listening as Dean calls for "Dean" and seems to begin snatches of conversations with people who aren't there.
It's clear he's not seeing Sam anymore. It's clear something is very, very wrong.
Bobby's at a loss. "It ain't the hypothermia - my guess is it's something that hoodoo priest did to him. I really can't tell from here. It sounds almost like he's in some kind of withdrawal."
Sam freezes. He slowly looks at Dean, who's managed to dislodge the hat again. He replaces it with gentle fingers and whispers, "Bobby ... I'll call you back." He hangs up the phone and stares at it, just as it vibrates with an incoming call.
Ruby.
He looks over at his brother, shaking in the grip of something Sam has done to himself and now - thanks to that priest - Dean is going through... and Sam answers the phone.
"Don't come here ever again," he growls, his voice low and gravel-filled. "I don't ever want you or your filthy blood near me or my brother. Ever."
He hangs up before she can say a word.
Then he smashes the phone against the wall.
Dean is quaking now, shivering like he's trying to quake himself apart. He manages to dislodge the hat again.
Again, Sam replaces it, crawling onto the bed to try to add comfort and warmth to his brother.
"Dean..." Dean whimpers. "Dean....where's Dean..."
Sam closes his eyes and pulls him close. "I'm here," he whispers, carding his fingers through the fine short hairs on the back of Dean's neck. "I'm here, Sammy. I'm not lettin' you go."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Sam isn't surprised when he unwraps himself from Dean - who has finally fallen into a doze - and looks out the peephole to see who's pounding on their door to find it's Ruby.
He pulls the Colt from their weapons bag and slides it into his waistband. It's not the original, but Bobby re-created it once. It was child's play to re-create it again.
He goes outside, forcing her to step back from the doorway. His eyes scan the parking lot, finding it empty as usual.
"What the hell do you think you're playing at?" she snarls. "You think Lilith is just gonna sit on her ass while--"
"-while you make me more of a vampyre than you already have?" he snarls back at her. "You're hookin' me on your blood, bitch. Making me dependent on it."
"You're strong on it!" she hisses. "Powerful on it!"
"I'm not human like this, Ruby!" His hands flail out to the sides. "You're turning me into something wrong!"
Dean whimpers from inside the room and Sam glances at the window.
"What's wrong with short-bus?" Ruby asks.
"Like you care," he grinds out, his voice going low again.
"I care because I don't want him waking up before we're done! The last thing we need is him going all righteous on you powering up!"
"I am never 'powering up' with you again. Last chance, Ruby - get out of here."
She steps forward. "You will. You need it and you know it. You love the power it gives you. You love the feeling you get. You love the sex. You love the--"
Her words end in a choked gasp as he draws and fires in one smooth motion. Her body shivers and sways as the bullet plows into her forehead and her skeleton begins to become visible as she lights up from inside.
"Good-bye, Ruby." Sam lunges forward and grabs her knife out of her belt. He spins it in his hand and drives the point of the blade deep into her heart.
Ruby topples onto her knees, then her side. There is a light show from her body and then she lies still.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Hundreds of miles away, the woman vessel that Lilith has recently occupied gasps as she feels her most trusted operative terminate.
"No," she wails, knowing that without Ruby, Sam Winchester is lost.
Their plan was moving so well.... Ruby would manipulate Sam to the convent, where he would kill Lilith and release Lucifer from his prison.
But now - Sam could no longer be groomed. All the threads had snapped.
Lilith shivered. All was not quite lost.
The first thirty-four seals were still broken. All she needed was a powerful man of the right bloodline, infected with demon blood and related closely to the Righteous Man who had broken the first one and would someday serve as Michael's vessel - and her master would still rise, defeat Michael, and rule.
All was not quite lost. She just needed to raise up another demon who was willing to infect children with his own blood. To free Lucifer? That wouldn't be hard to find.
There was still one Winchester brother.
And his lovely girlfriend had just found out she was pregnant.
With twin boys.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The priest smiles warmly even as he finds himself face to face with a huge man holding his trembling brother with one hand and a gun pointed at his forehead in the other.
"Fix this," the man snarls.
"Come inside. I have everything prepared. I just need him." The priest steps aside to give them room. "Lay him on the couch."
He takes special note of the way that, though the gun had to go in the waistband for him to maneouvre his brother onto the couch, the man never turns his back on the priest.
"Dean," the brother whines, hands clutching at sleeves as if it's the only thing keeping him sane.
"What the hell did you do to him?" comes the irate demand.
"He needed comfort. Rest." The priest shrugs. "I made it possible for him to get it. I didn't know you'd hopped yourself up on the supernatural world's most potent drug, Sam Winchester."
Sam hisses, a long breath through clenched teeth. "Fix this."
"I will," the priest says. "Once it has cleared his system. Should only be a couple more hours now. Would you like something to eat?"
"I want my brother back! My brother! Not this - this --"
The priest smiles. "This person who thinks he's you?"
Sam raises stricken eyes to him.
"You boys. You both have such self-esteem issues, it's no wonder you're so connected. Each of you is truly only half of a whole. Each of you is trying to fill that other half by any means necessary. And each of you will always fail."
"What are you saying?" Suspicion now. Fear? Hard to tell with this one.
The priest leans forward. "I'm saying: Stop keeping secrets! Trust him! Here is why he feels he doesn't deserve it!" And his palm settles onto Dean's forehead.
His other one moves - too quickly for Sam to stop - and settles onto Sam's.
And Sam screams - quite out of his control - as the entirety of Dean's forty years in hell is suddenly downloaded into his brain. He sees everything. He feels everything.
He understands. Everything.
It takes him a few moments to realise that he is on his knees, vomiting into a wastebasket, and that the priest is holding his hair out of his face.
"You understand," the priest says as he helps Sam to sit against the couch. "And Dean now understands everything you have been through."
"Why?" Sam chokes out through a wrecked throat. "Why did you do this to us?"
A damp hand is suddenly fluttering on his forehead. "....Dean....okay?"
Sam catches it. "I'm okay, Sammy. Go back to sleep."
The priest sits on the coffee table facing them. "Believe it or not, I did it so your brother could be taken care of. So he could better take care of you once the spell ran its course. I didn't realise I would end up thwarting a huge plan in the bargain."
"What?" Sam frowns.
".....being....groomed," Dean whispers. ".....demons.....making me....their bitch..."
The priest nods slowly. "He gets it. Still seeing it from your viewpoint, thinking he's you, but he gets it."
"I killed her," Sam says, leaning over Dean. "You hear me, Sammy? I killed Ruby. She's never gonna groom you again."
Dean's dry lips curl into a warm smile. "Saved....me."
"Yeah, Sammy. I saved you." He gathers Dean into his arms and rocks him. "I saved us both," he whispers into his hair.
The priest smiles as both of them drift into an uneasy sleep. Once they are there, he puts a hand on both their foreheads and whispers the counterspell.
Then he calls Bobby Singer, whose number he finds in the lone cell phone between them, and fills him in on what's happened to his surrogate sons. With emphasis on how it was to help and how they were both all right now.
He then hangs up and starts to pack. He's going to have a pissed off trio of hunters on his tail when the brothers wake up.
Best to just not be around.
When the Winchesters wake, they are themselves again. With full memory of what went on.
And with no priest around.
They are heading to the Impala when Bobby pulls up in a flurry of brakes and all but leaps out of the truck. "Are you boys okay? I been drivin' to get to you since Sam called me last night!"
They look at each other, understanding passing through their eyes. Then - in unison - they give weary nods.
It's still too new, this communion between the brothers. Still too raw. They are still finding their way through it.
But they know they will come out the other side of it stronger than ever.
There are, after all, still people to save and things to hunt.
And they are now practically one person in two bodies.
Though Bobby doesn't need to know that quite yet.
END
She gave me gracious permission to remix it. I wanted to explore the rationale behind it all - and ended up with a fun AU take on things!
Apologies to the Who for stealing a lyric for a title.
When Dean wakes up, Sam isn't there.
He's been acting really strange lately. Distracted. Vanishing. And now he's gone. Again.
In the middle of a damned case.
The hoodoo priest they're chasing has pulled a vanishing act and now, so has Sam.
Dean has reached the end of his tether.
He jerks on his clothes and heads out to the last known location of the hoodoo priest. Alone.
Always alone lately.
Funny. Earth was supposed to be better than Hell.
Lately, it seems like just another branch of it.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Dean is halfway through picking the lock when the door opens. The man smiling at him is only a few years older.
Dean slowly gets to his feet. He locks eyes with the man and hears his own voice as if from the bottom of a well. "I know who you are."
"Good." The man smiles larger. "Because I know who you are, too."
"Oh, really?"
"Really." A hand comes up and Dean curses as he inhales a faceful of blown powder. As his knees buckle, he feels strong arms surround him and hears the hoodoo priest whisper in his ear.
"You are the one who never lets himself be cared for.
You are the one who needs to be cared for.
You are the one who would do anything at all for his brother.
You are the one who will get all these things.
Become what you need to be to get these things.
And remember this, Winchester."
He feels a hand card through his hair and the whisper resonates with power.
"Not all hoodoo is used for evil."
Then there is darkness.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
When Ruby drops him off, Dean is gone. That fact alone drives the warm buzz right out of Sam's system.
He knows where Dean had to have gone - the priest's house. He finds the Impala still there and realises Dean must have walked off his frustration and rage.
Sam takes the car, desperation overriding frustration. He's nearly to the hoodoo priest's house when he sees it.
Dean is half-in and half-out of the frozen lake. It looks like he's passed out while walking and rolled onto his back. Fortunately, his face is out of the water and he's in no danger of drowning.
But it's damned near freezing out here and if he doesn't get changed and inside, Dean is going to freeze to death.
Sam gets him in the passenger seat and gets him back to the motel. He gets some water into him and pulls dry, warm clothing onto his brother.
".......wha' 'appened?" Dean asks, his eyes half-masting and his speech slurring badly through the chattering teeth.
"You decided to go for a swim," Sam informs him as he pulls covers over the quaking form.
"Sh-sh-shit," Dean gasps. "......c-c-cold...."
"You'll warm up. I've got soup waiting when you wake up."
A slow nod and the glazed jade eyes close. "Th-Th-Thanks....thanks, D-Dean..."
And Sam double-takes as the world suddenly shifts under his feet into something he doesn't quite understand.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Dean seems to improve over the next few hours. He keeps soup down and manages to hold competent conversations.
Except that he keeps calling Sam "Dean" and seems to think that he - Dean - is "Sam".
It's making Sam's head hurt.
Sam starts to feel strangely protective of his addled little -- of his addled brother. He's always used this as lip service for all the dark things he has recently been doing, but now he feels it under his skin.
Like his brother is his purpose.
It confuses Sam. It makes very little sense.
Around dawn, Dean's mood begins to deteriorate. When he wakes, he is cranky. Swearing. Picking apart Sam's motivations and wishes.
Sam feels his own control over his temper slipping. He goes out for breakfast, just to get away for a few minutes.
He finds himself almost literally biting his tongue so as not to trigger his brother's acid words.
Sam only realises something is very off when he finds himself outside the motel room with a half-smoked cigarette in his hand and the acrid taste of tobacco in his mouth.
Sam stares at the cigarette in his fingers, eyes going ridiculously huge.
Sam doesn't smoke. At all.
But Dean occasionally does, when too stressed.
Throwing the cigarette down and grinding it out with his heel, Sam claws his phone out of his pocket and calls Bobby. "Something's wrong," he pants into the phone when Bobby answers. "Something's very, very wrong and I can't--" He glances into the window to see Dean trembling as if he's in the grip of a frigid wind.
Racing into the room, he gives Bobby a laundry list of Dean's symptoms.
His own problems be damned. His brother needs him!
Sam finds a knit hat stuffed in the bottom of one of their duffels and pulls it onto Dean's head. He wraps Dean up in the quilts and sits by him, listening as Dean calls for "Dean" and seems to begin snatches of conversations with people who aren't there.
It's clear he's not seeing Sam anymore. It's clear something is very, very wrong.
Bobby's at a loss. "It ain't the hypothermia - my guess is it's something that hoodoo priest did to him. I really can't tell from here. It sounds almost like he's in some kind of withdrawal."
Sam freezes. He slowly looks at Dean, who's managed to dislodge the hat again. He replaces it with gentle fingers and whispers, "Bobby ... I'll call you back." He hangs up the phone and stares at it, just as it vibrates with an incoming call.
Ruby.
He looks over at his brother, shaking in the grip of something Sam has done to himself and now - thanks to that priest - Dean is going through... and Sam answers the phone.
"Don't come here ever again," he growls, his voice low and gravel-filled. "I don't ever want you or your filthy blood near me or my brother. Ever."
He hangs up before she can say a word.
Then he smashes the phone against the wall.
Dean is quaking now, shivering like he's trying to quake himself apart. He manages to dislodge the hat again.
Again, Sam replaces it, crawling onto the bed to try to add comfort and warmth to his brother.
"Dean..." Dean whimpers. "Dean....where's Dean..."
Sam closes his eyes and pulls him close. "I'm here," he whispers, carding his fingers through the fine short hairs on the back of Dean's neck. "I'm here, Sammy. I'm not lettin' you go."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Sam isn't surprised when he unwraps himself from Dean - who has finally fallen into a doze - and looks out the peephole to see who's pounding on their door to find it's Ruby.
He pulls the Colt from their weapons bag and slides it into his waistband. It's not the original, but Bobby re-created it once. It was child's play to re-create it again.
He goes outside, forcing her to step back from the doorway. His eyes scan the parking lot, finding it empty as usual.
"What the hell do you think you're playing at?" she snarls. "You think Lilith is just gonna sit on her ass while--"
"-while you make me more of a vampyre than you already have?" he snarls back at her. "You're hookin' me on your blood, bitch. Making me dependent on it."
"You're strong on it!" she hisses. "Powerful on it!"
"I'm not human like this, Ruby!" His hands flail out to the sides. "You're turning me into something wrong!"
Dean whimpers from inside the room and Sam glances at the window.
"What's wrong with short-bus?" Ruby asks.
"Like you care," he grinds out, his voice going low again.
"I care because I don't want him waking up before we're done! The last thing we need is him going all righteous on you powering up!"
"I am never 'powering up' with you again. Last chance, Ruby - get out of here."
She steps forward. "You will. You need it and you know it. You love the power it gives you. You love the feeling you get. You love the sex. You love the--"
Her words end in a choked gasp as he draws and fires in one smooth motion. Her body shivers and sways as the bullet plows into her forehead and her skeleton begins to become visible as she lights up from inside.
"Good-bye, Ruby." Sam lunges forward and grabs her knife out of her belt. He spins it in his hand and drives the point of the blade deep into her heart.
Ruby topples onto her knees, then her side. There is a light show from her body and then she lies still.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Hundreds of miles away, the woman vessel that Lilith has recently occupied gasps as she feels her most trusted operative terminate.
"No," she wails, knowing that without Ruby, Sam Winchester is lost.
Their plan was moving so well.... Ruby would manipulate Sam to the convent, where he would kill Lilith and release Lucifer from his prison.
But now - Sam could no longer be groomed. All the threads had snapped.
Lilith shivered. All was not quite lost.
The first thirty-four seals were still broken. All she needed was a powerful man of the right bloodline, infected with demon blood and related closely to the Righteous Man who had broken the first one and would someday serve as Michael's vessel - and her master would still rise, defeat Michael, and rule.
All was not quite lost. She just needed to raise up another demon who was willing to infect children with his own blood. To free Lucifer? That wouldn't be hard to find.
There was still one Winchester brother.
And his lovely girlfriend had just found out she was pregnant.
With twin boys.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The priest smiles warmly even as he finds himself face to face with a huge man holding his trembling brother with one hand and a gun pointed at his forehead in the other.
"Fix this," the man snarls.
"Come inside. I have everything prepared. I just need him." The priest steps aside to give them room. "Lay him on the couch."
He takes special note of the way that, though the gun had to go in the waistband for him to maneouvre his brother onto the couch, the man never turns his back on the priest.
"Dean," the brother whines, hands clutching at sleeves as if it's the only thing keeping him sane.
"What the hell did you do to him?" comes the irate demand.
"He needed comfort. Rest." The priest shrugs. "I made it possible for him to get it. I didn't know you'd hopped yourself up on the supernatural world's most potent drug, Sam Winchester."
Sam hisses, a long breath through clenched teeth. "Fix this."
"I will," the priest says. "Once it has cleared his system. Should only be a couple more hours now. Would you like something to eat?"
"I want my brother back! My brother! Not this - this --"
The priest smiles. "This person who thinks he's you?"
Sam raises stricken eyes to him.
"You boys. You both have such self-esteem issues, it's no wonder you're so connected. Each of you is truly only half of a whole. Each of you is trying to fill that other half by any means necessary. And each of you will always fail."
"What are you saying?" Suspicion now. Fear? Hard to tell with this one.
The priest leans forward. "I'm saying: Stop keeping secrets! Trust him! Here is why he feels he doesn't deserve it!" And his palm settles onto Dean's forehead.
His other one moves - too quickly for Sam to stop - and settles onto Sam's.
And Sam screams - quite out of his control - as the entirety of Dean's forty years in hell is suddenly downloaded into his brain. He sees everything. He feels everything.
He understands. Everything.
It takes him a few moments to realise that he is on his knees, vomiting into a wastebasket, and that the priest is holding his hair out of his face.
"You understand," the priest says as he helps Sam to sit against the couch. "And Dean now understands everything you have been through."
"Why?" Sam chokes out through a wrecked throat. "Why did you do this to us?"
A damp hand is suddenly fluttering on his forehead. "....Dean....okay?"
Sam catches it. "I'm okay, Sammy. Go back to sleep."
The priest sits on the coffee table facing them. "Believe it or not, I did it so your brother could be taken care of. So he could better take care of you once the spell ran its course. I didn't realise I would end up thwarting a huge plan in the bargain."
"What?" Sam frowns.
".....being....groomed," Dean whispers. ".....demons.....making me....their bitch..."
The priest nods slowly. "He gets it. Still seeing it from your viewpoint, thinking he's you, but he gets it."
"I killed her," Sam says, leaning over Dean. "You hear me, Sammy? I killed Ruby. She's never gonna groom you again."
Dean's dry lips curl into a warm smile. "Saved....me."
"Yeah, Sammy. I saved you." He gathers Dean into his arms and rocks him. "I saved us both," he whispers into his hair.
The priest smiles as both of them drift into an uneasy sleep. Once they are there, he puts a hand on both their foreheads and whispers the counterspell.
Then he calls Bobby Singer, whose number he finds in the lone cell phone between them, and fills him in on what's happened to his surrogate sons. With emphasis on how it was to help and how they were both all right now.
He then hangs up and starts to pack. He's going to have a pissed off trio of hunters on his tail when the brothers wake up.
Best to just not be around.
When the Winchesters wake, they are themselves again. With full memory of what went on.
And with no priest around.
They are heading to the Impala when Bobby pulls up in a flurry of brakes and all but leaps out of the truck. "Are you boys okay? I been drivin' to get to you since Sam called me last night!"
They look at each other, understanding passing through their eyes. Then - in unison - they give weary nods.
It's still too new, this communion between the brothers. Still too raw. They are still finding their way through it.
But they know they will come out the other side of it stronger than ever.
There are, after all, still people to save and things to hunt.
And they are now practically one person in two bodies.
Though Bobby doesn't need to know that quite yet.
END