CHANGING - Chapter 8/10
Title: CHANGING
Author: Leigh Ann Wallace
Rating: PG
Genre/pairing: Gen
Characters:Sam, Dean and Bobby
Word count: 2046
Summary: Sam is bitten by a shapeshifter. Are the legends true, will Sam change? How can Dean save him?
Spoilers: (if applicable) You're safe if you've season eps up to season five. Mention of Lucifer and the apocalypse
Warnings: (if applicable) Shameless Angst
Disclaimer: Pretty clear I don't own anything to do with Supernatural. Written out of love and passionate obsession.
OOOOOOOOOO
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!
Isaiah 14: 12
OOOOOOOOOO
The desert sun, merciless even in winter, seared down on the two brothers and the beached Impala.
"Sam!"
Frantic, Dean knelt down beside his brother's prostrate body, laid out several feet from the car where he'd slammed into the ground. Gentle fingers combed through dark hair. "Sam?"
He sighed with relief when Sam's eyes flickered open and looked numbly up at him. "What - " He tried to sit up, but sank back with a gasp of pain.
"What is it?"
Sam grimaced. "Ribs."
"Hold still." Dean ran his hands up underneath Sam's shirt, probed expertly. "I don't think anything's broken." He put an arm around his brother's shoulder. "Let's get you up."
Moving slowly, he eased Sam into a sitting position, then carefully hauled him to his feet.
"What the hell happened?" Sam asked, confused, looking around.
"You tell me, man," Dean said. "One minute you're sleeping, the next minute you're screaming your guts out and we're off the freaking road." He glanced over at the Impala. "Lucky for you, my baby's okay, or I'd be kicking your ass right now."
Sam looked at the car, then at the highway. He clearly had no idea how they'd gotten out here.
"Must have been one hell of a nightmare," Dean said questioningly.
"Nightmare?" Sam asked, frowning. "Night -" The memory of his dream suddenly fell in on him and he staggered against Dean, sending them both stumbling back against the car.
"Damn it!" Dean grabbed Sam as he started to slide down the side of the car. "Sammy, don't you do it!" He shook him. "Sam!"
Trembling violently, fighting to stay focused, Sam grabbed hold of Dean and tried to steady himself. Dizziness swamped him and he lost all color, going limp in his brother's arms.
"Crap!" Swinging Sam around, Dean shoved him down into the passenger seat of the Impala. Then he grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler in the back seat, splashed some on Sam's face, and made him take a few sips.
"Sorry. Sorry." Trembling, Sam pushed his hair back from his face, tried to calm himself. "Christ!"
"Damn it, kid, what the hell's wrong?"
"Dean," Sam whispered. "Dean, it was him."
"Take it easy, Sam." His own hands shaking a little, Dean poured a little more water into the palm of his hand, smoothed it over his brother's pallid face. "Who?"
Half afraid that naming him would make the Beast appear, Sam hesitated, finally whispered, "Lucifer."
Dean went almost as pale as Sam. After taking a second to digest the news, he patted his brother's arm reassuringly, trying to calm Sam's obvious terror. "What did he want?"
"What he always wants," Sam said softly, despairingly. "Me."
"What? Always? He's come to you before? Why the hell didn't you tell me?"
Sam looked away from his brother. A drop of moisture ran down his face; he wasn't sure if it was water, or a tear. He wiped it away.
"I did tell you," he said quietly.
Dean stared at him blankly. "When - oh."
Of course. When Sam had called and asked to come back.
When Dean had said no. No, I don't want you.
"I didn't know he was still coming to you," Dean said apologetically.
Sam shrugged. "This is the first time since -" he gestured wearily to his scarred arm. "When he found me, I was dreaming. I had - changed. Shifted. He liked it. He wanted to - play."
A wave of nausea rolled over him; he fought it back bitterly. "I'm sorry. He's just - he's just so -" Sam stopped, unable to convey just how much the fallen angel frightened him.
"Don't worry about it." Dean squeezed his arm, asked gently, "You okay to get back on the road?"
Hands clenched together, Sam nodded mutely.
Dean got into the driver's seat, started the car and listened to the engine for a minute. She sounded good so he maneuvered her back onto the highway.
They sat for a minute on the side of the road, Sam staring straight ahead into the middle distance.
Uneasy, Dean asked, "What are you thinking?"
Sam was too tired, too freaked out, to dissemble. "That it wouldn't do any good to kill myself."
Dean flinched.
"He'd just bring me back," Sam went on. "He'd just - bring me back. But -" he stopped, hesitated. "I was wondering, what if I could shift - if I stayed shifted. Don't you think he'd give up after a while, move on to someone else?"
"Jesus, Sam!" Dean was horrified. "Do you really want to spend your whole life as an animal? We'd have to keep you in a cage. What the hell kind of life is that?"
Sam looked out the window at the desert, at the mountains in the distance. His heart, his soul, ached.
Dean saw the longing on his brother's face. "Sam . . ." he said helplessly.
Sam turned to face him. Defenses down, eyes unveiled, hiding nothing. For the first time, Dean saw the truth of the hell his brother lived in.
The pain was so stark, so bleak, so all encompassing that Dean could not - simply could not - continue to look.
There was nothing he could say, nothing he could do, that was going to make this any better. There was nothing he could do to help his brother.
He turned away and sent the Impala roaring down the highway.
Drifting.
White clouds in a wide blue sky. A basketball in the middle of the ocean. One needle in a forest of needles. Jessica's smile . . .
Arms full of take-out food, Dean fumbled open the door of their motel room and turned on the light, saw Sam blinking at him from one of the beds.
"Oh man, sorry about that."
Sam yawned. "It's okay. Wasn't sleeping. Just resting." Scrubbing a hand wearily over his face, he got out of bed. "Salad?"
Dean sighed. "No, Francine. The salad fairies got there before me, and cleaned them out! Dude - of course they had salad - it's California!"
It was a good salad but Sam had zip appetite. After a few bites, he pushed it away. He opened his laptop and pulled up his notes on their current case.
"So I found out what's going on. Thanksgiving in 1892 a woman named Kate Morgan checked into room 312 of the Hotel Del Coronado. She stayed five nights and on the sixth morning they found her body on the stairs leading down to the beach. She was shot with a .44. Suicide was the verdict."
"Big gun for a woman," Dean commented, taking another bite of his cheeseburger.
"It says she left her husband and was living with some other guy who was supposedly cheating on her. She was waiting for him to come and when he didn't -" Sam shrugged.
"Anything else?"
"Um, yeah, she was pregnant."
"Ouch." Dean finished off his burger, started on the fries. "We sure she offed herself?"
"That's what the coroner said. Somebody tried to get the case reopened a few years later. There was a rumor that the bullet found in her body wasn't the same caliber as the gun they found with her."
"Huh. So we've got either a suicide or a murder haunting."
"Yeah," Sam nodded. "So anyway, last week, Bruce Cannon, married with three kids, checks into room 3327, which used to be room 312, which was Kate Morgan's room. He's with a woman, but not his wife. Halfway through the night they get into a screaming match and he splits. Next morning they find the girlfriend hanging in the bathroom, and Cannon in the parking lot, shot."
"What makes this our business?"
"The guy had a hole in his chest that looked like it could have come from a .44 round. But there was no bullet found in his body, and no exit wound."
Dean whistled. "Kinky!"
"Tell me about it. It's a little weird. Kate Morgan's been haunting the hotel for more than a century. They've even got her in their freaking brochures. No big deal, nothing unusual - her walking through the hotel, looking out the window of her old room, bad vibes in certain parts of the hotel. Then all of a sudden, she goes postal and offs somebody."
"You're thinking Cannon killed his girlfriend and that's what set her off?"
"Could be. Or, if Kate killed herself, it could be that the girlfriend killing herself was the trigger. Also -" Sam shook his head - "Cannon's girlfriend was pregnant. People who heard them fighting said he wasn't too happy about it."
"Douche bag."
"Whatever happened, it woke Kate up. I think she followed him down to the car and -" Sam pointed an index finger at Dean, mimed firing.
"Pretty creative for a hundred year old ghost."
"I'm sure she's spent most of that century being pretty pissed off," Sam said. "Since Cannon and his girlfriend died, she's been showing up all over the hotel. Full manifestations - in the lobby, on the stairs where she died, in the dining room. She's even appearing in people's rooms, scaring the crap out of them. Hotel's going nuts."
"Do we know where she's buried?"
Sam flipped through his notes. "Mount Hope Cemetery. Division 5. Section 1."
"We won't even be breaking a sweat on this one," Dean grumbled.
"Well . . . Maybe." Sam looked at his notes, frowning.
"What?"
"There was another suicide, within the same two year time frame. Another woman, the mistress of the guy who owned the hotel. She was pregnant, too. She killed herself, but the body disappeared; probably the hotel owner trying to avoid a scandal."
"Crap." Dean scowled. "Well, let's hope it turns out to be the Morgan chick, 'cause I don't know how the hell we're supposed to find a body that disappeared more than a hundred years ago."
"No kidding." Sam covered a yawn. "Okay, so, tonight. Good. We should be on the road outta here by midnight."
Dean eyed him. "Listen, I know you're not much into the miracles of modern pharmacology, but we got about twelve hours before we can head over there, and -" he pulled a bottle of pills out of his pocket, shook it - "you could use some sleep."
Sam shook his head decisively. "No, thanks."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm fine, Dean."
"You haven't had more than five or six hours sleep for the last four days," Dean said sarcastically. "On what planet is that fine?"
Scowling, Sam rose abruptly. "Just leave it, will you?"
Dean laughed jeeringly. "Yeah, right. Tell me why and I will. Maybe."
"You're a real pain in the ass, Dean!"
"So you've said. Many, many times. And?"
Sam turned away from him and started to stuff his belongings into his duffel. "Let's just get this done and get the hell out of here, okay?"
"Sam."
Furious, Sam turned on him. "Because I don't want to get stuck in my head, okay? If he comes, I want to be able to wake up. I don't want to be trapped in here, listening to his shit and not be able to get away from him, okay?"
"Ah." Dean grimaced. "Got it."
Not mollified in the least, Sam snapped at him. "And I'd like not to have to talk about this every goddamned minute of every goddamned day!" His voice rose to a near-shout.
Dean waited a beat.
"You done?"
There was a lot more Sam wanted to say; most of it on the subject of overbearing older brothers, but he managed to rein himself in.
"I get it," Dean said. Sam drew in an impatient breath and Dean raised a hand to forestall another outburst. "As much as I am able to get what it's like, I do." He rolled his eyes. "God, you're such a freaking drama queen!"
Despite himself, Sam laughed. "Bastard."
Grinning, happy to have gotten a genuine laugh out of his brother, Dean clapped Sam on the shoulder. "Okay, Princess. Since sleep is out, what the hell are we supposed to do for the next twelve hours?"