Circadia
Title: Circadia, Part I
Rating: R
Characters: Bobby, Dean, Sam, and Ruby
Word Count: 3,230
Warnings: language, brother angst
Summary: It’s almost like Sam’s dead all over again. Only this time there isn’t a deal that can undo what he’s done.
Disclaimer: Not mine, the boys, I mean. The words are mine; I take full responsibility for mangling what’s left of their damaged psyches, but Ruby’s not so much. ;)
Notes: Written for
sammessiah’s DJ100 Flash Fanworks-Athon. Because my prompt was #38 Outside POV--the Sammessiah and his Consort, I tried my hand at reining in narrative distance and writing through an uber-filtered voice. It turned out that meant writing in alternating first person POV *meep* whereby this fic become possessed by the voices of Bobby, Missouri, and Ruby and spread out in all directions. So sorry, but this will be a three-part story. Thanks to
dreamlittleyo, who let me submit this as a WiP, and
dianne_37, a wonderful beta who reads faster than the speed of light. Concrit always welcome.
[+] [O] [~]
“When life hardens into a bead of such cruel perfection you see it with the purest clarity. Everything suddenly there--life as it truly is, enormous, appalling, devastating. You see the great sinkholes it makes in people and the harrowing lengths to which love will go to fill them.”
-Sue Monk Kidd “The Mermaid Chair”
[+]
Heil, North Dakota, March 20, 2008
Dean’s got that wild, desperate look to him. The same one he wore at Cold Oak and that long night and day afterward.
If there was anything that could split a soul in two it would be what I saw that night. Dean’s yell stopped me cold, been hunting long enough to know the sound of someone damn well breaking from the inside out. These legs made it back fast as anything, and I half expected to have a heart attack the way the old ticker was going double time. Found Dean in the middle of that road in all that mud, kneeling with Sam propped up. The two of them weren’t right, too still, too close, the angles all wrong. And I knew right then there was only going to be white breath coming from one of them. Would’ve traded the pain in my chest right then for a heart attack.
Dean was careful, kept saying to keep Sam out of the mud and dirt. He was all business until we got Sam inside and laid out, then he went to someplace inside himself. Kept real quiet. Wouldn’t budge for hours, just sat there in that half-rotted crap piece of chair staring at nothing. Wouldn’t touch Sam, wouldn’t let me touch him even after the blood started leaking into the mattress and seeping around toward the edges. That whole ghost town smelled like death, dark and stale and unnatural, but that room was heavy with it.
Dean didn’t start talking until the next morning. First words out of his mouth were ‘damn whiskey’, then ‘please’ and ‘Bobby’. It was like going back twenty-odd years. Saw pieces of another hunter, young and half mad with grief, standing in front of me, and it hit me that these were John Winchester’s boys. God help us all, I thought.
Dean wasn’t right in the head that night. He wasn’t right until he showed up unapologetic and squared for one of those silent Winchester tests of wills on my doorstep with Sam, the walking undead, the next day.
I knew I should never have let him alone.
Now here we are again. Sam’s gone and done the fool thing this time and Dean’s going out of his head again.
“Bobby, what’d you let him do!” he yells, shouldering his way past the splintered doorframe and carrying in the cold. Dean zeros in on the beds and either doesn’t notice or give a damn that he’s destroyed the salt lines nearly ground into the carpet in his rush. His eyes dart to the blonde girl spread out broken-like on the corner bed and then go hard. “Who else? Ellen, Jo?” Dean grabs a hold of me and screams, “Who else knew!”
I’d be a fool to give Dean real answers right now. Like a blind bull stuck with a hot poker, he’s on a rampage, tearing up the trail Sam tried to hide and leaving a highway of broken junk and rubble about a mile wide. Idiot kid. It’s enough to lead the rest of them straight to us. But Dean’s not one to look twice at common sense, least where Sam’s concerned. He’d face down Hell’s army with a feather duster and a paper clip if they stood between him and that stray brother of his.
The lights flicker. Then go out. The flowered rag-tag curtains hanging above the plastic heater go still as the fan stutters and dies. Dean lets me go and yanks up his sleeve, stares at his watch. On the wall the hands on the cracked cowboy clock stop at thirteen past eight, the second’s hand frozen near around twelve.
My gut starts rolling and that spot behind my ears starts tingling, hunter’s intuition. I tell Dean it’s started.
A growl crawls up from somewhere inside him, and in three steps he’s kneeling on bed where Sam’s lying with his eyes open.
“Sam. Sammy! Wake up!” Dean’s fingers turn white as he digs them into Sam’s shoulders and shakes. “Bobby, we gotta stop his walking!” He rounds to run at the girl lying on the other bed, but I drag Dean away before he does something that’ll screw up Sam’s chances of finding his way back.
“Dean, there’s nothing you can do. Your brother’s a stupid, stubborn ass just like you.”
When I get a good look at Dean’s face that deep down gut ache of guilt hits me. I can’t think of anything to do but yell about Dean and his deal making and how it started this whole mess ‘cause it keeps the wreck of grief, pain, and fear buried deep where it belongs. And whiskey helps.
The last time I got real acquainted with a bottle of Jimmy’s stiffest was two years ago when John left those boys lost and floundering like two wounded tigers. When they finally drove off in that soccer mobile, I was sure they’d tear each other to pieces with their grief, or else crash that minivan with all that bundled up anger (there was a reason I made sure they got the slowest car I had). Never did see that noisy bucket of rubber bands on wheels again, and never been gladder to hear Ellen’s voice. When she called about John Winchester’s boys showing up on her doorstep and taking a case in Medford, I damn well exhaled for so long she thought I went and died on her. As those boys limped their way back from the edge, I locked up the Jim Beam good and tight along with thoughts of their daddy.
But I could probably do with a couple of mouthfuls of whiskey now ‘cause Dean’s not moving, just stares me down like he wants to burn to me with his eyes. Then something changes, realization maybe, acceptance maybe, understanding, or maybe it’s that damn burden of responsibility I’ve seen that boy carrying since age seven when John rolled into the yard with a trunk full of ammo and knives, a mouth full of demon questions, and a backseat loaded with kids.
I lay a hand on Dean’s shoulder and squeeze hard. He’s all knots and quivering panic pent up with nowhere to go.
“You couldn’t know,” I say. Sam was bull-headed and sure this was the only way, and for all my years of hunting and reading I couldn’t argue with him. If it comes down to it, burying a young hunter is something you never want to do, but burying two young hunters is worse.
Dean steps away, squares his shoulders.
“He’s coming back.” He says it like he’s speaking some God-promised truth. Dean tears off his jacket, then pulls out his Colt and lays it next to Sam’s Taurus, dusty and cold on the side table. He’s rolling up his sleeves when I catch sight of the bruises on the inside of his arms. The ones like Sam’s.
“There’s a med kit in the trunk.” Dean jerks his head toward the door.
When I don’t move, he says matter-of-fact-like, “I can lead him back. I’ve done it before, this time’s no different.”
“Dean--”
“If you try and stop me, Bobby, so help me God.” His eyes go to the girl staring at the ceiling with black eyes. “I don’t care what Sam said. I’ll kill her.”
“You can’t. She’s in there with him.”
Dean goes stock still like some animal caught in the middle of the road with an eighteen wheeler screaming around a blind corner. The bathroom light flickers to life, dumping light and shadow into the room. From the corner bed come two yellow flashes. I tell myself they’re only the florescent lights reflecting off those demon’s eyes. The charm around her neck winks silver.
“Ruby, that bitch.”
I don’t tell Dean it wasn’t her idea. No sense speaking what the heart already knows.
[+]
The med kit is full of needles. Dean lines them up next to the guns in two rows, five syringes each, and touches each of them like they’re something holy. They shine hard and smooth in the light from the candle stubs ‘cause Sam’s made the lights go out again.
Judging by the calluses and faded bruises on Dean’s arm, they’ve been doing this for weeks, months maybe. I knew Sam’s wandering was getting bad. Knew he had trouble staying in his own head. Knew after he left Dean stabilized in that Pocatello hospital and the Impala with an empty gas tank and a flat tire in the parking lot two weeks ago, he and Ruby had fallen off the map. But I didn’t know Sam’s dreamwalking had him tearing himself and his brother up.
It makes a hell of a lot more sense why Sam left Dean, why he was so desperate to not be found. “Bobby, you can’t tell him. Not until after it’s over.” Sam’s voice was real hard to make out between the static, so I pressed the phone to my ear like that would make a difference. “He’s gonna be pissed, but the doctor said he’ll be fine. I just … can you make sure he’s … you’ll be there when he wakes up, right?”
I should’ve known that damn kid was trying to save his brother.
Dean peels back the corner of the wool blanket he covered Sam with and lays Sam’s right arm flat. He rolls up his brother’s sleeve like this is nothing more than putting a Band-Aid on a paper cut.
“Alright, Sammy, it’s gonna be fine.” Dean’s voice is low and quiet, even. Like John’s when he’d be talking comfort into some poor person who just had their whole world upended by the supernatural. John, for all his rough talk and silent spells, had a way of talking when words weren’t important, just the tone. Dean ties the rubber tubing around his own arm and starts tapping for veins.
“There’s only so much blood you can give before you’re dried up,” I say, running my hands up over my face and back down. A day of chasing Dean down blacktop and gravel roads and an hour of watching the heater go on and off, the lights flicker, and Sam and that demon lie like the dead have me worn down dull and to the quick.
“I’m real juicy, Bobby. Got more than my share of Winchester blood, enough for me and Sam. And this?” Dean holds up a syringe filled with blood. “This’ll drown out that demon blood.”
And keep Sam on this side of human.
I don’t say the words, but Dean reads them on my face before I can turn my back and head toward the only place of privacy in this damn motel room.
I knew things were wrong when I got Sam’s note written on paper from the Trident Motel in Heil, North Dakota yesterday. Notes leave trails. Too messy a move for someone who’d spent the last couple weeks making them self invisible. Too sloppy for Sam, who knew Dean would be wrecking half the world looking for him. Hunters know never to send messages through the mail ‘cause it makes it easy for other eyes to see what they’re not supposed to be reading. And it takes too long, is too unreliable. More than likely you’d be left sipping beer in some stale-smelling bar, waiting for somebody who didn’t know where they were supposed to be until days later. Sam never would’ve mailed a letter if he was planning on meeting us. It was more like he was telling us where to find him after the fact.
His note was post dated two days earlier. It said:
March 20th
Room 3b
Your promise.
I promised not to say anything to Dean. I’m not so high on myself to think me not promising Sam would’ve stopped him. He would’ve still run off stubborn as ever but without anyone to turn to in a tight spot, and the last thing I wanted was Sam running alone in the dark.
But there wasn’t much of a promise to keep ‘cause I didn’t know much more than anyone else. There’s been talk these last two weeks of dark rituals only a hunter would know how to do, things about pulling powers and dreamwalking. People are worried, panicked. A hunter gone off the rails needs to be pulled back in. The quieter and gentler the better, but not everyone sees it the same as me. So it took no words out of my mouth for Dean to find Sam’s note and recognize his writing. My square edges may be going round, but if a soft spot for those boys is gonna land me in Hell, then I’ll be bringing marshmallows and hot dogs to my funeral pyre.
The water blasts into the sink hard and cold. And I let it run. The white noise is good, drowns out the outside world. I rest my hands on either side of the basin and lean forward until my head’s resting against the mirror. Close my eyes.
Something’s not right in all of this. Never heard of such deep, unbreakable wandering before. Never for more than a night’s sleep, never in pairs. As far as I can tell, the electrical outages and time freezing are Sam telegraphing something fierce. There’s something going down, and it ain’t good.
After I’m done soaking my face, I’m searching for a towel to wipe my hands when I knock over the garbage can with my boot. There’s a thud and a clink and a glass rolls across the floor and stops at the doorjamb. And that’s when I smell it, strong, bitter sharp, and unmistakable.
“This ain’t like before, Dean.” I march out of the bathroom and shove two motel glasses rimmed with dirty green into his face. “You know what this is?”
Dean sniffs and bats the cup away, saying, “Liquid blue cheese in a cup?” before giving me his smart ass face.
“It’s valerian powder.” I slam one of the glasses down next to alarm clock blinking 8:13. “It’s a plant sedative, a hypnotic … makes you sleep.”
“I know what a sedative is.” The irritation in Dean’s voice doesn’t cover his alarm.
“Sam’s gone and done something crazy.”
“Sam’s not crazy.”
I don’t know what Sam’s got planned, but Dean’s soul is on the line, and there ain’t nothing short of bringing down the world that Sam wouldn’t do to keep Dean out of Hell. Demons don’t make deals that can’t be undone. They’ll trade up if they can get something better. And Sam knows better than anyone that demons are greedy bastards.
“No? I’ve seen all sorts of crazy crawl out of desperate.”
Dean stands up with his eyes full of fire and jaw twitching.
“He’s gone walking deep this time and pulled that demon in with him to save you,” I yell louder than I mean to.
Then Dean shuts down, pulls a mask over his face. He drops his eyes and reaches down quiet and cold as anything and picks up a syringe.
“If you don’t like it, Bobby, there’s the door.”
What is it with these Winchesters thinking they got to do everything alone? My sigh makes Dean’s eyes dart up. But when I go to look him in the eye he’s staring at Sam.
“Your brother is a lot of things, but stupid ain’t one of them.” I walk to where Dean’s standing and press the other glass into his free hand and say quieter, “He’s put himself down so he won’t wake up for a reason.”
Dean puts the glass down on the yellow blanket next to Sam’s leg. “Then that’s all the more reason he needs this.” He pulls the plastic cap off the needle with his teeth.
“Your brother and that demon, they’re tangled up in his mind someplace. You can’t just shock them out. There’s no telling what’ll happen, and you don’t know what you’ll be interfering with. Sam’s gone to someplace where you can’t follow this time--”
Dean’s head snaps around, and I recognize that look.
“No,” I tell him.
But it’s a waste of air ‘cause Dean’s up and in the bathroom with the door shut in my face. I hear him pulling open drawers and sorting through the wrapped soaps in the chipped dish on the counter. By the time I jimmy open the lock, he’s pulling out his arm from up under the sink, a plastic bag tied with red string in his hand.
“It’ll be a hell of a lot safer if you stick around, Bobby. But I’m telling you right now, your being here or not isn’t gonna change my mind. I’m doing this.” Dean’s got a death grip on that bag of powdered valerian and is puffing himself up for a fight.
And suddenly I’m more tired than I’ve ever felt. Trying to keep that family together all these years after losing mine, I never thought it would turn to me squaring down Dean, telling him to just let Sam go.
“Sam’s somewhere in there doing something because of me. And whatever it is, I can’t let him do it alone. He’s my responsibility, Bobby. Mine. There’ll be nobody left after my year is up. And I can’t just leave him without--” Dean looks away and pulls his hands through his hair. When he turns around all I see is a young boy who looks so lost and scared I barely hear his words: “Please. He’s my brother. I need to do this.”
And there’s nothing I got that can do battle with a look like that. I glance over my shoulder at the girl lying harmless and quiet and then to Sam. The bruises stand dark on his arms, and his chest rises slow and steady and in time to the tick of the second’s hand on the clock skipping backwards. And below the stillness and silence, I think of them trapped in a nightmare.
“You idiot,” is all I manage. Then I mutter something about getting whiskey from the truck to chase down the bitter of the valerian.
Dean opens his mouth and then closes it. The hard lines on his face go smooth, and his eyes change like something inside's just opened up. He nods.
“I’ll wait until you come back,” he says.
That’s as much of a reprieve Dean’s capable of. Real words and straight-forward communication don’t mix with the name Winchester just like tears are a waste of salt for a Singer.
It’s cold outside. The sky is dark and naked. And there are stars everywhere, staring down like a million eyes. Though the closed door I hear Dean drag a chair across the floor to Sam’s side. And it’s almost like Sam’s dead all over again. Only this time there ain’t no deal that can undo what he’s done.
Through a layer of peeling varnish I get a good hard look at the knots in the wood door, sliced through their hearts and cracked along their weakness by hot and cold. I run my hand along the frame and catch a splinter. It’s such a little thing, would barely know it was there except for the blood and the sting.
[+] [O] [~]
TBC
Rating: R
Characters: Bobby, Dean, Sam, and Ruby
Word Count: 3,230
Warnings: language, brother angst
Summary: It’s almost like Sam’s dead all over again. Only this time there isn’t a deal that can undo what he’s done.
Disclaimer: Not mine, the boys, I mean. The words are mine; I take full responsibility for mangling what’s left of their damaged psyches, but Ruby’s not so much. ;)
Notes: Written for
sammessiah’s DJ100 Flash Fanworks-Athon. Because my prompt was #38 Outside POV--the Sammessiah and his Consort, I tried my hand at reining in narrative distance and writing through an uber-filtered voice. It turned out that meant writing in alternating first person POV *meep* whereby this fic become possessed by the voices of Bobby, Missouri, and Ruby and spread out in all directions. So sorry, but this will be a three-part story. Thanks to
dreamlittleyo, who let me submit this as a WiP, and
dianne_37, a wonderful beta who reads faster than the speed of light. Concrit always welcome.
[+] [O] [~]
“When life hardens into a bead of such cruel perfection you see it with the purest clarity. Everything suddenly there--life as it truly is, enormous, appalling, devastating. You see the great sinkholes it makes in people and the harrowing lengths to which love will go to fill them.”
-Sue Monk Kidd “The Mermaid Chair”
[+]
Heil, North Dakota, March 20, 2008
Dean’s got that wild, desperate look to him. The same one he wore at Cold Oak and that long night and day afterward.
If there was anything that could split a soul in two it would be what I saw that night. Dean’s yell stopped me cold, been hunting long enough to know the sound of someone damn well breaking from the inside out. These legs made it back fast as anything, and I half expected to have a heart attack the way the old ticker was going double time. Found Dean in the middle of that road in all that mud, kneeling with Sam propped up. The two of them weren’t right, too still, too close, the angles all wrong. And I knew right then there was only going to be white breath coming from one of them. Would’ve traded the pain in my chest right then for a heart attack.
Dean was careful, kept saying to keep Sam out of the mud and dirt. He was all business until we got Sam inside and laid out, then he went to someplace inside himself. Kept real quiet. Wouldn’t budge for hours, just sat there in that half-rotted crap piece of chair staring at nothing. Wouldn’t touch Sam, wouldn’t let me touch him even after the blood started leaking into the mattress and seeping around toward the edges. That whole ghost town smelled like death, dark and stale and unnatural, but that room was heavy with it.
Dean didn’t start talking until the next morning. First words out of his mouth were ‘damn whiskey’, then ‘please’ and ‘Bobby’. It was like going back twenty-odd years. Saw pieces of another hunter, young and half mad with grief, standing in front of me, and it hit me that these were John Winchester’s boys. God help us all, I thought.
Dean wasn’t right in the head that night. He wasn’t right until he showed up unapologetic and squared for one of those silent Winchester tests of wills on my doorstep with Sam, the walking undead, the next day.
I knew I should never have let him alone.
Now here we are again. Sam’s gone and done the fool thing this time and Dean’s going out of his head again.
“Bobby, what’d you let him do!” he yells, shouldering his way past the splintered doorframe and carrying in the cold. Dean zeros in on the beds and either doesn’t notice or give a damn that he’s destroyed the salt lines nearly ground into the carpet in his rush. His eyes dart to the blonde girl spread out broken-like on the corner bed and then go hard. “Who else? Ellen, Jo?” Dean grabs a hold of me and screams, “Who else knew!”
I’d be a fool to give Dean real answers right now. Like a blind bull stuck with a hot poker, he’s on a rampage, tearing up the trail Sam tried to hide and leaving a highway of broken junk and rubble about a mile wide. Idiot kid. It’s enough to lead the rest of them straight to us. But Dean’s not one to look twice at common sense, least where Sam’s concerned. He’d face down Hell’s army with a feather duster and a paper clip if they stood between him and that stray brother of his.
The lights flicker. Then go out. The flowered rag-tag curtains hanging above the plastic heater go still as the fan stutters and dies. Dean lets me go and yanks up his sleeve, stares at his watch. On the wall the hands on the cracked cowboy clock stop at thirteen past eight, the second’s hand frozen near around twelve.
My gut starts rolling and that spot behind my ears starts tingling, hunter’s intuition. I tell Dean it’s started.
A growl crawls up from somewhere inside him, and in three steps he’s kneeling on bed where Sam’s lying with his eyes open.
“Sam. Sammy! Wake up!” Dean’s fingers turn white as he digs them into Sam’s shoulders and shakes. “Bobby, we gotta stop his walking!” He rounds to run at the girl lying on the other bed, but I drag Dean away before he does something that’ll screw up Sam’s chances of finding his way back.
“Dean, there’s nothing you can do. Your brother’s a stupid, stubborn ass just like you.”
When I get a good look at Dean’s face that deep down gut ache of guilt hits me. I can’t think of anything to do but yell about Dean and his deal making and how it started this whole mess ‘cause it keeps the wreck of grief, pain, and fear buried deep where it belongs. And whiskey helps.
The last time I got real acquainted with a bottle of Jimmy’s stiffest was two years ago when John left those boys lost and floundering like two wounded tigers. When they finally drove off in that soccer mobile, I was sure they’d tear each other to pieces with their grief, or else crash that minivan with all that bundled up anger (there was a reason I made sure they got the slowest car I had). Never did see that noisy bucket of rubber bands on wheels again, and never been gladder to hear Ellen’s voice. When she called about John Winchester’s boys showing up on her doorstep and taking a case in Medford, I damn well exhaled for so long she thought I went and died on her. As those boys limped their way back from the edge, I locked up the Jim Beam good and tight along with thoughts of their daddy.
But I could probably do with a couple of mouthfuls of whiskey now ‘cause Dean’s not moving, just stares me down like he wants to burn to me with his eyes. Then something changes, realization maybe, acceptance maybe, understanding, or maybe it’s that damn burden of responsibility I’ve seen that boy carrying since age seven when John rolled into the yard with a trunk full of ammo and knives, a mouth full of demon questions, and a backseat loaded with kids.
I lay a hand on Dean’s shoulder and squeeze hard. He’s all knots and quivering panic pent up with nowhere to go.
“You couldn’t know,” I say. Sam was bull-headed and sure this was the only way, and for all my years of hunting and reading I couldn’t argue with him. If it comes down to it, burying a young hunter is something you never want to do, but burying two young hunters is worse.
Dean steps away, squares his shoulders.
“He’s coming back.” He says it like he’s speaking some God-promised truth. Dean tears off his jacket, then pulls out his Colt and lays it next to Sam’s Taurus, dusty and cold on the side table. He’s rolling up his sleeves when I catch sight of the bruises on the inside of his arms. The ones like Sam’s.
“There’s a med kit in the trunk.” Dean jerks his head toward the door.
When I don’t move, he says matter-of-fact-like, “I can lead him back. I’ve done it before, this time’s no different.”
“Dean--”
“If you try and stop me, Bobby, so help me God.” His eyes go to the girl staring at the ceiling with black eyes. “I don’t care what Sam said. I’ll kill her.”
“You can’t. She’s in there with him.”
Dean goes stock still like some animal caught in the middle of the road with an eighteen wheeler screaming around a blind corner. The bathroom light flickers to life, dumping light and shadow into the room. From the corner bed come two yellow flashes. I tell myself they’re only the florescent lights reflecting off those demon’s eyes. The charm around her neck winks silver.
“Ruby, that bitch.”
I don’t tell Dean it wasn’t her idea. No sense speaking what the heart already knows.
[+]
The med kit is full of needles. Dean lines them up next to the guns in two rows, five syringes each, and touches each of them like they’re something holy. They shine hard and smooth in the light from the candle stubs ‘cause Sam’s made the lights go out again.
Judging by the calluses and faded bruises on Dean’s arm, they’ve been doing this for weeks, months maybe. I knew Sam’s wandering was getting bad. Knew he had trouble staying in his own head. Knew after he left Dean stabilized in that Pocatello hospital and the Impala with an empty gas tank and a flat tire in the parking lot two weeks ago, he and Ruby had fallen off the map. But I didn’t know Sam’s dreamwalking had him tearing himself and his brother up.
It makes a hell of a lot more sense why Sam left Dean, why he was so desperate to not be found. “Bobby, you can’t tell him. Not until after it’s over.” Sam’s voice was real hard to make out between the static, so I pressed the phone to my ear like that would make a difference. “He’s gonna be pissed, but the doctor said he’ll be fine. I just … can you make sure he’s … you’ll be there when he wakes up, right?”
I should’ve known that damn kid was trying to save his brother.
Dean peels back the corner of the wool blanket he covered Sam with and lays Sam’s right arm flat. He rolls up his brother’s sleeve like this is nothing more than putting a Band-Aid on a paper cut.
“Alright, Sammy, it’s gonna be fine.” Dean’s voice is low and quiet, even. Like John’s when he’d be talking comfort into some poor person who just had their whole world upended by the supernatural. John, for all his rough talk and silent spells, had a way of talking when words weren’t important, just the tone. Dean ties the rubber tubing around his own arm and starts tapping for veins.
“There’s only so much blood you can give before you’re dried up,” I say, running my hands up over my face and back down. A day of chasing Dean down blacktop and gravel roads and an hour of watching the heater go on and off, the lights flicker, and Sam and that demon lie like the dead have me worn down dull and to the quick.
“I’m real juicy, Bobby. Got more than my share of Winchester blood, enough for me and Sam. And this?” Dean holds up a syringe filled with blood. “This’ll drown out that demon blood.”
And keep Sam on this side of human.
I don’t say the words, but Dean reads them on my face before I can turn my back and head toward the only place of privacy in this damn motel room.
I knew things were wrong when I got Sam’s note written on paper from the Trident Motel in Heil, North Dakota yesterday. Notes leave trails. Too messy a move for someone who’d spent the last couple weeks making them self invisible. Too sloppy for Sam, who knew Dean would be wrecking half the world looking for him. Hunters know never to send messages through the mail ‘cause it makes it easy for other eyes to see what they’re not supposed to be reading. And it takes too long, is too unreliable. More than likely you’d be left sipping beer in some stale-smelling bar, waiting for somebody who didn’t know where they were supposed to be until days later. Sam never would’ve mailed a letter if he was planning on meeting us. It was more like he was telling us where to find him after the fact.
His note was post dated two days earlier. It said:
March 20th
Room 3b
Your promise.
I promised not to say anything to Dean. I’m not so high on myself to think me not promising Sam would’ve stopped him. He would’ve still run off stubborn as ever but without anyone to turn to in a tight spot, and the last thing I wanted was Sam running alone in the dark.
But there wasn’t much of a promise to keep ‘cause I didn’t know much more than anyone else. There’s been talk these last two weeks of dark rituals only a hunter would know how to do, things about pulling powers and dreamwalking. People are worried, panicked. A hunter gone off the rails needs to be pulled back in. The quieter and gentler the better, but not everyone sees it the same as me. So it took no words out of my mouth for Dean to find Sam’s note and recognize his writing. My square edges may be going round, but if a soft spot for those boys is gonna land me in Hell, then I’ll be bringing marshmallows and hot dogs to my funeral pyre.
The water blasts into the sink hard and cold. And I let it run. The white noise is good, drowns out the outside world. I rest my hands on either side of the basin and lean forward until my head’s resting against the mirror. Close my eyes.
Something’s not right in all of this. Never heard of such deep, unbreakable wandering before. Never for more than a night’s sleep, never in pairs. As far as I can tell, the electrical outages and time freezing are Sam telegraphing something fierce. There’s something going down, and it ain’t good.
After I’m done soaking my face, I’m searching for a towel to wipe my hands when I knock over the garbage can with my boot. There’s a thud and a clink and a glass rolls across the floor and stops at the doorjamb. And that’s when I smell it, strong, bitter sharp, and unmistakable.
“This ain’t like before, Dean.” I march out of the bathroom and shove two motel glasses rimmed with dirty green into his face. “You know what this is?”
Dean sniffs and bats the cup away, saying, “Liquid blue cheese in a cup?” before giving me his smart ass face.
“It’s valerian powder.” I slam one of the glasses down next to alarm clock blinking 8:13. “It’s a plant sedative, a hypnotic … makes you sleep.”
“I know what a sedative is.” The irritation in Dean’s voice doesn’t cover his alarm.
“Sam’s gone and done something crazy.”
“Sam’s not crazy.”
I don’t know what Sam’s got planned, but Dean’s soul is on the line, and there ain’t nothing short of bringing down the world that Sam wouldn’t do to keep Dean out of Hell. Demons don’t make deals that can’t be undone. They’ll trade up if they can get something better. And Sam knows better than anyone that demons are greedy bastards.
“No? I’ve seen all sorts of crazy crawl out of desperate.”
Dean stands up with his eyes full of fire and jaw twitching.
“He’s gone walking deep this time and pulled that demon in with him to save you,” I yell louder than I mean to.
Then Dean shuts down, pulls a mask over his face. He drops his eyes and reaches down quiet and cold as anything and picks up a syringe.
“If you don’t like it, Bobby, there’s the door.”
What is it with these Winchesters thinking they got to do everything alone? My sigh makes Dean’s eyes dart up. But when I go to look him in the eye he’s staring at Sam.
“Your brother is a lot of things, but stupid ain’t one of them.” I walk to where Dean’s standing and press the other glass into his free hand and say quieter, “He’s put himself down so he won’t wake up for a reason.”
Dean puts the glass down on the yellow blanket next to Sam’s leg. “Then that’s all the more reason he needs this.” He pulls the plastic cap off the needle with his teeth.
“Your brother and that demon, they’re tangled up in his mind someplace. You can’t just shock them out. There’s no telling what’ll happen, and you don’t know what you’ll be interfering with. Sam’s gone to someplace where you can’t follow this time--”
Dean’s head snaps around, and I recognize that look.
“No,” I tell him.
But it’s a waste of air ‘cause Dean’s up and in the bathroom with the door shut in my face. I hear him pulling open drawers and sorting through the wrapped soaps in the chipped dish on the counter. By the time I jimmy open the lock, he’s pulling out his arm from up under the sink, a plastic bag tied with red string in his hand.
“It’ll be a hell of a lot safer if you stick around, Bobby. But I’m telling you right now, your being here or not isn’t gonna change my mind. I’m doing this.” Dean’s got a death grip on that bag of powdered valerian and is puffing himself up for a fight.
And suddenly I’m more tired than I’ve ever felt. Trying to keep that family together all these years after losing mine, I never thought it would turn to me squaring down Dean, telling him to just let Sam go.
“Sam’s somewhere in there doing something because of me. And whatever it is, I can’t let him do it alone. He’s my responsibility, Bobby. Mine. There’ll be nobody left after my year is up. And I can’t just leave him without--” Dean looks away and pulls his hands through his hair. When he turns around all I see is a young boy who looks so lost and scared I barely hear his words: “Please. He’s my brother. I need to do this.”
And there’s nothing I got that can do battle with a look like that. I glance over my shoulder at the girl lying harmless and quiet and then to Sam. The bruises stand dark on his arms, and his chest rises slow and steady and in time to the tick of the second’s hand on the clock skipping backwards. And below the stillness and silence, I think of them trapped in a nightmare.
“You idiot,” is all I manage. Then I mutter something about getting whiskey from the truck to chase down the bitter of the valerian.
Dean opens his mouth and then closes it. The hard lines on his face go smooth, and his eyes change like something inside's just opened up. He nods.
“I’ll wait until you come back,” he says.
That’s as much of a reprieve Dean’s capable of. Real words and straight-forward communication don’t mix with the name Winchester just like tears are a waste of salt for a Singer.
It’s cold outside. The sky is dark and naked. And there are stars everywhere, staring down like a million eyes. Though the closed door I hear Dean drag a chair across the floor to Sam’s side. And it’s almost like Sam’s dead all over again. Only this time there ain’t no deal that can undo what he’s done.
Through a layer of peeling varnish I get a good hard look at the knots in the wood door, sliced through their hearts and cracked along their weakness by hot and cold. I run my hand along the frame and catch a splinter. It’s such a little thing, would barely know it was there except for the blood and the sting.
[+] [O] [~]
TBC