FIC: - Blind Spot - 13/14
Title: - Blind Spot - Chapter 13/14
Author:
pdragon76
Rating: NC-17 (language, whump, sex)
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: AU, set six months after AHBL2
Disclaimer: All things Supernatural belong to Kripke, not me (rinse & repeat).
Summary: Dean’s on a slow burn after a bloody confrontation with an old nemesis. Sam’s got his hands full picking up the pieces. The Crossroads Deal isn’t the only timer ticking. Warnings for language, whump and sex.
A/N: Chapter Fourteen will post as it is completed. Thanks for your patience, guys. Some liberties have been taken with locations, mythology and demonology. Apologies to any mortified Oregonians, mythologists and/or demons. Mad props to my iron-fisted, velvet-gloved betas.
kimonkey7 - you relentlessly demand more from my writerly self than I am capable of giving, and sometimes you get it. For that, the Dragons is eternally in your debt. Due to unforeseen circumstances, we has no
ailleann23 this chapter. She will be returning with her slapping hand to beta Chapter the Final. That is all.
Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4 Ch 5 Ch 6 Ch 7 Ch 8 Ch 9 Ch 10 Ch 11 Ch 12
- Blind Spot - : Chapter Thirteen
A peacefulness follows any decision, even the wrong one.
~Rita Mae Brown
It was late afternoon. Dean didn’t know exactly what time. Everything was still a little fluid in the time department, and he was half-tanked; poised atop the downhill slide of a morphine run. He felt bright and hot and hyper-aware of all the wrong things as he perched on the edge of the bed: the fiber of the sheets beneath the fingers of his left hand; the air shifting the hairs on his forearm as Sam unwound the bandage from his right wrist. He looked down as Sam peeled back the gauze, and the damage beneath sent his eyes elsewhere in a hurry.
Sam glanced up at him. “Dude, trust me, it looks a lot better.”
Christ.
“You sure about this?”
Dean got his attention on Bobby, felt like his head was turning through a slick of oil. He overshot the mark a tad; had to correct. “Hmm?”
Bobby frowned, folded his arms. “I said: are you sure about this?”
Dean gave him a manic, determined nod. “Yep.”
“It’s a stupid idea,” Sam muttered. “It’s too soon.” His frustration found its way down to the swab in his fingers and Dean hissed, tugged his wrist free. Sam held up both hands. “Sorry. Sorry.”
Dean warily returned his arm to his brother’s care. He found Bobby again, racked him into focus with a drunken squint. “M’already half up. Just gemme to the door and back.”
Bobby gave him a single nod. “Okay. Door and back. Sam?”
“Well, you’re both gonna have to wait,” Sam responded petulantly. “I’m not done here.”
Dean toyed teeth against lip, gave the top of his brother’s bowed head a long-suffering frown.
Sam took his sweet time re-wrapping the wrist. He was still grumbling when they helped Dean to his feet, so he must have felt pretty vindicated when they only got two steps from the bed. Left foot a little less responsive than the right, and Dean fumbled. He snagged his shoulder against Sam’s and up flashed a sheet of white.
When he came to, there was carpet at his back and Sam in his face.
Dean lay there for a second while the details came back to him, let his brother sculpt the Rockies out of the molehill. When he’d re-established the hows and whys of his unexpected recumbence, he balled a clumsy hand in Sam’s shirt and pulled.
“Gemme up.”
Sam slapped at Dean’s gripping hand as though it was a large spider. “No way. You just completely blacked out. You’re not going anywhere.”
Bobby bent at the waist, hands on his knees. “Calm down, Sam. Was more of a long blink. Ya alright, Dean?”
“Uh-huh. Gemme up.”
“Kid wants to get up.”
Dean let go of his brother’s shirt and transferred his hand to the thick paw Bobby offered.
Sam made some expansive, incredulous gestures at Bobby, arms flapping like an albatross. “Oh, no you don’t. Don’t touch him.”
The flurry of movement set the room off on a tilt and spin, made Dean a little nauseous. He swallowed thickly, felt a sweat break along his hairline. For all its redeeming qualities, morphine was a shit of a drug on the comedown.
“You wanna get up, Dean?” Bobby asked, and his voice was sharp and hard.
Dean blinked up at Sam. “Lemme up.”
“That right there?” Sam jabbed an angry finger in Dean’s face, drilled Bobby with an accusatory glare. “That’s the morphine. He doesn’t know what he wants.”
Dean lifted his hand again, waggled it loosely in the air. “Bobby, just--”
“No,” Sam snapped. “You’re stoned, Dean. Shut up.”
Bobby got down on one knee. When Sam started to protest again, he shot a hand across the divide between them and gripped the front of Sam’s shirt, pulled him close.
“Your brother wants to get up. So, we’re gonna get him on his feet, and we’re gonna walk him to that door and back. You understand me?”
It was five kinds of helpless, the expression plastered on Sam’s face as his gaze traveled from the set of Bobby’s jaw to Dean’s white-washed countenance.
When they eased him to his feet, Dean’s head spun and his knees buckled. Bobby kept him upright. Silenced Sam with a gruff: “Give him a minute.”
Dean breathed through his nose, closed his eyes until the room leveled out beneath his bare feet.
Bobby shifted beside him to better take his weight. “Say when, kid. We’ll take it slow.”
*********************************************************************************************
Dean leaned on the hallway wall outside the study door. He swallowed down the tightness in his throat, bit his lip and stared at the juncture between cornice and plaster.
Get it together.
“Dean?”
He started, head snapping up as Bobby approached from the end of the hall.
“How’s he doin’?”
Dean raised his eyebrows, shook his head. “He’s sittin’ in the middle of a Devil’s Trap handcuffed to a chair, Bobby. How do you think he’s doin’?”
Bobby’s lips pursed and his dark eyes crinkled at the edges beneath his baseball cap. “I know this is hard, kiddo. If there was any other way…”
Dean raked a hand down his face, nodded. “No, it’s okay. I’m sorry, man. It’s okay. I know.”
Bobby’s appraising gaze lingered. Dean knew they were all watching and waiting, anticipating a meltdown that was long overdue. And yeah, he could feel himself braced against that oncoming locomotive. There wasn’t anything about the last couple of weeks that wasn’t screwed to all hell. He recognized the antecedent vibration in his rails. But he’d just found the eye of his storm. And he could see it from here; the point break. A sort of void beyond the noise and turmoil.
Not much longer. A few hours.
It felt like his first solid ground in a while.
“Look, I don’t mean to rush ya, but we’re on the clock here. We got some stuff we need to go over. As soon as you’re ready.” Bobby jerked a thumb over his shoulder back towards the living room, where Marcus and Jo were waiting.
Dean rubbed the back of his neck, forced his chin up until his spine cracked audibly at the base of his skull. It set his ears ringing, spread an insidious warmth through the muscles at the back of his jaw. Just another warning light that no longer applied to him on his Fourth of July panel. He’d let go of the controls, and the deep hush inside him was instant; welcomed and embraced.
“I’m good. Let’s do this.”
**********************************************************************************************
When the door opened again, it was Bobby instead of Dean.
Sam shifted in the chair, shoulders creaking. The muscles across his back rippled fire when he moved. Six hours - unaccosted and unabused - and he’d discovered a whole league of muscles he never knew he had. Twinges and spasms in them all. It made his gut churn.
“You need some water?” Bobby scooped the bottle off the ground where Dean had left it.
“Yes,” Sam admitted.
Bobby held the bottle while he drank, used the time to take a look at Sam’s eye. “You see anything outta that?”
“Not much.”
“So, we’ve been talkin’ out there.”
Sam nodded. He’d heard. Not all of the words. Mostly, the ones Dean had shouted, sounding loose and unhinged, like a door flapping in a storm.
“I’ll be honest with you, Sam. I don’t wanna take you with us. I wanna leave you cuffed to this chair right here. Dean’s got a problem with that. So, I guess I wanna hear what you have to say.”
“What I have to say?” Sam stared at Bobby intently, willed his voice to stay calm and controlled. “I think you need to knock my brother unconscious, and then you need to fix this, before things get any worse.”
“Sam--”
“You said you could do it, Bobby. You can stop me right here, right now.” He leaned forward, got a lance of fire up his spine for the trouble. “What’s the plan? You guys summon Gaap, Dean does the talking, right?”
Bobby cut eyes to the floorboards, and Sam felt a sharp pang of estrangement. You don’t discuss strategy with the enemy. But he didn’t need the confirmation. He knew what Dean was doing. Maybe better than his brother did.
“Because he’s got the dagger, right? He told you it’s safest if he does the talking, because he’s got the dagger.” Sam strained against his bound wrists, ducked his chin to the left to catch Bobby’s line of sight.
“Your brother knows his job, Sam.”
“Yeah, he knows exactly what he’s doing.” Sam shifted forward on the chair and the legs scraped against the floorboards. Bobby took a small instinctive step back, woke in Sam an awful pang of guilty sadness. “The question is, do you?”
“What are you talking about?”
Sam’s face creased in exasperation. “‘Deliver Familiars out of the custody of magicians’, Bobby. That’s what I’m talking about. He thinks that means me. He thinks this demon can stop whatever the fuck’s happening to me.” He lost it a little on the expletive, voice cracking. Sam stopped, quivered a breath in through his nose and got his composure back before he continued. Knew it was imperative that he remain calm. Rational. “You let him deal with Gaap, that’s it. He’s gone.”
He gave it some time to sink in. Let Bobby mull it over, search his face for a hidden agenda that wasn’t - couldn’t- be there.
“Bobby, I know you don’t trust me right now, but you have to believe me. I’ve got nothing to gain here. Think about it. You can end this now. Right here in this room.”
Bobby face crumpled in fatherly concern. “Jesus Christ, Sam. No.”
“You said you’d do it, Bobby.”
“We’re not there yet, kid. Yeah, I gave you my word. And I make the call on when I gotta keep it. Not you.”
Sam wanted to shout. Scream. Shake him until he understood. I’m not ready. Dean’s going to die and I’m handcuffed to this fucking chair. He bent his gaze to his lap, head bowed and face scrunched tight with helplessness.
“Okay, fine. If you can't do it, then at least stop him.” He looked up at Bobby earnestly. “Please. Look at him. Just go back out there and take a look at him.” Sam shook his head. “And then tell me he hasn't got a foot out the door already.”
**********************************************************************************************
Dean re-checked the guns. Laid them all out on the dining room table and went through them, one by one. He could feel Jo’s eyes on him from where she sat, arms folded and boots propped on the edge of the mahogany; knew she’d already done the job once. He let the seething build until the air was fairly buzzing with it, finally looked down the table at her as he racked the slide on the Smith & Wesson.
“If you got somethin’ you wanna say, Jo, you should go ahead and say it.”
“You know, I already did that.”
Dean laid the handgun flat on the table, hovered his hands over the arsenal. “I’m not sayin’ you didn’t. I just…” He patted the air, paused to pick his words. “I just gotta pack my own ‘chute here.” He scratched the back of his head, reached for Sam’s Glock. “There’s a reason my gun never jams.”
He didn’t mean it to be as insulting as it sounded. Jo stiffened visibly and, to her credit, she bit back what was no doubt an instructive and colorful suggestion about where he could stick his fucking Glock.
Dean wasn’t sure why it was such a big deal. It wasn’t anything personal. He’d double checked Sam’s weapons detail a thousand times, got his brother’s jockeys in a twist for all the same reasons. But he felt like far less of a jackass under the pinch and glare of Sam’s infamous bitchface. Jo’s fiery indignation was steeped in disappointment, and he was mildly surprised to find he didn’t really like disappointing Jo Harvelle.
Marcus came through from the living room, book nestled under his armpit and both hands raised to his red-rimmed eyes. He pressed the flat of his fingers against the sockets, sighed audibly.
“Oh, my God. If I read one more chilling extract about the gates to Hell flying open, I’m either going to shit my pants or have a nervous breakdown.” He sent an appalled glance from Jo to Dean. “Possibly both. Simultaneously. You really saw something like this in Wyoming?”
Dean cleared his throat. “Something like. Yeah. I don’t mean to add to your digestive issues, Marcus, but I think a twelve hundred mile wide gate’s gonna be a little…bigger.”
“Oh.” Marcus nodded, tilted his chin a little as though awaiting an instruction from the ceiling. “I think I’m actually going to vomit.”
“On the upside, it sounds like we’ve got a free ride with this Gaap guy, so… we raise a little demon, direct a little higher power traffic…” Dean tipped his temple. “Barring anything unforeseen - like a fullscale demon war - we could be done by lunch.”
He got up, clapped Marcus on the back. Sam was always better at this, but Dean knew the basic principle. Keep them busy, they don’t fly off the handle. He picked up the Smith and Wesson, twirled it easily in his palm and offered it to Marcus, stock first.
“You ever fired one of these things?” He could see the answer in Marcus’s instantly pale face.
Up came the jazz hands as confirmation. “Oh, no. Nonononono.” He looked at Dean, aghast. “Out there on the porch? That is the first gun I’ve ever picked up. I’ve never even touched one before today.”
Dean raised his eyebrows, gave him a lackluster smile. “Might be time for a crash course.” He waggled the gun at Jo. “Take him out back. He doesn’t need a PhD, just show him how to point and shoot, do a few reloads.” He scooped up a spare magazine, handed it to her when she took the gun. “Don’t let him blow your head off.”
Bobby flattened in the doorway to let them pass, and Dean snapped his fingers, called Jo back.
“What?”
“Don’t forget the jam drills. Do a few tap, rack-flips.”
“What happened to ‘My gun never jams’?”
Dean pointed at the weapon in her hand. “That’s not my gun.” He shook his head. “I don’t want him gettin’ a faceful of psycho-virus ‘cause he gets a fuckin’ stovepipe and he can’t clear the brass.”
Jo shrugged. “Alright, alright. Jam drills. Got it.” She poked at Marcus. “Come on. You’re about to get a whole lot sexier. Trust me.”
“Target practice?” Bobby ventured as he came into the room.
“He’s gettin’ jittery. I’m just tryin’ to keep him busy.”
“Oh.” Bobby swept a palm towards the doorway. “By all means, give the nervous guy a gun.”
Dean pinched the bridge of his nose. “Whattaya want him to do, Bobby? Sit around with his thumb up his ass waitin’ for game-on?” He dropped the hand from his nose to his mouth, rubbed his jaw. “How’s Sam?”
Bobby regarded him carefully. “He’s pretty worried about you, actually.”
Dean went back to work on the guns. “Yeah?” he muttered. “Well, the feeling’s entirely mutual.”
“Dean.”
There was something in Bobby’s tone that demanded attention. Dean looked up.
“What?”
Bobby stared for a long time before he narrowed his eyes. “It is gonna get better. You know that, right?”
Dean ran his tongue over his teeth. He thought about that some. Wondered if it even mattered.
“I know you’re feelin’ pretty messed up right now, but it’ll get easier. It ain’t gonna go, but… it’ll fade.”
Dean chewed the corner of his lip, scratched at his ear. He shook his head dismissively. “That’s not what this is about.”
Bobby let loose a frustrated growl. “Then you better explain it to me, kid.”
“This is my choice!” Dean shouted, coming around the corner of the table towards Bobby. He stabbed the air between them with his finger. “I made it!”
Bobby stood his ground against the violence of Dean’s outburst, face expressionless.
Dean turned his finger on himself, pointed at his chest. “I summoned that demon and I made my choice, Bobby. All I’m tryin’ to do is see it through, here.”
“Yeah? Cause from this angle, it looks a little like layin’ down, Dean.”
Dean’s face pinched. “You know what? Fuck you. I’m not gonna spend the next five months watching him turn into the same thing we’ve hunted our entire lives. I can’t do it. I won’t. I’d rather go to Hell. That kid in there is all I have, and he is the only thing in my entire goddamn life, besides killing things, that I’ve gotten right.”
Bobby flinched at that, but he kept his mouth shut, and Dean was glad. He paced the length of the table, hand to his mouth, and got a collar on his agitation. He stopped down the far end, leaned on the back of a chair and stared down at the floor.
Finally, Bobby said: “You know, it’d break your Dad, to hear you say that.”
Outside, there was a CRACK! as Marcus found his trigger finger.
Dean breathed evenly through his nose, fixed Bobby with a level, dispassionate stare.
“Dad’s not here.”
**********************************************************************************************
They slept in shifts. Dean hadn’t expected sleep to come, but around two, he drifted and dozed, finally sank into a smooth, dark, dreamless void.
Bobby woke him at four, pressed a coffee into his hands. “Sorry, kid. Left ya as long as we could. We got Sam in the car. We’re loadin’ up.”
Dean rubbed the corners of his crusted eyes, shook his head to clear the tempting tug back towards oblivion. Waking into a nightmare. It just always felt wrong.
**********************************************************************************************
They used a can of spray paint from the trunk to mark a Devil’s trap on the dirt track outside the paddock gate. Sam had been silent for most of the trip from the house to the symbol; sat compliant and shackled to the door handle in the backseat. But he started to shift, rattled the cuffs as Dean got back behind the wheel and eased the Impala forward over the sigil.
“Dean, you don’t have to do this. Please, don’t.” He swung his bruised and stricken face towards Bobby. “Bobby, don’t you let him do this.”
Bobby threw open his door and got out, paced into the darkness towards the back of the car. Dean twisted, caught sight of him - hands laced behind his head - in the glow of the Impala’s taillights through the rear window. Felt a guilty flare at the conflict evident in his whiskered face.
Dean’s eyes flitted over Sam, couldn’t find anywhere safe to stick a landing.
Look him in the fucking eye. It felt like fisting his hands in broken glass, trying to get a lock on that gaze.
“Dean, you have to listen to me. You don’t have to do this. We can find another way to fix this. There’s gotta be another way.”
He wished Sam’s face wasn’t messed up. Dean smiled, wanted one back in return. He thought maybe he didn’t need to say anything; that Sam would find a smile somewhere, and they would both know, and that would be it. He wanted it to be like that.
But Sam’s lips tremored instead. “Don’t you do that. Don’t you pull that shit on me.”
He should have written him a letter, back at the house. Left it someplace in the car where Sam would find it later. He wished he’d written him a letter.
Dean’s hand twitched up from the back of the bench seat - almost - but he caught himself, and didn’t quite know why.
Sam sent an urgent tear on a slalom down his face with a frantic blink. “Dean, please,” he uttered brokenly.
And that was it. Dean’s eyes stung and misted, sent him out his door into the sharp, biting cold of the pre-dawn air.
“Stay put.” His voice a ragged whisper.
*********************************************************************************************
Stay put.
It took Sam two long shuddering breaths to decide. He wasn’t having that.
Stay put. That was bullshit.
He hauled on the cuffs and kicked at the door. Yelled and shouted. Screamed when the yelling and the shouting didn’t get him anywhere.
Dean and Bobby unloaded the trunk, ferried the gear to the paddock gate. Jo and Marcus pulled up and helped.
Dean kept his jaw set and his eyes on the ground. He didn’t look into the car again.
**********************************************************************************************
The first rays of sun hadn’t yet found their way over the hills. Dean dropped the duffel off his shoulder as he reached the base of the symbol, kept walking out onto the thick scorched line of earth. He looked to where the darkened sky was giving way to grey on the horizon, cast an alert eye across the field. There was enough ambient light to give Bobby a shadowy but distinct shape as he trudged up to the duffel and dumped his own bag. Dean heard the crunch and crackle of Jo and Marcus’s feet against the frozen fronds of rye grass, knew they were bringing up the rear.
The morning air was like ice in his lungs. His breath frosted at his lips. Dean kept moving, boots against the earth, senses straining in the darkness.
The wheels were in motion now. There shouldn’t have been a relief in that, but - Christ - there was, and Dean felt a compulsion to maintain the swell of momentum. He knew it was the sort of destructive mentality that applied the gas into a wall, but it made a terrible, peaceable sense: If you can’t clean up the mess, get yourself someplace messy.
He couldn’t hear Sam anymore. Didn’t know if he’d shut up, or if they were just too far away now for his voice to travel. Either way, Dean was okay with that.
Bobby’s hand closed on his shoulder and he turned, caught the sparkle of the man’s glistening eyes under the peak of his cap. Whatever Bobby wanted to say, Dean was one hundred percent sure he didn’t want to hear it. He twisted his top lip, flashed a little teeth.
“Let’s not, huh? I got a blade with Meg’s name on it and I’m not goin’ anywhere ‘til I’ve got some blood on it. So, save it.”
Bobby clapped a hand to Dean’s cheek, nodded. “Okay,” he said hoarsely. “You got it. Be careful. Let’s not fuck this up.”
“Copy that. How long?”
Bobby dropped the hand from Dean’s face and twisted his wrist to look at his watch. “Give us ten minutes. I dunno how this is gonna go down. You just need to make sure you’re in contact with the symbol.” Bobby looked across the field. “We’re cuttin’ this pretty fine. They’re planning on opening this seal, their best shot’s at sunrise. But we gotta time this so we draw on the same power. Meg and her pals show up early, this could get a little messy.”
Dean’s hand went to the dagger inside his jacket. He pulled it out, flipped the hilt in his hand and gave the blade a lazy spin through his fingers.
“Let's hope so.”
**********************************************************************************************
Whiskey.
He wished he’d had a whiskey, back at the house.
Dean hopped a little on the spot, kept the weight through his right knee, and tried to maintain his body warmth. He could see the flicker of flame and movement a hundred yards south of his position. Wondered how far Bobby and Marcus were into the ritual.
Thirty yards to their right, Jo was providing cover. Dean could see the glint of the shotgun in the semi-darkness as she shifted, arced the muzzle across the field.
It started to rain. He cocked an eyebrow up at the drizzle, shook his head.
You gotta be kidding me.
His disgust with the world in general was short lived. A flare of blue sparks shot up above Marcus and Bobby.
“Holy shit.” The words had barely left Dean’s lips, and Thor cracked a mighty hammer against the sky. He flinched, ducked instinctively. The clouds flashed a brilliant blood-red crimson and then went dark.
The hairs on the back of Dean’s neck tingled to attention as he straightened, turned a slow circle on the spot, eyes scanning the field. The rain grew heavier, gathered itself up into a dull roar, inserted a wall of grey sleet between himself and Bobby. Dean blinked into the rain, shoulders hunched against the onslaught of water.
“Bobby!” he shouted uselessly into the blur.
Then the thunder crashed again - an almighty boom - and the world seemed to stop.
**********************************************************************************************
The downpour ceased abruptly. Dean lifted a hand to his forehead, swiped a slick of rainwater up through his hair. He squinted at the midnight blue of the pre-sunrise sky, listened to the tap and trickle of the residual rainfall playing upon the rye. He sniffed damply, looked from one side of the field to the other.
“Bobby!”
He gave it enough volume that you could have heard it clear across the paddock. Couldn’t see them anymore down past the base of the symbol where they had been moments before. He turned in another arc, fingers opening and closing on the hilt of the knife in his hand. He spun the blade, played his fingers up along the grip until they found his standard defensive hold.
It was instinct that got the blade up and moving when he rounded to find himself face-to-face with an eight-foot-tall winged demon.
Gaap caught Dean’s wrist as the knife came up, enormous clawed hand engulfing his forearm. He leaned forward, gargoyle features twisting in interest at the dagger. The impressive wingspan fluttered and concertinaed shut behind the muscled, bristling mass of his shoulders.
Dean regarded his primal swarthy bulk from gnarled toes to twisting horns and was whole-heartedly inclined to declare his situation completely fucked. If Gaap so much as sneezed, his arm was going to snap in two.
The demon’s red eyes blazed with curiosity as he turned Dean’s arm to look at the dagger. Dean came up on his toes, flexed awkwardly through his back to accommodate the angle.
“Where did you get that?”
The voice rumbled somewhere deeper than Gaap’s throat, seemed to come up through Dean from the ground itself. The words reverberated around his skull like skittering marbles. He winced.
“I’m a friend of Bradley’s.”
“You speak an untruth.” Gaap’s eyes narrowed. “The dagger is bound to you. You have taken the blade by force.”
“Okay, so more of an associate,” Dean conceded.
“The dagger’s path is still in flux,” Gaap stated approvingly. He tilted his head. “You call on me to fulfill the final transaction.”
“Yes.”
“It will be the last of the agreed interventions. There can be no more.”
“Well, we’re kinda hopin’ we won’t need you again.”
“These battles will play until the end of days. As long as there are foxes, there will be foxholes.”
The grip on Dean’s wrist tightened, sent a bone-deep stab into his carpal joint. He felt his fingers slipping on the hilt involuntarily, gritted his teeth with the effort of keeping it in his grasp. Unless it was jammed fast in Meg, he wasn’t letting go of this knife.
“The seal will be broken. You wish to share of my knowledge.”
Dean nodded. “Yeah, I got a coupla questions.”
“Proceed.”
“Okay, first query’s right off the cuff, but: What are my chances you’re gonna let go of my goddamn arm before you fuckin’ break it?”
Gaap’s mouth widened in an ugly grin, and he shoved back, sent Dean stumbling. Dean shook out his wrist, clenched his fingers around the dagger.
“Thank you,” he muttered.
Gaap took a fluid, wing-assisted leap toward him, closed the distance between them again. Dean resisted the urge to step back, flapped a lazy hand in Gaap’s general direction instead.
“So, is this, like, personal choice for you, or is there a No Pants Policy down there in the pit?” He raised his eyebrows. “See, I should really be taking notes.”
“You are wasting time, human.”
“Yeah. Okay. Fair call. Why are you helping us?”
“You believe this aid to be assistance.” The idea seemed to amuse Gaap. “There are many forces at work here. This event is but one cog in a vast mechanism.”
“Again with the cryptic. I knew those crosswords were the work of the Devil.”
Gaap cocked his head.
“Alright. Lemme try again: Why stop this?”
“It is not time.”
“Time for what?”
“For the restoration of balance.”
“Balance of what?”
“You have gleaned very little, stupid human.”
Dean pouted, nodded a little. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll pay that.”
“He is right under your nose, and still you do not see.”
Dean went cold. “See what?”
“That you defend the flame by which the forest will be cleansed.” Gaap leaned in, and Dean got a blast of hot acrid breath. He turned his face away. “You are its keeper.”
Gaap pointed at the knife. “The dagger’s journey is incomplete. You will all have your roles to play. Instrument, fire, defender. In good time.”
“Well, I hate to break it to you, pal, but I’ve got a bit of an egg-timer running here, so… my destiny’s kinda pre-mapped. Which reminds me--”
“The answer is no.”
“I didn’t ask you a question.”
“It is not in my power to undo what is yet to be decided.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“You wish to trade your soul, give yours to free his.”
Dean did. Yes. He wished to do that. He nodded. “I’ll go right now. I just need five minutes to kill one of your psycho whack-job colleagues, then I’m all yours. Just let him go. Whatever’s happening to him, just…stop it.”
“He is becoming whole. And you…” Gaap seemed interested. “You would stop this?”
“If he’s becoming a fucking demon? Then yes, I would stop this, you son of a bitch.”
“This, I cannot answer.”
“I thought you knew all things.”
“I know all things that can be known,” Gaap snapped. “There are matters which are undecided. It is not my place to speak of them.”
“Oh, here we go. The goddamn choice cha-cha.”
“There is choice in all things, human. Even that which appears to be set in stone can be altered irrevocably by a degree’s deviation at the appropriate point.”
“You know what? Fuck that. I didn’t buy the fast-track to the Pit so we could play your little reindeer demon games. This wasn’t part of the deal. So, let’s hear it. What’s it gonna take?”
“The answer is no.”
Dean shook his head emphatically. “No’s not gonna work for me.”
Gaap was upon him in a flash, hand around his throat and lifting him off the ground. “You are not in a position for negotiation. A contract is in place. Your soul is already spoken for.”
Dean grappled at Gaap’s bristled forearms, got the words out through his gritted teeth. “You’re not getting him. So, help me God--”
“Your path must play as it has been laid. The dagger’s journey is incomplete. His actions rely upon your fate.” Gaap fell silent, appeared to think. “She is preparing to call upon the seal.” He dropped Dean to the ground, stepped back. “This will be the last of the interventions.”
Dean elbowed up. “Oh, no you don’t, you sonuvabitch. We’re not done.”
“No, we are not. The next time we meet, Dean Winchester,” Gaap snarled ominously, “there will be far less discussion. You will know me by my actions. There will be wine from your blood.”
Dean scrambled to his knees, rubbed his abused throat with the flat of his fingers. The first drops of rain started again. Tap tap taptaptaptaptap on the earth around him until it swelled into a roaring downpour.
Gaap backed into the shimmer of precipitation, and after a few paces, Dean couldn’t tell anymore where the demon ended and the rain began.
‘Wait!” he shouted.
Gaap’s parting words were almost indistinguishable from the roar of the deluge: “Until then, the flame is in your keeping, as the outcome is in his.”
**********************************************************************************************
Sam stopped shouting when he lost sight of them. He caught his breath, passed his frantic gaze across the backseat of the Impala, strained against his shackles to see into the front.
Not even a paperclip lying anywhere. He kicked the seat in front of him in desperate frustration.
“Fuck!”
He leaned back, lifted his ass off the seat and twisted, tried to get his fingers down the pocket of his jeans. Dug out a couple of quarters and a crumpled dollar bill, some lint and not much else. He managed to pull his tri-fold from his back pocket, dropped back onto the seat and fumbled the wallet open against the door. He thumbed through the contents, unzipped the coin hold and emptied it carefully into his hand.
Nothing. “Shit.”
He dropped the wallet down the side of the seat, stared at his knees for a moment. Alright, calm down. Think.
Belt.
He leaned back again, shucked his hips up and caught the buckle with his reaching fingers. He tugged it undone, pulled the leather through the loops inch at a time, feeding it from hand to hand as far as the handcuffs allowed. When it flipped loose of his waist, he sat back onto the seat and found the prong on the buckle.
Sam worked it into the keyhole of the left cuff, bottom lip between his teeth. He closed his eyes, let his tactile sense heighten while he played the lock. It took a minute of very fine motor skills, but then he felt the lock give and the cuff loosened on his wrist. He snapped his eyes open, huffed out the breath he’d been holding, and shook his hand loose. He turned his attention to the second keyhole, had it open in half the time.
He kicked the door, scrabbled wildly out onto the dirt.
Meg was waiting. She shoved him hard in the chest when he straightened, sent him crashing into the back quarter panel with a bark of surprise.
He shrank back against the metal. “Oh, shit.”
Meg stepped up, grabbed him by the front of his shirt. “Game time, Sam. Let’s go see what your shithead brother’s up to, shall we?”
**********************************************************************************************
It was getting lighter. Dean turned blindly in the grey roar of the rain, dagger still clenched in his right hand. He squinted in one direction and then the next, internal compass spinning as wildly as his mind.
A shotgun blast cut through the wet cacophony. He jumped, spun on his heel towards the sound. The rain suddenly lightened, and as the sheet of water lifted, he heard the shotgun go off again, saw the muzzle flash a hundred yards to his right.
“Bobby!” he bellowed, picked up into a jog, then a run as he made out the grey shapes advancing across the field.
He slid to a halt behind Jo, got a hand up to his ear and turned his face away in a hurry as she let loose half the rounds from Sam’s Glock, sent a party of shells pinging up out of the slide. The three approaching figures twisted one by one and folded neatly to the grass.
“Jesus, what the fuck is going on?”
Bobby turned, did a double-take. “Dean? What the hell…? Did it work?”
“I dunno.” Dean squinted towards the southern end of the paddock, saw movement along the fence line. As his eyes adjusted, he made out a small crowd of people milling there. “Are they possessed or infected?”
Bobby cracked the shotgun, pulled the empty shells and started to reload. “Well, I haven’t run any labs, but the rounds are droppin’ ‘em.” He snapped the shotgun closed and took aim. “You wanna lose the butter knife and give us a hand here?”
“How long’ve they been there?”
“’Bout twenty minutes. Couple of ‘em have gotten close enough for a shot but they’re not really movin’. S’like they’re waitin’.”
“Oh, that’s not creepy at all.” Dean transferred the dagger into his left hand, pulled his Glock from the back of his jeans. A peal of thunder rattled the sky-scape like colliding boulders, and the rumble shifted the earth beneath their feet. Dean stumbled forward against Jo and she caught his arm, kept them both on their feet.
Marcus looked up at the sky. “What was that?”
Jo brushed a frantic hand across her face, cleared the wayward strands of blonde from her eyes. “Well?” she demanded. “What happened with the demon?”
Dean gave her shrug with his good shoulder, face broadcasting confusion. “He said it was a done deal. I dunno.”
Jo punched a finger through the air towards the waiting shadows. “Does that look like a done deal to you?”
“Not really, no.” Another boom from above and Dean hunched, looked up. “Where the fuck’s Gaap?” He sucked in a lungful of crisp morning ice, shouted up at the sky: “Anytime you’re ready, asshole!”
“Oh, my God.” Marcus was looking from the gun in his hand to the people at the base of the field.
No one down there seemed to be moving. Dean returned his Glock to the back of his pants, clicked his fingers. “Marcus?”
He gazed blankly at Dean, jaw slack and mouth open. The muzzle of the Smith and Wesson knocked visibly against his thigh in his shaking hand.
Dean reached out and gave Jo a shove towards him. “Get that gun off him, before he blows his foot off.” He turned back to Bobby. “Any sign of Meg?”
Bobby lifted his cheek from the side of the shotgun, shook his head. “No. What about Sam?”
“No dice. Sonuvabitch wouldn’t deal.” Dean saw the obvious relief wash up over Bobby’s face and raised both eyebrows. “Let’s not break out the champagne, Bobby. I’m not exactly celebrating over here.”
Behind him, Meg said: “What a shame. I love a party.”
Dean didn’t think.
He stepped back and turned on his heel. Passed the dagger into his right hand as he spun, put everything the momentum afforded him into a wild, blind strike. Didn’t see his brother until it was almost too late.
Sam made a muffled, panicked noise against the gag between his teeth, twisted and snapped back out of the path of the arcing blade. Dean didn’t have time to pull much out of the swing, felt his knuckles kiss the fabric of his brother’s shirt. Couldn’t be sure the blade hadn’t contacted on the follow through.
Meg shoved Sam hard from behind and sent him crashing - arms bound at his back - into Dean as he straightened. Dean staggered, managed to catch Sam’s shirt. Righted him as he tripped, kept him on his feet.
“Sam.” It fell from his lips, half desperate exhalation, half self-recrimination. His frantic fingers tugged and pulled at the front of this brother’s shirt, found no wound. He searched Sam's eyes for some sort of confirmation - some reassurance that he was unharmed. Found such a kaleidoscope of emotion there, it was impossible to gauge the depth or cause of his distress.
He transferred the hilt of the dagger to the custody of his teeth, gripped it hard in his jaws while his fingers skipped across Sam’s shoulders, moving to release the gag.
But Meg was moving, too. Dean swung his brother around, away from Meg; got himself between them. He dropped the blade from his teeth, caught it smoothly in his right hand as he turned to face her.
“Get away from him, you goddamn skank.”
From somewhere behind his left shoulder, Bobby said, “Dean.” It was low and quiet, and for a second Dean misconstrued the warning, entertained the ridiculous and fleeting notion that he was being reprimanded for his language.
But then he felt it. Like a hum beneath his feet. He glanced down, then back up at Meg.
Oh, shit.
She smiled, flashed him smug eight-ball eyes.
The hunter in Dean shifted gears, moved straight to contingencies. Retreat. Regroup. Reassess.
Gaap lied. We’re all five kinds of fucked.
“Bobby?” Dean turned his head, far enough to catch him on the periphery.
“Yeah.”
“Fall back. Take Sam.”
“Dean--”
“I said, fall back.” He tossed a glance over his other shoulder to where the Glock glinted in Jo’s hands, muzzle trained on Meg. “You too, Jo. Grab Marcus, fall back.”
“No.” Her voice was emphatic.
Dean was about to get pissed off when another deafening peal of thunder shook the sky. The clouds flickered with an impossibly deep burgundy. There was a blinding flash and then the paddock cracked in half along the length of the burnt symbol with an ear-splitting clap.
Meg stumbled on the quaking earth, nearly fell.
Dean hit the ground hard on his hip, the lightning bolt still stamped on his retinas, world muffled beyond his ringing ears. He palmed the rye and struggled back to his feet.
Meg was gazing at the rumbling fissure in the earth, her face an incredulous canvas of disbelief. She stayed statue-still while the rippling ground settled and the sky eased its grumbling.
She got her hands up on her hips, surveyed the smoldering gouge through the field.
“Dean,” she enquired tightly, “did you just break my fucking symbol?”
He was almost quick enough. She was off-balance and her attention was diverted, and she didn’t catch his wrist until the last moment, stilled the dagger an inch from the silk-smooth skin of her décolletage.
“I can’t believe you just broke my fucking symbol.”
He slapped his left hand up over his right, threw his weight forward. The adrenalin thumped through his system, reduced him to the shuddering tip of the blade and the bang of his heart inside his chest. He leaned on the knife - felt the twitch and shake of the muscles in his arms, in his face - and almost got some movement on the end of the dagger.
Meg face twisted. ‘How the fuck did you just break my goddamn fucking symbol?”
She pushed forward and sent him hurtling backwards.
Dean twisted mid-flight, got his left forearm out before he landed, had time to think Wrong arm before he jolted against the earth. He lost the dagger on the first roll, tumbled and cracked and slid over the slick earth before he came to rest on his back.
When he tried to move, everything locked up.
Oh.
He heard Jo screaming for him, turned his head and saw her thirty yards away, crawling towards him. He realized he hadn’t taken a breath yet, got his mouth open and discovered his lungs were still down for the count. Somewhere past his feet, he could hear the shotgun going off, Bobby roaring Sam’s name.
He felt Jo’s hands grip at his shirt, shifted his head and tried to get her in his sights. Everything buzzed and blurred and he froze. The shock of the impact began to recede, washed out like a tide and left him with a horrible, undeniable realization: he wasn’t getting up.
That’s it. I’m out.
The knowledge filled him with an awful sense of panic. Get up. The adrenal surge sparked, then faltered; flooded him instead with an insidious fatigue. GET UP. His heel scraped uselessly against the grass, knee jerking up. The spasm was completely beyond his control, and fear gripped him.
“Dean.”
He opened his mouth to respond and choked instead. The cough sent a warm splatter of something wet up and out of his mouth.
Jo’s fingers fluttered at his jaw. “Oh, God. Don’t move. Stay still.”
Copy that. He gave breathing another shot, got a thin wheeze of air down into his lungs, felt his chest starting to give and shift. He could feel the denim of his jeans against the back of his left hand, couldn’t get his arm to budge.
“Get the dagger,” he managed. The empty fingers of his right hand curled against the grass.
Jo’s knee grazed his hip as she moved away and the bump jolted through him like a current. He tensed, every muscle in his body screaming with abuse. And then:
“Dean!”
Sam.
Dean thought he might cry. Heard the thump thump thump of his brother’s charging feet, and a second later he was staring up into Sam’s face. Sam’s beautiful, fucked-up face. Dean was definitely going to cry.
“Sam.”
“Oh, fuck. Oh, thank God. Dean.”
“I didn’t…I couldn’t…Sammy, I’m sorry…” Dean blinked a run of tears down his face, tried to lift his head. “Where is she?”
“I dunno. Bobby just emptied the saltgun into her, stepped on the Latin. I think she’s gone. Stay still.”
“Where’s the knife. I lost the knife.”
“Jo’s looking.”
A few seconds later he felt the hilt being pressed into his fingers. Jo whispered something into Sam’s ear as she levered up off his shoulder, and Sam nodded. “We need the car. Tell Bobby we need the car.” He scanned the paddock. “Are they gone? Can you see anyone else?”
Jo shook her head. “I think so. I dunno. We’ll take care of it, just… Sam, he’s…”
“Okay,” Sam nodded again, “He’s okay. He’s gonna be okay.” He turned his determined face back to Dean. “You’re okay. Just don’t move.”
“He wouldn’t deal.” The confession stoked the hot coals of failure, sent another salty wash from Dean’s eyes.
Sam’s shoulders slumped in relief. He closed his eyes for a long beat, and when he opened them his gaze was intense, as full of emotion as his voice: “Christ. Thank God. That is some fan-fucking-tastic news.”
“Oh, my. You boys really are having a Hallmark moment, aren’t you?” Meg folded her arms. “Makes me just wanna gouge my eyes out.”
Dean heard Jo scream first for Bobby, and then for Marcus.
Meg raised her voice. “They can’t hear you. They’re taking a little nap, Blondie.”
Jo shut up abruptly. “Oh, my God. Marcus.”
Sam twisted towards her. “Go.”
Jo took off at a sprint, and Meg waved politely at her departing back. “What a fucking Pollyanna. I bet she fucks like Marcia Brady.” She cocked her head. “Well, whattaya know. And they say you can’t keep a good man down. You don’t look so good, Dean.”
Dean’s fingers tightened around the hilt of the knife. He stifled the cough that clawed its way up the back of his throat. Less than ten feet away, and he had the dagger in his hand. He made another desperate ploy for verticality, but Sam held him down.
“Fuck you, Meg.” He spat the words from bloodied lips.
“Actually, I think you’ll find it’s fuck you, Dean. Fuck you and all your little friends. Except you, Sam.”
She smiled at him sweetly.
*********************************************************************************************
He felt the tremor in his hands first, let go of Dean’s shirt and flipped his palms slowly, eyes growing wide.
“Oh, no. Not now.”
Dean frowned up at him, the pain and anger in his face morphing into concern, and then his eyes filled with fear.
“Sam?”
Sam closed his eyes, shook his head. “Nonononononono. Please, not now.”
Dean tried to elbow up. “Sammy?”
Meg’s easy, languid laugh ran the distance between them like a babbling brook.
Sam felt a surge of incalculable rage, felt the access gates thrown wide on an insatiable and volcanic wrath.
“Shut up, bitch.” A voice not his own. Sam fisted his hands against his thighs, tried to anchor himself against the physical sensation of his clenched fingers, nails sunk into flesh. He started with the Latin.
“Successio ut vestri moenia locus in iucunditas. Permissum illic exsisto misericordia Deus super mihi.”
“Come on, Sam. Don’t fight it,” Meg coaxed.
He didn’t mean to snap up his head. Meant to ignore her. Willed every fiber of his being to keep his head bowed, and his lips working a foreign tongue as familiar as his own. But it was like a glacier-thick sheet of ice had come down between him and the world. He felt heavy and guided as the venomous attack came out of him.
“I’m gonna cut your fucking throat.”
Meg’s eyes flashed. She pointed at Dean. “No, you’re not. You’re going to cut his throat.” She squatted down, hugged her knees. Her eyes were heavy, lidded. “Feel it, Sam. You want to.”
He did. God, help him he did. He strained against the concept, repulsion and horror vying with unmistakable need. An itch for his fingers to close around the hilt of that blade. To feel the drag of metal through flesh.
Dean.
Sam’s heart thudded against his ribs. He could no longer hear or feel whether the Latin still fell from his lips. When his hand closed over Dean’s fingers on the dagger, his brother tightened his grip.
“Sam, no.” Dean’s voice was wild. “Don’t.”
He did. Didn’t want to. But he did. Sam wrenched the knife up, Dean’s hand still imprisoned beneath his iron grip. Felt the twist and click of the fingers as they snapped beneath his own.
The back of Dean’s skull smacked off the ground and he made a sharp raw sound. “God, Sam, no,” he growled through clenched teeth.
Sam loosened his clutch, let Dean’s crumpled hand fall away. He was aware of the knife shaking, his entire body trembling.
“This is who you are, Sam,” Meg was saying, voice soothing. “It’s just who you are. That’s all it is.”
This wasn’t who he was. It couldn’t be. Bleeding his broken brother on the grass in some field.
No.
He knew who he was.
Sam concentrated. Felt the impossibility of breaching the cold shroud that had descended upon him. Turned his mind instead to that yawning chasm of rage, edged toward the internal drop-away.
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Right?
He had a brief fleeting awareness that this was no saloon door. Then he let go. Sam dragged the blade across the palm of his own hand.
“Sam! DROP IT!” Bobby bellowed, and another Sam might have. Five-minutes-ago Sam might have let it fall.
But this Sam knew who he was, and what he was doing. He had no need to follow any orders outside his own. The blade was in his power, now.
Dean let out a fractured shout of “Bobby, no!” just before the bullet punched through Sam’s chest. It threw a misty spray of crimson across Dean’s face and dropped his jaw open.
But Sam barely missed a beat.
Meg was surprised, expecting something other than an arm around her waist and the dagger thrust up into her chest.
Sam hugged her tight, pushed the blade in further as she buckled. Felt the warm flow of blood over his fingers around the hilt.
“You’re all going to be very sorry,” he told her.
“Ow,” she frowned, slowly and deliberately, eyes traveling from Dean on the ground back to Sam’s face. Then she let out a little laugh. “I thought you said you were going to cut my throat.”
Sam yanked the knife clear, brought it smoothly up to her neck as his fingers fisted in her hair.
“I am.”
Chapter Fourteen
Author:
pdragon76
Rating: NC-17 (language, whump, sex)
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: AU, set six months after AHBL2
Disclaimer: All things Supernatural belong to Kripke, not me (rinse & repeat).
Summary: Dean’s on a slow burn after a bloody confrontation with an old nemesis. Sam’s got his hands full picking up the pieces. The Crossroads Deal isn’t the only timer ticking. Warnings for language, whump and sex.
A/N: Chapter Fourteen will post as it is completed. Thanks for your patience, guys. Some liberties have been taken with locations, mythology and demonology. Apologies to any mortified Oregonians, mythologists and/or demons. Mad props to my iron-fisted, velvet-gloved betas.
kimonkey7 - you relentlessly demand more from my writerly self than I am capable of giving, and sometimes you get it. For that, the Dragons is eternally in your debt. Due to unforeseen circumstances, we has no
ailleann23 this chapter. She will be returning with her slapping hand to beta Chapter the Final. That is all.
Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4 Ch 5 Ch 6 Ch 7 Ch 8 Ch 9 Ch 10 Ch 11 Ch 12
- Blind Spot - : Chapter Thirteen
A peacefulness follows any decision, even the wrong one.
~Rita Mae Brown
It was late afternoon. Dean didn’t know exactly what time. Everything was still a little fluid in the time department, and he was half-tanked; poised atop the downhill slide of a morphine run. He felt bright and hot and hyper-aware of all the wrong things as he perched on the edge of the bed: the fiber of the sheets beneath the fingers of his left hand; the air shifting the hairs on his forearm as Sam unwound the bandage from his right wrist. He looked down as Sam peeled back the gauze, and the damage beneath sent his eyes elsewhere in a hurry.
Sam glanced up at him. “Dude, trust me, it looks a lot better.”
Christ.
“You sure about this?”
Dean got his attention on Bobby, felt like his head was turning through a slick of oil. He overshot the mark a tad; had to correct. “Hmm?”
Bobby frowned, folded his arms. “I said: are you sure about this?”
Dean gave him a manic, determined nod. “Yep.”
“It’s a stupid idea,” Sam muttered. “It’s too soon.” His frustration found its way down to the swab in his fingers and Dean hissed, tugged his wrist free. Sam held up both hands. “Sorry. Sorry.”
Dean warily returned his arm to his brother’s care. He found Bobby again, racked him into focus with a drunken squint. “M’already half up. Just gemme to the door and back.”
Bobby gave him a single nod. “Okay. Door and back. Sam?”
“Well, you’re both gonna have to wait,” Sam responded petulantly. “I’m not done here.”
Dean toyed teeth against lip, gave the top of his brother’s bowed head a long-suffering frown.
Sam took his sweet time re-wrapping the wrist. He was still grumbling when they helped Dean to his feet, so he must have felt pretty vindicated when they only got two steps from the bed. Left foot a little less responsive than the right, and Dean fumbled. He snagged his shoulder against Sam’s and up flashed a sheet of white.
When he came to, there was carpet at his back and Sam in his face.
Dean lay there for a second while the details came back to him, let his brother sculpt the Rockies out of the molehill. When he’d re-established the hows and whys of his unexpected recumbence, he balled a clumsy hand in Sam’s shirt and pulled.
“Gemme up.”
Sam slapped at Dean’s gripping hand as though it was a large spider. “No way. You just completely blacked out. You’re not going anywhere.”
Bobby bent at the waist, hands on his knees. “Calm down, Sam. Was more of a long blink. Ya alright, Dean?”
“Uh-huh. Gemme up.”
“Kid wants to get up.”
Dean let go of his brother’s shirt and transferred his hand to the thick paw Bobby offered.
Sam made some expansive, incredulous gestures at Bobby, arms flapping like an albatross. “Oh, no you don’t. Don’t touch him.”
The flurry of movement set the room off on a tilt and spin, made Dean a little nauseous. He swallowed thickly, felt a sweat break along his hairline. For all its redeeming qualities, morphine was a shit of a drug on the comedown.
“You wanna get up, Dean?” Bobby asked, and his voice was sharp and hard.
Dean blinked up at Sam. “Lemme up.”
“That right there?” Sam jabbed an angry finger in Dean’s face, drilled Bobby with an accusatory glare. “That’s the morphine. He doesn’t know what he wants.”
Dean lifted his hand again, waggled it loosely in the air. “Bobby, just--”
“No,” Sam snapped. “You’re stoned, Dean. Shut up.”
Bobby got down on one knee. When Sam started to protest again, he shot a hand across the divide between them and gripped the front of Sam’s shirt, pulled him close.
“Your brother wants to get up. So, we’re gonna get him on his feet, and we’re gonna walk him to that door and back. You understand me?”
It was five kinds of helpless, the expression plastered on Sam’s face as his gaze traveled from the set of Bobby’s jaw to Dean’s white-washed countenance.
When they eased him to his feet, Dean’s head spun and his knees buckled. Bobby kept him upright. Silenced Sam with a gruff: “Give him a minute.”
Dean breathed through his nose, closed his eyes until the room leveled out beneath his bare feet.
Bobby shifted beside him to better take his weight. “Say when, kid. We’ll take it slow.”
*********************************************************************************************
Dean leaned on the hallway wall outside the study door. He swallowed down the tightness in his throat, bit his lip and stared at the juncture between cornice and plaster.
Get it together.
“Dean?”
He started, head snapping up as Bobby approached from the end of the hall.
“How’s he doin’?”
Dean raised his eyebrows, shook his head. “He’s sittin’ in the middle of a Devil’s Trap handcuffed to a chair, Bobby. How do you think he’s doin’?”
Bobby’s lips pursed and his dark eyes crinkled at the edges beneath his baseball cap. “I know this is hard, kiddo. If there was any other way…”
Dean raked a hand down his face, nodded. “No, it’s okay. I’m sorry, man. It’s okay. I know.”
Bobby’s appraising gaze lingered. Dean knew they were all watching and waiting, anticipating a meltdown that was long overdue. And yeah, he could feel himself braced against that oncoming locomotive. There wasn’t anything about the last couple of weeks that wasn’t screwed to all hell. He recognized the antecedent vibration in his rails. But he’d just found the eye of his storm. And he could see it from here; the point break. A sort of void beyond the noise and turmoil.
Not much longer. A few hours.
It felt like his first solid ground in a while.
“Look, I don’t mean to rush ya, but we’re on the clock here. We got some stuff we need to go over. As soon as you’re ready.” Bobby jerked a thumb over his shoulder back towards the living room, where Marcus and Jo were waiting.
Dean rubbed the back of his neck, forced his chin up until his spine cracked audibly at the base of his skull. It set his ears ringing, spread an insidious warmth through the muscles at the back of his jaw. Just another warning light that no longer applied to him on his Fourth of July panel. He’d let go of the controls, and the deep hush inside him was instant; welcomed and embraced.
“I’m good. Let’s do this.”
**********************************************************************************************
When the door opened again, it was Bobby instead of Dean.
Sam shifted in the chair, shoulders creaking. The muscles across his back rippled fire when he moved. Six hours - unaccosted and unabused - and he’d discovered a whole league of muscles he never knew he had. Twinges and spasms in them all. It made his gut churn.
“You need some water?” Bobby scooped the bottle off the ground where Dean had left it.
“Yes,” Sam admitted.
Bobby held the bottle while he drank, used the time to take a look at Sam’s eye. “You see anything outta that?”
“Not much.”
“So, we’ve been talkin’ out there.”
Sam nodded. He’d heard. Not all of the words. Mostly, the ones Dean had shouted, sounding loose and unhinged, like a door flapping in a storm.
“I’ll be honest with you, Sam. I don’t wanna take you with us. I wanna leave you cuffed to this chair right here. Dean’s got a problem with that. So, I guess I wanna hear what you have to say.”
“What I have to say?” Sam stared at Bobby intently, willed his voice to stay calm and controlled. “I think you need to knock my brother unconscious, and then you need to fix this, before things get any worse.”
“Sam--”
“You said you could do it, Bobby. You can stop me right here, right now.” He leaned forward, got a lance of fire up his spine for the trouble. “What’s the plan? You guys summon Gaap, Dean does the talking, right?”
Bobby cut eyes to the floorboards, and Sam felt a sharp pang of estrangement. You don’t discuss strategy with the enemy. But he didn’t need the confirmation. He knew what Dean was doing. Maybe better than his brother did.
“Because he’s got the dagger, right? He told you it’s safest if he does the talking, because he’s got the dagger.” Sam strained against his bound wrists, ducked his chin to the left to catch Bobby’s line of sight.
“Your brother knows his job, Sam.”
“Yeah, he knows exactly what he’s doing.” Sam shifted forward on the chair and the legs scraped against the floorboards. Bobby took a small instinctive step back, woke in Sam an awful pang of guilty sadness. “The question is, do you?”
“What are you talking about?”
Sam’s face creased in exasperation. “‘Deliver Familiars out of the custody of magicians’, Bobby. That’s what I’m talking about. He thinks that means me. He thinks this demon can stop whatever the fuck’s happening to me.” He lost it a little on the expletive, voice cracking. Sam stopped, quivered a breath in through his nose and got his composure back before he continued. Knew it was imperative that he remain calm. Rational. “You let him deal with Gaap, that’s it. He’s gone.”
He gave it some time to sink in. Let Bobby mull it over, search his face for a hidden agenda that wasn’t - couldn’t- be there.
“Bobby, I know you don’t trust me right now, but you have to believe me. I’ve got nothing to gain here. Think about it. You can end this now. Right here in this room.”
Bobby face crumpled in fatherly concern. “Jesus Christ, Sam. No.”
“You said you’d do it, Bobby.”
“We’re not there yet, kid. Yeah, I gave you my word. And I make the call on when I gotta keep it. Not you.”
Sam wanted to shout. Scream. Shake him until he understood. I’m not ready. Dean’s going to die and I’m handcuffed to this fucking chair. He bent his gaze to his lap, head bowed and face scrunched tight with helplessness.
“Okay, fine. If you can't do it, then at least stop him.” He looked up at Bobby earnestly. “Please. Look at him. Just go back out there and take a look at him.” Sam shook his head. “And then tell me he hasn't got a foot out the door already.”
**********************************************************************************************
Dean re-checked the guns. Laid them all out on the dining room table and went through them, one by one. He could feel Jo’s eyes on him from where she sat, arms folded and boots propped on the edge of the mahogany; knew she’d already done the job once. He let the seething build until the air was fairly buzzing with it, finally looked down the table at her as he racked the slide on the Smith & Wesson.
“If you got somethin’ you wanna say, Jo, you should go ahead and say it.”
“You know, I already did that.”
Dean laid the handgun flat on the table, hovered his hands over the arsenal. “I’m not sayin’ you didn’t. I just…” He patted the air, paused to pick his words. “I just gotta pack my own ‘chute here.” He scratched the back of his head, reached for Sam’s Glock. “There’s a reason my gun never jams.”
He didn’t mean it to be as insulting as it sounded. Jo stiffened visibly and, to her credit, she bit back what was no doubt an instructive and colorful suggestion about where he could stick his fucking Glock.
Dean wasn’t sure why it was such a big deal. It wasn’t anything personal. He’d double checked Sam’s weapons detail a thousand times, got his brother’s jockeys in a twist for all the same reasons. But he felt like far less of a jackass under the pinch and glare of Sam’s infamous bitchface. Jo’s fiery indignation was steeped in disappointment, and he was mildly surprised to find he didn’t really like disappointing Jo Harvelle.
Marcus came through from the living room, book nestled under his armpit and both hands raised to his red-rimmed eyes. He pressed the flat of his fingers against the sockets, sighed audibly.
“Oh, my God. If I read one more chilling extract about the gates to Hell flying open, I’m either going to shit my pants or have a nervous breakdown.” He sent an appalled glance from Jo to Dean. “Possibly both. Simultaneously. You really saw something like this in Wyoming?”
Dean cleared his throat. “Something like. Yeah. I don’t mean to add to your digestive issues, Marcus, but I think a twelve hundred mile wide gate’s gonna be a little…bigger.”
“Oh.” Marcus nodded, tilted his chin a little as though awaiting an instruction from the ceiling. “I think I’m actually going to vomit.”
“On the upside, it sounds like we’ve got a free ride with this Gaap guy, so… we raise a little demon, direct a little higher power traffic…” Dean tipped his temple. “Barring anything unforeseen - like a fullscale demon war - we could be done by lunch.”
He got up, clapped Marcus on the back. Sam was always better at this, but Dean knew the basic principle. Keep them busy, they don’t fly off the handle. He picked up the Smith and Wesson, twirled it easily in his palm and offered it to Marcus, stock first.
“You ever fired one of these things?” He could see the answer in Marcus’s instantly pale face.
Up came the jazz hands as confirmation. “Oh, no. Nonononono.” He looked at Dean, aghast. “Out there on the porch? That is the first gun I’ve ever picked up. I’ve never even touched one before today.”
Dean raised his eyebrows, gave him a lackluster smile. “Might be time for a crash course.” He waggled the gun at Jo. “Take him out back. He doesn’t need a PhD, just show him how to point and shoot, do a few reloads.” He scooped up a spare magazine, handed it to her when she took the gun. “Don’t let him blow your head off.”
Bobby flattened in the doorway to let them pass, and Dean snapped his fingers, called Jo back.
“What?”
“Don’t forget the jam drills. Do a few tap, rack-flips.”
“What happened to ‘My gun never jams’?”
Dean pointed at the weapon in her hand. “That’s not my gun.” He shook his head. “I don’t want him gettin’ a faceful of psycho-virus ‘cause he gets a fuckin’ stovepipe and he can’t clear the brass.”
Jo shrugged. “Alright, alright. Jam drills. Got it.” She poked at Marcus. “Come on. You’re about to get a whole lot sexier. Trust me.”
“Target practice?” Bobby ventured as he came into the room.
“He’s gettin’ jittery. I’m just tryin’ to keep him busy.”
“Oh.” Bobby swept a palm towards the doorway. “By all means, give the nervous guy a gun.”
Dean pinched the bridge of his nose. “Whattaya want him to do, Bobby? Sit around with his thumb up his ass waitin’ for game-on?” He dropped the hand from his nose to his mouth, rubbed his jaw. “How’s Sam?”
Bobby regarded him carefully. “He’s pretty worried about you, actually.”
Dean went back to work on the guns. “Yeah?” he muttered. “Well, the feeling’s entirely mutual.”
“Dean.”
There was something in Bobby’s tone that demanded attention. Dean looked up.
“What?”
Bobby stared for a long time before he narrowed his eyes. “It is gonna get better. You know that, right?”
Dean ran his tongue over his teeth. He thought about that some. Wondered if it even mattered.
“I know you’re feelin’ pretty messed up right now, but it’ll get easier. It ain’t gonna go, but… it’ll fade.”
Dean chewed the corner of his lip, scratched at his ear. He shook his head dismissively. “That’s not what this is about.”
Bobby let loose a frustrated growl. “Then you better explain it to me, kid.”
“This is my choice!” Dean shouted, coming around the corner of the table towards Bobby. He stabbed the air between them with his finger. “I made it!”
Bobby stood his ground against the violence of Dean’s outburst, face expressionless.
Dean turned his finger on himself, pointed at his chest. “I summoned that demon and I made my choice, Bobby. All I’m tryin’ to do is see it through, here.”
“Yeah? Cause from this angle, it looks a little like layin’ down, Dean.”
Dean’s face pinched. “You know what? Fuck you. I’m not gonna spend the next five months watching him turn into the same thing we’ve hunted our entire lives. I can’t do it. I won’t. I’d rather go to Hell. That kid in there is all I have, and he is the only thing in my entire goddamn life, besides killing things, that I’ve gotten right.”
Bobby flinched at that, but he kept his mouth shut, and Dean was glad. He paced the length of the table, hand to his mouth, and got a collar on his agitation. He stopped down the far end, leaned on the back of a chair and stared down at the floor.
Finally, Bobby said: “You know, it’d break your Dad, to hear you say that.”
Outside, there was a CRACK! as Marcus found his trigger finger.
Dean breathed evenly through his nose, fixed Bobby with a level, dispassionate stare.
“Dad’s not here.”
**********************************************************************************************
They slept in shifts. Dean hadn’t expected sleep to come, but around two, he drifted and dozed, finally sank into a smooth, dark, dreamless void.
Bobby woke him at four, pressed a coffee into his hands. “Sorry, kid. Left ya as long as we could. We got Sam in the car. We’re loadin’ up.”
Dean rubbed the corners of his crusted eyes, shook his head to clear the tempting tug back towards oblivion. Waking into a nightmare. It just always felt wrong.
**********************************************************************************************
They used a can of spray paint from the trunk to mark a Devil’s trap on the dirt track outside the paddock gate. Sam had been silent for most of the trip from the house to the symbol; sat compliant and shackled to the door handle in the backseat. But he started to shift, rattled the cuffs as Dean got back behind the wheel and eased the Impala forward over the sigil.
“Dean, you don’t have to do this. Please, don’t.” He swung his bruised and stricken face towards Bobby. “Bobby, don’t you let him do this.”
Bobby threw open his door and got out, paced into the darkness towards the back of the car. Dean twisted, caught sight of him - hands laced behind his head - in the glow of the Impala’s taillights through the rear window. Felt a guilty flare at the conflict evident in his whiskered face.
Dean’s eyes flitted over Sam, couldn’t find anywhere safe to stick a landing.
Look him in the fucking eye. It felt like fisting his hands in broken glass, trying to get a lock on that gaze.
“Dean, you have to listen to me. You don’t have to do this. We can find another way to fix this. There’s gotta be another way.”
He wished Sam’s face wasn’t messed up. Dean smiled, wanted one back in return. He thought maybe he didn’t need to say anything; that Sam would find a smile somewhere, and they would both know, and that would be it. He wanted it to be like that.
But Sam’s lips tremored instead. “Don’t you do that. Don’t you pull that shit on me.”
He should have written him a letter, back at the house. Left it someplace in the car where Sam would find it later. He wished he’d written him a letter.
Dean’s hand twitched up from the back of the bench seat - almost - but he caught himself, and didn’t quite know why.
Sam sent an urgent tear on a slalom down his face with a frantic blink. “Dean, please,” he uttered brokenly.
And that was it. Dean’s eyes stung and misted, sent him out his door into the sharp, biting cold of the pre-dawn air.
“Stay put.” His voice a ragged whisper.
*********************************************************************************************
Stay put.
It took Sam two long shuddering breaths to decide. He wasn’t having that.
Stay put. That was bullshit.
He hauled on the cuffs and kicked at the door. Yelled and shouted. Screamed when the yelling and the shouting didn’t get him anywhere.
Dean and Bobby unloaded the trunk, ferried the gear to the paddock gate. Jo and Marcus pulled up and helped.
Dean kept his jaw set and his eyes on the ground. He didn’t look into the car again.
**********************************************************************************************
The first rays of sun hadn’t yet found their way over the hills. Dean dropped the duffel off his shoulder as he reached the base of the symbol, kept walking out onto the thick scorched line of earth. He looked to where the darkened sky was giving way to grey on the horizon, cast an alert eye across the field. There was enough ambient light to give Bobby a shadowy but distinct shape as he trudged up to the duffel and dumped his own bag. Dean heard the crunch and crackle of Jo and Marcus’s feet against the frozen fronds of rye grass, knew they were bringing up the rear.
The morning air was like ice in his lungs. His breath frosted at his lips. Dean kept moving, boots against the earth, senses straining in the darkness.
The wheels were in motion now. There shouldn’t have been a relief in that, but - Christ - there was, and Dean felt a compulsion to maintain the swell of momentum. He knew it was the sort of destructive mentality that applied the gas into a wall, but it made a terrible, peaceable sense: If you can’t clean up the mess, get yourself someplace messy.
He couldn’t hear Sam anymore. Didn’t know if he’d shut up, or if they were just too far away now for his voice to travel. Either way, Dean was okay with that.
Bobby’s hand closed on his shoulder and he turned, caught the sparkle of the man’s glistening eyes under the peak of his cap. Whatever Bobby wanted to say, Dean was one hundred percent sure he didn’t want to hear it. He twisted his top lip, flashed a little teeth.
“Let’s not, huh? I got a blade with Meg’s name on it and I’m not goin’ anywhere ‘til I’ve got some blood on it. So, save it.”
Bobby clapped a hand to Dean’s cheek, nodded. “Okay,” he said hoarsely. “You got it. Be careful. Let’s not fuck this up.”
“Copy that. How long?”
Bobby dropped the hand from Dean’s face and twisted his wrist to look at his watch. “Give us ten minutes. I dunno how this is gonna go down. You just need to make sure you’re in contact with the symbol.” Bobby looked across the field. “We’re cuttin’ this pretty fine. They’re planning on opening this seal, their best shot’s at sunrise. But we gotta time this so we draw on the same power. Meg and her pals show up early, this could get a little messy.”
Dean’s hand went to the dagger inside his jacket. He pulled it out, flipped the hilt in his hand and gave the blade a lazy spin through his fingers.
“Let's hope so.”
**********************************************************************************************
Whiskey.
He wished he’d had a whiskey, back at the house.
Dean hopped a little on the spot, kept the weight through his right knee, and tried to maintain his body warmth. He could see the flicker of flame and movement a hundred yards south of his position. Wondered how far Bobby and Marcus were into the ritual.
Thirty yards to their right, Jo was providing cover. Dean could see the glint of the shotgun in the semi-darkness as she shifted, arced the muzzle across the field.
It started to rain. He cocked an eyebrow up at the drizzle, shook his head.
You gotta be kidding me.
His disgust with the world in general was short lived. A flare of blue sparks shot up above Marcus and Bobby.
“Holy shit.” The words had barely left Dean’s lips, and Thor cracked a mighty hammer against the sky. He flinched, ducked instinctively. The clouds flashed a brilliant blood-red crimson and then went dark.
The hairs on the back of Dean’s neck tingled to attention as he straightened, turned a slow circle on the spot, eyes scanning the field. The rain grew heavier, gathered itself up into a dull roar, inserted a wall of grey sleet between himself and Bobby. Dean blinked into the rain, shoulders hunched against the onslaught of water.
“Bobby!” he shouted uselessly into the blur.
Then the thunder crashed again - an almighty boom - and the world seemed to stop.
**********************************************************************************************
The downpour ceased abruptly. Dean lifted a hand to his forehead, swiped a slick of rainwater up through his hair. He squinted at the midnight blue of the pre-sunrise sky, listened to the tap and trickle of the residual rainfall playing upon the rye. He sniffed damply, looked from one side of the field to the other.
“Bobby!”
He gave it enough volume that you could have heard it clear across the paddock. Couldn’t see them anymore down past the base of the symbol where they had been moments before. He turned in another arc, fingers opening and closing on the hilt of the knife in his hand. He spun the blade, played his fingers up along the grip until they found his standard defensive hold.
It was instinct that got the blade up and moving when he rounded to find himself face-to-face with an eight-foot-tall winged demon.
Gaap caught Dean’s wrist as the knife came up, enormous clawed hand engulfing his forearm. He leaned forward, gargoyle features twisting in interest at the dagger. The impressive wingspan fluttered and concertinaed shut behind the muscled, bristling mass of his shoulders.
Dean regarded his primal swarthy bulk from gnarled toes to twisting horns and was whole-heartedly inclined to declare his situation completely fucked. If Gaap so much as sneezed, his arm was going to snap in two.
The demon’s red eyes blazed with curiosity as he turned Dean’s arm to look at the dagger. Dean came up on his toes, flexed awkwardly through his back to accommodate the angle.
“Where did you get that?”
The voice rumbled somewhere deeper than Gaap’s throat, seemed to come up through Dean from the ground itself. The words reverberated around his skull like skittering marbles. He winced.
“I’m a friend of Bradley’s.”
“You speak an untruth.” Gaap’s eyes narrowed. “The dagger is bound to you. You have taken the blade by force.”
“Okay, so more of an associate,” Dean conceded.
“The dagger’s path is still in flux,” Gaap stated approvingly. He tilted his head. “You call on me to fulfill the final transaction.”
“Yes.”
“It will be the last of the agreed interventions. There can be no more.”
“Well, we’re kinda hopin’ we won’t need you again.”
“These battles will play until the end of days. As long as there are foxes, there will be foxholes.”
The grip on Dean’s wrist tightened, sent a bone-deep stab into his carpal joint. He felt his fingers slipping on the hilt involuntarily, gritted his teeth with the effort of keeping it in his grasp. Unless it was jammed fast in Meg, he wasn’t letting go of this knife.
“The seal will be broken. You wish to share of my knowledge.”
Dean nodded. “Yeah, I got a coupla questions.”
“Proceed.”
“Okay, first query’s right off the cuff, but: What are my chances you’re gonna let go of my goddamn arm before you fuckin’ break it?”
Gaap’s mouth widened in an ugly grin, and he shoved back, sent Dean stumbling. Dean shook out his wrist, clenched his fingers around the dagger.
“Thank you,” he muttered.
Gaap took a fluid, wing-assisted leap toward him, closed the distance between them again. Dean resisted the urge to step back, flapped a lazy hand in Gaap’s general direction instead.
“So, is this, like, personal choice for you, or is there a No Pants Policy down there in the pit?” He raised his eyebrows. “See, I should really be taking notes.”
“You are wasting time, human.”
“Yeah. Okay. Fair call. Why are you helping us?”
“You believe this aid to be assistance.” The idea seemed to amuse Gaap. “There are many forces at work here. This event is but one cog in a vast mechanism.”
“Again with the cryptic. I knew those crosswords were the work of the Devil.”
Gaap cocked his head.
“Alright. Lemme try again: Why stop this?”
“It is not time.”
“Time for what?”
“For the restoration of balance.”
“Balance of what?”
“You have gleaned very little, stupid human.”
Dean pouted, nodded a little. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll pay that.”
“He is right under your nose, and still you do not see.”
Dean went cold. “See what?”
“That you defend the flame by which the forest will be cleansed.” Gaap leaned in, and Dean got a blast of hot acrid breath. He turned his face away. “You are its keeper.”
Gaap pointed at the knife. “The dagger’s journey is incomplete. You will all have your roles to play. Instrument, fire, defender. In good time.”
“Well, I hate to break it to you, pal, but I’ve got a bit of an egg-timer running here, so… my destiny’s kinda pre-mapped. Which reminds me--”
“The answer is no.”
“I didn’t ask you a question.”
“It is not in my power to undo what is yet to be decided.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“You wish to trade your soul, give yours to free his.”
Dean did. Yes. He wished to do that. He nodded. “I’ll go right now. I just need five minutes to kill one of your psycho whack-job colleagues, then I’m all yours. Just let him go. Whatever’s happening to him, just…stop it.”
“He is becoming whole. And you…” Gaap seemed interested. “You would stop this?”
“If he’s becoming a fucking demon? Then yes, I would stop this, you son of a bitch.”
“This, I cannot answer.”
“I thought you knew all things.”
“I know all things that can be known,” Gaap snapped. “There are matters which are undecided. It is not my place to speak of them.”
“Oh, here we go. The goddamn choice cha-cha.”
“There is choice in all things, human. Even that which appears to be set in stone can be altered irrevocably by a degree’s deviation at the appropriate point.”
“You know what? Fuck that. I didn’t buy the fast-track to the Pit so we could play your little reindeer demon games. This wasn’t part of the deal. So, let’s hear it. What’s it gonna take?”
“The answer is no.”
Dean shook his head emphatically. “No’s not gonna work for me.”
Gaap was upon him in a flash, hand around his throat and lifting him off the ground. “You are not in a position for negotiation. A contract is in place. Your soul is already spoken for.”
Dean grappled at Gaap’s bristled forearms, got the words out through his gritted teeth. “You’re not getting him. So, help me God--”
“Your path must play as it has been laid. The dagger’s journey is incomplete. His actions rely upon your fate.” Gaap fell silent, appeared to think. “She is preparing to call upon the seal.” He dropped Dean to the ground, stepped back. “This will be the last of the interventions.”
Dean elbowed up. “Oh, no you don’t, you sonuvabitch. We’re not done.”
“No, we are not. The next time we meet, Dean Winchester,” Gaap snarled ominously, “there will be far less discussion. You will know me by my actions. There will be wine from your blood.”
Dean scrambled to his knees, rubbed his abused throat with the flat of his fingers. The first drops of rain started again. Tap tap taptaptaptaptap on the earth around him until it swelled into a roaring downpour.
Gaap backed into the shimmer of precipitation, and after a few paces, Dean couldn’t tell anymore where the demon ended and the rain began.
‘Wait!” he shouted.
Gaap’s parting words were almost indistinguishable from the roar of the deluge: “Until then, the flame is in your keeping, as the outcome is in his.”
**********************************************************************************************
Sam stopped shouting when he lost sight of them. He caught his breath, passed his frantic gaze across the backseat of the Impala, strained against his shackles to see into the front.
Not even a paperclip lying anywhere. He kicked the seat in front of him in desperate frustration.
“Fuck!”
He leaned back, lifted his ass off the seat and twisted, tried to get his fingers down the pocket of his jeans. Dug out a couple of quarters and a crumpled dollar bill, some lint and not much else. He managed to pull his tri-fold from his back pocket, dropped back onto the seat and fumbled the wallet open against the door. He thumbed through the contents, unzipped the coin hold and emptied it carefully into his hand.
Nothing. “Shit.”
He dropped the wallet down the side of the seat, stared at his knees for a moment. Alright, calm down. Think.
Belt.
He leaned back again, shucked his hips up and caught the buckle with his reaching fingers. He tugged it undone, pulled the leather through the loops inch at a time, feeding it from hand to hand as far as the handcuffs allowed. When it flipped loose of his waist, he sat back onto the seat and found the prong on the buckle.
Sam worked it into the keyhole of the left cuff, bottom lip between his teeth. He closed his eyes, let his tactile sense heighten while he played the lock. It took a minute of very fine motor skills, but then he felt the lock give and the cuff loosened on his wrist. He snapped his eyes open, huffed out the breath he’d been holding, and shook his hand loose. He turned his attention to the second keyhole, had it open in half the time.
He kicked the door, scrabbled wildly out onto the dirt.
Meg was waiting. She shoved him hard in the chest when he straightened, sent him crashing into the back quarter panel with a bark of surprise.
He shrank back against the metal. “Oh, shit.”
Meg stepped up, grabbed him by the front of his shirt. “Game time, Sam. Let’s go see what your shithead brother’s up to, shall we?”
**********************************************************************************************
It was getting lighter. Dean turned blindly in the grey roar of the rain, dagger still clenched in his right hand. He squinted in one direction and then the next, internal compass spinning as wildly as his mind.
A shotgun blast cut through the wet cacophony. He jumped, spun on his heel towards the sound. The rain suddenly lightened, and as the sheet of water lifted, he heard the shotgun go off again, saw the muzzle flash a hundred yards to his right.
“Bobby!” he bellowed, picked up into a jog, then a run as he made out the grey shapes advancing across the field.
He slid to a halt behind Jo, got a hand up to his ear and turned his face away in a hurry as she let loose half the rounds from Sam’s Glock, sent a party of shells pinging up out of the slide. The three approaching figures twisted one by one and folded neatly to the grass.
“Jesus, what the fuck is going on?”
Bobby turned, did a double-take. “Dean? What the hell…? Did it work?”
“I dunno.” Dean squinted towards the southern end of the paddock, saw movement along the fence line. As his eyes adjusted, he made out a small crowd of people milling there. “Are they possessed or infected?”
Bobby cracked the shotgun, pulled the empty shells and started to reload. “Well, I haven’t run any labs, but the rounds are droppin’ ‘em.” He snapped the shotgun closed and took aim. “You wanna lose the butter knife and give us a hand here?”
“How long’ve they been there?”
“’Bout twenty minutes. Couple of ‘em have gotten close enough for a shot but they’re not really movin’. S’like they’re waitin’.”
“Oh, that’s not creepy at all.” Dean transferred the dagger into his left hand, pulled his Glock from the back of his jeans. A peal of thunder rattled the sky-scape like colliding boulders, and the rumble shifted the earth beneath their feet. Dean stumbled forward against Jo and she caught his arm, kept them both on their feet.
Marcus looked up at the sky. “What was that?”
Jo brushed a frantic hand across her face, cleared the wayward strands of blonde from her eyes. “Well?” she demanded. “What happened with the demon?”
Dean gave her shrug with his good shoulder, face broadcasting confusion. “He said it was a done deal. I dunno.”
Jo punched a finger through the air towards the waiting shadows. “Does that look like a done deal to you?”
“Not really, no.” Another boom from above and Dean hunched, looked up. “Where the fuck’s Gaap?” He sucked in a lungful of crisp morning ice, shouted up at the sky: “Anytime you’re ready, asshole!”
“Oh, my God.” Marcus was looking from the gun in his hand to the people at the base of the field.
No one down there seemed to be moving. Dean returned his Glock to the back of his pants, clicked his fingers. “Marcus?”
He gazed blankly at Dean, jaw slack and mouth open. The muzzle of the Smith and Wesson knocked visibly against his thigh in his shaking hand.
Dean reached out and gave Jo a shove towards him. “Get that gun off him, before he blows his foot off.” He turned back to Bobby. “Any sign of Meg?”
Bobby lifted his cheek from the side of the shotgun, shook his head. “No. What about Sam?”
“No dice. Sonuvabitch wouldn’t deal.” Dean saw the obvious relief wash up over Bobby’s face and raised both eyebrows. “Let’s not break out the champagne, Bobby. I’m not exactly celebrating over here.”
Behind him, Meg said: “What a shame. I love a party.”
Dean didn’t think.
He stepped back and turned on his heel. Passed the dagger into his right hand as he spun, put everything the momentum afforded him into a wild, blind strike. Didn’t see his brother until it was almost too late.
Sam made a muffled, panicked noise against the gag between his teeth, twisted and snapped back out of the path of the arcing blade. Dean didn’t have time to pull much out of the swing, felt his knuckles kiss the fabric of his brother’s shirt. Couldn’t be sure the blade hadn’t contacted on the follow through.
Meg shoved Sam hard from behind and sent him crashing - arms bound at his back - into Dean as he straightened. Dean staggered, managed to catch Sam’s shirt. Righted him as he tripped, kept him on his feet.
“Sam.” It fell from his lips, half desperate exhalation, half self-recrimination. His frantic fingers tugged and pulled at the front of this brother’s shirt, found no wound. He searched Sam's eyes for some sort of confirmation - some reassurance that he was unharmed. Found such a kaleidoscope of emotion there, it was impossible to gauge the depth or cause of his distress.
He transferred the hilt of the dagger to the custody of his teeth, gripped it hard in his jaws while his fingers skipped across Sam’s shoulders, moving to release the gag.
But Meg was moving, too. Dean swung his brother around, away from Meg; got himself between them. He dropped the blade from his teeth, caught it smoothly in his right hand as he turned to face her.
“Get away from him, you goddamn skank.”
From somewhere behind his left shoulder, Bobby said, “Dean.” It was low and quiet, and for a second Dean misconstrued the warning, entertained the ridiculous and fleeting notion that he was being reprimanded for his language.
But then he felt it. Like a hum beneath his feet. He glanced down, then back up at Meg.
Oh, shit.
She smiled, flashed him smug eight-ball eyes.
The hunter in Dean shifted gears, moved straight to contingencies. Retreat. Regroup. Reassess.
Gaap lied. We’re all five kinds of fucked.
“Bobby?” Dean turned his head, far enough to catch him on the periphery.
“Yeah.”
“Fall back. Take Sam.”
“Dean--”
“I said, fall back.” He tossed a glance over his other shoulder to where the Glock glinted in Jo’s hands, muzzle trained on Meg. “You too, Jo. Grab Marcus, fall back.”
“No.” Her voice was emphatic.
Dean was about to get pissed off when another deafening peal of thunder shook the sky. The clouds flickered with an impossibly deep burgundy. There was a blinding flash and then the paddock cracked in half along the length of the burnt symbol with an ear-splitting clap.
Meg stumbled on the quaking earth, nearly fell.
Dean hit the ground hard on his hip, the lightning bolt still stamped on his retinas, world muffled beyond his ringing ears. He palmed the rye and struggled back to his feet.
Meg was gazing at the rumbling fissure in the earth, her face an incredulous canvas of disbelief. She stayed statue-still while the rippling ground settled and the sky eased its grumbling.
She got her hands up on her hips, surveyed the smoldering gouge through the field.
“Dean,” she enquired tightly, “did you just break my fucking symbol?”
He was almost quick enough. She was off-balance and her attention was diverted, and she didn’t catch his wrist until the last moment, stilled the dagger an inch from the silk-smooth skin of her décolletage.
“I can’t believe you just broke my fucking symbol.”
He slapped his left hand up over his right, threw his weight forward. The adrenalin thumped through his system, reduced him to the shuddering tip of the blade and the bang of his heart inside his chest. He leaned on the knife - felt the twitch and shake of the muscles in his arms, in his face - and almost got some movement on the end of the dagger.
Meg face twisted. ‘How the fuck did you just break my goddamn fucking symbol?”
She pushed forward and sent him hurtling backwards.
Dean twisted mid-flight, got his left forearm out before he landed, had time to think Wrong arm before he jolted against the earth. He lost the dagger on the first roll, tumbled and cracked and slid over the slick earth before he came to rest on his back.
When he tried to move, everything locked up.
Oh.
He heard Jo screaming for him, turned his head and saw her thirty yards away, crawling towards him. He realized he hadn’t taken a breath yet, got his mouth open and discovered his lungs were still down for the count. Somewhere past his feet, he could hear the shotgun going off, Bobby roaring Sam’s name.
He felt Jo’s hands grip at his shirt, shifted his head and tried to get her in his sights. Everything buzzed and blurred and he froze. The shock of the impact began to recede, washed out like a tide and left him with a horrible, undeniable realization: he wasn’t getting up.
That’s it. I’m out.
The knowledge filled him with an awful sense of panic. Get up. The adrenal surge sparked, then faltered; flooded him instead with an insidious fatigue. GET UP. His heel scraped uselessly against the grass, knee jerking up. The spasm was completely beyond his control, and fear gripped him.
“Dean.”
He opened his mouth to respond and choked instead. The cough sent a warm splatter of something wet up and out of his mouth.
Jo’s fingers fluttered at his jaw. “Oh, God. Don’t move. Stay still.”
Copy that. He gave breathing another shot, got a thin wheeze of air down into his lungs, felt his chest starting to give and shift. He could feel the denim of his jeans against the back of his left hand, couldn’t get his arm to budge.
“Get the dagger,” he managed. The empty fingers of his right hand curled against the grass.
Jo’s knee grazed his hip as she moved away and the bump jolted through him like a current. He tensed, every muscle in his body screaming with abuse. And then:
“Dean!”
Sam.
Dean thought he might cry. Heard the thump thump thump of his brother’s charging feet, and a second later he was staring up into Sam’s face. Sam’s beautiful, fucked-up face. Dean was definitely going to cry.
“Sam.”
“Oh, fuck. Oh, thank God. Dean.”
“I didn’t…I couldn’t…Sammy, I’m sorry…” Dean blinked a run of tears down his face, tried to lift his head. “Where is she?”
“I dunno. Bobby just emptied the saltgun into her, stepped on the Latin. I think she’s gone. Stay still.”
“Where’s the knife. I lost the knife.”
“Jo’s looking.”
A few seconds later he felt the hilt being pressed into his fingers. Jo whispered something into Sam’s ear as she levered up off his shoulder, and Sam nodded. “We need the car. Tell Bobby we need the car.” He scanned the paddock. “Are they gone? Can you see anyone else?”
Jo shook her head. “I think so. I dunno. We’ll take care of it, just… Sam, he’s…”
“Okay,” Sam nodded again, “He’s okay. He’s gonna be okay.” He turned his determined face back to Dean. “You’re okay. Just don’t move.”
“He wouldn’t deal.” The confession stoked the hot coals of failure, sent another salty wash from Dean’s eyes.
Sam’s shoulders slumped in relief. He closed his eyes for a long beat, and when he opened them his gaze was intense, as full of emotion as his voice: “Christ. Thank God. That is some fan-fucking-tastic news.”
“Oh, my. You boys really are having a Hallmark moment, aren’t you?” Meg folded her arms. “Makes me just wanna gouge my eyes out.”
Dean heard Jo scream first for Bobby, and then for Marcus.
Meg raised her voice. “They can’t hear you. They’re taking a little nap, Blondie.”
Jo shut up abruptly. “Oh, my God. Marcus.”
Sam twisted towards her. “Go.”
Jo took off at a sprint, and Meg waved politely at her departing back. “What a fucking Pollyanna. I bet she fucks like Marcia Brady.” She cocked her head. “Well, whattaya know. And they say you can’t keep a good man down. You don’t look so good, Dean.”
Dean’s fingers tightened around the hilt of the knife. He stifled the cough that clawed its way up the back of his throat. Less than ten feet away, and he had the dagger in his hand. He made another desperate ploy for verticality, but Sam held him down.
“Fuck you, Meg.” He spat the words from bloodied lips.
“Actually, I think you’ll find it’s fuck you, Dean. Fuck you and all your little friends. Except you, Sam.”
She smiled at him sweetly.
*********************************************************************************************
He felt the tremor in his hands first, let go of Dean’s shirt and flipped his palms slowly, eyes growing wide.
“Oh, no. Not now.”
Dean frowned up at him, the pain and anger in his face morphing into concern, and then his eyes filled with fear.
“Sam?”
Sam closed his eyes, shook his head. “Nonononononono. Please, not now.”
Dean tried to elbow up. “Sammy?”
Meg’s easy, languid laugh ran the distance between them like a babbling brook.
Sam felt a surge of incalculable rage, felt the access gates thrown wide on an insatiable and volcanic wrath.
“Shut up, bitch.” A voice not his own. Sam fisted his hands against his thighs, tried to anchor himself against the physical sensation of his clenched fingers, nails sunk into flesh. He started with the Latin.
“Successio ut vestri moenia locus in iucunditas. Permissum illic exsisto misericordia Deus super mihi.”
“Come on, Sam. Don’t fight it,” Meg coaxed.
He didn’t mean to snap up his head. Meant to ignore her. Willed every fiber of his being to keep his head bowed, and his lips working a foreign tongue as familiar as his own. But it was like a glacier-thick sheet of ice had come down between him and the world. He felt heavy and guided as the venomous attack came out of him.
“I’m gonna cut your fucking throat.”
Meg’s eyes flashed. She pointed at Dean. “No, you’re not. You’re going to cut his throat.” She squatted down, hugged her knees. Her eyes were heavy, lidded. “Feel it, Sam. You want to.”
He did. God, help him he did. He strained against the concept, repulsion and horror vying with unmistakable need. An itch for his fingers to close around the hilt of that blade. To feel the drag of metal through flesh.
Dean.
Sam’s heart thudded against his ribs. He could no longer hear or feel whether the Latin still fell from his lips. When his hand closed over Dean’s fingers on the dagger, his brother tightened his grip.
“Sam, no.” Dean’s voice was wild. “Don’t.”
He did. Didn’t want to. But he did. Sam wrenched the knife up, Dean’s hand still imprisoned beneath his iron grip. Felt the twist and click of the fingers as they snapped beneath his own.
The back of Dean’s skull smacked off the ground and he made a sharp raw sound. “God, Sam, no,” he growled through clenched teeth.
Sam loosened his clutch, let Dean’s crumpled hand fall away. He was aware of the knife shaking, his entire body trembling.
“This is who you are, Sam,” Meg was saying, voice soothing. “It’s just who you are. That’s all it is.”
This wasn’t who he was. It couldn’t be. Bleeding his broken brother on the grass in some field.
No.
He knew who he was.
Sam concentrated. Felt the impossibility of breaching the cold shroud that had descended upon him. Turned his mind instead to that yawning chasm of rage, edged toward the internal drop-away.
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Right?
He had a brief fleeting awareness that this was no saloon door. Then he let go. Sam dragged the blade across the palm of his own hand.
“Sam! DROP IT!” Bobby bellowed, and another Sam might have. Five-minutes-ago Sam might have let it fall.
But this Sam knew who he was, and what he was doing. He had no need to follow any orders outside his own. The blade was in his power, now.
Dean let out a fractured shout of “Bobby, no!” just before the bullet punched through Sam’s chest. It threw a misty spray of crimson across Dean’s face and dropped his jaw open.
But Sam barely missed a beat.
Meg was surprised, expecting something other than an arm around her waist and the dagger thrust up into her chest.
Sam hugged her tight, pushed the blade in further as she buckled. Felt the warm flow of blood over his fingers around the hilt.
“You’re all going to be very sorry,” he told her.
“Ow,” she frowned, slowly and deliberately, eyes traveling from Dean on the ground back to Sam’s face. Then she let out a little laugh. “I thought you said you were going to cut my throat.”
Sam yanked the knife clear, brought it smoothly up to her neck as his fingers fisted in her hair.
“I am.”
Chapter Fourteen