Silence Speaks - Part 2
Title: Silence Speaks - Part 2
Summary: When Zachariah doesn’t return to take Dean back from 2014, Dean has to find common ground with himself and undertakes a new plan to save Sam and stop Lucifer.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Suggestive content, dark imagery, mild blood play and brief scenes of torture. Nothing especially graphic or explicit.
Spoilers: Through early Season 5
Word Count: 5,503 for this part
Author's Note: AU tag to 'The End'. Written for a spnrarepairs exchange, but it's UST only and could be read as gen...or not, depending on your preference. Hinted pairings include Dean/future!Dean UST, Dean/Alastair implied past relationship, implied Dean/Castiel and very vaguely implied Castiel/Anna. See the Master Post for prompt details.
All but the last few lines of dialogue in the first scene are taken directly from 'The End'. The song lyrics are from The Shin's 'Past and Pending'. Thanks so much to corri_kun for the beta!
~~~
Continued from Part 1
“I know we’re royally screwed, but isn’t it a little pessimistic start by digging our own grave?” Dean asked.
“And where the hell are we anyway?”
At his older self’s question, Dean fully took in the surreal surroundings. Despite the setting sun he wasn’t as cold as he’d expected to be. Last night he’d been chilled beneath three layers and now he was decently comfortable with his upper torso bare. It was probably the electricity irradiating them.
The air buzzed so loud he could barely hear himself think. High voltage wires hung from scaffolding that extend out towards the horizon. The towering structures were silhouetted by an early evening sky that burned red as embers intense enough to be reminiscent of hellfire.
“This is Christchurch and the digging of the grave is symbolic,” Anna assured them though the assurance rang hollow considering the circumstances. “The ritual is performed as a solitary vigil beside an open grave. Since you’re both you, that should be close enough.”
“Again with the maybes...” Dean’s older self said with a kick to the sea of gravel that surrounded them. “This is holy ground?”
A quiet laugh drifted from Anna, barely audible over the hum of transformers. “Not exactly. This is Christchurch, New Zealand. From our mapping this power substation...”
“Wait, like land of the sheep lovers, other side of the freakin’ planet, New Zealand?” Dean again looked around, but with the quickly darkening sky there was no real visual reference for where they were beyond the substation. “If you can zap us across the globe, why can’t you just kick me back to ‘09?”
“I’m sorry, Dean. World travel and temporal travel, they’re just not the same thing.”
Instead of sending him home, Anna showed them to a site of barren ground. In the fading light it didn’t look any different than where they’d popped in at except that the gravel had given way to dirt that could actually be dug, though apparently Dean wasn’t the one digging.
He sat as instructed, strangely mystified by the sight of his older self breaking through the surface of the crusted earth. There was no counting the number of graves he’d dug up over the years. For him busting open coffins was as normal as picking milk up from the store was for most people and never had he wondered what he looked like doing it.
The older man stripped down to a t-shirt and was strength personified as he chiseled through the layers of soil. Quiet sounds of effort and the occasional clank of shovel spade against rock blended into the throbbing of the substation’s atmosphere. By the time his older self sat down beside him, sweat stains darkened his shirt.
“That was a blast. Now what?”
“I guess we wait.” Anna had popped out before the digging started. Apparently they were supposed to know what to do. Impatiently Dean tapped his fingers against the worn denim of his jeans. “This acid trip would be a lot more fun with some acid.”
“Sulfuric acid would cleanse your soul good and proper.”
The words skirted playfully on the wind. Every muscle in Dean’s body went rigid, the chill sinking straight through to his soul. He bit down panic as his eyes locked questioningly with himself. The older man stared blankly back at him.
“What?” Dean’s older self asked.
“Did you hear that?”
“Yeah, it was my stomach. Man, this fasting business is crap.” Indifference quickly melted to alertness that drifted into concern. Dean’s older self sat up straighter, uncrossing his legs as he scanned the open area around them. “What’d you hear?”
Heavy steps crunched over the gravel behind him yet his older self, who was looking right at him, obviously didn’t see anyone there. As impossible as it was, he already knew who was waiting. Instead of turning to look over his shoulder, Dean let his eyes fall closed before answering.
“Looks like we’re getting this party started.”
Any reply that may have been in his older self’s throat never reached Dean’s ears. Pleasantly warm air boiled to a repressive heat so intense it felt as if it would melt away his flesh to leave only charred bones. It wouldn’t be the first time. Electric lines gave way to hills of bones, mountains of flesh and rivers of blood. The buzz of electricity notched up to agonizing screams.
When his eyes focused, a lacerated liver stared up at him. He was probably qualified to be a surgeon with his intimate familiarity of human anatomy. There was just the little problem that he only knew how to break it. Like everything else, in a million ways he could tear it apart. He didn’t know how to put it back together.
His hands were sticky with blood, blood that coated his skin up to his elbows and splatter painted his torso red, but his sternum was intact. The liver wasn’t his. There was no reason to think that the blood was either. Bile threatened the back of his tongue. Reluctantly his eyes scanned up the mutilated body on the rack before him.
Dead eyes of the bound soul stared blankly past him. Stumbling to his feet, Dean shook his head and stepped back from the limply hanging mangled corpse. His tentative retreat was cut short when he backed into something.
“Now, now, Dean. Where have your manners gone?” Alastair asked. “You really must remember to share.”
With a deceptive tenderness Alastair’s hand closed over Dean’s, carefully prying his fingers free from the razor Dean hadn’t realized he was clutching.
“You’re dead,” Dean said.
“Aren’t we all?”
Dean’s reluctant eyes followed Alastair’s guiding gaze. The soul strapped naked to the rack was no longer faceless. Blood flowed from wounds so numerous they all bled to one, streams of crimson traveling down to drip from the dangling feet. Screams so familiar, so brutal, that Dean would’ve torn his ears off if it would’ve helped to silence the torment.
Worse than any of it was the easy pleasure on the face of the man wielding the razor. It was his face, his hands that gouged shredded flesh with eyes black as night, tearing into his father. For a brief moment his disbelieving eyes grew wide before he quickly looked away, clenching his eyes closed and willing reality to return.
“This isn’t real...that never happened!” Dean shouted with a gesture towards the rack that he couldn’t look back towards.
“You say potato, I say potato. History, Dean, is what the living make of it - it’s not for people like me to decide.”
“’People’?” Dean sneered. “That’s hilarious. You’re not a ‘people’, Alastair. You’re...wait. You’re my Jiminy Cricket aren’t you? Son of a bitch.” Dean used his forearm to wipe the sweat from his brow, unintentionally smearing blood across his forehead. “Awesome. I got a torture master for my guide.”
Alastair rubbed his hand over Dean’s brow, wiping it clean before moving to step behind him. A possessive hand latched onto Dean’s hip and jerked him backwards until his back was pressed flush against Alastair’s chest. The demon placed his now crimson stained fingers over Dean’s heart.
“In your hearts of hearts you know it’s what you are,” Alastair said. The fingers clamped around his hip and bit into the suddenly exposed skin with a bruising force. “I know - I’ve seen your heart.”
Dean gave a reluctant nod. “Yeah, and I’ve eaten it. Thanks for that.” His head tilted back to lean against the familiar curves of Alastair’s shoulder. He looked at the demon out of the corner of his eye, wholly unfazed by the grotesqueness of the demon’s true face. “Maybe we could get off memory lane and onto finding Sam.”
“You’ll never find your brother like this,” Alastair remarked.
After he pulled back Alastair ran his finger along Dean’s sweat soaked back. The finger came back inky black with smudged paint. Dean bowed his head before he spoke.
“You better fix it.”
Forty years they had been at each other’s side. It was a blink in time for Alastair, but a lifetime for Dean. There was no need for Alastair to speak for Dean to know what he wanted. Even less so now that Alastair was literally in his head. Maybe he’d been there the entire time.
With an unsteady breath Dean stepped forward against the now empty rack. There was no reason for restraints as Dean just clutched the searing metal. The light grip turned white knuckle as the razor carved into his skin the first line of the words that Chuck had painted there.
“It’s true what they say, there's more than one way to skin a Winchester.” Alastair’s blade expertly burned sweeping curves into Dean’s back as he spoke. “But there’s only one way for you to go forward. Alone, but you always have been that.” Blinking back the sting of tears, Dean clenched his jaw and just gripped the steel of the rack tighter. “And by alone, my boy, I mean you have to let go.”
“Of what?”
Ragged breaths seeped past Dean’s slightly parted lips as Alastair pulled the razor away only long enough to lean into Dean. Alastair’s head rested atop Dean’s blood seeping shoulder. Dean forced his breath quiet as he strained to hear the words Alastair spoke over the howling cries that filled the bitter air.
“All of it. Everything. Everyone. You have to shed it all, son. It’s the only way to slip past Lucifer’s gate.”
Dean didn’t know what that meant, but more than that he knew it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t blink at eternally throwing his soul back into the Pit if it would mean freeing Sam from this lord of evil crap. While not so much as a breath had left his mouth, he knew Alastair already had his answer.
Strong hands pried his hands from the rack. When he turned around Dean again found the familiar curves of the razor’s handle gripped in his palm. He steeled himself already afraid he wouldn’t be strong enough to face whatever now lay on the rack.
Before he had fully turned back, his legs gave out. He never felt his knees hit the ground. The searing heat of the air combusted into the flames of an entirely different fire, one so deeply etched into his memory as to define him. It wasn’t the eternal expanse of hell, but burned hotter.
Everything he was silently screamed against the raging flames that surged across the ceiling of Sammy’s nursery. The fire engulfed Mom’s body, just before the heaviest weight Dean would ever carry was placed into his arms, the weight he had never put down.
He squinted against the blinding light and the angle of the fire shifted. Despair mimicked the flames, consuming him as the fire consumed his Dad’s body on the funeral pyre. His world turned to ash and in the next moment it was Sam’s blood sticky on his hands, his brother’s dead weight again in his arms. By comparison the flaying of the hellhounds claws and return to hellfire was ecstasy.
When flames again swallowed the ceiling, it was Jessica pinned in the inferno. It wasn’t through his eyes or emotions that he watched the woman Sam loved charred to nothing. He was Sam carrying Dean’s weight in his arms, lowering his shredded body into a pine box and feeling the impossible weight of every shovelful of dirt that filled the grave and made the silence that brought the chill.
“Dean?”
The ghost of a word sliced through the frozen silence. With a sharp gasp Dean let himself breath, air rushing to refill his lungs. When his eyes focused he was sitting in a field, the sun warm on his face. His brother stood in the middle of the grassy expanse.
Sam’s long arms were wrapped tenderly around Jessica lost in the depth of a kiss. Slowly they pulled away from each other but it was Jessica, not Sam, that looked to him. Only it wasn’t Jessica. His brow furrowed as he saw Anna leave Sam’s side and stride quickly towards him.
“Dean, you need to get out.”
“Get out? I just got here. How are you here?”
“I’m not. I’m in your mind. You’ve crossed the line into Sam’s, but the boundary between Sam and Lucifer is too thin.”
His head was still spinning and his heart literally ached like hell. All he needed or wanted right now was Sam. There was no way he was turning around after having just caught a glimpse of his brother. If Lucifer wanted a piece of him while not strutting around in his Sam’s suit then Dean was all too ready for him.
“I don’t care.” Dean shot his head to the side to see himself, not some mental projection of himself, but his older self. “Why are you here?”
“You did the gate crashing. It’s time for the big guns to take over.”
“Why?” Dean looked suspiciously between himself and Anna. “I’m the one that can reach Sam.”
“You were the only one who could get in. If Sam is still here, we’ll reach him,” Anna said, “but we can’t sacrifice you to do it.”
He looked to his older self who stood casually by, not quite meeting his eyes. Slowly the meaning of Anna’s words registered. His words were heavy with disbelief. “You want to sacrifice him.”
“He’s expendable, you’re not.”
“He is me!”
“That’s why he’s redundant. Without you there is no him. No you. No way to stop any of this.” Anna stepped forward, closing the distance between them. “Why do you think he was brought back?”
“You angels just never tired of screwing with me, do you? To hell with you and your big picture crap. This is my fight and I’m not going to die - nobody’s gonna die because this is Sam and he won’t kill me.”
“It’s our fight,” Dean’s older self corrected. “And, hey, you’re right. It’s Friday. We can only die on Thursdays.” The older man flashed the closest thing Dean had seen to a smile, but the corner of his lips quickly fell. “You were also right about us and Sam.”
“Yeah, I know.” Dean glanced back to Anna. “You can bring him back again, right?”
“Not from this, not if Lucifer finds him.”
Dean’s older self shrugged. If anything the man looked relieved and Dean somehow knew he would be. He was tired. Add a few years without Sam in a dying world he’d damned to hell and he’d be ready to check out too.
“Look at it this way,” Dean’s older self said, “we get to kill our self and live. Win, win.”
~~~
Dean had let himself be talked into holding back only because he wanted to make sure someone was left to save Sam. While he had held back, he hadn’t left like Anna had ordered. It turned out that the only one with any powers in Sam’s head, beside Sam, was him and Sammy’s roommate. The only angel he had to contend with here was Lucifer. Good times.
When the sun surrendered to storm clouds the pressure of the atmosphere became repressive and the hair at the nape of Dean’s neck stood on end. The rumble of thunder in the near distance rippled through the darkening sky. His back tingled.
Reaching behind himself, he wiped his hand across his back expecting it to come away bloody. Instead the skin felt unmarred. He couldn’t even feel the crust of paint yet he could feel the lines of the words that had been drawn there vibrating deeper than the surface as if they had been etched into his soul.
Without knowing why, he rose to his feet. His movements were automatic as he left the moist grass of the field and cleared the top of the hill that hadn’t been there when he had sat down. The surroundings shifted as he descended the other side of the slope and he was again there, where Lucifer had sworn they would always end up.
It was like some twisted Groundhog Day. His older self lay on the ground with Lucifer’s pristinely white shoe poised over his neck. This time Dean didn’t let shock stifle his movements. Chuck might not be a prophet anymore, but Dean already knew how this ended.
“No!”
When Dean rushed forward, the same smug smile he’d seen the other night traced over not Sam’s, but Lucifer’s, lips. A sweep of Lucifer’s hand sent Dean flying backwards. His awareness went fuzzy when he collided into a stone statue, sending a jolt of pain through his body. It might not actually be his physical body, but it sure as hell felt like it.
Dean rolled onto his side, stunned. It was too soon to force his eyes to focus when a steel grip latched around his throat. He gasped sharply for air that would no longer come as Lucifer pulled him up by his neck.
His hands gripped Lucifer’s arm to try to ease the unyielding pressure on his airway while his feet were left dangling free from the ground. Lucifer watched him struggle with a curious tilt of his head.
“Dean, back sooner than I expected,” Lucifer said. “I’d commend you on your persistence, but it would be like commending fleas for returning to a dog.”
“Where’s Sam?” Dean gasped.
“Oh, I see. This must be terribly disappointing for you.”
Like brushing off a fly, Lucifer released his grip, letting Dean crumple to the ground at his feet. Lucifer raised his brows and glanced back to Dean’s older self who was staggering to his feet while Dean choked to recover air.
“Did you really think you could just sneak in here and rescue Sam from me? Sorry you wasted the trip, but Sam and I, we’re two sides of the same coin, Dean. I am what your brother was made for. And you...you’ve outstayed your welcome.” Lucifer flexed his fists, cracked his neck and looked between the two of them. “Would you like me to kill you now?”
“We’d like you to shut the hell up and let us talk to Sam,” Dean’s older self replied.
The smile that rose to Lucifer’s lips had lost its easygoing smugness and was beginning to look like a smokescreen. Dean shoved off the ground, his eyes sharply fixed on Lucifer. The harder he looked the more disjointed his vision became and with a flicker, it was no longer Sam’s body standing there.
He’d never seen an angel in its true form. Maybe that was what he was looking at now. Even if it was, it was tainted by the more familiar contorted features of a demon. After a moment Dean realized that he was seeing Lucifer’s true face surrounded by both himself and his older self. It was again through Sam’s eyes that he was seeing.
Dean stumbled back as his vision returned to being his own. When he again looked up a satisfied smirk crossed his lips, drawing confusion from his older self.
“What now?”
“He can’t kill us,” Dean replied.
“Funny, I seem to remember that he can.”
“Not here. We’d already be dead...at least you would. Ain’t that right, Lucy?” Dean’s sight fixed back in on Lucifer, taking a step towards him. “You and Sam, you’re not the same. This is still Sam’s head. You’re just a son of a bitch parasite slithering around inside it.”
“Dean?”
This time it wasn’t a whisper on the wind or a tickle in the back of his skull - it was Sam’s voice clear as day.
“Sam!”
Dean spun towards the voice he’d needed to hear more than anything. The storm was gone, but a murky darkness had closed in around them. Sam was kneeling chained and shackled to a floor. The instant Dean’s eyes adjusted enough to see him, he skidded across the damp concrete to drop at his brother’s side.
Immediately he began to examine the solidly welded restraints that he instinctually knew could not be broken with any lock pick. His anxious eyes scanned Sam while he tried to look strong. It was only another few seconds before he could no longer resist pulling his stunned brother into his arms.
“Dean, how…?”
“It’s really us, Sammy,” Dean’s older self said.
At the use of Sam’s nickname, Dean looked over his shoulder to see the overwhelmed expression on the older man’s face. It was one thing to say that Sam was a lost cause. It was another thing to be standing in front of his bound kid brother and pretend that it didn’t matter, that he was somehow better off alone.
Bewilderment folded Sam’s brow. “How are there two of you?”
“Guess it’s just your lucky day,” Dean replied.
His hands remained busy scanning his brother for injuries. It was an action that was imbedded in his muscle memory. It didn’t matter that this was just a projection of Sam. Aside from being trapped, Sam looked okay. Physically. He seemed strong, but his eyes were gripped in agony that Dean wanted desperately to take from him.
“Dean, I can’t stop him.”
Dean clenched his jaw knowing that the same was true for him, but that was the last thing he was going to tell his brother. “It’s okay, Sammy. You don’t have to.” He blinked back the wetness he could feel welling in his eyes as he ruffled his hand into Sam’s hair just for a confirmation that his brother was really there, physical or not.
“I never should have...God...the things I’ve done…”
“Wasn’t you. We’re getting you out of here.”
“How?”
“We’re working on that,” Dean’s older self replied. “Just hold on, okay?”
Dean glanced away from Sam when a hand set on his shoulder. It was his older self looking down at him. For the first time Dean saw real emotion in his eyes. For the first time he believed he wasn’t dead.
“We gotta go,” the older man said. Despite what the man had said last night, tonight there was reluctance in the words.
Dean shook his head. Instead of standing he crouched further down beside Sam. “You go. I’m staying with him.”
“We can’t stay, we’re not even here. We can’t just pull up a U-Haul and move into Sam’s head.”
“Dean, he’s...you’re right. You need to go...all of you.” With a clink of chains Sam lifted his arm to clutch Dean’s forearm. “You have to stop me.”
“Not happening. He’s not you, Sam.” Dean gripped his brother’s shoulder, giving him a strong shake. “You hear me? We’re gonna kill his ass and save yours. We just need your help to do it. Come on, you can’t leave me out here with myself.”
~~~
“Now we’re celebrating,” Dean’s older self announced as he handed Dean a beer. “I guess sucking at dying comes in handy after all.”
The sun was well hidden behind a dense blanket of clouds that made it feel far later than it was. While it was barely noon Dean was damn near ready to pass out where he stood. For some reason that was starting to make his fist twitchy, his older self was still buzzed from the ritual. They’d left Sam imprisoned inside of Lucifer. It wasn’t exactly time to break out the bubbly.
Still walking with a bounce in his step, Dean’s older self bent down to snatch up the empty beer bottle he’d tossed in the bushes the other night. Absently he twirled it in his fingers while they walked down the camp’s road.
“What’re you so damn happy about?” Dean popped the top off his beer and guzzled it as quickly as humanly possible, avoiding the taste and getting straight to the point.
“Sam isn’t dead and we got an in at stopping Lucifer,” Dean’s older self replied. He tossed the empty bottle at a rusted steel drum that was spilling over with trash. “Sure as hell beats the alternative.”
“Sure as hell beats your alternative. Me, I’m supposed to be back in ’09 saving the world from us with our brother. Instead I’m stuck here talking to myself with no decent alcohol, no actual food and a camp full of women who I already screwed over without even getting laid.” With an irritated huff Dean chucked his own bottle at the barrel with a shattering force. “Zachariah where are you, you son of a bitch?!” Dean shouted uselessly towards the clouds.
“He ain’t listening. No one is, but on the plus side you get to skip the ugly parts. Believe me, those years between ’09 and now... Zachariah did you a favor. At least this way we can pretend we could’ve done better without just screwing it up again.” Dean shot a hardened glare towards himself. “You can’t say you’d do it better than me - you are me.”
Maybe that was true, but he could do it different. Now he knew what didn’t work. It didn’t mean that anything else would work, but he couldn’t live in this world without having tried, not that it was looking like he had much of a choice.
“Maybe if Anna can figure out how to get Cas’s angel mojo back on.”
“Yeah, maybe.” His older self turned away from him and snapped his fingers at an older man. The guy was leaning against one of the cabins smoking a cigarette and watching Dean warily. “Hey, Ricky, heads up,” Dean’s older self said as he tossed his crushed pack of cigarettes to the man.
The man caught it, turning it over in his hands before sending a suspicious look to Dean’s older self. “What’s this for, boss?”
“Employee of the week. Now get back to work on that security detail and get someone to clean up that garbage.”
“On it.”
Dean’s older self looked back to Dean as he grabbed his arm and steered him off the road. “You can click your heels all you want, Dorothy, but for the record, until you get your ass zapped by an angel, I’m still in charge.”
“You can have your Merry Men. I’m gonna get our brother back.” Dean reached over his shoulder and slid his hand down the collar of his shirt to scratch at his itchy back. “Right after I get this damn paint off.”
His older self came up behind him and lifted up the back of his shirt. “It’s giving us a rash.” Dean felt his older self's fingers make a half assed effort at chipping at the stubbornly caked on paint mix. “It’s gonna be a bitch to get off.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a bigger bitch to have on.” His brow furrowed as he looked up to realize where they were. “What’s this - orgy time?”
With a snort, Dean’s older self swept the curtain of beads aside for Dean to duck into Castiel’s cabin. “Cas is doing up a bath to soak that crap off with some girly bath salts.”
“And you’re here to be my personal luffa?”
“If you ever pull a Back to the Future III, I happen to have a vested interest in our back.”
It wasn’t like he didn’t need the help, but when he heard Anna’s voice filtering out from down the hall he glanced back to his older self. “How many people does it take to make a bath around here?”
“Just two of you, an impotent angel and...well, not impotent...”
At the suggestive raise of his older self’s brow Dean waved him off. “I don’t even wanna know how we know that.” Before heading down the hall, he stopped to really look at himself, truly meeting the older man's eyes for the first time. “So you’re really riding the happy train on this whole save Sam, stop Lucifer thing?”
“Reverse priorities, and we’re still gonna get our asses handed to us, but yeah, sure. Why not? With you here we got at least two chances to die trying.”
Summary: When Zachariah doesn’t return to take Dean back from 2014, Dean has to find common ground with himself and undertakes a new plan to save Sam and stop Lucifer.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Suggestive content, dark imagery, mild blood play and brief scenes of torture. Nothing especially graphic or explicit.
Spoilers: Through early Season 5
Word Count: 5,503 for this part
Author's Note: AU tag to 'The End'. Written for a spnrarepairs exchange, but it's UST only and could be read as gen...or not, depending on your preference. Hinted pairings include Dean/future!Dean UST, Dean/Alastair implied past relationship, implied Dean/Castiel and very vaguely implied Castiel/Anna. See the Master Post for prompt details.
All but the last few lines of dialogue in the first scene are taken directly from 'The End'. The song lyrics are from The Shin's 'Past and Pending'. Thanks so much to corri_kun for the beta!
~~~
Continued from Part 1
“I know we’re royally screwed, but isn’t it a little pessimistic start by digging our own grave?” Dean asked.
“And where the hell are we anyway?”
At his older self’s question, Dean fully took in the surreal surroundings. Despite the setting sun he wasn’t as cold as he’d expected to be. Last night he’d been chilled beneath three layers and now he was decently comfortable with his upper torso bare. It was probably the electricity irradiating them.
The air buzzed so loud he could barely hear himself think. High voltage wires hung from scaffolding that extend out towards the horizon. The towering structures were silhouetted by an early evening sky that burned red as embers intense enough to be reminiscent of hellfire.
“This is Christchurch and the digging of the grave is symbolic,” Anna assured them though the assurance rang hollow considering the circumstances. “The ritual is performed as a solitary vigil beside an open grave. Since you’re both you, that should be close enough.”
“Again with the maybes...” Dean’s older self said with a kick to the sea of gravel that surrounded them. “This is holy ground?”
A quiet laugh drifted from Anna, barely audible over the hum of transformers. “Not exactly. This is Christchurch, New Zealand. From our mapping this power substation...”
“Wait, like land of the sheep lovers, other side of the freakin’ planet, New Zealand?” Dean again looked around, but with the quickly darkening sky there was no real visual reference for where they were beyond the substation. “If you can zap us across the globe, why can’t you just kick me back to ‘09?”
“I’m sorry, Dean. World travel and temporal travel, they’re just not the same thing.”
Instead of sending him home, Anna showed them to a site of barren ground. In the fading light it didn’t look any different than where they’d popped in at except that the gravel had given way to dirt that could actually be dug, though apparently Dean wasn’t the one digging.
He sat as instructed, strangely mystified by the sight of his older self breaking through the surface of the crusted earth. There was no counting the number of graves he’d dug up over the years. For him busting open coffins was as normal as picking milk up from the store was for most people and never had he wondered what he looked like doing it.
The older man stripped down to a t-shirt and was strength personified as he chiseled through the layers of soil. Quiet sounds of effort and the occasional clank of shovel spade against rock blended into the throbbing of the substation’s atmosphere. By the time his older self sat down beside him, sweat stains darkened his shirt.
“That was a blast. Now what?”
“I guess we wait.” Anna had popped out before the digging started. Apparently they were supposed to know what to do. Impatiently Dean tapped his fingers against the worn denim of his jeans. “This acid trip would be a lot more fun with some acid.”
“Sulfuric acid would cleanse your soul good and proper.”
The words skirted playfully on the wind. Every muscle in Dean’s body went rigid, the chill sinking straight through to his soul. He bit down panic as his eyes locked questioningly with himself. The older man stared blankly back at him.
“What?” Dean’s older self asked.
“Did you hear that?”
“Yeah, it was my stomach. Man, this fasting business is crap.” Indifference quickly melted to alertness that drifted into concern. Dean’s older self sat up straighter, uncrossing his legs as he scanned the open area around them. “What’d you hear?”
Heavy steps crunched over the gravel behind him yet his older self, who was looking right at him, obviously didn’t see anyone there. As impossible as it was, he already knew who was waiting. Instead of turning to look over his shoulder, Dean let his eyes fall closed before answering.
“Looks like we’re getting this party started.”
Any reply that may have been in his older self’s throat never reached Dean’s ears. Pleasantly warm air boiled to a repressive heat so intense it felt as if it would melt away his flesh to leave only charred bones. It wouldn’t be the first time. Electric lines gave way to hills of bones, mountains of flesh and rivers of blood. The buzz of electricity notched up to agonizing screams.
When his eyes focused, a lacerated liver stared up at him. He was probably qualified to be a surgeon with his intimate familiarity of human anatomy. There was just the little problem that he only knew how to break it. Like everything else, in a million ways he could tear it apart. He didn’t know how to put it back together.
His hands were sticky with blood, blood that coated his skin up to his elbows and splatter painted his torso red, but his sternum was intact. The liver wasn’t his. There was no reason to think that the blood was either. Bile threatened the back of his tongue. Reluctantly his eyes scanned up the mutilated body on the rack before him.
Dead eyes of the bound soul stared blankly past him. Stumbling to his feet, Dean shook his head and stepped back from the limply hanging mangled corpse. His tentative retreat was cut short when he backed into something.
“Now, now, Dean. Where have your manners gone?” Alastair asked. “You really must remember to share.”
With a deceptive tenderness Alastair’s hand closed over Dean’s, carefully prying his fingers free from the razor Dean hadn’t realized he was clutching.
“You’re dead,” Dean said.
“Aren’t we all?”
Dean’s reluctant eyes followed Alastair’s guiding gaze. The soul strapped naked to the rack was no longer faceless. Blood flowed from wounds so numerous they all bled to one, streams of crimson traveling down to drip from the dangling feet. Screams so familiar, so brutal, that Dean would’ve torn his ears off if it would’ve helped to silence the torment.
Worse than any of it was the easy pleasure on the face of the man wielding the razor. It was his face, his hands that gouged shredded flesh with eyes black as night, tearing into his father. For a brief moment his disbelieving eyes grew wide before he quickly looked away, clenching his eyes closed and willing reality to return.
“This isn’t real...that never happened!” Dean shouted with a gesture towards the rack that he couldn’t look back towards.
“You say potato, I say potato. History, Dean, is what the living make of it - it’s not for people like me to decide.”
“’People’?” Dean sneered. “That’s hilarious. You’re not a ‘people’, Alastair. You’re...wait. You’re my Jiminy Cricket aren’t you? Son of a bitch.” Dean used his forearm to wipe the sweat from his brow, unintentionally smearing blood across his forehead. “Awesome. I got a torture master for my guide.”
Alastair rubbed his hand over Dean’s brow, wiping it clean before moving to step behind him. A possessive hand latched onto Dean’s hip and jerked him backwards until his back was pressed flush against Alastair’s chest. The demon placed his now crimson stained fingers over Dean’s heart.
“In your hearts of hearts you know it’s what you are,” Alastair said. The fingers clamped around his hip and bit into the suddenly exposed skin with a bruising force. “I know - I’ve seen your heart.”
Dean gave a reluctant nod. “Yeah, and I’ve eaten it. Thanks for that.” His head tilted back to lean against the familiar curves of Alastair’s shoulder. He looked at the demon out of the corner of his eye, wholly unfazed by the grotesqueness of the demon’s true face. “Maybe we could get off memory lane and onto finding Sam.”
“You’ll never find your brother like this,” Alastair remarked.
After he pulled back Alastair ran his finger along Dean’s sweat soaked back. The finger came back inky black with smudged paint. Dean bowed his head before he spoke.
“You better fix it.”
Forty years they had been at each other’s side. It was a blink in time for Alastair, but a lifetime for Dean. There was no need for Alastair to speak for Dean to know what he wanted. Even less so now that Alastair was literally in his head. Maybe he’d been there the entire time.
With an unsteady breath Dean stepped forward against the now empty rack. There was no reason for restraints as Dean just clutched the searing metal. The light grip turned white knuckle as the razor carved into his skin the first line of the words that Chuck had painted there.
“It’s true what they say, there's more than one way to skin a Winchester.” Alastair’s blade expertly burned sweeping curves into Dean’s back as he spoke. “But there’s only one way for you to go forward. Alone, but you always have been that.” Blinking back the sting of tears, Dean clenched his jaw and just gripped the steel of the rack tighter. “And by alone, my boy, I mean you have to let go.”
“Of what?”
Ragged breaths seeped past Dean’s slightly parted lips as Alastair pulled the razor away only long enough to lean into Dean. Alastair’s head rested atop Dean’s blood seeping shoulder. Dean forced his breath quiet as he strained to hear the words Alastair spoke over the howling cries that filled the bitter air.
“All of it. Everything. Everyone. You have to shed it all, son. It’s the only way to slip past Lucifer’s gate.”
Dean didn’t know what that meant, but more than that he knew it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t blink at eternally throwing his soul back into the Pit if it would mean freeing Sam from this lord of evil crap. While not so much as a breath had left his mouth, he knew Alastair already had his answer.
Strong hands pried his hands from the rack. When he turned around Dean again found the familiar curves of the razor’s handle gripped in his palm. He steeled himself already afraid he wouldn’t be strong enough to face whatever now lay on the rack.
Before he had fully turned back, his legs gave out. He never felt his knees hit the ground. The searing heat of the air combusted into the flames of an entirely different fire, one so deeply etched into his memory as to define him. It wasn’t the eternal expanse of hell, but burned hotter.
Everything he was silently screamed against the raging flames that surged across the ceiling of Sammy’s nursery. The fire engulfed Mom’s body, just before the heaviest weight Dean would ever carry was placed into his arms, the weight he had never put down.
He squinted against the blinding light and the angle of the fire shifted. Despair mimicked the flames, consuming him as the fire consumed his Dad’s body on the funeral pyre. His world turned to ash and in the next moment it was Sam’s blood sticky on his hands, his brother’s dead weight again in his arms. By comparison the flaying of the hellhounds claws and return to hellfire was ecstasy.
When flames again swallowed the ceiling, it was Jessica pinned in the inferno. It wasn’t through his eyes or emotions that he watched the woman Sam loved charred to nothing. He was Sam carrying Dean’s weight in his arms, lowering his shredded body into a pine box and feeling the impossible weight of every shovelful of dirt that filled the grave and made the silence that brought the chill.
“Dean?”
The ghost of a word sliced through the frozen silence. With a sharp gasp Dean let himself breath, air rushing to refill his lungs. When his eyes focused he was sitting in a field, the sun warm on his face. His brother stood in the middle of the grassy expanse.
Sam’s long arms were wrapped tenderly around Jessica lost in the depth of a kiss. Slowly they pulled away from each other but it was Jessica, not Sam, that looked to him. Only it wasn’t Jessica. His brow furrowed as he saw Anna leave Sam’s side and stride quickly towards him.
“Dean, you need to get out.”
“Get out? I just got here. How are you here?”
“I’m not. I’m in your mind. You’ve crossed the line into Sam’s, but the boundary between Sam and Lucifer is too thin.”
His head was still spinning and his heart literally ached like hell. All he needed or wanted right now was Sam. There was no way he was turning around after having just caught a glimpse of his brother. If Lucifer wanted a piece of him while not strutting around in his Sam’s suit then Dean was all too ready for him.
“I don’t care.” Dean shot his head to the side to see himself, not some mental projection of himself, but his older self. “Why are you here?”
“You did the gate crashing. It’s time for the big guns to take over.”
“Why?” Dean looked suspiciously between himself and Anna. “I’m the one that can reach Sam.”
“You were the only one who could get in. If Sam is still here, we’ll reach him,” Anna said, “but we can’t sacrifice you to do it.”
He looked to his older self who stood casually by, not quite meeting his eyes. Slowly the meaning of Anna’s words registered. His words were heavy with disbelief. “You want to sacrifice him.”
“He’s expendable, you’re not.”
“He is me!”
“That’s why he’s redundant. Without you there is no him. No you. No way to stop any of this.” Anna stepped forward, closing the distance between them. “Why do you think he was brought back?”
“You angels just never tired of screwing with me, do you? To hell with you and your big picture crap. This is my fight and I’m not going to die - nobody’s gonna die because this is Sam and he won’t kill me.”
“It’s our fight,” Dean’s older self corrected. “And, hey, you’re right. It’s Friday. We can only die on Thursdays.” The older man flashed the closest thing Dean had seen to a smile, but the corner of his lips quickly fell. “You were also right about us and Sam.”
“Yeah, I know.” Dean glanced back to Anna. “You can bring him back again, right?”
“Not from this, not if Lucifer finds him.”
Dean’s older self shrugged. If anything the man looked relieved and Dean somehow knew he would be. He was tired. Add a few years without Sam in a dying world he’d damned to hell and he’d be ready to check out too.
“Look at it this way,” Dean’s older self said, “we get to kill our self and live. Win, win.”
~~~
Dean had let himself be talked into holding back only because he wanted to make sure someone was left to save Sam. While he had held back, he hadn’t left like Anna had ordered. It turned out that the only one with any powers in Sam’s head, beside Sam, was him and Sammy’s roommate. The only angel he had to contend with here was Lucifer. Good times.
When the sun surrendered to storm clouds the pressure of the atmosphere became repressive and the hair at the nape of Dean’s neck stood on end. The rumble of thunder in the near distance rippled through the darkening sky. His back tingled.
Reaching behind himself, he wiped his hand across his back expecting it to come away bloody. Instead the skin felt unmarred. He couldn’t even feel the crust of paint yet he could feel the lines of the words that had been drawn there vibrating deeper than the surface as if they had been etched into his soul.
Without knowing why, he rose to his feet. His movements were automatic as he left the moist grass of the field and cleared the top of the hill that hadn’t been there when he had sat down. The surroundings shifted as he descended the other side of the slope and he was again there, where Lucifer had sworn they would always end up.
It was like some twisted Groundhog Day. His older self lay on the ground with Lucifer’s pristinely white shoe poised over his neck. This time Dean didn’t let shock stifle his movements. Chuck might not be a prophet anymore, but Dean already knew how this ended.
“No!”
When Dean rushed forward, the same smug smile he’d seen the other night traced over not Sam’s, but Lucifer’s, lips. A sweep of Lucifer’s hand sent Dean flying backwards. His awareness went fuzzy when he collided into a stone statue, sending a jolt of pain through his body. It might not actually be his physical body, but it sure as hell felt like it.
Dean rolled onto his side, stunned. It was too soon to force his eyes to focus when a steel grip latched around his throat. He gasped sharply for air that would no longer come as Lucifer pulled him up by his neck.
His hands gripped Lucifer’s arm to try to ease the unyielding pressure on his airway while his feet were left dangling free from the ground. Lucifer watched him struggle with a curious tilt of his head.
“Dean, back sooner than I expected,” Lucifer said. “I’d commend you on your persistence, but it would be like commending fleas for returning to a dog.”
“Where’s Sam?” Dean gasped.
“Oh, I see. This must be terribly disappointing for you.”
Like brushing off a fly, Lucifer released his grip, letting Dean crumple to the ground at his feet. Lucifer raised his brows and glanced back to Dean’s older self who was staggering to his feet while Dean choked to recover air.
“Did you really think you could just sneak in here and rescue Sam from me? Sorry you wasted the trip, but Sam and I, we’re two sides of the same coin, Dean. I am what your brother was made for. And you...you’ve outstayed your welcome.” Lucifer flexed his fists, cracked his neck and looked between the two of them. “Would you like me to kill you now?”
“We’d like you to shut the hell up and let us talk to Sam,” Dean’s older self replied.
The smile that rose to Lucifer’s lips had lost its easygoing smugness and was beginning to look like a smokescreen. Dean shoved off the ground, his eyes sharply fixed on Lucifer. The harder he looked the more disjointed his vision became and with a flicker, it was no longer Sam’s body standing there.
He’d never seen an angel in its true form. Maybe that was what he was looking at now. Even if it was, it was tainted by the more familiar contorted features of a demon. After a moment Dean realized that he was seeing Lucifer’s true face surrounded by both himself and his older self. It was again through Sam’s eyes that he was seeing.
Dean stumbled back as his vision returned to being his own. When he again looked up a satisfied smirk crossed his lips, drawing confusion from his older self.
“What now?”
“He can’t kill us,” Dean replied.
“Funny, I seem to remember that he can.”
“Not here. We’d already be dead...at least you would. Ain’t that right, Lucy?” Dean’s sight fixed back in on Lucifer, taking a step towards him. “You and Sam, you’re not the same. This is still Sam’s head. You’re just a son of a bitch parasite slithering around inside it.”
“Dean?”
This time it wasn’t a whisper on the wind or a tickle in the back of his skull - it was Sam’s voice clear as day.
“Sam!”
Dean spun towards the voice he’d needed to hear more than anything. The storm was gone, but a murky darkness had closed in around them. Sam was kneeling chained and shackled to a floor. The instant Dean’s eyes adjusted enough to see him, he skidded across the damp concrete to drop at his brother’s side.
Immediately he began to examine the solidly welded restraints that he instinctually knew could not be broken with any lock pick. His anxious eyes scanned Sam while he tried to look strong. It was only another few seconds before he could no longer resist pulling his stunned brother into his arms.
“Dean, how…?”
“It’s really us, Sammy,” Dean’s older self said.
At the use of Sam’s nickname, Dean looked over his shoulder to see the overwhelmed expression on the older man’s face. It was one thing to say that Sam was a lost cause. It was another thing to be standing in front of his bound kid brother and pretend that it didn’t matter, that he was somehow better off alone.
Bewilderment folded Sam’s brow. “How are there two of you?”
“Guess it’s just your lucky day,” Dean replied.
His hands remained busy scanning his brother for injuries. It was an action that was imbedded in his muscle memory. It didn’t matter that this was just a projection of Sam. Aside from being trapped, Sam looked okay. Physically. He seemed strong, but his eyes were gripped in agony that Dean wanted desperately to take from him.
“Dean, I can’t stop him.”
Dean clenched his jaw knowing that the same was true for him, but that was the last thing he was going to tell his brother. “It’s okay, Sammy. You don’t have to.” He blinked back the wetness he could feel welling in his eyes as he ruffled his hand into Sam’s hair just for a confirmation that his brother was really there, physical or not.
“I never should have...God...the things I’ve done…”
“Wasn’t you. We’re getting you out of here.”
“How?”
“We’re working on that,” Dean’s older self replied. “Just hold on, okay?”
Dean glanced away from Sam when a hand set on his shoulder. It was his older self looking down at him. For the first time Dean saw real emotion in his eyes. For the first time he believed he wasn’t dead.
“We gotta go,” the older man said. Despite what the man had said last night, tonight there was reluctance in the words.
Dean shook his head. Instead of standing he crouched further down beside Sam. “You go. I’m staying with him.”
“We can’t stay, we’re not even here. We can’t just pull up a U-Haul and move into Sam’s head.”
“Dean, he’s...you’re right. You need to go...all of you.” With a clink of chains Sam lifted his arm to clutch Dean’s forearm. “You have to stop me.”
“Not happening. He’s not you, Sam.” Dean gripped his brother’s shoulder, giving him a strong shake. “You hear me? We’re gonna kill his ass and save yours. We just need your help to do it. Come on, you can’t leave me out here with myself.”
~~~
“Now we’re celebrating,” Dean’s older self announced as he handed Dean a beer. “I guess sucking at dying comes in handy after all.”
The sun was well hidden behind a dense blanket of clouds that made it feel far later than it was. While it was barely noon Dean was damn near ready to pass out where he stood. For some reason that was starting to make his fist twitchy, his older self was still buzzed from the ritual. They’d left Sam imprisoned inside of Lucifer. It wasn’t exactly time to break out the bubbly.
Still walking with a bounce in his step, Dean’s older self bent down to snatch up the empty beer bottle he’d tossed in the bushes the other night. Absently he twirled it in his fingers while they walked down the camp’s road.
“What’re you so damn happy about?” Dean popped the top off his beer and guzzled it as quickly as humanly possible, avoiding the taste and getting straight to the point.
“Sam isn’t dead and we got an in at stopping Lucifer,” Dean’s older self replied. He tossed the empty bottle at a rusted steel drum that was spilling over with trash. “Sure as hell beats the alternative.”
“Sure as hell beats your alternative. Me, I’m supposed to be back in ’09 saving the world from us with our brother. Instead I’m stuck here talking to myself with no decent alcohol, no actual food and a camp full of women who I already screwed over without even getting laid.” With an irritated huff Dean chucked his own bottle at the barrel with a shattering force. “Zachariah where are you, you son of a bitch?!” Dean shouted uselessly towards the clouds.
“He ain’t listening. No one is, but on the plus side you get to skip the ugly parts. Believe me, those years between ’09 and now... Zachariah did you a favor. At least this way we can pretend we could’ve done better without just screwing it up again.” Dean shot a hardened glare towards himself. “You can’t say you’d do it better than me - you are me.”
Maybe that was true, but he could do it different. Now he knew what didn’t work. It didn’t mean that anything else would work, but he couldn’t live in this world without having tried, not that it was looking like he had much of a choice.
“Maybe if Anna can figure out how to get Cas’s angel mojo back on.”
“Yeah, maybe.” His older self turned away from him and snapped his fingers at an older man. The guy was leaning against one of the cabins smoking a cigarette and watching Dean warily. “Hey, Ricky, heads up,” Dean’s older self said as he tossed his crushed pack of cigarettes to the man.
The man caught it, turning it over in his hands before sending a suspicious look to Dean’s older self. “What’s this for, boss?”
“Employee of the week. Now get back to work on that security detail and get someone to clean up that garbage.”
“On it.”
Dean’s older self looked back to Dean as he grabbed his arm and steered him off the road. “You can click your heels all you want, Dorothy, but for the record, until you get your ass zapped by an angel, I’m still in charge.”
“You can have your Merry Men. I’m gonna get our brother back.” Dean reached over his shoulder and slid his hand down the collar of his shirt to scratch at his itchy back. “Right after I get this damn paint off.”
His older self came up behind him and lifted up the back of his shirt. “It’s giving us a rash.” Dean felt his older self's fingers make a half assed effort at chipping at the stubbornly caked on paint mix. “It’s gonna be a bitch to get off.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a bigger bitch to have on.” His brow furrowed as he looked up to realize where they were. “What’s this - orgy time?”
With a snort, Dean’s older self swept the curtain of beads aside for Dean to duck into Castiel’s cabin. “Cas is doing up a bath to soak that crap off with some girly bath salts.”
“And you’re here to be my personal luffa?”
“If you ever pull a Back to the Future III, I happen to have a vested interest in our back.”
It wasn’t like he didn’t need the help, but when he heard Anna’s voice filtering out from down the hall he glanced back to his older self. “How many people does it take to make a bath around here?”
“Just two of you, an impotent angel and...well, not impotent...”
At the suggestive raise of his older self’s brow Dean waved him off. “I don’t even wanna know how we know that.” Before heading down the hall, he stopped to really look at himself, truly meeting the older man's eyes for the first time. “So you’re really riding the happy train on this whole save Sam, stop Lucifer thing?”
“Reverse priorities, and we’re still gonna get our asses handed to us, but yeah, sure. Why not? With you here we got at least two chances to die trying.”