New Wings For Icarus | PART 2
Title: New Wings For Icarus
By: revenant_scribe
Rating: R
Word Count: 7,543
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Part of the Icarus 'Verse
Moral wounds have this peculiarity - they may be hidden,
but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed
when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart.
The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
Sam woke with his nose pressed into a rough cotton pillowcase that smelled of a combination bleach and detergent unique to hotels; the scent was neither particularly fresh nor clean. He was sprawled on his stomach, one arm stretched across the mattress like he had been reaching for something in his sleep.
Rubbing his eyes, Sam checked first the clock and then the rest of the suite. There was nothing to indicate that Dean was or ever had been in the room, though the crease in the pillow where he had slept was still warm. It wasn’t a surprise, but that didn’t stop Sam from feeling disappointed and he dropped back on the bed rubbing a hand through his hair, sparing a moment to wallow in the muddled twist of emotions that Dean never failed to incite.
Memories flashed through his head as he lay there: Dean’s smiling face when they were kids, running out to meet the first snowfall and pulling Sam along for the ride; Dean who heated up Spaghetti-O’s and told silly stories to distract him from his nightmares and who never let him face a fight alone. Dean who supported and defended him, even when it came to their dad, and who would sacrifice just about anything for him and had never turned his back on Sam … except once.
With a frustrated whoosh of breath, Sam pushed himself up and out of bed, broke away from the circling thoughts so he could concentrate on what he needed to get done. The most important thing, he decided, was to get some food for the kitchenette so he was not spending a small fortune on restaurants and room service.
Bobby always answered the phone like he already knew it was Dean. At first, Dean thought Bobby called everyone 'boy' in that gruff, affectionate tone that made him think of home and belonging. Then he just figured the man was psychic. Now, he supposed that Bobby just knew him too well - like maybe even when Dean thought he was being unpredictable, Bobby had him all figured out. At first, the idea of someone other than Sam knowing him so well had been daunting, but Bobby had come through for Dean enough times that he'd just come to accept it.
“Hey, Bobby,” Dean answered the familiar greeting.
“Geezes, Dean,” Bobby said. “You sound like someone just ran over yer dog.”
“Naw, things are okay, just tired s’all. And,” Dean paused and for a moment, considered leaving it there; the idea was so tempting he had to struggle to continue, “I’m in Minnesota.”
“You visiting Jim?”
Dean smiled to himself, appreciating everything Bobby was and wasn’t saying with that question. “I’m in Minneapolis right now, visiting some old friends. Aaron and Jesse…”
“Been a while since I heard about them. Those boys in trouble?”
“You know how it is.”
“Yeah, I do,” Bobby said, exasperation melding with resignation to make that tone of voice that Dean had only ever heard from that man. “There something yer not telling me, boy?”
“I dunno,” Dean rubbed his brow. “Yeah, probably.” Then, because he actually didn’t feel like getting into all that, he said, “Sam’s here.”
Bobby guffawed. “About time you boys talked, don’tcha think?” The silence stretched a little, and when Bobby spoke again it was with fondness in his tone, “You take care of yourself.” As if Dean couldn’t be trusted to do that without being explicitly told. Dean huffed; maybe the man had a point. “And call every once in a while. Let me know if I need to round up the cavalry.”
Dean smiled a little wider and not for the first time felt a burst of gratitude and affection that he would never voice for the man, not that he ever had to. “Will do, Bobby,” he said, and then hung up the phone.
Jesse Deacon had been bouncing in and out of jail since he had been a teenager. He was a suspect in four unsolved homicides and his record was a laundry list of violent, erratic crime that ran the gamut from robbery to murder. Though there was a significant number of bar fights and back-alley assaults, Sam noted with vague interest that none of the violent incidents had included women. He and Aaron were two of the founding members of the Mad Dog Gang, which Sam discovered was a fairly notable gang in Minneapolis, and also a significantly destructive one, which was rumored to have connections with organized crime.
Whereas Deacon’s record painted the picture of a hotheaded violent and unpredictable man, the information Sam had on Aaron Conyers was the opposite. Aaron had committed his first murder at the age of seventeen; in exchange he had received fifty dollars. He hadn’t been in jail nearly as frequently as Jesse, but Sam suspected that owed to the few years operating as a strong-arm for organized crime. He did drugs and had a wife who lived somewhere in Sioux City, Iowa. There was no indication that either man had ever met their victim, Edward Dowell, before that night in January.
For his part, Edward Dowell had been a hard working citizen who had earned his living as a guard in a couple of jails before he’d moved to Minneapolis and become the driver of a Brink’s truck. He had a two-bedroom apartment in St. Paul, with a single bed in one room and an office in the other. None of the jails Dowell had worked at over the years matched any visited by Conyers or Deacon, and neither man had been imprisoned at the same time anyway.
Given the information that Sam had splayed across his sofa and coffee table, it seemed fairly clear that the motive for the murder was gang violence, random and impersonal. The more he looked at his notes, however, the less Sam considered that an acceptable explanation. Random public violence fit Jesse’s M.O. but Aaron’s crimes were all premeditated and meticulous, and if his diminishing arrests were anything to go by, he’d been getting better at planning. Blowing someone away in the middle of a pub was certainly not something that fit his pattern.
In addition, there was the report on the bod: seven shots were fired, seven bullets had entered the victim, and each shot had been delivered at close range. The wounds were consistent with witness accounts that the two men stood across the table and raised their weapons. Dowell had been hit once in the groin, once at the joint in each arm, twice in the chest, once in the throat and the finishing shot went straight through the middle of his head. Outside of being sadistic, the shots seemed fairly targeted to Sam. If the intent was to kill publicly, why fire the first shot under the table? Jesse, but especially Aaron, had proved themselves to be expert marksmen, which meant they hit what they aimed at, and they’d been standing close to the victim, which meant there was little to no reason to miss their target. To Sam, it meant that there was some significance in the location of the shots, because concentrated weapons fired to the chest and head would have been more of a mess, and therefore more of a demonstration. The more Sam looked at the crime, the more it seemed like something personal, even if none of the information he had supported that notion.
Snelling Motel was a two-story horseshoe-shaped seafoam-green building that offered no covered parking. Sam pulled into a spot beside the Impala and noted with fond amusement that the sleek black car had been thoroughly whisked of snow; the one pristine thing in the entire lot.
Dean’s room was in the corner on the second floor, and Sam waited for a moment after he knocked, knowing that the absolute silence emanating from inside was not necessarily an indication of his brother’s absence.
“Sam,” Dean said, his voice cautious and his body blocking most of the gap he’d opened into his room. Sam raised an eyebrow and tilted his head; after a moment Dean relented, stepping aside and letting his brother through.
The carpet in Dean’s room was green and beige and packed down so thoroughly that it was barely carpet at all. There was a plain wood chest of drawers on top of which sat a black, boxy television set and a little plastic sign that boasted free HBO. A tiny square table of the same pale wood with a matching chair was in the corner, where a telephone and a pad of legal paper covered in Dean’s writing sat, obscuring most of its surface. The desk chair was mostly blocked-in by the heater, which Dean had set to funnel warm air into the room, likely to counteract the draft from the window above. A nightstand was wedged into the opposite corner, with a very tall and precarious lamp, as well as one of Dean’s favorite guns and his cellphone. Mostly, though, Sam was caught up by the fact that the bedspread and matching curtains featured big squares of pink and green and beige, with great big flowers. It made Dean’s worn, khaki duffel bag sitting on the folding luggage rack beside the bed look supremely out of place. Dean himself, for that matter, hardly seemed to belong in the cramped space, with its clean white walls and flower border. “Jesus, Dean, did you ask for the Rose Suite?”
“Shut up,” Dean muttered, dropping the knife he had brought with him to the door onto the surface of his king-sized bed. “Seriously, Dude, pick a spot. There’s not enough room for your Yeti-size self to be standing around blocking up the place.” Sam moved to take the chair by the tiny desk and idly noted the lines of salt running across the window ledge and by the door.
Dean settled onto the bed, his back propped-up by the pillows he’d stacked against the headboard, his jean-clad legs stretched out in front of him. “So?” he prompted, “to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”
Sitting in his brother’s motel room, Sam started to rethink his reasons for tracking the man down. The twisted net of conflicting emotions with which he had awoken were surging back and he couldn’t pick where to start, or what he wanted to say. In the end, “I wasn’t sure you’d still be here,” came tumbling out before he had thought it through and Dean’s gaze skittered away. Satisfaction that his comment had struck home warred with a vague sense of guilt, but Sam thought that it was only fair. After all, he had woken to an empty bed, and Dean had said his only reason for being in Minneapolis in the first place had been to make certain his friends were okay. There wasn’t much Dean could do about them being in jail.
Dean snatched up an open bottle of beer from where it had been resting on the floor beside the bed and Sam rubbed his brow. “Look,” he said. “That’s not why I came.” Cool green eyes focused on him and Sam pushed his hair back and tried to come up with a solid purpose for his presence. “How much do you know about what happened?” Dean shrugged. “I mean, have Aaron or Jesse said anything?”
Dean’s gaze narrowed slightly. “What’s up?”
“I dunno, maybe I’m just over-thinking things.” It didn’t feel as if he were; Sam had instincts about his cases the same way his dad had instincts about hunting. “It’s one of the most important things to remember,” John had said, “Always trust your gut. Sometimes it makes all the difference.” Sam ran his hand through his hair again, as if he could physically push away the thought of his dad. “Did either of them know the victim at all?”
Dean blinked at him. “I dunno,” he said. “Who was the victim?”
“Some guy named Edward Dowell. He drove a Brinks truck, lived alone; didn’t even own a pet or anything. As far as I can tell, he was just an ordinary, boring guy with a library card and a handful of friends who all say he was a good guy who mostly kept to himself,” Sam leaned back in the chair and frowned, mind still wrapped in the curious conflicting facts. “Neither one of them mentioned him?”
“Why would they?”
Sam sighed. “It just, the murder was tagged as gang violence because there didn’t seem to be any motive for it. But the way he was killed, the location of the bullets, it seems personal to me. I mean, it was a long shot, but I was just wondering if maybe you knew something.”
“Sorry,” Dean said, taking another pull of beer. “I can’t help you.”
Sam nodded his head. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you about it anyway.”
“Well then, this never happened.”
The silence stretched. Sam took in the casual stretch of his brother, feet bare and legs crossed, he wore faded jeans and a shirt that looked as if it might have been a bold navy color a million washes ago. There was a slight fray at the neckline of the shirt and Sam could see the familiar dark cord of the necklace his brother always wore. There was so much familiar about the man who sat, nursing his beer and casually sprawled across the bed, that Sam wanted to ignore all the differences, but try as he might, he couldn’t push it all away, not the new scars, or the stiff wariness that Sam could see in the lines of his brother’s muscles even if he knew Dean was trying to hide them. He couldn’t ignore how he himself had changed.
“Hey, Dean...” Sam glanced at his brother and then quickly away. He remembered the feel of the other man’s skin, of his hot breath and how their mouths closed together, how everything stopped and started again in that moment. “What happened last night?”
Dean’s smirk was entirely predictable, and Sam was hearing his brother’s reply before Dean had even made it, “If I have to tell you, Sammy, then clearly I wasn’t doing it right.”
“I’m serious, Dean.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want to know why you came over the other night? Why? If you were only going to leave, why bother starting it up again?”
Dean stood up from the bed, and Sam’s knowledge of his brother filled in that Dean wanted to pace, but he was stuck between the wall and the bed, with Sam’s chair blocking his way out. Instead, Dean turned, fiddled with his cellphone on the nightstand as he said, “Clearly it was a mistake,” and then Sam was met with a dull, cold stare as Dean added, “It won’t happen again.”
Sam was up off his chair in an instant. “That’s not what I meant.” He grabbed his brother’s shoulders and push-pulled him until Dean was forced to meet his gaze. “That’s not what I meant,” he repeated, his voice softer. “I’m just… I’m just trying to get my bearings here.”
“I’m not sure that changes my answer.” Sam watched Dean rub a hand over his face and tried to stop himself from reaching for him. “Nothing’s changed. You’ve got your life, Sam. I’m just passing through it.”
He brushed passed but Sam grabbed his arm, tried to ignore the almost invisible flinch his brother gave. “Cut the bullshit, Dean,” Sam said. “You’re not just passing through my life. I wanted you to be a part of it, but if I recall correctly, you were the one who threw that back in my face.”
“Whatever.”
“You always do this,” Sam huffed. “You pull me in and then push me away, like it’s nothing. Like I’m just some toy on a string you take up and put down whenever you want. Like what we have doesn’t mean anything!”
“Yeah, it’s a big gay incestuous romance,” Dean scoffed. “Which is why, the second the opportunity presented itself, you took up with a pretty little blonde.”
“Jess and I broke up.”
“Well good for you, that doesn’t change the fact that you took up with her to begin with.” Dean shook his head, raised a hand a little like he wanted to put a stop to where things were headed. “You know, it’s fine. I don’t care, really. I just want you to be honest with yourself. Do you even know what you want?”
“I’ve already told you what I want.”
Dean’s mouth twisted in a bitter little smile. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, I’m telling you. It was a mistake. And it won’t happen again.”
Sam remembered that day four years ago; the last time they had seen each other, the last time they had fought and Dean had walked away and Sam had been furious enough to trash his entire apartment. He could hear echoes of his brother’s words that day in everything he said, and Sam knew his brother was pushing, just like he always did. Pushed and pushed until Sam inevitably snapped and surrendered, backed off and let him go. “You’re wrong.” But he gave Dean just what he wanted, and walked out the door.
“Did you bring me something?” Jesse asked, leaning forward and peering at Dean like a little kid when Dean entered the private visiting room and began rifling through his briefcase. Despite his apparent good humor, Dean noted that both of his friends looked tense and worn.
“I sure did,” he said. “I smuggled in two of the most delicious burgers money can buy. Unfortunately, I got here during the guards’ shift-change and ate them while I was waiting to be let in.” He settled into his chair and set a black, leather-bound journal down onto the tabletop, a small cloth-covered packet sticking out from between the pages of the book.
“You asshole,” Jesse exclaimed, flopping back in his chair, the chains that kept him semi-confined rattling as he crossed his arms and pouted. “I’m sick of macaroni,” he muttered, then glanced curiously back at his friend. “Where did you get them from?”
“The burgers?” Dean asked. “Some place called Matt’s. They actually melt cheese into the patty. Ingenious.”
“You brought me a Juicy Lucy and then you ate it?” Dean blinked wide innocent eyes at his blond friend. “Mother fucker! I love those things!”
“Man,” Dean said, leaning forward to a put an understanding hand on his friend’s forearm, “I’m in total agreement. They were delicious.” Jesse actually snarled and Dean pulled his arm back and snickered.
“I hate you.”
Aaron had watched the exchange with a fond twist to his lips, but he had a sharp gaze and when Jesse sat back, he asked, “What are you really here for?”
Dean’s eyebrows jerked up a little, teasing in his eyes, “Geez, you know how to make someone feel real appreciated, Conyers.”
“Sam was by earlier,” Aaron continued, like Dean hadn’t spoken at all.
“Yeah, well Sammy’s figuring out the plot holes in the little story you told him.”
“Naw, man,” Jesse said. “We just gave him the facts. If he’s finding plot holes it’s the prosecution’s fault, not ours.”
Dean shrugged, “Either way.”
“So what’s up?” Aaron asked.
“Just thought I’d stop by,” Dean said. “Divert you from your miserable existence that is life without me.” He tipped back in his chair, lazed a little with a bored, distracted expression before he said, “Read any good books lately?”
Aaron laughed quietly, a low, soft sound filled with affection. “No, Dean,” he said, slightly exasperated. “I’ve been a bit distracted. Why, have you?”
“Oh, you know,” Dean said. “I’ve been reading a bit of Dumas.”
“What, still?” Jesse said. “You haven’t finished it yet? Well, I’m not surprised, that book is ridiculously long.”
Aaron’s eyes narrowed a little as he focused on his friend’s feigned casualness. “I read a bit of that every day,” Aaron said. “When I can.”
“Me too.” Dean righted his chair and rested his forearms on the tabletop, the fingers of his left hand tapping on the notebook he had set out, the little cloth packet tucked inside it like a placeholder. “My favorite character is the Abbot. He’s clever, y’know? Wise.”
“He was crazy,” Jesse corrected with a snort.
Aaron’s eyes dropped to the notebook that Dean was resting his hand over; he looked at the bump the package was making in the pages and then raised his brown eyes back to meet Dean. “We’ve really pulled everything apart for you, haven’t we?”
“Yeah, whatever,” Dean dismissed. “Look, I already said, if there’s anything I can do, I’m gonna do it.”
“It’s already done,” Aaron said, shrugging one shoulder. “And you know what? Whatever the court decides, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me, do you understand?”
Dean dropped his elbows on the table, ran his hands over his face and back through his hair before he pulled the notebook from the table and stuffed it back into his briefcase. “It’s not fair,” he muttered, which prompted Jesse to laugh.
“Let’s not even go near that completely ridiculous statement.”
Dean rolled his eyes and then looked away to say, “If you change your mind...” and let the offer hang there.
“There’s more that you can do,” Aaron said, his hand gripped the edge of the table and slowly, he dropped his pinky down out of view, leaving three fingers visible to Dean on the table top. “You keep us together,” he continued, and then raised his eyebrows a little and added, “And you give us direction.”
“Something to consider,” Jesse said, his tongue in his cheek. “And we’ll consider it too, what you said. But I dunno if I’m ready to blow off the legal proceedings. I have this weird confidence in our attorney for some reason.” Which had Dean rolling his eyes all over again, but he managed a smile, however small, and he nodded.
“Bobby?” Sam said, as if he needed to confirm what the caller-ID had told him.
“Sam,” Bobby greeted, like they talked on the phone all the time. “How’re you doin’ kid?”
“I’m okay.” Sam set aside the notes he’d been making about the case and sat up in his chair. “What’s up?”
“I spoke to Dean. He said he bumped into you in Minneapolis?”
“Yeah, I got a murder case I got called out for. The clients are actually two of Dean’s old friends.” At school, Sam had called Bobby with updates about his studies or the new crazy world he was traversing almost as often as he had called his brother; not that his calls to either man had been terribly frequent, but Bobby had listened and remembered things Sam told him, and in a lot of ways he’d filled in for the father that had severed all connection to Sam as soon as he’d stated his intention to leave for Stanford.
“Last I heard you were working out in New York.”
Sam smiled as he said, “Have you been keeping tabs on me, Bobby?”
Bobby chuckled. “Were you under the impression you were flying under the radar? Just ’cause you stop huntin’ don’t mean you’re not still a hunter, Sam. And I keep touch with the hunters I know.”
“Right.” Sam hadn’t thought about it too much before, but it occurred to him that after their dad died, Dean hadn’t been entirely alone, he’d had people who he talked to, who checked in with him and who maybe, sometimes, he talked about his family to. Obviously he did, or why would Bobby have called so soon after he’d bumped into his brother?
“So these clients o’ yours…”
“Yeah,” Sam said, redirecting his train of thought. “Aaron Conyers and Jesse Deacon. Do you know them?”
“A bit.”
“I’ve been trying to remember more about them, but it was a long time ago. They were really goods friends of Dean’s. Sometimes when dad was away and they were over, they’d hang with me, too, help me with my homework. Aaron taught me pretty much everything I know about chess. Then they headed off to summer camp. I was really pissed that dad thought I was still too young to go off on something like that.”
There was a pause, and then Bobby said, “Summer camp?”
“Yeah,” Sam confirmed. “I don’t remember much about it, just that the summer seemed to last forever without Dean around. Why?”
“Nothing.” There was a pause, and then Bobby said, “Y’know, Sam, you should stop by sometime, visit the old place. It’s been a while.”
It seemed an odd thing for Bobby to say and Sam felt a strange twisting ache in his gut. “Is something wrong?”
“What, something’s gotta be wrong for you to visit family?”
“It’s Winchester tradition?” Sam joked, somewhat half-heartedly.
“Yer brother manages just fine.”
The scolding tone was a reminder that Sam said ‘Winchester tradition’, and really meant his dad, and sometimes even himself. Bobby and Dean had gotten along from the first moment they’d met and Sam thought it was because Dean was more like Bobby than their dad. It was something Sam hadn’t entirely realized until he’d been away from it all for a while; that the hunt had never driven Dean the way it did their dad. “Yeah,” Sam said, and then again, stronger, “Yeah, I’ll stop by when this is over. It’ll be good.”
The drive was about two hours long and Sam was in such a rush to leave that it didn’t occur to him until a half hour on the road that he should have probably called ahead. He’d fallen asleep over his notes, his mind muddling thoughts of Dean and his conversation with Bobby together with the defense he was building and memories of 1994. When Sam woke up it was to the realization that there was one other person who might know Aaron and Jesse well enough to give Sam some more insight.
Driving through Blue Earth resurrected memories Sam had thought long-since gone. He could almost see a younger version of his brother running along the sidewalk shouting out for Sam to “Come on! Keep up!” Of all the places their dad had dragged them, Blue Earth had always felt the most like home. Maybe a little of that had to do with the fact that over the years they’d spent the most time there, but a bigger part of that, Sam was sure, was because Pastor Jim had given them roots. He’d drag them to church on the weekend and introduce them to his parishioners, some of who would invariably begin baking treats for them. Sam could remember the last time they’d been there all together where Dean had been an altar boy.
The tall, white boxy church that he pulled to a stop in front of hadn’t changed, even if the years had left it looking perhaps a little more worn. It was bright and stately, and Sam caught himself bounding up the cracked cement steps like he’d always done as a scrawny eleven-year-old. He pushed open the heavy wooden door and stepped into the dim candle-lit interior, breathing in the musty incense-thick air.
On the backs of his eyelids Sam watched as Dean, fourteen and lanky, like he hadn’t quite grown into himself yet, stood at the front of the church holding a cross and looking appropriately somber, flanked by Jesse and Aaron as Pastor Jim circled the coffin swinging an incense-burner.
“Sam?” the voice broke through the memory, and Sam jerked and turned, feeling off-kilter and struggling to catch his breath. “Is that you?”
Grinning, Sam stepped over to where the other man stood, found himself tugged into a firm hug. “Pastor Jim,” he greeted, surprised to find how much he towered over the man.
Jim’s hair was more white than dark, though the cut of it was just as Sam recalled, his smile more in his eyes than anywhere as he clapped Sam’s upper arms. “Has it really been that long?” Jim said. “You’re about as tall as our Green Giant.”
Sam laughed and allowed himself to be ushered down the stairs and into Jim’s office. Found himself caught up in another memory, of sitting curled in the corner on one of Jim’s armchairs that practically swallowed him up, reading and listening to the sounds of the choir filtering through the closed doors, feeling impatient for the service to be over so he and Dean could rush off and see the afternoon showing of Highlander III before their dad got back.
“A lot of memories,” Jim said, undoubtedly reading Sam’s look. He pressed a cup of tea into Sam’s hands and settled into his chair behind his cluttered desk. “How have you been?”
“I’ve been pretty good.” However truthful the statement was, Sam found the words constricting in his throat, felt himself wanting to unburden at least part of everything he had been grappling with for so long onto the man who had helped Sam make one of the biggest decisions he’d ever faced, and given him enough support to finally be able to face his father with the news that he wasn’t quite finished with schooling.
“I heard you’re a full-fledged lawyer.”
“For a few years now,” Sam agreed, his eyes following Jim’s glance, and he noticed one of the framed photographs sitting on one of Jim’s side shelves. “Where did you get that? That’s from my graduation.”
“It is indeed,” Jim said, smiling as he reached over and picked it up, eying it fondly before offering it to Sam. In the photograph Sam was in his cap and gown, smiling and accepting his diploma. Sam’s friends had been relieved to finally be finished with law school and had plans to sleep for about a month, or alternately, go out and party into the next week; Sam had barely waited a full three hours before he boarded a plane to New York. “Bobby mailed it to me. He keeps me updated on you boys, more or less.”
Sam glanced up from the picture and smiled before he shook his head. “I didn’t even know Bobby went to my graduation.”
Jim was quiet a moment before he said softly, “He didn’t.”
Sam glanced up and then down once more at the photograph. The image of him was smiling, and he remembered that he hadn’t turned, like so many of his peers had, to face the audience and wave his diploma in triumph; there hadn’t been anyone in the audience for him to wave to. Apparently, however, he’d been mistaken. He held out the framed picture and Jim took it back. “The last time I saw Dean was at the end of the summer, just before I started back to classes,” Sam said as he watched Jim return the picture to its place on the shelf. “He swore up and down that he wouldn’t be there.”
“He was there, Sam,” Jim said. “And he was damned proud, by the way Bobby tells it. Everyone was proud, you know, that you stuck it out, even after the summer you had. Your father, well, I know whenever he spoke about you he couldn’t have sounded any more pleased with what you were doing.”
The last time Sam had heard his father talk about Stanford, the word had been dripped with twisted disdain like it was the filthiest of swears. He’d caught sight of him, though, driving through town or passing through campus, like he still had to keep an eye on things. During that summer of his final year, John had managed to explain, in an awkward and stilted conversation, that his anger had been less about Sam’s choices as about the fact he’d simply been afraid for his son.
“What’s that one?” Sam said, gesturing to another picture that stood next to Sam’s graduation shot. He could make out bright blue stretching above a sea of red-orange.
Jim laughed. “That.” He took the picture down and his grin was bright as he passed it over. “I’m pretty sure your brother doesn’t know anyone else has a copy of that.” Dean had obviously taken the photograph himself, the angle of the shot somewhat awkward. He was sitting on the hood of the Impala in a T-shift, his eyes scrunched a little against the sunlight and he was grinning that bright, wide grin that always tied Sam’s stomach in giddy knots. Behind him stretched a vivid cornflower sky cut through with puffs of white clouds and a jagged, jutting mass of orange-red rock that Sam knew was the Grand Canyon.
It hurt a little in a way that surprised him, to realize that Dean’s life hadn’t somehow just paused while Sam had been away. That somehow his brother had found a balance between living and hunting that worked for him, and he’d done it without Sam, and somewhere in the middle of that, he’d gone to the Grand Canyon, which was a place Sam had always insisted he would go with Dean to see.
“Do you keep in touch with Dean?” Sam found himself asking, wanting to hear about his brother’s life in the past years, something he knew Dean was unlikely to ever share.
“I haven’t spoken to your brother in a long time,” Jim said, the regret clear in his tone even as he took-back the photo, smiled fondly back at Dean’s grinning face. “Not since you boys were last here.”
Sam shifted in his chair, felt uncomfortably eager now that the opportunity to ask what he had come to had presented itself. “I’ve been trying to remember more about that time. I mean, there was school, and Dean making friends with Jesse and Aaron and spending a lot of time at the church, but then he went off to that summer camp and after that, well, I can barely remember.”
“Summer camp?” Jim asked with a frown. “Is that what John told you?” Sam found himself unconsciously bracing himself in his chair, running through the conversation he had with his father that brought on months of Sam acting sullen and uncooperative when he wasn’t all-out yelling at his dad for treating him like a little kid. “Sam, your brother wasn’t in any camp. He and Aaron and Jesse and their friend Grady Mitchell were arrested. He was away because they were all sentenced to Faribault Home For Boys for six months”
“No,” Sam denied. “That doesn’t make sense. We would have gotten him out. Dad wouldn’t have just left him there.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. Your dad was hunting something big, and he thought it was best. I went and visited them all, as often as I could I would drive out there.”
Sam remembered the day Dean had returned from ‘camp’. Jim had dropped him off at the house they’d been renting, and Dean had looked tired and rumpled and Sam had thought somewhat bitterly that there must have been a big party to celebrate the last day of camp. Dean had opened his arms a little when Sam had offered only a subdued “hi” in greeting and said, “What, that’s it? Where’s the love?” and Sam had kicked at the dirt a little before he had shuffled over and thrown his arms around his brother, what had begun as a reluctant hug quickly turning into a clinging welcome-back and ‘I missed you’ embrace.
He remembered pestering his brother a lot, after that. Wanting to hear details, figuring that if their dad wouldn’t let him go to camp at least he could live vicariously through Dean’s experience, but Dean had kept putting him off. Sometimes he would tell exciting stories about hiking trips and games and things he’d learned, and Sam would lie there and listen until he fell asleep, and he would wake up hours later and ask for more. It had made Sam even more determined to go to summer camp, but John had never again let either of his boys go off. Not that Dean stuck around for much longer after that. Somewhere in the first month of the New Year Dean had insisted he was old enough to hunt on his own, and he’d taken off. Summer camp for Sam became the times their dad had let him meet up with Dean wherever he happened to be, which were some of Sam’s favorite childhood memories.
“I can’t believe they both lied to me like that.”
“I can understand that you feel hurt by it, but try to understand it from their point of view. Try to understand your brother’s side of it.”
“Had you met Edward Dowell before that night?” Sam asked before he had even taken his seat.
Jesse blinked at him like he was startled by the question. “No,” he said, drawing the word out like he thought Sam might have suddenly become crazy.
Sam turned to Aaron, “What about you? Had you ever met Edward Dowell?”
Aaron blinked startled eyes at Sam and then turned to Jesse, his expression echoing what Jesse’s drawn-out answer had said. “No,” he said, finally. “What’s going on?”
Sam dropped a file onto the table and sat down on his chair as he flipped it open. “It says right here that Edward Dowell worked as a guard at Faribault Home For Boys from 1992 until 1997, which is really interesting to me, because I have it on good authority that you were both detained for about sixth months at Faribault Home For Boys in 1994. And y’know what’s even more interesting? Edward Dowell was the designated leader of the four guards assigned to the second floor, unit C. Now, I’m gonna make a completely wild guess about what floor and what unit you were both assigned to...”
Silence stretched out, hung heavy in the room and Sam wanted to strike out at the men sitting opposite, wanted to force the answers out. It was strange, years of study and practice combined together until Sam had become used to wielding his words and his knowledge in the same way his father had once taught him to wield a blade. It was too much, though. His niggling doubts about the case and his knowledge about his brother’s secret were twisting him up.
“You shouldn’t be asking us, man,” Jesse said finally. “It’s not us you want to be talking to, anyway. This has nothing to do with the case.”
“It does if whatever happened then gave you motive to gun the man down fifteen years later.”
“We were minors,” Aaron said. “We were both still treated as minors, at that point. Those records are closed.”
“Well,” Sam said. “I want to know. I think I’m entitled.”
“Yeah,” Jesse muttered. “You’re real entitled.”
Aaron leaned forward over the table as he said, “Sam, trust me. Let this one go. There’s nothing we can tell you that’s going make you feel better about any of this, believe me. You’re better off not knowing.”
Sam dropped his head into his hands, tried to hear Aaron over the roaring in his ears, the horrible possibilities rearing up inside his head and pieces were slotting together, things slipping into clear and horrible focus. “Did he,” Sam said, and then stopped, had to wait a moment before he could try again. “Did he touch you?”
“Sam,” Jesse pleaded, then dropped his eyes as Sam turned an angry, desperate gaze on him. “Yes.”
Sam reminded himself to breathe, concentrated on letting out a slow breath before he asked, “Did he hurt you?”
“Yes,” Jesse said, his head bowed. Beside him, Aaron had turned, was facing away from everyone like he simply refused to be a part of the conversation.
Sam thought about stopping, about leaving it there. Jesse was right, knowing what happened then didn’t have bearing on the defense he was building; in fact, it could hurt his argument. The damage was already done, though, and he couldn’t walk out without knowing. “Jesse … what about my brother?”
Jesse’s exhaled breath was audible, and he finally looked up and met Sam’s eyes. “Yeah, Sammy,” he said. “Dean, too.”
He tried to tell himself to calm down, that racing in, given his state of mind, was probably about the worst thing that he could do. In the end, though, Sam jerked his car to a stop in the parking lot of Snelling Motor Inn and was up the stairs and knocking on his brother’s door before he had calmed enough to process he had even arrived. “Sam, what the hell?” Dean said, when Sam pushed into the room. “Come on in, make yourself at home.”
“Just don’t, Dean,” Sam snapped as he tossed his briefcase onto his brother’s bed.
“Jesus, Sammy,” Dean said, then frowned, his eyes scanning over Sam where he stood as he asked, “Are you hurt?”
“I just,” Sam stopped, shook his head and paced a few steps. “What…” which wasn’t the right place to start either, so he stopped again, ran frustrated fingers through his hair and tried to get his thoughts into some semblance of order.
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay, Sammy. D’you want a beer?” Sam nodded, watched as Dean fished two beers from a tiny box fridge that stood in the open closet.
He took a deep pull of the cold beverage, then met his brother’s gaze and asked, “Did you know Edward Dowell?”
Dean didn’t flinch, didn’t break eye contact. “No.”
“You can tell me, Dean. Did you know Edward Dowell?”
“No,” Dean said again.
“Stop lying to me!” Sam’s fist clenched around the beer in his hand and he thought for a moment about throwing it, hearing that satisfying shattering sound and watching the foamy contents spill onto the rug. “Just tell me,” he said, felt like he was pleading for it, felt like it was a matter of life and death even if that moment had long since passed. “Tell me.”
He got his answer when Dean turned away, his shoulders hunching forward. Sam pulled the file from his briefcase and dropped it, open, onto the bed. “What about Albert Wilson?” Surprised green eyes jerked up to Sam’s face, and Sam nodded. He tried to remind himself to breathe but it felt like he had been stepping up on a panic attack since he’d left Jim’s church. There were parts of the day that he couldn’t remember, wasn’t even sure how he’d made it from the prison to Dean’s room.
He tossed another open folder on the bed, a plain young face with a close-cut buzz of brown hair and wide brown eyes looking up from a photograph. “Bryan Sullivan?” Dean turned and started walking to the desk, barely glanced at the old photograph. “What about Eric Torres, Dean,” he added another open file to the pile. “Did you know him too?”
“You’ve already figured it out,” Dean said. “Why bother asking? Sure. I spent about six months in a youth detention facility, and those were the guards for my unit. Whoopdee friggin’ doo.”
“One more question.” Sam felt powerful and ruthless, drew out one more file and with a vicious twist in his gut he dropped it right onto the desk in front of Dean. “How many of those men were in on what Dowell had going on the side?” Dean stared down at the image of Dowell, sharp features and cool eyes gazing back from the image the file held. The color bled out of Dean’s face so quickly Sam actually wondered if his brother would pass out. “Dean?” he asked, his tone softer, regret edging into his core and he wished he could take it back, go back in time and never figure the truth, or further back still and stop it all.
“Shut up,” Dean said, his voice broken and rough. “Don’t ask me, Sam.”
Sam dropped down onto the rug, tried to look up into his brother’s face. “Was it all of them?” Dean’s eyes scrunched closed and he jerked violently away when Sam braced a careful hand on his knee. “Dean?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because you told me bedtime stories, Dean, about swimming in the lake and pranks you pulled with your friends, and campfires, and I wanted so much to have been there with you. But that was all bullshit, wasn’t it? Dad told me you were at a fucking summer camp, when you were at that place with … with them!”
“Well, he would’ve, wouldn’t he?” Dean said, a bitter twinge in his tone that Sam had never, not once in his entire life, heard from Dean when his brother was talking about their dad.
Sam squeezed his brother’s knee carefully as he asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He’s the reason why I ended up there.”
|<< END PART TWO >>|
MASTERPOST
By: revenant_scribe
Rating: R
Word Count: 7,543
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Part of the Icarus 'Verse
Moral wounds have this peculiarity - they may be hidden,
but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed
when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart.
The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
Sam woke with his nose pressed into a rough cotton pillowcase that smelled of a combination bleach and detergent unique to hotels; the scent was neither particularly fresh nor clean. He was sprawled on his stomach, one arm stretched across the mattress like he had been reaching for something in his sleep.
Rubbing his eyes, Sam checked first the clock and then the rest of the suite. There was nothing to indicate that Dean was or ever had been in the room, though the crease in the pillow where he had slept was still warm. It wasn’t a surprise, but that didn’t stop Sam from feeling disappointed and he dropped back on the bed rubbing a hand through his hair, sparing a moment to wallow in the muddled twist of emotions that Dean never failed to incite.
Memories flashed through his head as he lay there: Dean’s smiling face when they were kids, running out to meet the first snowfall and pulling Sam along for the ride; Dean who heated up Spaghetti-O’s and told silly stories to distract him from his nightmares and who never let him face a fight alone. Dean who supported and defended him, even when it came to their dad, and who would sacrifice just about anything for him and had never turned his back on Sam … except once.
With a frustrated whoosh of breath, Sam pushed himself up and out of bed, broke away from the circling thoughts so he could concentrate on what he needed to get done. The most important thing, he decided, was to get some food for the kitchenette so he was not spending a small fortune on restaurants and room service.
Bobby always answered the phone like he already knew it was Dean. At first, Dean thought Bobby called everyone 'boy' in that gruff, affectionate tone that made him think of home and belonging. Then he just figured the man was psychic. Now, he supposed that Bobby just knew him too well - like maybe even when Dean thought he was being unpredictable, Bobby had him all figured out. At first, the idea of someone other than Sam knowing him so well had been daunting, but Bobby had come through for Dean enough times that he'd just come to accept it.
“Hey, Bobby,” Dean answered the familiar greeting.
“Geezes, Dean,” Bobby said. “You sound like someone just ran over yer dog.”
“Naw, things are okay, just tired s’all. And,” Dean paused and for a moment, considered leaving it there; the idea was so tempting he had to struggle to continue, “I’m in Minnesota.”
“You visiting Jim?”
Dean smiled to himself, appreciating everything Bobby was and wasn’t saying with that question. “I’m in Minneapolis right now, visiting some old friends. Aaron and Jesse…”
“Been a while since I heard about them. Those boys in trouble?”
“You know how it is.”
“Yeah, I do,” Bobby said, exasperation melding with resignation to make that tone of voice that Dean had only ever heard from that man. “There something yer not telling me, boy?”
“I dunno,” Dean rubbed his brow. “Yeah, probably.” Then, because he actually didn’t feel like getting into all that, he said, “Sam’s here.”
Bobby guffawed. “About time you boys talked, don’tcha think?” The silence stretched a little, and when Bobby spoke again it was with fondness in his tone, “You take care of yourself.” As if Dean couldn’t be trusted to do that without being explicitly told. Dean huffed; maybe the man had a point. “And call every once in a while. Let me know if I need to round up the cavalry.”
Dean smiled a little wider and not for the first time felt a burst of gratitude and affection that he would never voice for the man, not that he ever had to. “Will do, Bobby,” he said, and then hung up the phone.
Jesse Deacon had been bouncing in and out of jail since he had been a teenager. He was a suspect in four unsolved homicides and his record was a laundry list of violent, erratic crime that ran the gamut from robbery to murder. Though there was a significant number of bar fights and back-alley assaults, Sam noted with vague interest that none of the violent incidents had included women. He and Aaron were two of the founding members of the Mad Dog Gang, which Sam discovered was a fairly notable gang in Minneapolis, and also a significantly destructive one, which was rumored to have connections with organized crime.
Whereas Deacon’s record painted the picture of a hotheaded violent and unpredictable man, the information Sam had on Aaron Conyers was the opposite. Aaron had committed his first murder at the age of seventeen; in exchange he had received fifty dollars. He hadn’t been in jail nearly as frequently as Jesse, but Sam suspected that owed to the few years operating as a strong-arm for organized crime. He did drugs and had a wife who lived somewhere in Sioux City, Iowa. There was no indication that either man had ever met their victim, Edward Dowell, before that night in January.
For his part, Edward Dowell had been a hard working citizen who had earned his living as a guard in a couple of jails before he’d moved to Minneapolis and become the driver of a Brink’s truck. He had a two-bedroom apartment in St. Paul, with a single bed in one room and an office in the other. None of the jails Dowell had worked at over the years matched any visited by Conyers or Deacon, and neither man had been imprisoned at the same time anyway.
Given the information that Sam had splayed across his sofa and coffee table, it seemed fairly clear that the motive for the murder was gang violence, random and impersonal. The more he looked at his notes, however, the less Sam considered that an acceptable explanation. Random public violence fit Jesse’s M.O. but Aaron’s crimes were all premeditated and meticulous, and if his diminishing arrests were anything to go by, he’d been getting better at planning. Blowing someone away in the middle of a pub was certainly not something that fit his pattern.
In addition, there was the report on the bod: seven shots were fired, seven bullets had entered the victim, and each shot had been delivered at close range. The wounds were consistent with witness accounts that the two men stood across the table and raised their weapons. Dowell had been hit once in the groin, once at the joint in each arm, twice in the chest, once in the throat and the finishing shot went straight through the middle of his head. Outside of being sadistic, the shots seemed fairly targeted to Sam. If the intent was to kill publicly, why fire the first shot under the table? Jesse, but especially Aaron, had proved themselves to be expert marksmen, which meant they hit what they aimed at, and they’d been standing close to the victim, which meant there was little to no reason to miss their target. To Sam, it meant that there was some significance in the location of the shots, because concentrated weapons fired to the chest and head would have been more of a mess, and therefore more of a demonstration. The more Sam looked at the crime, the more it seemed like something personal, even if none of the information he had supported that notion.
Snelling Motel was a two-story horseshoe-shaped seafoam-green building that offered no covered parking. Sam pulled into a spot beside the Impala and noted with fond amusement that the sleek black car had been thoroughly whisked of snow; the one pristine thing in the entire lot.
Dean’s room was in the corner on the second floor, and Sam waited for a moment after he knocked, knowing that the absolute silence emanating from inside was not necessarily an indication of his brother’s absence.
“Sam,” Dean said, his voice cautious and his body blocking most of the gap he’d opened into his room. Sam raised an eyebrow and tilted his head; after a moment Dean relented, stepping aside and letting his brother through.
The carpet in Dean’s room was green and beige and packed down so thoroughly that it was barely carpet at all. There was a plain wood chest of drawers on top of which sat a black, boxy television set and a little plastic sign that boasted free HBO. A tiny square table of the same pale wood with a matching chair was in the corner, where a telephone and a pad of legal paper covered in Dean’s writing sat, obscuring most of its surface. The desk chair was mostly blocked-in by the heater, which Dean had set to funnel warm air into the room, likely to counteract the draft from the window above. A nightstand was wedged into the opposite corner, with a very tall and precarious lamp, as well as one of Dean’s favorite guns and his cellphone. Mostly, though, Sam was caught up by the fact that the bedspread and matching curtains featured big squares of pink and green and beige, with great big flowers. It made Dean’s worn, khaki duffel bag sitting on the folding luggage rack beside the bed look supremely out of place. Dean himself, for that matter, hardly seemed to belong in the cramped space, with its clean white walls and flower border. “Jesus, Dean, did you ask for the Rose Suite?”
“Shut up,” Dean muttered, dropping the knife he had brought with him to the door onto the surface of his king-sized bed. “Seriously, Dude, pick a spot. There’s not enough room for your Yeti-size self to be standing around blocking up the place.” Sam moved to take the chair by the tiny desk and idly noted the lines of salt running across the window ledge and by the door.
Dean settled onto the bed, his back propped-up by the pillows he’d stacked against the headboard, his jean-clad legs stretched out in front of him. “So?” he prompted, “to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”
Sitting in his brother’s motel room, Sam started to rethink his reasons for tracking the man down. The twisted net of conflicting emotions with which he had awoken were surging back and he couldn’t pick where to start, or what he wanted to say. In the end, “I wasn’t sure you’d still be here,” came tumbling out before he had thought it through and Dean’s gaze skittered away. Satisfaction that his comment had struck home warred with a vague sense of guilt, but Sam thought that it was only fair. After all, he had woken to an empty bed, and Dean had said his only reason for being in Minneapolis in the first place had been to make certain his friends were okay. There wasn’t much Dean could do about them being in jail.
Dean snatched up an open bottle of beer from where it had been resting on the floor beside the bed and Sam rubbed his brow. “Look,” he said. “That’s not why I came.” Cool green eyes focused on him and Sam pushed his hair back and tried to come up with a solid purpose for his presence. “How much do you know about what happened?” Dean shrugged. “I mean, have Aaron or Jesse said anything?”
Dean’s gaze narrowed slightly. “What’s up?”
“I dunno, maybe I’m just over-thinking things.” It didn’t feel as if he were; Sam had instincts about his cases the same way his dad had instincts about hunting. “It’s one of the most important things to remember,” John had said, “Always trust your gut. Sometimes it makes all the difference.” Sam ran his hand through his hair again, as if he could physically push away the thought of his dad. “Did either of them know the victim at all?”
Dean blinked at him. “I dunno,” he said. “Who was the victim?”
“Some guy named Edward Dowell. He drove a Brinks truck, lived alone; didn’t even own a pet or anything. As far as I can tell, he was just an ordinary, boring guy with a library card and a handful of friends who all say he was a good guy who mostly kept to himself,” Sam leaned back in the chair and frowned, mind still wrapped in the curious conflicting facts. “Neither one of them mentioned him?”
“Why would they?”
Sam sighed. “It just, the murder was tagged as gang violence because there didn’t seem to be any motive for it. But the way he was killed, the location of the bullets, it seems personal to me. I mean, it was a long shot, but I was just wondering if maybe you knew something.”
“Sorry,” Dean said, taking another pull of beer. “I can’t help you.”
Sam nodded his head. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you about it anyway.”
“Well then, this never happened.”
The silence stretched. Sam took in the casual stretch of his brother, feet bare and legs crossed, he wore faded jeans and a shirt that looked as if it might have been a bold navy color a million washes ago. There was a slight fray at the neckline of the shirt and Sam could see the familiar dark cord of the necklace his brother always wore. There was so much familiar about the man who sat, nursing his beer and casually sprawled across the bed, that Sam wanted to ignore all the differences, but try as he might, he couldn’t push it all away, not the new scars, or the stiff wariness that Sam could see in the lines of his brother’s muscles even if he knew Dean was trying to hide them. He couldn’t ignore how he himself had changed.
“Hey, Dean...” Sam glanced at his brother and then quickly away. He remembered the feel of the other man’s skin, of his hot breath and how their mouths closed together, how everything stopped and started again in that moment. “What happened last night?”
Dean’s smirk was entirely predictable, and Sam was hearing his brother’s reply before Dean had even made it, “If I have to tell you, Sammy, then clearly I wasn’t doing it right.”
“I’m serious, Dean.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want to know why you came over the other night? Why? If you were only going to leave, why bother starting it up again?”
Dean stood up from the bed, and Sam’s knowledge of his brother filled in that Dean wanted to pace, but he was stuck between the wall and the bed, with Sam’s chair blocking his way out. Instead, Dean turned, fiddled with his cellphone on the nightstand as he said, “Clearly it was a mistake,” and then Sam was met with a dull, cold stare as Dean added, “It won’t happen again.”
Sam was up off his chair in an instant. “That’s not what I meant.” He grabbed his brother’s shoulders and push-pulled him until Dean was forced to meet his gaze. “That’s not what I meant,” he repeated, his voice softer. “I’m just… I’m just trying to get my bearings here.”
“I’m not sure that changes my answer.” Sam watched Dean rub a hand over his face and tried to stop himself from reaching for him. “Nothing’s changed. You’ve got your life, Sam. I’m just passing through it.”
He brushed passed but Sam grabbed his arm, tried to ignore the almost invisible flinch his brother gave. “Cut the bullshit, Dean,” Sam said. “You’re not just passing through my life. I wanted you to be a part of it, but if I recall correctly, you were the one who threw that back in my face.”
“Whatever.”
“You always do this,” Sam huffed. “You pull me in and then push me away, like it’s nothing. Like I’m just some toy on a string you take up and put down whenever you want. Like what we have doesn’t mean anything!”
“Yeah, it’s a big gay incestuous romance,” Dean scoffed. “Which is why, the second the opportunity presented itself, you took up with a pretty little blonde.”
“Jess and I broke up.”
“Well good for you, that doesn’t change the fact that you took up with her to begin with.” Dean shook his head, raised a hand a little like he wanted to put a stop to where things were headed. “You know, it’s fine. I don’t care, really. I just want you to be honest with yourself. Do you even know what you want?”
“I’ve already told you what I want.”
Dean’s mouth twisted in a bitter little smile. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, I’m telling you. It was a mistake. And it won’t happen again.”
Sam remembered that day four years ago; the last time they had seen each other, the last time they had fought and Dean had walked away and Sam had been furious enough to trash his entire apartment. He could hear echoes of his brother’s words that day in everything he said, and Sam knew his brother was pushing, just like he always did. Pushed and pushed until Sam inevitably snapped and surrendered, backed off and let him go. “You’re wrong.” But he gave Dean just what he wanted, and walked out the door.
“Did you bring me something?” Jesse asked, leaning forward and peering at Dean like a little kid when Dean entered the private visiting room and began rifling through his briefcase. Despite his apparent good humor, Dean noted that both of his friends looked tense and worn.
“I sure did,” he said. “I smuggled in two of the most delicious burgers money can buy. Unfortunately, I got here during the guards’ shift-change and ate them while I was waiting to be let in.” He settled into his chair and set a black, leather-bound journal down onto the tabletop, a small cloth-covered packet sticking out from between the pages of the book.
“You asshole,” Jesse exclaimed, flopping back in his chair, the chains that kept him semi-confined rattling as he crossed his arms and pouted. “I’m sick of macaroni,” he muttered, then glanced curiously back at his friend. “Where did you get them from?”
“The burgers?” Dean asked. “Some place called Matt’s. They actually melt cheese into the patty. Ingenious.”
“You brought me a Juicy Lucy and then you ate it?” Dean blinked wide innocent eyes at his blond friend. “Mother fucker! I love those things!”
“Man,” Dean said, leaning forward to a put an understanding hand on his friend’s forearm, “I’m in total agreement. They were delicious.” Jesse actually snarled and Dean pulled his arm back and snickered.
“I hate you.”
Aaron had watched the exchange with a fond twist to his lips, but he had a sharp gaze and when Jesse sat back, he asked, “What are you really here for?”
Dean’s eyebrows jerked up a little, teasing in his eyes, “Geez, you know how to make someone feel real appreciated, Conyers.”
“Sam was by earlier,” Aaron continued, like Dean hadn’t spoken at all.
“Yeah, well Sammy’s figuring out the plot holes in the little story you told him.”
“Naw, man,” Jesse said. “We just gave him the facts. If he’s finding plot holes it’s the prosecution’s fault, not ours.”
Dean shrugged, “Either way.”
“So what’s up?” Aaron asked.
“Just thought I’d stop by,” Dean said. “Divert you from your miserable existence that is life without me.” He tipped back in his chair, lazed a little with a bored, distracted expression before he said, “Read any good books lately?”
Aaron laughed quietly, a low, soft sound filled with affection. “No, Dean,” he said, slightly exasperated. “I’ve been a bit distracted. Why, have you?”
“Oh, you know,” Dean said. “I’ve been reading a bit of Dumas.”
“What, still?” Jesse said. “You haven’t finished it yet? Well, I’m not surprised, that book is ridiculously long.”
Aaron’s eyes narrowed a little as he focused on his friend’s feigned casualness. “I read a bit of that every day,” Aaron said. “When I can.”
“Me too.” Dean righted his chair and rested his forearms on the tabletop, the fingers of his left hand tapping on the notebook he had set out, the little cloth packet tucked inside it like a placeholder. “My favorite character is the Abbot. He’s clever, y’know? Wise.”
“He was crazy,” Jesse corrected with a snort.
Aaron’s eyes dropped to the notebook that Dean was resting his hand over; he looked at the bump the package was making in the pages and then raised his brown eyes back to meet Dean. “We’ve really pulled everything apart for you, haven’t we?”
“Yeah, whatever,” Dean dismissed. “Look, I already said, if there’s anything I can do, I’m gonna do it.”
“It’s already done,” Aaron said, shrugging one shoulder. “And you know what? Whatever the court decides, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me, do you understand?”
Dean dropped his elbows on the table, ran his hands over his face and back through his hair before he pulled the notebook from the table and stuffed it back into his briefcase. “It’s not fair,” he muttered, which prompted Jesse to laugh.
“Let’s not even go near that completely ridiculous statement.”
Dean rolled his eyes and then looked away to say, “If you change your mind...” and let the offer hang there.
“There’s more that you can do,” Aaron said, his hand gripped the edge of the table and slowly, he dropped his pinky down out of view, leaving three fingers visible to Dean on the table top. “You keep us together,” he continued, and then raised his eyebrows a little and added, “And you give us direction.”
“Something to consider,” Jesse said, his tongue in his cheek. “And we’ll consider it too, what you said. But I dunno if I’m ready to blow off the legal proceedings. I have this weird confidence in our attorney for some reason.” Which had Dean rolling his eyes all over again, but he managed a smile, however small, and he nodded.
“Bobby?” Sam said, as if he needed to confirm what the caller-ID had told him.
“Sam,” Bobby greeted, like they talked on the phone all the time. “How’re you doin’ kid?”
“I’m okay.” Sam set aside the notes he’d been making about the case and sat up in his chair. “What’s up?”
“I spoke to Dean. He said he bumped into you in Minneapolis?”
“Yeah, I got a murder case I got called out for. The clients are actually two of Dean’s old friends.” At school, Sam had called Bobby with updates about his studies or the new crazy world he was traversing almost as often as he had called his brother; not that his calls to either man had been terribly frequent, but Bobby had listened and remembered things Sam told him, and in a lot of ways he’d filled in for the father that had severed all connection to Sam as soon as he’d stated his intention to leave for Stanford.
“Last I heard you were working out in New York.”
Sam smiled as he said, “Have you been keeping tabs on me, Bobby?”
Bobby chuckled. “Were you under the impression you were flying under the radar? Just ’cause you stop huntin’ don’t mean you’re not still a hunter, Sam. And I keep touch with the hunters I know.”
“Right.” Sam hadn’t thought about it too much before, but it occurred to him that after their dad died, Dean hadn’t been entirely alone, he’d had people who he talked to, who checked in with him and who maybe, sometimes, he talked about his family to. Obviously he did, or why would Bobby have called so soon after he’d bumped into his brother?
“So these clients o’ yours…”
“Yeah,” Sam said, redirecting his train of thought. “Aaron Conyers and Jesse Deacon. Do you know them?”
“A bit.”
“I’ve been trying to remember more about them, but it was a long time ago. They were really goods friends of Dean’s. Sometimes when dad was away and they were over, they’d hang with me, too, help me with my homework. Aaron taught me pretty much everything I know about chess. Then they headed off to summer camp. I was really pissed that dad thought I was still too young to go off on something like that.”
There was a pause, and then Bobby said, “Summer camp?”
“Yeah,” Sam confirmed. “I don’t remember much about it, just that the summer seemed to last forever without Dean around. Why?”
“Nothing.” There was a pause, and then Bobby said, “Y’know, Sam, you should stop by sometime, visit the old place. It’s been a while.”
It seemed an odd thing for Bobby to say and Sam felt a strange twisting ache in his gut. “Is something wrong?”
“What, something’s gotta be wrong for you to visit family?”
“It’s Winchester tradition?” Sam joked, somewhat half-heartedly.
“Yer brother manages just fine.”
The scolding tone was a reminder that Sam said ‘Winchester tradition’, and really meant his dad, and sometimes even himself. Bobby and Dean had gotten along from the first moment they’d met and Sam thought it was because Dean was more like Bobby than their dad. It was something Sam hadn’t entirely realized until he’d been away from it all for a while; that the hunt had never driven Dean the way it did their dad. “Yeah,” Sam said, and then again, stronger, “Yeah, I’ll stop by when this is over. It’ll be good.”
The drive was about two hours long and Sam was in such a rush to leave that it didn’t occur to him until a half hour on the road that he should have probably called ahead. He’d fallen asleep over his notes, his mind muddling thoughts of Dean and his conversation with Bobby together with the defense he was building and memories of 1994. When Sam woke up it was to the realization that there was one other person who might know Aaron and Jesse well enough to give Sam some more insight.
Driving through Blue Earth resurrected memories Sam had thought long-since gone. He could almost see a younger version of his brother running along the sidewalk shouting out for Sam to “Come on! Keep up!” Of all the places their dad had dragged them, Blue Earth had always felt the most like home. Maybe a little of that had to do with the fact that over the years they’d spent the most time there, but a bigger part of that, Sam was sure, was because Pastor Jim had given them roots. He’d drag them to church on the weekend and introduce them to his parishioners, some of who would invariably begin baking treats for them. Sam could remember the last time they’d been there all together where Dean had been an altar boy.
The tall, white boxy church that he pulled to a stop in front of hadn’t changed, even if the years had left it looking perhaps a little more worn. It was bright and stately, and Sam caught himself bounding up the cracked cement steps like he’d always done as a scrawny eleven-year-old. He pushed open the heavy wooden door and stepped into the dim candle-lit interior, breathing in the musty incense-thick air.
On the backs of his eyelids Sam watched as Dean, fourteen and lanky, like he hadn’t quite grown into himself yet, stood at the front of the church holding a cross and looking appropriately somber, flanked by Jesse and Aaron as Pastor Jim circled the coffin swinging an incense-burner.
“Sam?” the voice broke through the memory, and Sam jerked and turned, feeling off-kilter and struggling to catch his breath. “Is that you?”
Grinning, Sam stepped over to where the other man stood, found himself tugged into a firm hug. “Pastor Jim,” he greeted, surprised to find how much he towered over the man.
Jim’s hair was more white than dark, though the cut of it was just as Sam recalled, his smile more in his eyes than anywhere as he clapped Sam’s upper arms. “Has it really been that long?” Jim said. “You’re about as tall as our Green Giant.”
Sam laughed and allowed himself to be ushered down the stairs and into Jim’s office. Found himself caught up in another memory, of sitting curled in the corner on one of Jim’s armchairs that practically swallowed him up, reading and listening to the sounds of the choir filtering through the closed doors, feeling impatient for the service to be over so he and Dean could rush off and see the afternoon showing of Highlander III before their dad got back.
“A lot of memories,” Jim said, undoubtedly reading Sam’s look. He pressed a cup of tea into Sam’s hands and settled into his chair behind his cluttered desk. “How have you been?”
“I’ve been pretty good.” However truthful the statement was, Sam found the words constricting in his throat, felt himself wanting to unburden at least part of everything he had been grappling with for so long onto the man who had helped Sam make one of the biggest decisions he’d ever faced, and given him enough support to finally be able to face his father with the news that he wasn’t quite finished with schooling.
“I heard you’re a full-fledged lawyer.”
“For a few years now,” Sam agreed, his eyes following Jim’s glance, and he noticed one of the framed photographs sitting on one of Jim’s side shelves. “Where did you get that? That’s from my graduation.”
“It is indeed,” Jim said, smiling as he reached over and picked it up, eying it fondly before offering it to Sam. In the photograph Sam was in his cap and gown, smiling and accepting his diploma. Sam’s friends had been relieved to finally be finished with law school and had plans to sleep for about a month, or alternately, go out and party into the next week; Sam had barely waited a full three hours before he boarded a plane to New York. “Bobby mailed it to me. He keeps me updated on you boys, more or less.”
Sam glanced up from the picture and smiled before he shook his head. “I didn’t even know Bobby went to my graduation.”
Jim was quiet a moment before he said softly, “He didn’t.”
Sam glanced up and then down once more at the photograph. The image of him was smiling, and he remembered that he hadn’t turned, like so many of his peers had, to face the audience and wave his diploma in triumph; there hadn’t been anyone in the audience for him to wave to. Apparently, however, he’d been mistaken. He held out the framed picture and Jim took it back. “The last time I saw Dean was at the end of the summer, just before I started back to classes,” Sam said as he watched Jim return the picture to its place on the shelf. “He swore up and down that he wouldn’t be there.”
“He was there, Sam,” Jim said. “And he was damned proud, by the way Bobby tells it. Everyone was proud, you know, that you stuck it out, even after the summer you had. Your father, well, I know whenever he spoke about you he couldn’t have sounded any more pleased with what you were doing.”
The last time Sam had heard his father talk about Stanford, the word had been dripped with twisted disdain like it was the filthiest of swears. He’d caught sight of him, though, driving through town or passing through campus, like he still had to keep an eye on things. During that summer of his final year, John had managed to explain, in an awkward and stilted conversation, that his anger had been less about Sam’s choices as about the fact he’d simply been afraid for his son.
“What’s that one?” Sam said, gesturing to another picture that stood next to Sam’s graduation shot. He could make out bright blue stretching above a sea of red-orange.
Jim laughed. “That.” He took the picture down and his grin was bright as he passed it over. “I’m pretty sure your brother doesn’t know anyone else has a copy of that.” Dean had obviously taken the photograph himself, the angle of the shot somewhat awkward. He was sitting on the hood of the Impala in a T-shift, his eyes scrunched a little against the sunlight and he was grinning that bright, wide grin that always tied Sam’s stomach in giddy knots. Behind him stretched a vivid cornflower sky cut through with puffs of white clouds and a jagged, jutting mass of orange-red rock that Sam knew was the Grand Canyon.
It hurt a little in a way that surprised him, to realize that Dean’s life hadn’t somehow just paused while Sam had been away. That somehow his brother had found a balance between living and hunting that worked for him, and he’d done it without Sam, and somewhere in the middle of that, he’d gone to the Grand Canyon, which was a place Sam had always insisted he would go with Dean to see.
“Do you keep in touch with Dean?” Sam found himself asking, wanting to hear about his brother’s life in the past years, something he knew Dean was unlikely to ever share.
“I haven’t spoken to your brother in a long time,” Jim said, the regret clear in his tone even as he took-back the photo, smiled fondly back at Dean’s grinning face. “Not since you boys were last here.”
Sam shifted in his chair, felt uncomfortably eager now that the opportunity to ask what he had come to had presented itself. “I’ve been trying to remember more about that time. I mean, there was school, and Dean making friends with Jesse and Aaron and spending a lot of time at the church, but then he went off to that summer camp and after that, well, I can barely remember.”
“Summer camp?” Jim asked with a frown. “Is that what John told you?” Sam found himself unconsciously bracing himself in his chair, running through the conversation he had with his father that brought on months of Sam acting sullen and uncooperative when he wasn’t all-out yelling at his dad for treating him like a little kid. “Sam, your brother wasn’t in any camp. He and Aaron and Jesse and their friend Grady Mitchell were arrested. He was away because they were all sentenced to Faribault Home For Boys for six months”
“No,” Sam denied. “That doesn’t make sense. We would have gotten him out. Dad wouldn’t have just left him there.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. Your dad was hunting something big, and he thought it was best. I went and visited them all, as often as I could I would drive out there.”
Sam remembered the day Dean had returned from ‘camp’. Jim had dropped him off at the house they’d been renting, and Dean had looked tired and rumpled and Sam had thought somewhat bitterly that there must have been a big party to celebrate the last day of camp. Dean had opened his arms a little when Sam had offered only a subdued “hi” in greeting and said, “What, that’s it? Where’s the love?” and Sam had kicked at the dirt a little before he had shuffled over and thrown his arms around his brother, what had begun as a reluctant hug quickly turning into a clinging welcome-back and ‘I missed you’ embrace.
He remembered pestering his brother a lot, after that. Wanting to hear details, figuring that if their dad wouldn’t let him go to camp at least he could live vicariously through Dean’s experience, but Dean had kept putting him off. Sometimes he would tell exciting stories about hiking trips and games and things he’d learned, and Sam would lie there and listen until he fell asleep, and he would wake up hours later and ask for more. It had made Sam even more determined to go to summer camp, but John had never again let either of his boys go off. Not that Dean stuck around for much longer after that. Somewhere in the first month of the New Year Dean had insisted he was old enough to hunt on his own, and he’d taken off. Summer camp for Sam became the times their dad had let him meet up with Dean wherever he happened to be, which were some of Sam’s favorite childhood memories.
“I can’t believe they both lied to me like that.”
“I can understand that you feel hurt by it, but try to understand it from their point of view. Try to understand your brother’s side of it.”
“Had you met Edward Dowell before that night?” Sam asked before he had even taken his seat.
Jesse blinked at him like he was startled by the question. “No,” he said, drawing the word out like he thought Sam might have suddenly become crazy.
Sam turned to Aaron, “What about you? Had you ever met Edward Dowell?”
Aaron blinked startled eyes at Sam and then turned to Jesse, his expression echoing what Jesse’s drawn-out answer had said. “No,” he said, finally. “What’s going on?”
Sam dropped a file onto the table and sat down on his chair as he flipped it open. “It says right here that Edward Dowell worked as a guard at Faribault Home For Boys from 1992 until 1997, which is really interesting to me, because I have it on good authority that you were both detained for about sixth months at Faribault Home For Boys in 1994. And y’know what’s even more interesting? Edward Dowell was the designated leader of the four guards assigned to the second floor, unit C. Now, I’m gonna make a completely wild guess about what floor and what unit you were both assigned to...”
Silence stretched out, hung heavy in the room and Sam wanted to strike out at the men sitting opposite, wanted to force the answers out. It was strange, years of study and practice combined together until Sam had become used to wielding his words and his knowledge in the same way his father had once taught him to wield a blade. It was too much, though. His niggling doubts about the case and his knowledge about his brother’s secret were twisting him up.
“You shouldn’t be asking us, man,” Jesse said finally. “It’s not us you want to be talking to, anyway. This has nothing to do with the case.”
“It does if whatever happened then gave you motive to gun the man down fifteen years later.”
“We were minors,” Aaron said. “We were both still treated as minors, at that point. Those records are closed.”
“Well,” Sam said. “I want to know. I think I’m entitled.”
“Yeah,” Jesse muttered. “You’re real entitled.”
Aaron leaned forward over the table as he said, “Sam, trust me. Let this one go. There’s nothing we can tell you that’s going make you feel better about any of this, believe me. You’re better off not knowing.”
Sam dropped his head into his hands, tried to hear Aaron over the roaring in his ears, the horrible possibilities rearing up inside his head and pieces were slotting together, things slipping into clear and horrible focus. “Did he,” Sam said, and then stopped, had to wait a moment before he could try again. “Did he touch you?”
“Sam,” Jesse pleaded, then dropped his eyes as Sam turned an angry, desperate gaze on him. “Yes.”
Sam reminded himself to breathe, concentrated on letting out a slow breath before he asked, “Did he hurt you?”
“Yes,” Jesse said, his head bowed. Beside him, Aaron had turned, was facing away from everyone like he simply refused to be a part of the conversation.
Sam thought about stopping, about leaving it there. Jesse was right, knowing what happened then didn’t have bearing on the defense he was building; in fact, it could hurt his argument. The damage was already done, though, and he couldn’t walk out without knowing. “Jesse … what about my brother?”
Jesse’s exhaled breath was audible, and he finally looked up and met Sam’s eyes. “Yeah, Sammy,” he said. “Dean, too.”
He tried to tell himself to calm down, that racing in, given his state of mind, was probably about the worst thing that he could do. In the end, though, Sam jerked his car to a stop in the parking lot of Snelling Motor Inn and was up the stairs and knocking on his brother’s door before he had calmed enough to process he had even arrived. “Sam, what the hell?” Dean said, when Sam pushed into the room. “Come on in, make yourself at home.”
“Just don’t, Dean,” Sam snapped as he tossed his briefcase onto his brother’s bed.
“Jesus, Sammy,” Dean said, then frowned, his eyes scanning over Sam where he stood as he asked, “Are you hurt?”
“I just,” Sam stopped, shook his head and paced a few steps. “What…” which wasn’t the right place to start either, so he stopped again, ran frustrated fingers through his hair and tried to get his thoughts into some semblance of order.
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay, Sammy. D’you want a beer?” Sam nodded, watched as Dean fished two beers from a tiny box fridge that stood in the open closet.
He took a deep pull of the cold beverage, then met his brother’s gaze and asked, “Did you know Edward Dowell?”
Dean didn’t flinch, didn’t break eye contact. “No.”
“You can tell me, Dean. Did you know Edward Dowell?”
“No,” Dean said again.
“Stop lying to me!” Sam’s fist clenched around the beer in his hand and he thought for a moment about throwing it, hearing that satisfying shattering sound and watching the foamy contents spill onto the rug. “Just tell me,” he said, felt like he was pleading for it, felt like it was a matter of life and death even if that moment had long since passed. “Tell me.”
He got his answer when Dean turned away, his shoulders hunching forward. Sam pulled the file from his briefcase and dropped it, open, onto the bed. “What about Albert Wilson?” Surprised green eyes jerked up to Sam’s face, and Sam nodded. He tried to remind himself to breathe but it felt like he had been stepping up on a panic attack since he’d left Jim’s church. There were parts of the day that he couldn’t remember, wasn’t even sure how he’d made it from the prison to Dean’s room.
He tossed another open folder on the bed, a plain young face with a close-cut buzz of brown hair and wide brown eyes looking up from a photograph. “Bryan Sullivan?” Dean turned and started walking to the desk, barely glanced at the old photograph. “What about Eric Torres, Dean,” he added another open file to the pile. “Did you know him too?”
“You’ve already figured it out,” Dean said. “Why bother asking? Sure. I spent about six months in a youth detention facility, and those were the guards for my unit. Whoopdee friggin’ doo.”
“One more question.” Sam felt powerful and ruthless, drew out one more file and with a vicious twist in his gut he dropped it right onto the desk in front of Dean. “How many of those men were in on what Dowell had going on the side?” Dean stared down at the image of Dowell, sharp features and cool eyes gazing back from the image the file held. The color bled out of Dean’s face so quickly Sam actually wondered if his brother would pass out. “Dean?” he asked, his tone softer, regret edging into his core and he wished he could take it back, go back in time and never figure the truth, or further back still and stop it all.
“Shut up,” Dean said, his voice broken and rough. “Don’t ask me, Sam.”
Sam dropped down onto the rug, tried to look up into his brother’s face. “Was it all of them?” Dean’s eyes scrunched closed and he jerked violently away when Sam braced a careful hand on his knee. “Dean?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because you told me bedtime stories, Dean, about swimming in the lake and pranks you pulled with your friends, and campfires, and I wanted so much to have been there with you. But that was all bullshit, wasn’t it? Dad told me you were at a fucking summer camp, when you were at that place with … with them!”
“Well, he would’ve, wouldn’t he?” Dean said, a bitter twinge in his tone that Sam had never, not once in his entire life, heard from Dean when his brother was talking about their dad.
Sam squeezed his brother’s knee carefully as he asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He’s the reason why I ended up there.”
|<< END PART TWO >>|
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