A Satellite of Sorrows: Part Five
Sam awakened slowly, his eyes adjusting to the light in the room. He glanced toward the window and noted the darkness outside and wondered how much time had passed. He groaned and grabbed his head, “What the hell?”
“You tried to escape. We stopped you.” The young boy stared at him intently. “You’re not very smart.”
“No, sometimes I’m not,” Sam agreed, sitting up. His head pounded and he felt a little dizzy. He wondered if one day his head would just fall off. He was always getting hit in the head for some reason. Even his height didn’t discourage attackers from going for his head. He rubbed the growing bump as he looked around at the blank faces of the children. “Which one of you is Lethe?”
The teenage girl approached, “That would be me.”
“I’m guessing that you’re the one who lifted their emotional memories from them? I thought you just erased memory?”
“Your understanding of my power is limited to story books, Sam. I can do much more than what the storytellers revealed,” she replied, laying her hand on his cheek. “Like right now, I can see Dean in your mind. A young Dean who is laughing and joking with you. Perhaps twenty? But what you don’t know? I see him through your eyes and just like this,” she brings her hand back and snaps her fingers, “I could wipe that happiness away. That perfect moment of joy that you carry around like an icon would be gone, forever.”
“Lethe,” Eris reprimanded as she walked into the room. “Not yet.”
Sam looked at the young black eyed boy, “And I assume you are one of the phonoi? The gods of murder and mayhem? You did the killing?”
The boy didn’t respond except with a simple smile.
“You’re very curious, Sam. But you have yet to ask me how those murders tie to you and your brother? You know us Greeks, we do like our tropes and themes.” Eris rounded the table and sat next to Sam, her hand grazing his.
“Why do I have a feeling you’ll tell me even if I don’t ask?” Sam retorted bitterly, moving his hand away from her touch.
Eris turned her gaze fully on him, “Right now Dean is outside the house. He thinks he can sneak in. He just, about ten minutes ago, peeked in that window over there.” She pointed toward his right and Sam glanced at the now empty window. “And he saw you laying here wounded. His heart rate sped up and he thought the worst for a second. That was until you started to move, started to wake up. Then he calmed down, but for a few seconds, he considered jumping headfirst through the window, planned on taking us all out with the weapon he’s been told will kill us.”
The cold manner with which she told the story struck Sam and he said, “I thought all of you gods were simply personifications of human emotion.”
“Stories, Sam. Stories you humans tell yourself to feel more important or more godly or just more. We are more complicated than that, but you are right on one thing; we do feel, we do have emotions.” Eris turned her head and Sam heard the noise. It was a scuffle, a fight. Sam heard Dean cry out for him.
“Don’t hurt him,” Sam uttered softly. He hated the way his voice cracked.
“Oh, don’t worry, Sam. We have no plans to hurt him just yet. He just needs to be tamed.”
A few minutes passed as the sound of fighting grew louder and more intense. Then, suddenly, silence.
Sam watched the door anxiously and he didn’t have to wait long as the children dragged Dean’s unconscious form into the room.
“They’re small,” Eris chuckled, “but they’re wily.”
“Dean,” Sam called to him, but his brother lay limp on the floor. He let his angry eyes fall on Eris, “So what now?”
“Now, we start the fun part.”
Dean hated Greek gods. He hated them. They were vicious and nasty and petty. He would never read Homer again.
“I hate you,” he slurred, pulling at the ropes holding his arms behind his back. He was strapped to the chair when he woke up. Those damn little kids were tough suckers. When he saw them, he wasn’t surprised. He decided never to have kids. They just turn evil.
“Dean, you all right?” Dean looked over at his brother, who was seated on the sofa across from him.
“Sam?”
“Yeah, it’s me. I take it you figured out it was Eris?” Sam gestured toward the woman at his side. She watched their exchange with disinterest.
“Chronos?” Dean asked and Sam nodded. Dean sighed, “Damn gods and their vengeance.”
“Enough,” Eris pronounced. “I’m not inclined to care about your attempts at intellectualizing us. It’s time to get started.” She nodded at the children, who entered and stood in a circle around the two brothers.
“What’s going on here?” Dean asked nervously, tugging at his restraints. Sam moved to get up but Eris’s hand flew up and the force of her power pushed him back, holding him there.
Eris stalked toward Dean and lifted the wooden stake in front of him. “So I hear that you think this piece of bark will kill me?” She pricked her finger on the tip. “I’m smarter than my grandfather, Dean. This? This will only tickle me now.”
“What kind of deal did you make?” Dean wondered aloud. “And who with?”
“All in due time, Dean. I’ll be sure you know everything, but first things, first.” Eris whispered maliciously and nodded to Lethe.
The young girl sauntered toward Sam. He tried to bend away from her, but she persisted, laying her hand on his cheek.
“What are you doing?” Dean asked. He watched as Sam’s eyes rolled back in his head and his body shook.
“Lethe is digging deep in your brother’s memories. It only hurts a bit, I promise.” Eris and Dean watched as the young girl turned toward Dean, her eyes white and clear as she stared at him.
“When he was in Hell, Lucifer tortured him by appearing as you for ten years. Every day of those ten years Lucifer, wearing your face, speaking in your deep voice, would tell Sam how much he hated him. How much Sam’s existence had cost you.”
The girl shifted her hand, “Interesting.”
She glanced at Eris, who nodded. Lethe reached out, her fingertips grazing Dean’s hand, and it was like a conduit had opened up and something shot through him. The lights dimmed and one lamp shattered as energy crackled across the room. He felt her push something into him, overpowering any resistance he could muster. It was invasive, horrifying and he felt split open, broken as all the world flooded in. All the world that was Sam.
He could barely hear Eris whisper, “It’s especially strong with them.”
Images flashed through his mind. It was a chaotic mixture of visions. Flashes of him intermixed with those of Sam.
Dean found himself looking into his own eyes. He was younger, happier, and offered an ice cream cone with a smirk.
Then he saw Sam laughing, face shadowed by the trunk of the Impala, his fingers wrapped around Dean’s sawed off shotgun as he tried to mimic Rambo. It was a bad impression.
Suddenly, his own battered and bruised face looked sadly back at him. A strange sense of totality washed through him, a peace that he ached to find himself. He wanted to cry out as he saw through Sam’s eyes. Watched as his body slipped quickly away, falling behind the horizon of darkness. And then he felt it. Fire licked at his back…
And then there was Sam dying in his arms. His face tucked against Dean’s shoulder. Dean relived that moment again. He heard a gasp and he looked up to see Sam staring back at him. Lethe giggled and twisted her hand as if she were digging deeper and then….
Without warning, he heard John Winchester yelling, cursing. It was so clear, so present. Dean saw his father point at the motel door. “Get out! And don’t ever come back!” Dean felt gut wrenching rage at the rejection. He saw himself, standing off to the side, eyes cast downward.
“No!” Dean heard Sam’s voice, but he wasn’t sure if it was now or then. The image wouldn’t move and Dean was overcome with an agony and shame that he couldn’t, shouldn’t name. His breath rushed out as the scene shifted to a hellish vision -
Sam lying naked under the sheets, crying, as he curled up on his side.
Dean finally growled at her, “Stop it.”
“Something happened when he was seventeen….”
Dean yelled at her, “Stop it!”
Lethe looked at her mother and then at Dean. Her knowing glance ripped through him, “That’s why he left for Stanford.”
Eris laughed, “This sounds like the beginnings of a Greek tragedy.”
“Shut up,” Dean commanded. This was humiliating for both Sam and himself. “Is this what you want? You play with your food, too, before you eat it? Just kill us!”
Eris moves toward Dean, as Sam bends ragged and evacuated in the corner of the sofa. All of his emotions gone, now resting in Dean. Soulless once again as the young girl leeched out his memories and held them hostage. Thankfully, as Eris approached Lethe lifted her hand away from Dean, freeing him from the assault.
“You have no idea what I plan for you, dear boy.” Her eyes flashed black as she leaned in close to him. “I have no desire to kill you. In fact, I’m going to let you live. That’s why I wanted you back here, in this place, in Lawrence. It seems only right that we meet at the place of your greatest sorrows, don’t you think? I want you to feel everything, every emotional prick and prod, before I finally let you go. And where will you go? At this moment, the Leviathans are sending some of their own to get you. After all, I am the goddess of strife, sister to war. It’s only right that I give you over to the other side. But before that, I just want the opportunity to make you feel the shame you have escaped for too long.”
Dean turned his head away from her lips, “What do you get out of this?”
“Ask me, first, Dean.”
“Ask you what?”
“Ask me why the little old lady, why the manly cop’s lifemate, why the wheelchair-bound wife. Ask me why them. Why did they live and the other die. Ask me.”
“No,” his tight voice answered.
“Lethe,” Eris nodded toward her daughter.
The young girl twisted her hand into Sam’s flesh and his body rose up off the couch. She looked at Dean, “When he was in Hell, Lucifer showed him your life with Lisa. He seethed in jealousy. Hated himself for it, too. But he couldn’t stop his hate for Lisa or her son. He was forced to watch your first family Thanksgiving as you ate apple pie and watched the football game with the young boy, your arm thrown around his shoulder. Lucifer played it on a loop for days, weeks.”
Dean shifted his gaze up to meet hers, “Why them?” His words taut with rage.
“Good boy,” she patted his head. “It had to be them. They were the soul mates who would suffer the most. I bet you know how that feels, don’t you Dean?”
“Soul mates?” Dean asked, his voice doubtful.
“Did you ever read the story by Plato called the Symposium?” Eris asked. “Now, I was never a fan of the philosophers. They had too much hate and animosity for the gods. They were arrogant with their science and their math and such, but they told good tales at times.”
“Can’t say I ever had the pleasure,” Dean responded sarcastically.
“I bet Sam knows,” she gestured toward Lethe, who let Sam go. He breathed in deep and looked at Dean in shock and fear.
He remembered what Lethe had revealed.
Dean shook his head at his brother. “Don’t think about it,” he commanded.
Eris ignored them, “So, Sam, what do you know about soul mates?”
“What?”
“Did you get a chance to read Symposium while you were away at that fancy college?” Eris asked, taking a spot next to him on the couch.
Sam looked at her confused, “Yeah, I think. Plato?”
“What do you remember about it?” She picked at the lint on her sleeve. Dean was struck by how normal the conversation seemed.
“It was a dialogue about love.”
“Remember Aristophanes’s story?” Eris stared at Dean and smiled. She turned her gaze back to Sam.
He shifted uncomfortably under her scrutiny, “His was the story about bodies and souls being one before Zeus got mad and split them in two.”
“You really are the smarter one,” she observed as she got up and approached Dean. “Why don’t you explain how that works to your brother?”
Sam remained silent.
“Okay, I’ll do it then. You see, Dean, there is a tale that says that once upon a time humans were really two souls in one body, but then something happened to piss the gods off and so in punishment, you were torn asunder.” Eris laid her hand on Dean’s. He flinched at the contact.
“But as time passed, souls drifted apart, evolved away from each other. It’s quite poetic in its Darwinism, actually. Did you know that souls can change to adapt to their circumstances? I have to say, that god had a wonderful experiment in you and your precious spirits.”
Eris drew a finger down Dean’s cheek, “But some of the old ones still exist. The old versions of the one soul, two bodied kind. They are rare though. Very rare. Gerty and Herb were one. Ross and Trent another. So on and so forth. And they were happy, fulfilled. Part of my gift to them was Lethe, was oblivion. To know the world without the other in it seems too high a price to pay, even to me.”
She grabbed Dean’s chin, making him look at her squarely, “But sometimes the old ones struggle. They fight against the pull of their souls; they tear their bodies and minds apart in hopes of escaping that desire. But the old ones are strong and they can’t help but feel empty without the other, can’t help but feel evacuated and unholy in absence of the other. Do you see the pattern here, Dean?”
She leaned down and laid her mouth next to his ear, but when she spoke her voice was loud enough for all the room to hear. “I watched you in hell, Dean. I would never have thought to interrupt you during your training. I rather regret that…I wanted to talk to you, listen to your short cries as you became more and more adept at torture, as you turned into the perfect soldier we all knew you could be.” She paused and then with a husky laugh reminded him, “With one nod, Dean, I could wipe you from Sam and you’d finally be as alone as you’ve always felt.”
Dean shivered and didn’t know what the change of subject meant. That was a lie, he told himself. He knew exactly where she was going. He stared up at her and begged, “Please, don’t.”
Eris leaned in, her mouth close to Dean’s cheek, her breath too sweet and cloying. Her seductively deep voice whispered, “Remember when Alistair made them all look like Sam? When he painted their faces with the fresh skin of your precious Sammy? You remember, right? They had his eyes and his hands. They had his mouth. And you just broke again and again, begging him to stop, begging him to change them back to their real selves? But he wouldn’t. He just let you kill them again and again, ordering you to strip them naked, slash and burn them as they screamed out to you, in his voice, with his cries. Young Sam. Teenage Sam. Sam, the adult, the would-be lover in another life. Sam, the soul mate.”
Eris turned to Sam, who looked on with horror, a stare that ripped through Dean. “You know what he did then, Sammy?”
Sam merely looked up as she continued, “He then turned all of that love into rage. He killed you again and again, all the time whispering that you weren’t real. That the souls deserved it, deserved the mutilation. And he got a routine, too. You want me to tell him, Dean?” Eris lifted an eyebrow in amusement.
“Shut up,” Dean whispered, his graveled voice deeper and more resolute. She recognized this Dean and laughed gleefully. He was the hell version, the one emptied of emotion, or seemingly emptied.
“Sam,” Eris stepped closer to Sam and snapped her fingers in front of the younger man’s face. “Stay with us. This is the best part of the story. When your brother here,” she pointed at Dean, “finally took to the torture, he’d start with slicing your face and then he’d touch his lips ever so gently to the slash, almost like a lover’s kiss.” She leaned down to Sam, tracing a line down his cheek, her fingertip skirting his flesh, “He’d leave some mark on you. He did this to all of the victims afterward. It was his signature move. He practiced on your face, until he finally decided to move on…. How many times did you kill him, Dean?”
Sam struggled against the invisible hold she had over him, “Stop it!”
Dean stared up at her, his green eyes bright with anger, “Are you happy now?”
“Not even close,” she whispered. She rose and looked back and forth between them. And then blithely she said, “And just so you both know, John and Mary aren’t together in heaven. They have their own separate compartments where she munches on orange vanilla sherbet bars at some random fair she went to as a child. And John? He’s playing baseball with his cousins, chasing the ball as it travels over the right-field fence. They were never the love story of your family line. There’s only one set of soul mates in this line.”
While Eris returned to torturing Dean, Sam saw something out of the corner of his eye. A curtain moved imperceptibly and there was no wind. Sam’s eyes went straight to the flask. “Bobby?” he whispered low enough to not be heard by Eris or Lethe, who seemed to have turned their full attention on Dean.
He noted the shimmer of the ghost in the hallway, behind the small children who stood looking on at the spectacle. He didn’t really know what Bobby could do to stop this. They were outnumbered and outpowered.
There was a knock on the door, which interrupted their session. Eris smiled, “They’re here.”
She ordered one of the children to open the door and looked between Sam and Dean, “We’re almost finished here, then Dick can have you.”
Sam kept his eyes on the doorway and prayed Bobby could keep his emotions in check. Two men entered the room and stood. They were dressed in black and looked ominously like government agents from a Will Smith film.
“I’m almost finished. You can wait outside,” Eris dismissed them as she turned back to Sam.
“So, back to you, Sam. Now that you know Dean’s sins in hell, how do you feel?” She picked up the apple from the table and sat down. Her movements were an exaggerated impression of a psychologist. She propped her chin up with her hand, her legs crossed over the knees. She turned the apple over in her hand, “You see this here?” She held the apple out to him. “Notice the marks on it? What do you see?”
Sam tried to ignore her, turning his gaze away from her. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction, but he couldn’t help spitting out, “It’s appropriate a moon is named after you. You’re small in comparison to the worlds you revolve around. You’ll always be smaller, weaker.”
Eris slapped him. “Tell me how weak I am when you see this.” She holds out the apple, “Look at it, Sam!” The commanding tone brought his head up. He stared at it. The bright orb lay on her palm, its surface decorated with the story of his life, of Dean’s life. Two figures pushed at each other, their arms locked in a combative embrace. As the light reflected across the golden sheen, their limbs moved, roping themselves around the other’s until there was only one body falling into the world. They hovered over the ground, inches away from the crash.
“That’s a poor imitation of Achilles’s Shield,” Sam spit the insult at her.
Eris grinned, her smile widening with malevolence, “You just had to do it, didn’t you? Now we’re going to have to dig deeper into Dean’s darkest secret. Or are you curious anyway? Wouldn’t you like to know what lurks in that violent soul, what deep cavernous holes are there?”
Eris turned toward Lethe, “Why don’t you touch Dean, my precious daughter? Tell us what lies beneath all that bravado and charm.” Her eyes didn’t leave Sam as she waved her hand at the young girl.
Lethe reached out for Dean, who moved his head back sharply, trying to get away from her touch. “Don’t you touch me, you pagan bitch.”
The young girl’s lips curled in anger and she shoved her hand forward, grabbing his cheek. “I’ll touch you whenever I want to, you glorified ape,” she snarled.
Sam’s eyes caught Bobby’s. He motioned toward the stake. Even though Eris claimed the weapon would not work, it was their best shot at getting out of there. Bobby slipped back into nothing ness and Sam had faith he’d find a way to help them. He looked back at Dean, who was writhing in the chair under the administrations of the goddess of oblivion.
“Oh, well, what do we have here?” Lethe whispered, bending Dean’s head back even more. “We have some nasty dark secrets in here, don’t we, ape?”
“Please, don’t.” Dean cried out, his voice rose in panic. Sam jerked at the tone. It was an alien sound coming from his brother. It was a mixture of fear and pleading that echoed like a prayer of the damned.
Sam stared at Eris, “What do you get out of this? Fine, we’re soul mates. You made your point. You already said you won’t kill us, so what is the point of this?”
“You’re right, Sam. We’ll stop. It seems fitting that we end it here, don’t you think?” She turned toward her daughter. “Tell us, Lethe.”
Lethe’s eyes started going white when Sam heard the first cry. His eyes jerked up and he saw the first child bend back, the wooden stake puncturing his midsection. Light exploded from his eyes, his wound, and he fell heavily to the floor.
Bobby stood there with the stake, “Seems like her deal only covers her.”
Eris shrieked and ran after Bobby, who disappeared immediately. While she was distracted, Sam broke free and reached for the stake. He grabbed it and stood up and was met by the black-eyed boy. He shoved the stake forward, with all the force he could. The stake pierced the boy’s gut, sending another flash of light into the room.
Sam turned around and confronted Eris. Her children scattered around her, getting in a semi-circle, ready to fight. Sam counted and swore. All of a sudden another flash of light flooded the room and Sam watched in wonder as Lethe fell to the floor. Dean was standing behind her, another stake in his hand.
“Two?” Sam asked incredulously.
“Always come prepared, Sammy. Didn’t I teach you that?” Dean winked and started slashing at the other children. Both of them turned and saw Bobby take Eris by the arms, holding her back. She screamed, but Bobby’s strength as a ghost was in super drive. Neither brother questioned it as they began taking on the children.
They didn’t have much of a fight, as the remaining children seemed to understand the score. In the space of a few seconds, they disappeared completely, leaving Sam and Dean standing there alone, stakes poised in battle pose.
“What the hell?” Dean asked, looking at Sam. His brother shrugged. They both turned to Eris, but she too was gone.
“She just vanished,” Bobby held up his hands. “Just vanished.”
“Not completely,” Eris stated. She came out of the doorway, followed by the two men in black.
Sam and Dean looked at each other. They weren’t prepared for this. They didn’t have boric acid, a knife. They were flying blind.
“You can have them now, but first, one word.” Eris approached them. She didn’t look at Sam, instead focusing her attention on Dean. “I know your dirty little secret, Dean. And one day, it’ll finally eat its way through you, from the inside out. And you know what? I’ll be there to watch.”
Eris looked at Sam as she finished, “I’d say we all know your dirty little secret, Dean. We all know.”
She turned from them and walked out. She looked at Dean again and smirked, “Let Dick have them now.”
They both straightened up at the same time, ready for the fight, when they heard Bobby scream out, “Go boys, now!”
They watched in disbelief as borax laced water fell over the men, melting their skin away. Sam didn’t know how Bobby did it, but he didn’t question it either.
“Run!” Bobby yelled and they didn’t need further prodding. They sprinted toward the door. Sam grabbed his cell and the flask as he passed. He turned and watched as Bobby ripped the heads off the men. His angry face was disjointed and surreal as the bodies fell before him.
Sam swallowed his own horror and followed his brother out.
Conclusion