Fic: Wish Not Change (Sam/Dean, R) part 1 of 3
Title: Wish Not Change
Author: smalltrolven
Artist: kelios
Rating: R
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Wordcount: 10,048
Warning: Spoilers for season 15
Author’s Note: Not my characters, only my words. Written for the 2020 Wincest Reverse Bang.
Information on the Casket Girls was gleaned from this article. The Ursuline Covent museum is pretty interesting too. Many thanks to Kelios for the beautiful and inspiring artwork.
Summary: There’s a picture that Dean has in his wallet. It’s of the two of them, even though it’s not really them, but it’s still the stuff that wishes are made of. It takes a journey to New Orleans and back, a new case opened and closed, and wishes made and granted, for that wish to maybe come true.
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Read it over on AO3 right here.
Be sure and check out the beautiful art masterpost here.
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Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it. Marcus Aurelius
****
Dean’s had this picture, for a lot of years now. It’s something he had brought back from that weird universe Balthazar had sent them to, where everything had been so strange and so familiar. He’d found the photo in his counterpart’s trailer on that tv show set, it had been tucked into a journal. It was a picture of that universe’s version of them, the two actors, Jensen and Jared. They were at some kind of music festival, and they were tucked up together, like they were the only two people in the world, their body language screaming out intimacy and partnership. The words that had been written in the actor’s journal on the page where Dean had taken the picture from were permanently etched in his mind:
He is mine, I am his. No matter what anyone else knows, this I know for sure, for forever.
He turned the picture over and read those same words, running a finger over his own neat cursive. He’d written them down when he had first taken on the Mark because he’d been worried that it would change him so much that he might manage to forget them. He would have gotten them tattooed on himself somewhere if he thought that he could have hidden that from Sam.
Dean turned the picture back over and traced his finger around their intertwined bodies. He had only ever been able to see it as himself and Sam in this picture instead of the two actors who looked exactly like them. The picture seemed to somehow contain the possibility of how it could have been, or maybe could still be between them. Who was he kidding? He knew that was impossible now, even though there had been chances and opportunities for them to change into that over the years. But for whatever reasons, they had not chosen to take that pathway. And now they were old and set in their ways and facing down yet another apocalypse.
No wonder he was looking so hard for a case, he would take just about anything at this point just to get them the hell out of the bunker. They both needed something to occupy the time until Chuck turned his attention back on them, like some eye of Sauron swiveling around demolishing any world he bothered to look at. That had been the highlight of his oh-so-lovely nightmare tonight. That image had him jerking up straight out of bed, and drinking whisky in the kitchen by himself. He found himself wishing that they were staying in a motel room, so at least he’d have some company even if it was just Sam sound asleep in the same room.
Sam walked in right then, his hair a complete mess, sweaty and stuck to his forehead in sharp points.
“Bad night?” Dean asked, quickly tucking the picture into his robe pocket before Sam could notice.
“You too, huh?” Sam answered, fiddling with the electric kettle.
“It’s been a few days now, and nothing, no signs. I keep dreaming that it’s our turn next,” Dean admitted.
“Same-it really sucks. But get this, I found us a case,” Sam said.
“You really think we ought to-“ Dean asked, which was just a pro-forma question really.
“It’s all the way down in New Orleans,” Sam interrupted with a small smile.
“I’ll be ready in ten,” Dean said, standing up and gulping down the last bit of whisky in his glass.
“It’s not that much of an emergency. I want to take a shower at least before we hit the road,” Sam said.
“Ok, Frances, but none of that taking a freaking hour fixing your hair,” Dean said, exiting the kitchen with a grin. There was something about setting out on a case with Sam, gunning for the road, full cooler, weapons at the ready-that was the life.
***
On the drive there, Sam got out his case notes and they started talking about New Orleans and their various experiences with voodoo or Voudon.
“When was the first time you worked a case that was Voudon related instead of voodoo?” Sam asked.
“I first came across the real deal Voudon when I was working a case, in New Orleans, like a month before Hurricane Katrina hit the city. Which just happened to be a couple months before I came and got you out in Palo Alto,” Dean said.
“What was the case?” Sam asked, utterly surprised on two counts. To be hearing about something from so long ago, especially from that particular time period they avoided talking about at all costs.
“Turned out to be street vendors selling what they thought were knock-off made in China kind of versions of Gris-Gris bags, but there were a few real ones mixed in. They were the real deal, a type of dark Voudon or something, I forgot what the name of it was. It got some people killed, which put the case on our radar. I eventually figured out who was contaminating the supply for the stuff being sold to tourists. It was the first case Dad sent me out to work on my own.”
“Let me guess, it was a high schooler who’d learned it on the internet and was trying to make enough cash for spring break,” Sam guessed, not taking the bait on talking about Dad. He wasn’t up for it.
“Nope, but that’s a pretty good guess. It turned out it was an actual old-school, traditional Voudon practitioner who was completely fed up with all the fakery and shit going down in his city.”
“There’s a lot of that down there, people think they want the real deal, but they don’t really know it when they see it, much less revere it in a way that is acceptable to the true believers. It’s got to really suck to see your traditions treated so badly like that.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I told the dude, that I understood why he’d do something like that. But he couldn’t hurt random people like that, it wasn’t solving anything. Eventually he promised to cut it out,” Dean said.
“What’d you threaten him with?” Sam asked.
“Told him I’d cut off his jujubes and sell them for love-spell trinkets on Bourbon Street.”
Sam laughed until he just about had tears in his eyes. Once he stopped he looked over at Dean and caught him looking at him with a strange almost lost look on his face.
“What?” Sam asked.
“Nothing…just haven’t seen you laugh like that in a long time,” Dean said with a smile that tugged at something in Sam’s memory.
He hadn’t seen this smile in a while, it was the one Dean got when he’d made Sam let loose and truly laugh. It was full of pride that he’d done something good for Sam, made the hard life they lead just a little bit better even if just for that moment. “Thanks for that, guess I really needed it,” Sam said, smiling back at Dean, full and wide with honest thankfulness.
Dean beamed at being thanked for a moment and then turned his attention back to driving.
“Jujubes, hah!” Sam said, laughing again.
****
As they drove, Sam went over the particulars of the case with Dean. It was a series of several very strange deaths over the last month, which were only connected by the victim having visited a popular historical tourist site the day before they’d died. Several people seemed to have died after being in a state of extreme happiness. Witness after witness interviewed in the police reports said that the person was as happy as they’d ever seen them, that something they’d been yearning for their whole lives had finally come to pass. And then they’d gotten dark and surly, unlike themselves before ending up dying in the Mississippi. Each body had been fished out of the water in the same place near the Governor Nicholls Street wharf.
“After reading all these witness accounts, I think this seems like wishes are being granted somehow,” Sam said after reading over the details in his notes for the tenth time.
“You mean like a djinn or something else?” Dean asked.
“Well, since they’re ending up in the river with all their blood, I’d say something besides a djinn. Maybe a witch or a cursed object since all the victims were in the area of this historical museum.”
“What history exactly?” Dean asked.
“It’s the Ursuline Convent Museum, used to be an old Catholic convent, dates back to the late 1700s. Do you know the story about the casket girls? Because it might be related as it’s centered on the place.”
“Ooh, casket girls, sounds spooky and probably right up our alley. But no, I don’t know the story,” Dean said.
“I don’t know about spooky exactly but the story goes that the casket girls were mostly poor young immigrant girls from all over Europe, they were promised by matchmakers that they’d find a good match in New Orleans. They were packed into ships and a lot of them got TB on the way over so they would be a creepy shade of pale. They arrived in the city at the dock that is just a block down the street at the river.”
“This happen to be the same dock the bodies are being found underneath?” Dean asked.
“Yep, one and the same, so maybe there’s a connection somehow. Anyway, back to the casket girls, when they got off on the dock, the Ursuline convent would take them in, along with their little caskets of belongings until they got matched up with whoever needed a wife.”
“Ah, got it, so not caskets like burial caskets, more like suitcases, much less spooky,” Dean said.
“Well, the convent is definitely on the spooky spectrum. Over the years, the outer walls of the place would be plastered and re-stuccoed to try to keep the heat out. And the casket girls would embroider their wishes onto pieces of silk torn from their petticoats to add into the wall as it was getting worked on, layers of wishes over the years.”
“Sounds like a whole lot of concentrated wishing and hoping going on, that plus the combo of Catholicism and Voudon happening at the same time.”
“The article I was reading said that there were ‘layers and layers of wishes for something new, something good, please give me something I deserve.’ That could add up to something, I bet this has to do with the wall of the place itself instead of something inside the museum. It reminds me of the whole Tulpa thing we dealt with in Texas that time, remember?”
“Yeah, kinda hard to forget how we had to burn that place down just to stop it. If this convent wall is somehow involved, it might be the source of the wish granting power, but who’s the one telling these people where to make all these wishes? Or is it some internet rumor or something, like that Tulpa case was?” Dean asked.
“I couldn’t find anything like that online, but maybe it’s someone there near the wall, getting the tourists to make wishes somehow. That’s what we need to go check out after we talk to the witnesses.”
“How are there even witnesses still around, I thought the victims were all tourists, are their families still in town?” Dean asked.
“There’s only two witnesses that are still around, but that’s because both of them were locals who had visitors from out of town that died. The rest of the folks have all gone back home since it’s been a few weeks,” Sam said.
Sam directed Dean through the crowded streets to a small guesthouse he’d booked for them online. He’d chosen it because it was one of the few that advertised they had a guaranteed parking space. It was of course on the small side, but Dean eventually managed to maneuver Baby into the designated spot. Their room was also tiny, with two twin beds and a shared bathroom down the hall. It was all old fashioned period furnishings, but not overly floofy like some of the B&B’s they’d stayed at over the years.
After they got unpacked and changed into their Fed suits, they drove out to one of the far-flung suburbs to interview the first witness. According to the police report, she had hosted her college roommate for a visit and taken her to all the touristy destinations in New Orleans that her old roomie wanted to see. And then her roommate had ended up dead in the Mississippi the next morning.
As they walked up the woman’s red brick entry path, Dean noticed the way Sam’s shoulders were filling out his Fed suit perfectly once again. He’d regained the muscle and weight that he’d lost during the whole reign-of-Michael business. He looked good, no more than good, beautiful even, those big shoulders strong and wide, that glorious mane of hair glinting in the late morning sun. He followed Sam in the front door and sat down next to him on a couch across from the witness, still thinking about Sam’s hair. He heard Sam make an ahem sound and brought himself back to the task at hand.
“Around two that afternoon, we were at the Ursuline Convent Museum, down at Chartres and Ursuline Avenue, there’s a city sponsored cultural hands-on exhibit tourist thing they have every Saturday that’s usually fun. I always take visitors there so they can get a feel for what New Orleans used to be like. Cindy did the witchy make a wish thing. Later that night she got a call from her husband, their adoption had finally gone through after years of waiting. She was on top of the world-until she wasn’t.”
“What do you mean, Sue?” Sam asked with that encouraging open face that nearly every witness they'd ever encountered found they could not resist. Dean knew the feeling.
Sue looked up at them with fear echoing in her deep blue eyes. “We’d had a few drinks after dinner, celebrating how she was finally going to have a child to call her own, something she’d talked about wanting all through college, she turned…strange, like surly with me or something like that. It was totally weird, I thought it was maybe because we hadn’t seen each other in a while or that she was wishing the celebration was with her husband, you know? She was being really kind of shitty, so I went off to bed, and boy do I wish I hadn’t.”
“Why, what do you think would be different if you’d stayed up with her, Sue?” Dean asked.
“Maybe I could have helped, I don’t know. When she left, hours later that night, I guess the front door opening woke me up. I honestly just thought I was dreaming. There was someone with her, a young woman, so pale I’d call her ghostly. And she was wearing really tattered old fashioned clothes, her hair was long and an entire mess. I went back to sleep, and my friend, she was gone when I got up the next morning.” Sue’s head dropped forward, her curly black hair hiding her face from view.
“Sue, I’m going to ask you something that might sound kind of strange. Did you notice if it felt cold when you saw the young woman with your friend, or did you smell anything weird?” Dean asked.
“It was cold, yeah, colder than I thought the night should be, but like I said I thought I was sleepwalking or something. There weren’t any smells I remember.”
“We’re really sorry for your loss, it must have been hard to tell her husband,” Sam said.
“Thankfully I didn’t have to, the police took care of that, but I want to call him and tell him how damn happy she was about the adoption. But I suppose it would make him sadder, knowing that. I don’t know what to think or do. One-second she was happy as I’ve ever seen her, the next she’s being pulled up out of the river, and it’s all gone to shit.”
“We’re sorry, that your friend is gone,” Dean said. “Thanks a lot for your help.”
“You’re going to catch the guy, the one who did this, right? There’s a whole series of these supposed drownings, I’ve been seeing it on the news the last month or so,” Sue said.
“That’s why we got called in on the case, we kinda specialize in this kind of stuff,” Dean said.
Sam cut in before she could ask what kind of stuff Dean meant. “Sue, we’re on it, don’t worry. Thanks for your time.” He stood up and waited for Dean to join him at the door.
“I guess that’s reassuring, thanks guys,” Sue said as she closed the door behind them.
“What do you think?” Dean asked as they slipped back into the Impala.
“I think we need to go check out this Ursuline Convent situation,” Sam said.
“Forget the other witness then?” Dean asked.
“For now, yeah, we’ll see them if we have time later today. I want to get down there around the same time in the afternoon that Sue said she and Cindy were at the wall,” Sam said, a grim determined look around his eyes let Dean know he wasn’t up for discussing it further.
Dean drove them back from the suburbs into the city and maneuvered back into the small parking space at their guesthouse. They changed into their civilian clothes, wearing only one layer on top for a change since it was getting to be a very hot day.
They walked just a few blocks from their guesthouse until they spotted the Saturday afternoon crowds lining Ursuline Avenue in front of the Convent Museum. They ambled through all the cultural display booths which seemed to take turns with tchotchke booths selling all sorts of New Orleans trinkets, most of it voodoo more than Voudon related. Finally, they came across an older woman’s booth that had at least a three person deep crowd surrounding it.
She had a mass of greying, frizzy brown hair and was wearing what seemed like fifty necklaces which were shining in the afternoon sun. The signs on her booth were covered in Wiccan symbols as well as voodoo and Voudon symbols. The largest sign announced her as Madame Zee - teller of fortunes, granter of wishes. She seemed to be presenting herself as being some sort of hybrid hedge-witch. It was probably an easy gig to make money fooling all the tourists that were swarming through this part of the old city. The thick plastered convent wall loomed behind her, glaring white in the sun as she leaned against it for support as she worked. The brothers watched carefully to see what her pitch and performance entailed.
The table in front of her was covered in a hodgepodge of colorful bohemian printed tablecloths and scarves, the edges floating in the slight breeze as people passed by. On top of the table there were arrayed an assortment of Gris-Gris amulets, spell bags, wish candles, all that sort of mundane, usually safe stuff. The brothers watched as she offered to read tarot cards if the person wanted their future told, or for a slightly higher fee, she could perform a short ceremony that would grant them a wish. Most of the tourists went for the tarot reading, but a few chose the wish ceremony.
Sam and Dean watched as each time she’d have the person making a wish light a brand new candle. Next they’d be instructed to write down their wish on a small piece of parchment paper (nice touch not to be copy paper) with a feathery fountain pen in red ink (Sam really hoped it wasn’t blood). She very clearly insisted that they only be asking for positive wishes to be granted, there was no wishing someone dead or ill to happen to someone else allowed. She instructed the customer to then hold the written down wish in their left hand over their heart with their right hand on the plaster wall and say their wish three times out loud. Most people whispered their wishes which she assured them was just fine. She then had them repeat after her the words of a strange sounding spell that neither of the brothers recognized. To finish she had them burn the paper in the wish candle and then blow it out. Then she’d wrap up the partially burnt candle in a twist of aluminum foil with fragrant herbs for them to take and that was that.
“Keep this with you for the next twenty-four hours until your wish comes true,” was the final thing she’d say as each customer left her table with a smile on their faces.
Sam and Dean watched from the small crowd, listening in as one person after another said the words as they made their wishes. It didn’t seem at all out of the ordinary except the strange spell and the hand on the wall bit.
Sam leaned over and whispered in Dean’s ear, “I’m going inside the museum, check things out from the inside of the place, just in case there’s something unusual. You want to stay here and keep watching or come with me?”
Dean barely managed to not visibly react to Sam’s soft hair brushing against his neck as he whispered his question. He covered it up by answering, “You go get your museum boner taken care of geek boy, I’ll stay here.”
Sam shook his head and growled a little under his breath. Dean hid a small chuckle and watched him stride up the crowded street to the museum entrance. The people grouped around the witch’s table had thinned out enough that Dean thought it was time to give it a whirl himself while Sam was inside the museum and otherwise occupied. Yeah, maybe it wasn’t the best idea in the world, given how the other people had ended up, but Dean was in a wish-making kind of mood all of a sudden. Maybe it was watching all the people walking away from her booth with all those big smiles.
“Well, hello there, my darling,” Madame Zee’s voice purred at him as he sat in the folding chair across from her at the card table. One of her spidery hands with their long red nails took up one of his own hands, turning it palm side up. She ran one fingernail up the lines of his palm. “What is it you desire, shall I read your cards, tell you your future, or perhaps assist you in making a wish?”
“I’d like to do the wish thing, thanks,” Dean said.
“Right down to business, sure thing, darling. It is forty, please,” she said, letting go of his hand and turning hers palm side up. He laid two twenties on it and they disappeared somewhere in her voluminous clothing. “You have been watching for a while, with tall dark and handsome at your side, so you know the procedure, no?”
Dean nodded, agreeing with all of it, he knew the procedure and that his brother was indeed tall, dark and handsome-no argument there.
She handed him the feathery pen and gestured at the bottle of red ink and a piece of parchment. “Remember, you may wish for nothing that will harm another.”
Dean slowly wrote out the words that were always in his heart. I wish that Sam and I were like the Jared and Jensen in the picture
He held the piece of parchment in his hand, and stood up, placing his hand over his heart and the other on the wall. His palm soaked up the heat from the afternoon, as he whispered both the wish he’d written as well as the words that Jensen had written in his journal since they matched what was in Dean’s heart: He is mine, I am his. No matter what anyone else knows, this I know for sure, for forever. Somewhere in there he repeated the words of the strange spell and struggled to hold onto them to research later.
It was all a blur after the words he’d spoken had stopped echoing in his ears, he was sitting in the folding chair again, burning the piece of paper and then holding onto the candle wrapped up in foil that she had pressed into his hands. He was in some sort of daze and it felt so damn good, he couldn’t help but smile like the love-sick fool he had always been. The witch or whatever she really was laughed a little as he stumbled away from her table, but quickly moved onto her next willing mark.
****
Part Two