In the Pines, for TheYmp, 2/3
PART TWO
The witch-slash-psychic that Sam had his sights on next lives in a modest house, decorated with glowing neon signs depicting eyes and palms and eyes on palms. “Come learn your fortune from the Incredible Paolo!” the signage reads.
The Incredible Paolo is a short balding dude with a beer belly dressed in an extravagant purple outfit decked out with feathers and fur. Dean politely follows him all the way to the cluttered kitschy living room before pulling a gun on him.
The Incredible Paolo makes a loud noise of shock as soon as he turns around.
“Some psychic you are, not to see this coming,” Dean says, gesturing for him to sit on a pillow. Next to it, a low table with a large crystal ball atop of it and a deck of cards. Man, what a stereotype.
“Okay, what do you want? Money?” Paolo asks in a trembling voice. “Please, sir, I’ll open the safe for you…”
“And the money’s cursed so I die horribly in the next couple days, right?”
Paolo makes a noncommittal noise. “So you know I’m a witch.”
“And I know you’ve been sacrificing people left and right, pal.” Sam’s research is pretty fucking damning. Dean pulls Sam’s photo out of his jacket’s breast pocket, keeping the gun trained on Paolo. “Have you seen this man? And you better look carefully. If I don’t like what you’re saying, I’m gonna be pissed.”
“Okay, okay!” Paolo huffs and leans up to look at Sam’s photo. “I haven’t seen him. I swear.”
“You better not be lying to me, you little-”
“Wait, wait. I haven’t seen him, but there are spells, rituals we could try! You’re looking for him, right? I’ll help.”
“No human sacrifice?” Dean asks suspiciously.
“No human sacrifice. Please put the gun down, sir.”
“I don’t think so.” Dean kneels on one of the dusty pillows as well, but his gun is still aimed at Paolo. “But I’ll let you do the spell. No funny business.”
“May I go get the supplies for the spell? They’re in that cabinet over there.”
Dean grants his permission with a nod of the gun and soon the table is covered with a large map of the continental US on it and a bunch of candles of different colors and lengths. Paolo chants over them, eyes closed. A gust of wind tears through the room, rustling stray papers and making the candle’s flames waver and flicker.
“O-okay. Now, when I set the map on fire, the spot that remains will show us the area where your friend is. Like, erm, like magic GPS.” Paolo explains, dropping all pretense of acting like a mysterious psychic. He dips the corner of the map into one of the candles and it catches fire immediately.
The map burns fast, and by Paolo’s shocked face, Dean suspects something went haywire. The paper twitches on the table as if it’s being galvanized and scatters into ashes. All of it.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means, I cannot find him among the awake or the asleep. He’s no longer of this Earth, I’m sorry to say.”
“You’re telling me Sam’s dead?” Dean snarls, grabbing the fabric of Paolo’s outrageously purple shirt and shaking him. “No, no fucking way. You try your stupid ritual again!”
“It wouldn’t be any use. The spell worked as it was supposed to. It can’t find dead matter.”
Dead matter. Sam isn’t fucking dead matter. This fucker doesn’t get to call him that.
Dean’s fingers curl into a fist before he can even think about it. He clocks that smug-ass witch straight on his smug face, one punch after another. Dean jumps up to his feet and finally puts the gun to good use, bang-bang-bang, a triple tap straight to the head. He sits back down and buries his face in his hands with a shuddering exhale.
Sam isn’t just gone? Sam’s dead?
Dean sits in that room with the ganked witch for way too long, dragging his thumb back and forth over the engraving on his gun.
Whatever thing got Sam, it’ll regret it.
-
When you get a terminal diagnosis, it’s always good to get a second opinion. That’s why Dean heads to Lawrence, Kansas.
Missouri opens the door before he can even knock, and Dean stands there with his hand awkwardly raised until she pulls him in.
“An awful thing, what happened to your brother,” she says, cutting Dean off as soon as he starts explaining why he’s there. Dean perks up, hoping for more detail, but the next words that fall from her lips make his shoulders fall in turn. “Sadly, the connection to him is murky. I can’t make out what exactly happened. His spirit is...”
“Incommunicado?” Dean asks, picking up a bird skull perched on her cabinet and inspecting it closer.
“Precisely. And keep your hands off the merchandise,” Missouri says, yanking the skull out of his hands and placing it back where it was. “Let me see if there’s anything we can do to establish contact with Sam or pinpoint where he may be.”
They spend a good half of the day trying every ritual in Missouri’s books. By the end, Dean’s head is pulsing with dull pain because of all the sweet scents of the candles and incense and they’re not any closer to cracking the riddle of where Sam is.
“We could keep going.” Missouri looks up from the basin of water she’s been using to divine Sam’s whereabouts. Sam’s photo lies on its bottom, blithely staring up with his happy eyes. Dean can’t take much more of this. “But I don’t see us getting a different result.”
“So.” Dean gulps. Doctor, doctor, give me the news. “Does this mean Sam’s really, uh…”
“I do think that’s the most likely explanation. But there’s always a glimmer of hope, Dean,” Missouri says, and her voice is unusually soft. Dean wishes everyone would stop treating him with kid gloves because it makes him feel like they’re giving him their premature condolences. “There are some things even the spirits can’t divine. But he’s nowhere I can see.”
Dean avoids the old house on the way out of town. He does wonder if Jenny and her kids stuck around or if the poltergeist spooked them out. He wouldn’t blame them for leaving, not after everything they’ve seen. But people had stayed in stranger places after freakier circumstances.
Sam saved the kids that night. What they do is important. So fucking important. But the reason Sam isn’t next to Dean right now is because of their goddamn job.
He drives back to Washington in someone else’s old as dirt Dodge Dakota with a sputtering, fucked-up engine. Somewhere in Wyoming, Dean pulls over on the side of the road, because the path ahead is blurry all of a sudden.
Dean presses his forehead against his arms, folded on the wheel, and then he sits there as the car rocks to the tune of the large trucks passing by until he can’t stay still anymore.
He stumbles outside and hobbles into the forest on the edge of the road. Trees tower over him, so tall he has to throw his head to look back. Even just the freaking act of having to tilt his head back to look up reminds him of all the times Sam walked up to him while Dean was sitting on the bed looking at something or other on their laptop. And it’s so fucking stupid, really, that a fucking tree makes his heart ache so damn bad.
“Where the fuck are you?” Dean mouths, leaning against the tree, and he slides down, his shirt catching on the uneven bark, and his knees hit the ground hard. He doesn’t cry, not exactly, too empty to even muster it, just sits under that tree like he found his final resting place right next to a country road. Eventually, it gets too dark and cold for these over-dramatic acts of self-pity, and Dean has to get up and keep walking.
He makes his way back to Windfall, going way too fast and making way too few stops on the way. Once he’s there, Dean lies in the motel bed on that stupid lumpy mattress for hours on end.
The morning after shock never comes, because Dean barely sleeps enough for it to count. When he does, he has vivid nightmares. He was seeing all kinds of horror shows even before Sam went missing, but now instead of Amy and Castiel, he sees Dad chastising him and Sam, sad and silent.
He wants to deny it, to say the psychics are full of shit. What do they know? Just ‘cause they can chatter with spirits, Dean has to take their word for it? But he does trust Missouri. She knows what she’s doing.
And it looks like Sam may be dead.
Vonnegut said about death once, so it goes. Well, that's bullshit. It does not go. It’s not going anywhere. Not when it's Sam.
-
The Windfall church is small and humble. Its main decoration is a large stained window depicting Mother Mary. Dean stops in front of it for a second before walking on.
The elderly pastor smiles at Dean when Dean approaches. Dean shows him Sam’s picture. The good Father hasn’t seen Sam, but he tells Dean, in prayer, all things can be found. For once, Dean agrees with that sentiment.
Dean takes the pew in the very back. God, he hates praying.
“Testing, testing. Is this thing on? An open call to all the angels who can hear this.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “My name is Dean Winchester. And I need help.” One eye open. The pastor smiles at him again. No one else’s around.
He repeats his prayer a few times, an SOS signal sent out by a sinking ship. The church is empty and still. Fuckers. When they needed something from the Winchesters, you had to fight them off with a stick. When Dean needs one lousy angel? Zilch.
Dean’s crossing the motel parking lot when a rustling noise makes him turn around. Ed, the biker, is standing behind him, back straight as if he swallowed a rod. His feet make an unnatural, echoing noise against the wet pavement. For a second, Dean thinks Ed’s high as a kite and it’s about to go down. But a dark shadow of wings spreading wide behind his back points towards a different theory.
“Hello, Dean Winchester,” he says, and her eyes flash a bright blue. “I heard your prayer. My name is Zaqiel.” It’s really frigging weird, hearing that formal voice come out of Ed’s throat. For Ed, “formal” meant “less than five swear words per sentence”.
“Wait, what?” Dean says, kind of dumbly for someone who called angel delivery service not ten minutes ago. “Huh. You’re possessing a frigging Hell’s Angel? That’s ironic.”
The angel doesn’t acknowledge that joke with a reply. He stares at Dean with Ed’s beady eyes to the degree where it gets unnerving. Okay, not much of a humorous type. “Can you help me find Sam?” Dean cuts to the chase.
“Even if I wanted to help you, which I truly have no reason to, your friend,” Zaqiel says the word “friend” with disdain, like someone would say “a dead rat”, “Castiel seared yours and your brother’s ribs with sigils that conceal you from our sight.”
“No, that’s not what I mean.” Dean’s voice grows so thick, he has to clear his throat before he can speak again. “I mean, in Heaven. Is he in Heaven?”
“I don’t know. I’m not in charge of the Pearly Gates.”
“Okay, but can you check? Patch me through to him?”
“I can. But why would I?” He crosses her arms over his chest. “You and Sam used to run with Castiel. Castiel, who stoked flames of a civil war. Who’s to blame for my brothers and sisters dying!”
Okay. Unfortunate. “I’m sorry. But someone might’ve killed my brother, too. And I have to know what did it. I don’t even know where his body might be.” He doesn’t have any kind of leverage here. All he has up his sleeve is, well, a whole lot of begging. “I have to know what happened. Please, let me see him once and I’ll be out of your halo or whatever. Just...”
“Wow. A Winchester pleading, down on his knees. That’s a rare sight.” Zaqiel reaches out and places his hand on Dean’s face. Dean flinches at the first cold touch of the calloused hand but forces himself to stand still. “I’ve watched you two before. We all have, of course, we all came to watch the showdown. You remind me of him.”
“Who?”
“Michael. He was a strategist, same as you. And never knew when one was meant to quit.” A weak smile. “But he wouldn’t plead for any of us. And you do, so willingly, at the first indication that your brother may be aching.”
“That a bad thing?”
“Not to me.”
He flutters away. Dean leans against the hood of one of the cars in the parking lot and presses his palm against its cool surface, covered in raindrops. He wishes, now more than ever, that his Baby was still here. Screw being recognizable. He could use something familiar to cling to.
The angel Zaqiel comes back in a few minutes.
“I come bearing unfortunate news.” Fuck, what now? How does this get any worse? “I checked with the gatekeeper angel. She assured me that Sam Winchester hasn’t entered Heaven since his extremely brief visit in April of 2010.”
“If he’s not in Heaven, then where?” Dean asks, voice wooden.
“I’m afraid you know what the answer is. Hell has as valid of a claim on Sam’s soul as Heaven does.”
“A valid claim? You kidding me with this?”
“I don’t make the rules, Dean. But if you know your brother’s perished, and he’s not in Heaven, there’s not a lot of options left. That’s as much as I can tell you. Good luck.”
The grace smokes out of Ed’s throat, and he staggers with a grunt.
“Man,” he says cheerfully as soon as he straightens up, “I had the best fucking trip. I saw actual angels. It was crazy!”
-
There’s a suitable crossroads barely out of town, near a creek. The sky’s gray with heavy clouds today. They slowly pass overhead as Dean digs out a hole. The scene makes him sick with deja vu.
“Wow. Look at you, back for seconds. I do love a returning customer,” a voice rings out as soon as he refills the hole he dug, crouching over the small mound. Dean looks up at the high heels in his field of view and drags his gaze up to see a familiar face framed by dark wavy hair. Meg.
“What are you, a crossroads demon now?”
“Nah, I made an exception when I heard you rang the dinner bell. I’ve been known to secure a deal or two in the past, but dealing with needy, pathetic losers all day is such a turn-off.” She rolls her eyes. “Speaking of needy pathetic losers, I’m sorry to inform you, Dean, but you can’t sell your soul twice. We at Hell Inc. accept virginal souls only.” She smiles wide.
“Huh. Well, virgins are overrated.” Dean gets up to his feet. “I prefer ladies with experience.”
“Suum cuique.” Meg shrugs and snorts at the momentary confusion that flickers across Dean's face. “Right, Sammy isn’t around to play Google Translate. Anyway, why would you even want to bet your soul again? One stint down below wasn’t enough? Or do you think your pet angel will swoop in and save your ass from Hell this time around as well?”
“Cas is dead.”
Meg’s eyes go round. For a second, she looks genuinely crestfallen. “Oh.” She closes her eyes for a brief second and shrugs the breaking news off. “What do you want, Winchester?”
“I want to know where Sam is.”
“You lost him?” Meg snorts. “Aren’t you two attached at the hip at all times? When I took him for a joyride, getting him out of your sight was a bitch and a half.”
Dean grits his teeth. “He’s most likely dead. I want to know if he’s in Hell.”
“Most likely dead? So you don’t know for sure?” She lowers her voice to a purr. “Oh, this must be killing you.”
Dean stares her down.
“Everyone’s dead, then. Only you are left. Cool beans.” Meg tip-toes, gets in his face. “So you want me to check if Sammy dear’s frying extra crispy, then? And what do I get in return? ‘Cause, no offense, but I don’t think you have a thing to offer this girl, Winchester.”
“We could do this the easy way. You’ll tell me where Sam is and get to pay off some of Castiel’s debts. He screwed Sam over pretty bad before he died,” Dean says. Meg’s eyes dart away and back at him again. Dean dips his hand into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulls out the demon-killing knife. “Or we can do it the hard way and I can review a thing or two Alastair taught me. Your choice.”
“Pfft. You think you’re so big and bad.” Meg scoffs. “Sweetheart, I’m not scared of your pigsticker. And I… I certainly don’t give a flying fuck about the red ink in Clarence’s ledger.” She puts her hands on her hips. Dean twists the handle of the knife in his hand, making the sharp edge of the blade catch the light.
“Ugh, fine. I know you way better than I ever cared to, and I’m well-aware you’ll keep crawling after me until kingdom come. You’re like a hellhound with a bone when it comes to Sammy dear.” Meg bares her fangs and growls with a laugh. “I take it I don’t have to paint you a mental picture.”
“Shut your trap.”
“But you’re so fun to tease.” She stomps her boot’s heel against the ground in mock disappointment. “I see why you were Alastair’s favorite.”
“Where’s Sam?” Dean interjects before Meg can go any further along the memory lane in an attempt to get a rise out of him.
Meg runs her hand through her hair. “Dunno. But one thing I can tell you for sure, cowboy. Sam’s not in Hell.”
“How’d you know? You didn’t even check.”
“Oh, I didn’t have to. You think a Winchester arriving in Hell would pass unnoticed? We’d throw, like, the biggest party-slash-orgy in honor of that. Nah. Sam’s not there.”
“So where is he?”
“Well, he is a major goody-two-shoes. Have you tried upstairs?”
Dean makes a “duh, of course I tried upstairs” face.
“Maybe the rumors of Sam’s death are greatly exaggerated.” Meg shrugged. “Speaking of kicking the bucket. What happened to Castiel, anyway?”
“He ate a bunch of souls. Went nuts. Drowned.”
“Wo-o-ow. That’s way more epic of an exit than I expected from dear ol’ Clarence.”
“Yeah.”
They let it hang in the air for a few seconds. Meg is the first to break the awkward silence.
“Well. Guess you should look for your little bro elsewhere. Break a leg, Winchester.”
“I’m not in a fucking play.”
“Oh, I know. I just always wanted to wish you that,” Meg says with a shit-eating grin, and then she’s gone.
-
Dean’s not one to give up on a search, and he’s certainly not one to give up on Sam. But when psychics and Heaven and Hell agree that there’s nowhere else to look, there’s nowhere else to look. Sam’s missing. Completely.
Still, Dean keeps going. Not because he believes there’ll be clues, but because if he stops looking, his idle hands might start making a noose.
He looks through the NamUs database, widening his search from Windfall until it encompasses the entire state of Washington. So many of these cases sound a lot like Sam’s: they were on the road until they weren’t. But Dean doesn’t have enough to go on, no MO, no nothing. And something tells him trying to solve every missing case in the state in hopes that one will pan out and bring him to Sam won’t work out.
Dean charges Sam’s iPod and listens to the episode of the NY Times’ The Book Review Podcast it was paused on. That doesn’t give him any clues or new info since he’s not exactly looking for things to add to his summer reading list.
He looks through every single drawer in the table and checks the cabinet under the sink. All this turns up is a yellow legal pad Sam took notes on The Incredible Paolo’s case on. Dean flips through every page as if hoping there’s a hidden message on one of them he’ll need to scribble some graphite over. But Sam didn’t leave any hidden messages. Probably because he had no idea he wasn’t making it to Mt. Vernon. He had plans. Save people and hunt things, like on the good old bumper sticker. Dean tosses the notepad on the table, frustrated.
He finds out a little more about Sam’s plans when he opens Sam’s duffle. There, under Sam’s clothing and toiletry kit and a mean-looking hunting knife, is a large book. It's wrapped in brown paper with a receipt from the “Uncle Arthur’s Antique Books Store” stapled to it. At first, Dean thinks it’s a lore book of some kind, and he hurriedly undoes the rope bow on top and tears the paper up. But what falls out on the bedspread is an old, well-loved book of fairytales.
Why would Sam drag a fairytale book around? Dean picks up the book and flips through the pages until a familiar illustration catches his eye: a young girl standing atop a mountain and reaching up to the sun.
Right. That story. The story they never got to finish when they were kids. He remembers it now.
Dean flips to the end, to the image of the girl cradling her little brother to her chest.
This doesn’t feel like a message. It’s not like Sam was aware he was about to vanish into thin air, and Dean’s not about to go down that conspiracy theory road. Just a freakish coincidence. The receipt is dated a month and a half ago, when they barely split up. The crude gift wrap must mean Sam was gonna give it to him. Who else could appreciate this gift, huh? No, Sam was there. He would’ve answered if Dean called. You don’t get meaningful gifts for a guy you plan to ditch for good.
If only Sam didn’t ditch him at all. If Sam didn’t throw a fit, if Sam wasn’t a fucking bitch about this whole situation, Dean could’ve helped him.
Dean looks at the investigation wall with its pitiful few clues pinned up and fights the urge to put his fist through the garish wallpaper and the plaster behind.
-
In the end, Dean sets tentative roots in the Pineview Motel. Three weeks later, his money runs out and he drives a few towns over to hustle. Don’t shit where you eat or whatever. Or where you’re waiting for some kind of a little brother-related miracle. Even though Dean knows better than to believe in miracles occurring all by themselves. You have to make them happen, and even then they come at one hell of a price.
Besides, he kind of grows to enjoy the Moosetown Bar in all its fugly glory. The people there are nice, as asocial as Dean feels right now, and Kristy is one hell of a bartender. She makes the biggest dudes reconsider fighting in her establishment with her trusty shotgun she keeps behind the bar, heals the locals’ broken hearts with a well-placed drink, and knows just when to cut someone off. Which comes in handy since this quickly becomes Dean’s most-frequented watering hole.
“Still no news on the brother front?” Kristy asks, wiping the bar surface with her trusty white towel. It’s quiet today. An old man named Dave is drinking a Jack and coke a few bar stools over. A sleepy fly crawls on the bar and Kristy whips the towel to shoo it away. “Do they even have a theory? What happened?”
“They” being the cops, who don’t even know Sam ever went missing, so Dean gives her a noncommittal shrug.
“That’s pretty scary,” Kristy says. “That someone can vanish like that. It’s really nice that you’re out here looking for him. If I went missing, my brother wouldn’t even notice. Or care.”
“You don’t say?”
“Yeah, he’s a bit of an asshole. To put it lightly.” Kristy scrunches up her nose. “But I think you’re single-handedly reviving my faith in siblinghood.”
Hello, guilt, Dean’s old friend. If he was such a great brother, he wouldn’t have left Sam adrift by himself. If he was such a good brother, Sam wouldn’t have vanished into thin air. If he was such a good brother, he would be doing something else but sitting here and hoping for the world to send him a blinking sign, Find Your Little Brother Here.
“You alright? Did I say something?” she frowns, and Dean weakly laughs, as if she could say anything to make him feel worse than he already does.
“Nah, you’re good. Think I’m due for another drink, barkeep,” he says.
“Aye, aye, captain,” Kristy says, pushing her braid out of the way as she turns around to grab the bottle. She grows serious as she tops off Dean’s glass and even reaches across the bar to squeeze his wrist. “They’ll find him. They have to.”
“Have to,” Dean echoes and salutes her with his glass before tossing his drink back.
“At least Windfall isn’t the worst place on earth to be stuck. We have the best air, even though there’s a highway, like, right there.” Kristy makes a vague gesture in the direction of the freeway. “Our secret? The pines.”
Dean nods along to her little tour, even though he’s never found that the town of Windfall is particularly easy to breathe in.
-
Bobby calls a few days later.
“There’s a case in Montana,” he says. “Someone needs a partner to go at a pair of shifters. Sounds like your kind of a job.”
“Thought I was too toxic to set up with other hunters,” Dean says, and he’s not proud of how petty he sounds. But he’s in no state to mince words.
Bobby clears his throat at that level of backtalk. “That was then. I think you could use a good hunt with a solid partner right now. He’s a good guy. No bullshit.”
The thought of hunting with someone else makes Dean all kinds of nauseous.
“I haven’t finished up here yet.”
“Dean,” Bobby says carefully, “I think we might have exhausted our avenues. Why not-”
“It’s not over yet,” Dean snarls, and it’s not Bobby he’s angry at, but Bobby’s asking to be in the blast wave by trying to get Dean to switch his gears from Sam. “Until I see a body with my own two eyes, it’s not over.”
“Okay,” Bobby says in that “you’re being an idjit, but I can’t stop you” tone. “Okay, yeah. Jim can handle this one on his own, I guess.”
Dean can’t have some freaking Jim’s death on his conscience too. He’s running out of room to store his regrets. “Find him another partner,” he says before hanging up.
-
“What do you mean, Sam’s gone?” John asks, and Dean looks up at him. John towers over him. Dean shot up recently, but John still has an imposing presence that makes him feel like a ten-year-old who let a shtriga munch on his little brother.
This Arizona May has been suffocatingly hot, but that’s not why Dean’s having issues pulling in a full breath of air.
“I dropped him off at school, but he never made it there,” Dean confesses, and he expects anything, a slap, a punch, John to start screaming himself hoarse. Instead, John’s face takes on a disappointed expression, and Dean thinks he’d prefer a punch. A punch he can take and ice, and, honestly, he deserves one.
Instead, John looks at Dean like he’s a gnat. Like he’s a traitor to the one cause John cares about in this world.
-
“What do you mean, Sam’s gone?” John asks.
“He’s at that stupid fancy school of his, Dad, remember?” Dean pleads as he keeps tearing up the room in search of the hex bag. “Mr. Full Ride,” Dean adds in a mumble, going through the bedside cabinet. As urgent as this situation is, he always can spare a second to get pissed at Sam.
“You’re funny, kid,” John says in a loopy voice as Dean slices open the mattress John slept on tonight. “My Sammy’s too little for school.”
Dean turns around and opens John’s duffle. He’s glad the hex bag is in his fingers, his zippo at the ready, by the time John asks where his wife is.
-
“What do you mean, Sam’s gone?” John asks through a payphone. (This is wrong. It didn’t happen like this.)
“He went to California to look for you, Dad,” Dean says, and John tells him Dean better keep Sam on the case he told them to work, how hard can it be to keep an eye on one guy, really? You have a job and a case and I gave you an order, and I expect you to listen, boy, and Dean leans his forehead against the cold glass of the payphone, the many germs on it be damned, and waits for the lecture to blow over.
-
“What do you mean, Sam’s gone?” John paces the motel room.
(No, it definitely didn’t happen like this. Dad was long dead by then.)
“Probably shacked up with that bitch Ruby somewhere. Doing shady shit,” Dean sighs.
“Who’s Ruby?”
“Trust me, Dad. You don’t want to know,” Dean pleads, like he used to plead with Sam.
Don’t ask questions you’re not ready to hear an answer to.
(Dean wishes someone told him that before he knocked on Missouri’s door.)
-
“What do you mean, Sam’s gone?”
John looks at him from the mirror. It’s a nice mirror in a round frame shaped like the sun or maybe a sunflower. Lisa’s place is nice, way nicer than anywhere else Dean’s ever rested his bones at. She told him all about the tricks she used to make the place seem bigger and how she chose the paint for the walls in Home Depot and how she loves to shop for new decor in the little indie store down the street.
Shopping for freaking decor. Imagine that.
“Sam’s dead,” Dean says, and the mirror wobbles from that confession. Cobwebs of cracks cross its smooth surface. “Sam sacrificed himself to save the world.”
“And you’re still here,” John says in a soft voice, almost chastising Dean for sticking around.
“And I’m still here.”
The mirror shatters like an explosion.
-
“What do you mean, Sam’s gone?” John’s not in the motel room, but Dean hears his voice anyway. Oh well, Sam hears the Devil’s voice. Hearing their Dad is small fry compared to that.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Dean says. He’s exhausted. He’s on his nth drink of the night. He’s not in the mood to get his ass reamed by his father’s ghost. “I don’t know where he is.”
“How could you let that happen?” John sighs. Even if Dean wanted to shut him out, he can’t. John lives in his head. “Again? You’d think you’d learn by now. You best start writing, boy.”
Dean stands there, like a bad student in hunter school stuck doing detention, and writes the same line over and over again with a thick black crayon on a wall. Sam’s photos and the map of Pacific Northwest and case notes are still pinned up, but they’re moved to the side, to give Dean’s lines space.
I won’t lose my brother again.
I won’t lose my brother again.
I won’t lose my brother again.
I won’t lose my brother again.
I won’t lose my brother again.
I won’t lose my brother.
I won’t lose.
“My job would be a lot easier,” Dean says, “if he didn’t keep running away.”
“That’s no excuse,” John says. His voice is garbled. Now it sounds a whole lot like Dean’s own internal voice. “I don’t think you understood the lesson.” The wall is spotless and words-free all over again.
Back to square one, then.
I won’t lose my brother again, Dean writes on the old wallpaper. The oily crayon leaves soft, thick lines behind as it presses to the sun-bleached flower pattern.
And then Dean writes, I’m sorry.
-
Dean wakes up with a gasp, face buried in a suspiciously wet pillow. The clock shows it’s a little after five. In the evening. Hey, it’s socially-acceptable-to-drink o’clock already!
Sam’s gone. John was never here in the first place.
Sam’s still gone.
If only Dean texted him earlier. If only he didn’t let Sam walk off on that stupid pier. If only he didn’t ice Amy. She should’ve died, he still maintains that, but it wasn’t worth it. There’s not a monster in this world Dean wouldn’t let off scot-free if it meant Sam was safe.
Dean makes his way to the bathroom and shoves his head under the tap. The water, blissfully cool, runs down the back of his neck and his ears. He straightens up and glances in the mirror. John’s not in it. Sam’s not either. His own bearded, red-eyed reflection stares him down.
“Where the hell are you, man?” Dean asks the mirror. He rubs his hand on his face, exhaling. “I’m sorry, Sammy. I’m not sorry for killing her, but I sure as hell am sorry for lying to you about it. I’m sorry things got so messed up.”
His own reflection looks on dispassionately, and Sam’s not here, not lurking behind his shoulder with a toothbrush, not yelling for Dean to get out of the bathroom already, not scolding him for getting hammered, again, last night. Sam’s not anywhere. Sam’s in the wind.
“What happened to you? C’mon, give me a sign or something. You’re the one who’s good with that psychic crap. You’re the one who’s good at finding people. And I- I can’t do this on my own.”
Nothing happens.
Dean swears under his breath, cursing himself out for believing the dream meant anything. All this time has gone, and he still doesn’t have a single lead. Dad would be disappointed.
-
It’s a week later, and Dean’s wasting his time at Moosetown when a conversation from the next booth catches his attention. The words “weird” and “creepy” and “strange” ping Dean’s radar automatically, and the conversation next to him used all three.
“But seriously, have any of you seen this creepy hitchhiker?” one of the men, a stocky fella with a bushy beard says. “Down on I-5?”
“Oh, yeah,” another, an older guy in a ballcap and a vest, nods. “The weird barefoot guy in a white shirt? Right in the thick of the woods, right? Like, how’d he get there? And how is his shirt still so clean? Real strange. Something ain’t right.”
“The barefoot guy,” the first guy echoes. “And he looks like Hell warmed over. I swear, I just kept driving. Maybe that’s chickenshit of me, but I’ve heard enough crap about people pulling over for, like, cute girls hitchhiking and getting their asses beat up and robbed ‘cause it was a trap.”
“That’s not what this is,” a third man interjects. “Call me an idiot, okay, but I stopped for him. And something so weird happened. If I didn’t see it with my own two eyes…”
“What? What was it?”
“Okay, he stopped and looked at me, and told me something.”
“What?”
“He lowered his voice, all creepy-like, and said, ‘I know you cheated on your girlfriend.’ And, look, I swear on my momma’s grave, I never strayed, I’m a loyal man. And then he just turned around and walked back into the woods. I got chills, kid you not.”
Dean tenses in his seat. This sounds way too familiar to discount.
“Where was that, folks?” he asks, leaning over the edge of the booth.
“A little along I-5, that-a-way. When the forest gets really thick, right after Old Man Dave’s farm. An eerie little spot. Never liked it. Dunno how Dave lives there all by his lonesome without shitting his pants every night. Well, I guess he’s not alone, he’s got his sheep, but c’mon, what are the sheep gonna do? Baa the intruder to death or...?”
Dean’s not listening at this point.
“Thanks, fellas,” he says, and heads straight for the door.
He’s glad he didn’t have the chance to get sloppy just yet. The stolen car’s engine revs and Dean goes pedal to the metal. Right out of town on I-5, he said.
This car’s motor tends to sneeze, but it knows better than to test Dean’s patience now, even though he pushes it to its limits on these country roads. The farm flies by and the woods begin, thick ones with trees tall enough to scrape the ink-black sky. This spot isn’t that freaky by the light of day, but with the nightfall, even Dean has to admit it’s on the spookier side.
The radio comes to life all by itself. It goes from station to station, the knob rotating as if turned by an invisible hand. The speakers crackle with static noise. Dean must be getting close. He slows the car and carefully rolls it down the road, eyes peeled. And yet, for all the head-swiveling he does, the appearance of the figure in white in the car’s headlights still takes him by surprise. Dean swears and hits the breaks so hard the car squeals.
Dean stares at the hitchhiker, wordless. His hand curls around the door handle, but he can’t move. There, standing on the side of the road with his thumb up, in a white shirt and jeans, his hair messed up, is Sam.
He looks tired, with deep shadows under his eyes and his cheekbones jutting out more than usual. Dean steps out of the car and runs to him, his heart racing, ready to yank Sam into a long-overdue bear hug.
But his arms go straight through Sam, and he stumbles, his feet struggling to find purchase once he barrels through his brother’s shape.
“You’re a ghost,” Dean says, and his voice breaks. “You’re a fucking ghost, Sam.”
“I know,” Sam admits. His voice is a barely audible wheeze, and Dean has to listen closely to make out what he’s saying. “I’m sorry.”
“Okay. Fuck.” Dean straightens up. “What happened?”
“I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything past, uh, I don’t know. When we worked that clown case, I guess?” Sam makes a disgusted face. Dean laughs in spite of himself, a burst of semi-hysterical laughter shaking his shoulders. “Or, no, the undead girl? You thought her Dad brought her back but it was the guy who liked her?”
“That was, like, five years ago.” Dean rubs his hand on his face and watches Sam, committing his features to memory all over again. His sharp nose, his stupid sideburns that look like they’re eating his face alive, that little mole on his cheek. Sam flickers in and out of existence as Dean looks on, and the static in the car radio grows louder again. “You don’t remember how you…?”
How you died.
“No. But I know where my body is. I’m tethered to it, I guess.” Sam says. “And I can show you.”
Dean’s already opening the trunk and grabbing his duffle. A machete, silver bullets, holy water, this duffle’s packing enough heat to take down most things they know. Dean’s not wasting his time with recon, not when Sam might vanish at any second.
“Let’s roll,” he says and tries so hard to keep the quiver out of his voice.
-
Sam doesn’t talk anymore, simply walks next to Dean. His footsteps don’t make a noise, and his face is scrunched in concentration like every movement zaps energy from him.
“There,” he finally says, pointing at a crudely built shack. Dean eyes the shack, thinking how to approach it in case whatever took Sam was still in there.
“Okay. Let’s do this,” he mutters, pulling out his gun. Sam doesn’t answer, and Dean turns around with a “Sammy? You with me?” but he’s gone. “Yeah. Okay.”
Dean sneaks up to the door, picks the lock, and carefully pushes it open. The muffled creak sounds gunshot-loud in the stillness of the night woods. Dean holds his breath before venturing inside the shack. Good thing he does, too, because the smell inside is nothing short of foul. Dean whips his flashlight around and tallies up the floor layout in case shit goes down. He’s in a small hallway, and through a crack in a door, he can make out one large living room and a bathroom.
Dean steps forward to get to the living room, but a cracking noise and a crumbling sensation under his foot make him stop in his tracks. He shines the flashlight in the direction of the noise and recoils. A group of four dried up bodies is laying in the corner of the hallway, piled up right next to a pair of rubber boots and a rusted bike.
The closest thing Dean can compare them to is a cross between mummy skeletons and the weird dehydrated fruit Sam was into for a hot minute. The bodies are so brittle, one of the ankles straight-up crumbled under Dean’s shoe. He moves the flashlight’s beam to a large floral tattoo on one of the bodies’ arms to inspect it closer. It seems familiar. After a second of scrambling, his brain comes up with an explanation where he’s seen it: one of the NAMUS entries. A hippie-slash-hitchhiker who vanished without a trace a few months ago.
“Fuck. That’s just twisted,” he mumbles, wiping his shoe sole on the remains on the rag laid in front of the door.
Armed with the knowledge that whoever lives here is one sick puppy, Dean pushes the door open wider and carefully steps inside the room. The room's interior decor consists of a boxy old TV with crooked rabbit ears, assorted 80’s furniture, and some logging equipment. It was clearly abandoned a while back and never cleaned, judging by the mice droppings on the floor and the strong smell of dust. There’s another dismantled bike and a small kitchenette tucked in the corner with a large wall-mounted shelf over it. A weird faint blue glow comes in the gap between the shelf’s double doors, and Dean makes a note to check it out later.
Definitely later.
Because Sam’s right here.
Sam’s lying on two crudely made tables that have been pushed together to contain him. Even combined, the tables are too short to fit Sam, and his bare feet are hanging off the edge. Sam’s forehead is covered in the black electrodes they use for EEG. Multiple clear wires are running off the black disks to join the wire from the IV stuck in the crook of his elbow. The whole mess of them leads to an IV saline drip that’s filled with a bright blue glowing liquid, the same shade as the glow from the shelf. On further inspection, Dean realizes the blue is being pumped out of Sam, not inside of him. Like a blood donor kind of a situation.
Most importantly, Sam’s breathing.
His chest is rising with little shallow breaths, and his brow is furrowed, and he makes a little pained noise as another glob of blue shoots up one of the transparent hollow tubes to join the rest.
The psychics said Sam was neither awake nor asleep, and that’s why they couldn’t locate him. That’s why they defaulted to the idea that Sam was a goner. But Sam wasn’t dead. Sam was in a magic-induced coma.
“Oh, fuck,” Dean says, and the relief that washes over him is strong enough to make his knees buckle. He has to grab the edge of the table to stay upright. “Okay, Sammy. Hang on tight. I’m gonna get you out of here.”
Sam doesn’t respond to Dean shaking him or slapping his cold cheek. Dean peels all the electrodes off Sam’s head and carefully removes the IV needle and shakes him, but Sam doesn’t even stir. Fuck, what will it take?
Dean quickly glances around the room to make sure there’s no booby traps or anything and swings the doors of the shelf open.
A row of glass containers, ranging from small elegant perfume bottles to large glass jars, all full of a glowing blue liquid. All labeled in neat cursive writing like a grandma would label the jam she made for her favorite grandchildren.
“Seeing Jo and Ellen die,” one of the labels said. “Being possessed by the Devil.” “Ruby’s betrayal and breaking the last seal.” The biggest jar is labeled simply “HELL” in all capitals.
Dean’s holding the very last bottle in the row, labeled “Finding out his brother killed his friend,” when the sound of a door being opened behind him makes him whip around. He pockets the bottle and raises his gun.
The figure standing in the doorframe is familiar. Kristy the bartender.
“Dean!” she says, positively giddy. “Why, I’ve been waiting for you.” A deep blue glow spreads up her arms in an elaborate pattern. Her eyes flash blue as well. A djinn. Not a regular djinn, though, those feed on blood. Must be some new breed they haven’t had a run-in with before. There are way too many creepy-crawlies to keep track of them all.
Good news: Dean knows how to kill a djinn.
Bad news: you kill a djinn with a silver knife dipped in lamb’s blood, but he doesn't have a dipped one on him. Brought their whole arsenal, but still doesn’t have the tool that’d ice her in particular. Fucking figures.
“You sick freak,” Dean says and shoots as she approaches, even though he knows it’s useless. Her body jerks as the bullets hit her flesh, each slowing her down for a second, but she keeps walking.
“Appreciate the sweet nothings,” Kristy purrs. Dean drops the gun and pulls out his silver knife. When Kristy’s within a melee attack range, he buries the blade between her ribs with force. Kristy’s blood squirts onto his hand, sticky and warm, but she doesn’t even flinch.
“So close to making it work, kiddo.” She laughs and grabs Dean by the throat, lifting him off the ground. He flails, grabbing at her arm, and kicks out blindly, never hitting the mark. Kristy slams his head against the wall, and then he’s on the floor- and the world goes black quickly and unceremoniously.
On to PART THREE...
The witch-slash-psychic that Sam had his sights on next lives in a modest house, decorated with glowing neon signs depicting eyes and palms and eyes on palms. “Come learn your fortune from the Incredible Paolo!” the signage reads.
The Incredible Paolo is a short balding dude with a beer belly dressed in an extravagant purple outfit decked out with feathers and fur. Dean politely follows him all the way to the cluttered kitschy living room before pulling a gun on him.
The Incredible Paolo makes a loud noise of shock as soon as he turns around.
“Some psychic you are, not to see this coming,” Dean says, gesturing for him to sit on a pillow. Next to it, a low table with a large crystal ball atop of it and a deck of cards. Man, what a stereotype.
“Okay, what do you want? Money?” Paolo asks in a trembling voice. “Please, sir, I’ll open the safe for you…”
“And the money’s cursed so I die horribly in the next couple days, right?”
Paolo makes a noncommittal noise. “So you know I’m a witch.”
“And I know you’ve been sacrificing people left and right, pal.” Sam’s research is pretty fucking damning. Dean pulls Sam’s photo out of his jacket’s breast pocket, keeping the gun trained on Paolo. “Have you seen this man? And you better look carefully. If I don’t like what you’re saying, I’m gonna be pissed.”
“Okay, okay!” Paolo huffs and leans up to look at Sam’s photo. “I haven’t seen him. I swear.”
“You better not be lying to me, you little-”
“Wait, wait. I haven’t seen him, but there are spells, rituals we could try! You’re looking for him, right? I’ll help.”
“No human sacrifice?” Dean asks suspiciously.
“No human sacrifice. Please put the gun down, sir.”
“I don’t think so.” Dean kneels on one of the dusty pillows as well, but his gun is still aimed at Paolo. “But I’ll let you do the spell. No funny business.”
“May I go get the supplies for the spell? They’re in that cabinet over there.”
Dean grants his permission with a nod of the gun and soon the table is covered with a large map of the continental US on it and a bunch of candles of different colors and lengths. Paolo chants over them, eyes closed. A gust of wind tears through the room, rustling stray papers and making the candle’s flames waver and flicker.
“O-okay. Now, when I set the map on fire, the spot that remains will show us the area where your friend is. Like, erm, like magic GPS.” Paolo explains, dropping all pretense of acting like a mysterious psychic. He dips the corner of the map into one of the candles and it catches fire immediately.
The map burns fast, and by Paolo’s shocked face, Dean suspects something went haywire. The paper twitches on the table as if it’s being galvanized and scatters into ashes. All of it.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means, I cannot find him among the awake or the asleep. He’s no longer of this Earth, I’m sorry to say.”
“You’re telling me Sam’s dead?” Dean snarls, grabbing the fabric of Paolo’s outrageously purple shirt and shaking him. “No, no fucking way. You try your stupid ritual again!”
“It wouldn’t be any use. The spell worked as it was supposed to. It can’t find dead matter.”
Dead matter. Sam isn’t fucking dead matter. This fucker doesn’t get to call him that.
Dean’s fingers curl into a fist before he can even think about it. He clocks that smug-ass witch straight on his smug face, one punch after another. Dean jumps up to his feet and finally puts the gun to good use, bang-bang-bang, a triple tap straight to the head. He sits back down and buries his face in his hands with a shuddering exhale.
Sam isn’t just gone? Sam’s dead?
Dean sits in that room with the ganked witch for way too long, dragging his thumb back and forth over the engraving on his gun.
Whatever thing got Sam, it’ll regret it.
-
When you get a terminal diagnosis, it’s always good to get a second opinion. That’s why Dean heads to Lawrence, Kansas.
Missouri opens the door before he can even knock, and Dean stands there with his hand awkwardly raised until she pulls him in.
“An awful thing, what happened to your brother,” she says, cutting Dean off as soon as he starts explaining why he’s there. Dean perks up, hoping for more detail, but the next words that fall from her lips make his shoulders fall in turn. “Sadly, the connection to him is murky. I can’t make out what exactly happened. His spirit is...”
“Incommunicado?” Dean asks, picking up a bird skull perched on her cabinet and inspecting it closer.
“Precisely. And keep your hands off the merchandise,” Missouri says, yanking the skull out of his hands and placing it back where it was. “Let me see if there’s anything we can do to establish contact with Sam or pinpoint where he may be.”
They spend a good half of the day trying every ritual in Missouri’s books. By the end, Dean’s head is pulsing with dull pain because of all the sweet scents of the candles and incense and they’re not any closer to cracking the riddle of where Sam is.
“We could keep going.” Missouri looks up from the basin of water she’s been using to divine Sam’s whereabouts. Sam’s photo lies on its bottom, blithely staring up with his happy eyes. Dean can’t take much more of this. “But I don’t see us getting a different result.”
“So.” Dean gulps. Doctor, doctor, give me the news. “Does this mean Sam’s really, uh…”
“I do think that’s the most likely explanation. But there’s always a glimmer of hope, Dean,” Missouri says, and her voice is unusually soft. Dean wishes everyone would stop treating him with kid gloves because it makes him feel like they’re giving him their premature condolences. “There are some things even the spirits can’t divine. But he’s nowhere I can see.”
Dean avoids the old house on the way out of town. He does wonder if Jenny and her kids stuck around or if the poltergeist spooked them out. He wouldn’t blame them for leaving, not after everything they’ve seen. But people had stayed in stranger places after freakier circumstances.
Sam saved the kids that night. What they do is important. So fucking important. But the reason Sam isn’t next to Dean right now is because of their goddamn job.
He drives back to Washington in someone else’s old as dirt Dodge Dakota with a sputtering, fucked-up engine. Somewhere in Wyoming, Dean pulls over on the side of the road, because the path ahead is blurry all of a sudden.
Dean presses his forehead against his arms, folded on the wheel, and then he sits there as the car rocks to the tune of the large trucks passing by until he can’t stay still anymore.
He stumbles outside and hobbles into the forest on the edge of the road. Trees tower over him, so tall he has to throw his head to look back. Even just the freaking act of having to tilt his head back to look up reminds him of all the times Sam walked up to him while Dean was sitting on the bed looking at something or other on their laptop. And it’s so fucking stupid, really, that a fucking tree makes his heart ache so damn bad.
“Where the fuck are you?” Dean mouths, leaning against the tree, and he slides down, his shirt catching on the uneven bark, and his knees hit the ground hard. He doesn’t cry, not exactly, too empty to even muster it, just sits under that tree like he found his final resting place right next to a country road. Eventually, it gets too dark and cold for these over-dramatic acts of self-pity, and Dean has to get up and keep walking.
He makes his way back to Windfall, going way too fast and making way too few stops on the way. Once he’s there, Dean lies in the motel bed on that stupid lumpy mattress for hours on end.
The morning after shock never comes, because Dean barely sleeps enough for it to count. When he does, he has vivid nightmares. He was seeing all kinds of horror shows even before Sam went missing, but now instead of Amy and Castiel, he sees Dad chastising him and Sam, sad and silent.
He wants to deny it, to say the psychics are full of shit. What do they know? Just ‘cause they can chatter with spirits, Dean has to take their word for it? But he does trust Missouri. She knows what she’s doing.
And it looks like Sam may be dead.
Vonnegut said about death once, so it goes. Well, that's bullshit. It does not go. It’s not going anywhere. Not when it's Sam.
-
The Windfall church is small and humble. Its main decoration is a large stained window depicting Mother Mary. Dean stops in front of it for a second before walking on.
The elderly pastor smiles at Dean when Dean approaches. Dean shows him Sam’s picture. The good Father hasn’t seen Sam, but he tells Dean, in prayer, all things can be found. For once, Dean agrees with that sentiment.
Dean takes the pew in the very back. God, he hates praying.
“Testing, testing. Is this thing on? An open call to all the angels who can hear this.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “My name is Dean Winchester. And I need help.” One eye open. The pastor smiles at him again. No one else’s around.
He repeats his prayer a few times, an SOS signal sent out by a sinking ship. The church is empty and still. Fuckers. When they needed something from the Winchesters, you had to fight them off with a stick. When Dean needs one lousy angel? Zilch.
Dean’s crossing the motel parking lot when a rustling noise makes him turn around. Ed, the biker, is standing behind him, back straight as if he swallowed a rod. His feet make an unnatural, echoing noise against the wet pavement. For a second, Dean thinks Ed’s high as a kite and it’s about to go down. But a dark shadow of wings spreading wide behind his back points towards a different theory.
“Hello, Dean Winchester,” he says, and her eyes flash a bright blue. “I heard your prayer. My name is Zaqiel.” It’s really frigging weird, hearing that formal voice come out of Ed’s throat. For Ed, “formal” meant “less than five swear words per sentence”.
“Wait, what?” Dean says, kind of dumbly for someone who called angel delivery service not ten minutes ago. “Huh. You’re possessing a frigging Hell’s Angel? That’s ironic.”
The angel doesn’t acknowledge that joke with a reply. He stares at Dean with Ed’s beady eyes to the degree where it gets unnerving. Okay, not much of a humorous type. “Can you help me find Sam?” Dean cuts to the chase.
“Even if I wanted to help you, which I truly have no reason to, your friend,” Zaqiel says the word “friend” with disdain, like someone would say “a dead rat”, “Castiel seared yours and your brother’s ribs with sigils that conceal you from our sight.”
“No, that’s not what I mean.” Dean’s voice grows so thick, he has to clear his throat before he can speak again. “I mean, in Heaven. Is he in Heaven?”
“I don’t know. I’m not in charge of the Pearly Gates.”
“Okay, but can you check? Patch me through to him?”
“I can. But why would I?” He crosses her arms over his chest. “You and Sam used to run with Castiel. Castiel, who stoked flames of a civil war. Who’s to blame for my brothers and sisters dying!”
Okay. Unfortunate. “I’m sorry. But someone might’ve killed my brother, too. And I have to know what did it. I don’t even know where his body might be.” He doesn’t have any kind of leverage here. All he has up his sleeve is, well, a whole lot of begging. “I have to know what happened. Please, let me see him once and I’ll be out of your halo or whatever. Just...”
“Wow. A Winchester pleading, down on his knees. That’s a rare sight.” Zaqiel reaches out and places his hand on Dean’s face. Dean flinches at the first cold touch of the calloused hand but forces himself to stand still. “I’ve watched you two before. We all have, of course, we all came to watch the showdown. You remind me of him.”
“Who?”
“Michael. He was a strategist, same as you. And never knew when one was meant to quit.” A weak smile. “But he wouldn’t plead for any of us. And you do, so willingly, at the first indication that your brother may be aching.”
“That a bad thing?”
“Not to me.”
He flutters away. Dean leans against the hood of one of the cars in the parking lot and presses his palm against its cool surface, covered in raindrops. He wishes, now more than ever, that his Baby was still here. Screw being recognizable. He could use something familiar to cling to.
The angel Zaqiel comes back in a few minutes.
“I come bearing unfortunate news.” Fuck, what now? How does this get any worse? “I checked with the gatekeeper angel. She assured me that Sam Winchester hasn’t entered Heaven since his extremely brief visit in April of 2010.”
“If he’s not in Heaven, then where?” Dean asks, voice wooden.
“I’m afraid you know what the answer is. Hell has as valid of a claim on Sam’s soul as Heaven does.”
“A valid claim? You kidding me with this?”
“I don’t make the rules, Dean. But if you know your brother’s perished, and he’s not in Heaven, there’s not a lot of options left. That’s as much as I can tell you. Good luck.”
The grace smokes out of Ed’s throat, and he staggers with a grunt.
“Man,” he says cheerfully as soon as he straightens up, “I had the best fucking trip. I saw actual angels. It was crazy!”
-
There’s a suitable crossroads barely out of town, near a creek. The sky’s gray with heavy clouds today. They slowly pass overhead as Dean digs out a hole. The scene makes him sick with deja vu.
“Wow. Look at you, back for seconds. I do love a returning customer,” a voice rings out as soon as he refills the hole he dug, crouching over the small mound. Dean looks up at the high heels in his field of view and drags his gaze up to see a familiar face framed by dark wavy hair. Meg.
“What are you, a crossroads demon now?”
“Nah, I made an exception when I heard you rang the dinner bell. I’ve been known to secure a deal or two in the past, but dealing with needy, pathetic losers all day is such a turn-off.” She rolls her eyes. “Speaking of needy pathetic losers, I’m sorry to inform you, Dean, but you can’t sell your soul twice. We at Hell Inc. accept virginal souls only.” She smiles wide.
“Huh. Well, virgins are overrated.” Dean gets up to his feet. “I prefer ladies with experience.”
“Suum cuique.” Meg shrugs and snorts at the momentary confusion that flickers across Dean's face. “Right, Sammy isn’t around to play Google Translate. Anyway, why would you even want to bet your soul again? One stint down below wasn’t enough? Or do you think your pet angel will swoop in and save your ass from Hell this time around as well?”
“Cas is dead.”
Meg’s eyes go round. For a second, she looks genuinely crestfallen. “Oh.” She closes her eyes for a brief second and shrugs the breaking news off. “What do you want, Winchester?”
“I want to know where Sam is.”
“You lost him?” Meg snorts. “Aren’t you two attached at the hip at all times? When I took him for a joyride, getting him out of your sight was a bitch and a half.”
Dean grits his teeth. “He’s most likely dead. I want to know if he’s in Hell.”
“Most likely dead? So you don’t know for sure?” She lowers her voice to a purr. “Oh, this must be killing you.”
Dean stares her down.
“Everyone’s dead, then. Only you are left. Cool beans.” Meg tip-toes, gets in his face. “So you want me to check if Sammy dear’s frying extra crispy, then? And what do I get in return? ‘Cause, no offense, but I don’t think you have a thing to offer this girl, Winchester.”
“We could do this the easy way. You’ll tell me where Sam is and get to pay off some of Castiel’s debts. He screwed Sam over pretty bad before he died,” Dean says. Meg’s eyes dart away and back at him again. Dean dips his hand into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulls out the demon-killing knife. “Or we can do it the hard way and I can review a thing or two Alastair taught me. Your choice.”
“Pfft. You think you’re so big and bad.” Meg scoffs. “Sweetheart, I’m not scared of your pigsticker. And I… I certainly don’t give a flying fuck about the red ink in Clarence’s ledger.” She puts her hands on her hips. Dean twists the handle of the knife in his hand, making the sharp edge of the blade catch the light.
“Ugh, fine. I know you way better than I ever cared to, and I’m well-aware you’ll keep crawling after me until kingdom come. You’re like a hellhound with a bone when it comes to Sammy dear.” Meg bares her fangs and growls with a laugh. “I take it I don’t have to paint you a mental picture.”
“Shut your trap.”
“But you’re so fun to tease.” She stomps her boot’s heel against the ground in mock disappointment. “I see why you were Alastair’s favorite.”
“Where’s Sam?” Dean interjects before Meg can go any further along the memory lane in an attempt to get a rise out of him.
Meg runs her hand through her hair. “Dunno. But one thing I can tell you for sure, cowboy. Sam’s not in Hell.”
“How’d you know? You didn’t even check.”
“Oh, I didn’t have to. You think a Winchester arriving in Hell would pass unnoticed? We’d throw, like, the biggest party-slash-orgy in honor of that. Nah. Sam’s not there.”
“So where is he?”
“Well, he is a major goody-two-shoes. Have you tried upstairs?”
Dean makes a “duh, of course I tried upstairs” face.
“Maybe the rumors of Sam’s death are greatly exaggerated.” Meg shrugged. “Speaking of kicking the bucket. What happened to Castiel, anyway?”
“He ate a bunch of souls. Went nuts. Drowned.”
“Wo-o-ow. That’s way more epic of an exit than I expected from dear ol’ Clarence.”
“Yeah.”
They let it hang in the air for a few seconds. Meg is the first to break the awkward silence.
“Well. Guess you should look for your little bro elsewhere. Break a leg, Winchester.”
“I’m not in a fucking play.”
“Oh, I know. I just always wanted to wish you that,” Meg says with a shit-eating grin, and then she’s gone.
-
Dean’s not one to give up on a search, and he’s certainly not one to give up on Sam. But when psychics and Heaven and Hell agree that there’s nowhere else to look, there’s nowhere else to look. Sam’s missing. Completely.
Still, Dean keeps going. Not because he believes there’ll be clues, but because if he stops looking, his idle hands might start making a noose.
He looks through the NamUs database, widening his search from Windfall until it encompasses the entire state of Washington. So many of these cases sound a lot like Sam’s: they were on the road until they weren’t. But Dean doesn’t have enough to go on, no MO, no nothing. And something tells him trying to solve every missing case in the state in hopes that one will pan out and bring him to Sam won’t work out.
Dean charges Sam’s iPod and listens to the episode of the NY Times’ The Book Review Podcast it was paused on. That doesn’t give him any clues or new info since he’s not exactly looking for things to add to his summer reading list.
He looks through every single drawer in the table and checks the cabinet under the sink. All this turns up is a yellow legal pad Sam took notes on The Incredible Paolo’s case on. Dean flips through every page as if hoping there’s a hidden message on one of them he’ll need to scribble some graphite over. But Sam didn’t leave any hidden messages. Probably because he had no idea he wasn’t making it to Mt. Vernon. He had plans. Save people and hunt things, like on the good old bumper sticker. Dean tosses the notepad on the table, frustrated.
He finds out a little more about Sam’s plans when he opens Sam’s duffle. There, under Sam’s clothing and toiletry kit and a mean-looking hunting knife, is a large book. It's wrapped in brown paper with a receipt from the “Uncle Arthur’s Antique Books Store” stapled to it. At first, Dean thinks it’s a lore book of some kind, and he hurriedly undoes the rope bow on top and tears the paper up. But what falls out on the bedspread is an old, well-loved book of fairytales.
Why would Sam drag a fairytale book around? Dean picks up the book and flips through the pages until a familiar illustration catches his eye: a young girl standing atop a mountain and reaching up to the sun.
Right. That story. The story they never got to finish when they were kids. He remembers it now.
Dean flips to the end, to the image of the girl cradling her little brother to her chest.
This doesn’t feel like a message. It’s not like Sam was aware he was about to vanish into thin air, and Dean’s not about to go down that conspiracy theory road. Just a freakish coincidence. The receipt is dated a month and a half ago, when they barely split up. The crude gift wrap must mean Sam was gonna give it to him. Who else could appreciate this gift, huh? No, Sam was there. He would’ve answered if Dean called. You don’t get meaningful gifts for a guy you plan to ditch for good.
If only Sam didn’t ditch him at all. If Sam didn’t throw a fit, if Sam wasn’t a fucking bitch about this whole situation, Dean could’ve helped him.
Dean looks at the investigation wall with its pitiful few clues pinned up and fights the urge to put his fist through the garish wallpaper and the plaster behind.
-
In the end, Dean sets tentative roots in the Pineview Motel. Three weeks later, his money runs out and he drives a few towns over to hustle. Don’t shit where you eat or whatever. Or where you’re waiting for some kind of a little brother-related miracle. Even though Dean knows better than to believe in miracles occurring all by themselves. You have to make them happen, and even then they come at one hell of a price.
Besides, he kind of grows to enjoy the Moosetown Bar in all its fugly glory. The people there are nice, as asocial as Dean feels right now, and Kristy is one hell of a bartender. She makes the biggest dudes reconsider fighting in her establishment with her trusty shotgun she keeps behind the bar, heals the locals’ broken hearts with a well-placed drink, and knows just when to cut someone off. Which comes in handy since this quickly becomes Dean’s most-frequented watering hole.
“Still no news on the brother front?” Kristy asks, wiping the bar surface with her trusty white towel. It’s quiet today. An old man named Dave is drinking a Jack and coke a few bar stools over. A sleepy fly crawls on the bar and Kristy whips the towel to shoo it away. “Do they even have a theory? What happened?”
“They” being the cops, who don’t even know Sam ever went missing, so Dean gives her a noncommittal shrug.
“That’s pretty scary,” Kristy says. “That someone can vanish like that. It’s really nice that you’re out here looking for him. If I went missing, my brother wouldn’t even notice. Or care.”
“You don’t say?”
“Yeah, he’s a bit of an asshole. To put it lightly.” Kristy scrunches up her nose. “But I think you’re single-handedly reviving my faith in siblinghood.”
Hello, guilt, Dean’s old friend. If he was such a great brother, he wouldn’t have left Sam adrift by himself. If he was such a good brother, Sam wouldn’t have vanished into thin air. If he was such a good brother, he would be doing something else but sitting here and hoping for the world to send him a blinking sign, Find Your Little Brother Here.
“You alright? Did I say something?” she frowns, and Dean weakly laughs, as if she could say anything to make him feel worse than he already does.
“Nah, you’re good. Think I’m due for another drink, barkeep,” he says.
“Aye, aye, captain,” Kristy says, pushing her braid out of the way as she turns around to grab the bottle. She grows serious as she tops off Dean’s glass and even reaches across the bar to squeeze his wrist. “They’ll find him. They have to.”
“Have to,” Dean echoes and salutes her with his glass before tossing his drink back.
“At least Windfall isn’t the worst place on earth to be stuck. We have the best air, even though there’s a highway, like, right there.” Kristy makes a vague gesture in the direction of the freeway. “Our secret? The pines.”
Dean nods along to her little tour, even though he’s never found that the town of Windfall is particularly easy to breathe in.
-
Bobby calls a few days later.
“There’s a case in Montana,” he says. “Someone needs a partner to go at a pair of shifters. Sounds like your kind of a job.”
“Thought I was too toxic to set up with other hunters,” Dean says, and he’s not proud of how petty he sounds. But he’s in no state to mince words.
Bobby clears his throat at that level of backtalk. “That was then. I think you could use a good hunt with a solid partner right now. He’s a good guy. No bullshit.”
The thought of hunting with someone else makes Dean all kinds of nauseous.
“I haven’t finished up here yet.”
“Dean,” Bobby says carefully, “I think we might have exhausted our avenues. Why not-”
“It’s not over yet,” Dean snarls, and it’s not Bobby he’s angry at, but Bobby’s asking to be in the blast wave by trying to get Dean to switch his gears from Sam. “Until I see a body with my own two eyes, it’s not over.”
“Okay,” Bobby says in that “you’re being an idjit, but I can’t stop you” tone. “Okay, yeah. Jim can handle this one on his own, I guess.”
Dean can’t have some freaking Jim’s death on his conscience too. He’s running out of room to store his regrets. “Find him another partner,” he says before hanging up.
-
“What do you mean, Sam’s gone?” John asks, and Dean looks up at him. John towers over him. Dean shot up recently, but John still has an imposing presence that makes him feel like a ten-year-old who let a shtriga munch on his little brother.
This Arizona May has been suffocatingly hot, but that’s not why Dean’s having issues pulling in a full breath of air.
“I dropped him off at school, but he never made it there,” Dean confesses, and he expects anything, a slap, a punch, John to start screaming himself hoarse. Instead, John’s face takes on a disappointed expression, and Dean thinks he’d prefer a punch. A punch he can take and ice, and, honestly, he deserves one.
Instead, John looks at Dean like he’s a gnat. Like he’s a traitor to the one cause John cares about in this world.
-
“What do you mean, Sam’s gone?” John asks.
“He’s at that stupid fancy school of his, Dad, remember?” Dean pleads as he keeps tearing up the room in search of the hex bag. “Mr. Full Ride,” Dean adds in a mumble, going through the bedside cabinet. As urgent as this situation is, he always can spare a second to get pissed at Sam.
“You’re funny, kid,” John says in a loopy voice as Dean slices open the mattress John slept on tonight. “My Sammy’s too little for school.”
Dean turns around and opens John’s duffle. He’s glad the hex bag is in his fingers, his zippo at the ready, by the time John asks where his wife is.
-
“What do you mean, Sam’s gone?” John asks through a payphone. (This is wrong. It didn’t happen like this.)
“He went to California to look for you, Dad,” Dean says, and John tells him Dean better keep Sam on the case he told them to work, how hard can it be to keep an eye on one guy, really? You have a job and a case and I gave you an order, and I expect you to listen, boy, and Dean leans his forehead against the cold glass of the payphone, the many germs on it be damned, and waits for the lecture to blow over.
-
“What do you mean, Sam’s gone?” John paces the motel room.
(No, it definitely didn’t happen like this. Dad was long dead by then.)
“Probably shacked up with that bitch Ruby somewhere. Doing shady shit,” Dean sighs.
“Who’s Ruby?”
“Trust me, Dad. You don’t want to know,” Dean pleads, like he used to plead with Sam.
Don’t ask questions you’re not ready to hear an answer to.
(Dean wishes someone told him that before he knocked on Missouri’s door.)
-
“What do you mean, Sam’s gone?”
John looks at him from the mirror. It’s a nice mirror in a round frame shaped like the sun or maybe a sunflower. Lisa’s place is nice, way nicer than anywhere else Dean’s ever rested his bones at. She told him all about the tricks she used to make the place seem bigger and how she chose the paint for the walls in Home Depot and how she loves to shop for new decor in the little indie store down the street.
Shopping for freaking decor. Imagine that.
“Sam’s dead,” Dean says, and the mirror wobbles from that confession. Cobwebs of cracks cross its smooth surface. “Sam sacrificed himself to save the world.”
“And you’re still here,” John says in a soft voice, almost chastising Dean for sticking around.
“And I’m still here.”
The mirror shatters like an explosion.
-
“What do you mean, Sam’s gone?” John’s not in the motel room, but Dean hears his voice anyway. Oh well, Sam hears the Devil’s voice. Hearing their Dad is small fry compared to that.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Dean says. He’s exhausted. He’s on his nth drink of the night. He’s not in the mood to get his ass reamed by his father’s ghost. “I don’t know where he is.”
“How could you let that happen?” John sighs. Even if Dean wanted to shut him out, he can’t. John lives in his head. “Again? You’d think you’d learn by now. You best start writing, boy.”
Dean stands there, like a bad student in hunter school stuck doing detention, and writes the same line over and over again with a thick black crayon on a wall. Sam’s photos and the map of Pacific Northwest and case notes are still pinned up, but they’re moved to the side, to give Dean’s lines space.
I won’t lose my brother again.
I won’t lose my brother again.
I won’t lose my brother again.
I won’t lose my brother again.
I won’t lose my brother again.
I won’t lose my brother.
I won’t lose.
“My job would be a lot easier,” Dean says, “if he didn’t keep running away.”
“That’s no excuse,” John says. His voice is garbled. Now it sounds a whole lot like Dean’s own internal voice. “I don’t think you understood the lesson.” The wall is spotless and words-free all over again.
Back to square one, then.
I won’t lose my brother again, Dean writes on the old wallpaper. The oily crayon leaves soft, thick lines behind as it presses to the sun-bleached flower pattern.
And then Dean writes, I’m sorry.
-
Dean wakes up with a gasp, face buried in a suspiciously wet pillow. The clock shows it’s a little after five. In the evening. Hey, it’s socially-acceptable-to-drink o’clock already!
Sam’s gone. John was never here in the first place.
Sam’s still gone.
If only Dean texted him earlier. If only he didn’t let Sam walk off on that stupid pier. If only he didn’t ice Amy. She should’ve died, he still maintains that, but it wasn’t worth it. There’s not a monster in this world Dean wouldn’t let off scot-free if it meant Sam was safe.
Dean makes his way to the bathroom and shoves his head under the tap. The water, blissfully cool, runs down the back of his neck and his ears. He straightens up and glances in the mirror. John’s not in it. Sam’s not either. His own bearded, red-eyed reflection stares him down.
“Where the hell are you, man?” Dean asks the mirror. He rubs his hand on his face, exhaling. “I’m sorry, Sammy. I’m not sorry for killing her, but I sure as hell am sorry for lying to you about it. I’m sorry things got so messed up.”
His own reflection looks on dispassionately, and Sam’s not here, not lurking behind his shoulder with a toothbrush, not yelling for Dean to get out of the bathroom already, not scolding him for getting hammered, again, last night. Sam’s not anywhere. Sam’s in the wind.
“What happened to you? C’mon, give me a sign or something. You’re the one who’s good with that psychic crap. You’re the one who’s good at finding people. And I- I can’t do this on my own.”
Nothing happens.
Dean swears under his breath, cursing himself out for believing the dream meant anything. All this time has gone, and he still doesn’t have a single lead. Dad would be disappointed.
-
It’s a week later, and Dean’s wasting his time at Moosetown when a conversation from the next booth catches his attention. The words “weird” and “creepy” and “strange” ping Dean’s radar automatically, and the conversation next to him used all three.
“But seriously, have any of you seen this creepy hitchhiker?” one of the men, a stocky fella with a bushy beard says. “Down on I-5?”
“Oh, yeah,” another, an older guy in a ballcap and a vest, nods. “The weird barefoot guy in a white shirt? Right in the thick of the woods, right? Like, how’d he get there? And how is his shirt still so clean? Real strange. Something ain’t right.”
“The barefoot guy,” the first guy echoes. “And he looks like Hell warmed over. I swear, I just kept driving. Maybe that’s chickenshit of me, but I’ve heard enough crap about people pulling over for, like, cute girls hitchhiking and getting their asses beat up and robbed ‘cause it was a trap.”
“That’s not what this is,” a third man interjects. “Call me an idiot, okay, but I stopped for him. And something so weird happened. If I didn’t see it with my own two eyes…”
“What? What was it?”
“Okay, he stopped and looked at me, and told me something.”
“What?”
“He lowered his voice, all creepy-like, and said, ‘I know you cheated on your girlfriend.’ And, look, I swear on my momma’s grave, I never strayed, I’m a loyal man. And then he just turned around and walked back into the woods. I got chills, kid you not.”
Dean tenses in his seat. This sounds way too familiar to discount.
“Where was that, folks?” he asks, leaning over the edge of the booth.
“A little along I-5, that-a-way. When the forest gets really thick, right after Old Man Dave’s farm. An eerie little spot. Never liked it. Dunno how Dave lives there all by his lonesome without shitting his pants every night. Well, I guess he’s not alone, he’s got his sheep, but c’mon, what are the sheep gonna do? Baa the intruder to death or...?”
Dean’s not listening at this point.
“Thanks, fellas,” he says, and heads straight for the door.
He’s glad he didn’t have the chance to get sloppy just yet. The stolen car’s engine revs and Dean goes pedal to the metal. Right out of town on I-5, he said.
This car’s motor tends to sneeze, but it knows better than to test Dean’s patience now, even though he pushes it to its limits on these country roads. The farm flies by and the woods begin, thick ones with trees tall enough to scrape the ink-black sky. This spot isn’t that freaky by the light of day, but with the nightfall, even Dean has to admit it’s on the spookier side.
The radio comes to life all by itself. It goes from station to station, the knob rotating as if turned by an invisible hand. The speakers crackle with static noise. Dean must be getting close. He slows the car and carefully rolls it down the road, eyes peeled. And yet, for all the head-swiveling he does, the appearance of the figure in white in the car’s headlights still takes him by surprise. Dean swears and hits the breaks so hard the car squeals.
Dean stares at the hitchhiker, wordless. His hand curls around the door handle, but he can’t move. There, standing on the side of the road with his thumb up, in a white shirt and jeans, his hair messed up, is Sam.
He looks tired, with deep shadows under his eyes and his cheekbones jutting out more than usual. Dean steps out of the car and runs to him, his heart racing, ready to yank Sam into a long-overdue bear hug.
But his arms go straight through Sam, and he stumbles, his feet struggling to find purchase once he barrels through his brother’s shape.
“You’re a ghost,” Dean says, and his voice breaks. “You’re a fucking ghost, Sam.”
“I know,” Sam admits. His voice is a barely audible wheeze, and Dean has to listen closely to make out what he’s saying. “I’m sorry.”
“Okay. Fuck.” Dean straightens up. “What happened?”
“I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything past, uh, I don’t know. When we worked that clown case, I guess?” Sam makes a disgusted face. Dean laughs in spite of himself, a burst of semi-hysterical laughter shaking his shoulders. “Or, no, the undead girl? You thought her Dad brought her back but it was the guy who liked her?”
“That was, like, five years ago.” Dean rubs his hand on his face and watches Sam, committing his features to memory all over again. His sharp nose, his stupid sideburns that look like they’re eating his face alive, that little mole on his cheek. Sam flickers in and out of existence as Dean looks on, and the static in the car radio grows louder again. “You don’t remember how you…?”
How you died.
“No. But I know where my body is. I’m tethered to it, I guess.” Sam says. “And I can show you.”
Dean’s already opening the trunk and grabbing his duffle. A machete, silver bullets, holy water, this duffle’s packing enough heat to take down most things they know. Dean’s not wasting his time with recon, not when Sam might vanish at any second.
“Let’s roll,” he says and tries so hard to keep the quiver out of his voice.
-
Sam doesn’t talk anymore, simply walks next to Dean. His footsteps don’t make a noise, and his face is scrunched in concentration like every movement zaps energy from him.
“There,” he finally says, pointing at a crudely built shack. Dean eyes the shack, thinking how to approach it in case whatever took Sam was still in there.
“Okay. Let’s do this,” he mutters, pulling out his gun. Sam doesn’t answer, and Dean turns around with a “Sammy? You with me?” but he’s gone. “Yeah. Okay.”
Dean sneaks up to the door, picks the lock, and carefully pushes it open. The muffled creak sounds gunshot-loud in the stillness of the night woods. Dean holds his breath before venturing inside the shack. Good thing he does, too, because the smell inside is nothing short of foul. Dean whips his flashlight around and tallies up the floor layout in case shit goes down. He’s in a small hallway, and through a crack in a door, he can make out one large living room and a bathroom.
Dean steps forward to get to the living room, but a cracking noise and a crumbling sensation under his foot make him stop in his tracks. He shines the flashlight in the direction of the noise and recoils. A group of four dried up bodies is laying in the corner of the hallway, piled up right next to a pair of rubber boots and a rusted bike.
The closest thing Dean can compare them to is a cross between mummy skeletons and the weird dehydrated fruit Sam was into for a hot minute. The bodies are so brittle, one of the ankles straight-up crumbled under Dean’s shoe. He moves the flashlight’s beam to a large floral tattoo on one of the bodies’ arms to inspect it closer. It seems familiar. After a second of scrambling, his brain comes up with an explanation where he’s seen it: one of the NAMUS entries. A hippie-slash-hitchhiker who vanished without a trace a few months ago.
“Fuck. That’s just twisted,” he mumbles, wiping his shoe sole on the remains on the rag laid in front of the door.
Armed with the knowledge that whoever lives here is one sick puppy, Dean pushes the door open wider and carefully steps inside the room. The room's interior decor consists of a boxy old TV with crooked rabbit ears, assorted 80’s furniture, and some logging equipment. It was clearly abandoned a while back and never cleaned, judging by the mice droppings on the floor and the strong smell of dust. There’s another dismantled bike and a small kitchenette tucked in the corner with a large wall-mounted shelf over it. A weird faint blue glow comes in the gap between the shelf’s double doors, and Dean makes a note to check it out later.
Definitely later.
Because Sam’s right here.
Sam’s lying on two crudely made tables that have been pushed together to contain him. Even combined, the tables are too short to fit Sam, and his bare feet are hanging off the edge. Sam’s forehead is covered in the black electrodes they use for EEG. Multiple clear wires are running off the black disks to join the wire from the IV stuck in the crook of his elbow. The whole mess of them leads to an IV saline drip that’s filled with a bright blue glowing liquid, the same shade as the glow from the shelf. On further inspection, Dean realizes the blue is being pumped out of Sam, not inside of him. Like a blood donor kind of a situation.
Most importantly, Sam’s breathing.
His chest is rising with little shallow breaths, and his brow is furrowed, and he makes a little pained noise as another glob of blue shoots up one of the transparent hollow tubes to join the rest.
The psychics said Sam was neither awake nor asleep, and that’s why they couldn’t locate him. That’s why they defaulted to the idea that Sam was a goner. But Sam wasn’t dead. Sam was in a magic-induced coma.
“Oh, fuck,” Dean says, and the relief that washes over him is strong enough to make his knees buckle. He has to grab the edge of the table to stay upright. “Okay, Sammy. Hang on tight. I’m gonna get you out of here.”
Sam doesn’t respond to Dean shaking him or slapping his cold cheek. Dean peels all the electrodes off Sam’s head and carefully removes the IV needle and shakes him, but Sam doesn’t even stir. Fuck, what will it take?
Dean quickly glances around the room to make sure there’s no booby traps or anything and swings the doors of the shelf open.
A row of glass containers, ranging from small elegant perfume bottles to large glass jars, all full of a glowing blue liquid. All labeled in neat cursive writing like a grandma would label the jam she made for her favorite grandchildren.
“Seeing Jo and Ellen die,” one of the labels said. “Being possessed by the Devil.” “Ruby’s betrayal and breaking the last seal.” The biggest jar is labeled simply “HELL” in all capitals.
Dean’s holding the very last bottle in the row, labeled “Finding out his brother killed his friend,” when the sound of a door being opened behind him makes him whip around. He pockets the bottle and raises his gun.
The figure standing in the doorframe is familiar. Kristy the bartender.
“Dean!” she says, positively giddy. “Why, I’ve been waiting for you.” A deep blue glow spreads up her arms in an elaborate pattern. Her eyes flash blue as well. A djinn. Not a regular djinn, though, those feed on blood. Must be some new breed they haven’t had a run-in with before. There are way too many creepy-crawlies to keep track of them all.
Good news: Dean knows how to kill a djinn.
Bad news: you kill a djinn with a silver knife dipped in lamb’s blood, but he doesn't have a dipped one on him. Brought their whole arsenal, but still doesn’t have the tool that’d ice her in particular. Fucking figures.
“You sick freak,” Dean says and shoots as she approaches, even though he knows it’s useless. Her body jerks as the bullets hit her flesh, each slowing her down for a second, but she keeps walking.
“Appreciate the sweet nothings,” Kristy purrs. Dean drops the gun and pulls out his silver knife. When Kristy’s within a melee attack range, he buries the blade between her ribs with force. Kristy’s blood squirts onto his hand, sticky and warm, but she doesn’t even flinch.
“So close to making it work, kiddo.” She laughs and grabs Dean by the throat, lifting him off the ground. He flails, grabbing at her arm, and kicks out blindly, never hitting the mark. Kristy slams his head against the wall, and then he’s on the floor- and the world goes black quickly and unceremoniously.
On to PART THREE...