Iatromantis for ladykiki
Title: Iatromantis
Recipient: ladykiki
Rating: Teen (maybe R for Dean’s potty mouth)
Word Count: 7.6k
Warnings: Season 10, Dean’s potty-mouth
Author's Notes: I kind of mashed parts of two of your prompts together, hope it still lives up to what you were thinking!
Summary: On the hunt for a cure for the Mark of Cain, Sam and Dean are cursed by a god.
A great, black cloud.
A severed arm, dangling on a string.
A bloodied bathtub, a pyre.
Colored lights gleam off of a curved blade.
Sam comes to with a gasp that echoes in his ears.
It’s dark in the backstage room, completely dark, no windows to let the streetlights in. He tries to look around, but can’t even make out the shadowed shapes of the furniture.
Dean!
He rolls onto his hands and knees, feeling across the ground for his brother, unsure of where he’d fallen in his disorientation. His hand catches the edge of the loveseat and a shelf before landing on a warm cylinder-Dean’s leg.
Dean gasps when Sam touches him, coming awake as well. Sam has no idea how long they’ve been out, but it’s clear the god they’d come to see is long gone.
Dean sits up and Sam loses contact with him. There’s an entirely irrational moment of panic where it feels like the darkness will swallow Dean whole, and Sam reaches out for him again.
“Quit trying to feel me up!”
The snark helps to calm Sam’s racing heart.
“What the fuck?” Dean says.
“What?”
“What the fuck?”
Sam clenches his fists hard to keep from reaching out again. “What, Dean?”
“Fuck, Sam. I’m deaf.”
Damn it.
Sam sinks his face into his hands, pressing the heel of them into his eye sockets. He’s got a pounding headache, the kind he hasn’t felt in years. Apollo must’ve really wanted to make sure they’d have a hard time following after him.
He opens his eyes and tries to make out something-the sliver of light from under a door, the dim LED of a security camera, anything.
There’s nothing there, because the room isn’t actually dark. Dean would’ve said something, asked to turn on a light. The room isn’t dark.
He’s blind.
Panic creeps up his throat, tight in his chest.
He’s blind.
“Sam?”
But it’s not just that, isn’t it?
Sam heaves a deep breath, before dropping his hands from his face. He turns towards where he estimates Dean to be sitting, based on the sound of his voice. From the catch of his brother’s breath, it’s no doubt immediately apparent that even with his eyes wide open, Sam sees nothing at all.
“Well, shit.”
Several hours ago
“Run it by me one more time.”
From across the wide bench seat of the Impala Sam sighs, face still buried in a book he’d pulled from the depths of the bunker’s archives. It’s original to the Men of Letters, so it’s a dry read. “Apollo is the Greek god of healing.”
“Isn’t he the sun guy?”
Dean’s playing up his ignorance, but Sam’s willing to go along with it, happy enough to have a conversation with his brother that’s not fraught with tension. “Yeah, that’s him, but healing was a pretty big part of his mythology, too. In the Iliad he’s a physician to the gods. Nothing in Judeo-Christian mythology has helped get the Mark off your arm, so I figure we try coming at it sideways.”
“So, we’re going Greek.”
Sam snorts.
“What?”
Sam shakes his head, trying to repress his obvious amusement. Dean’s contact with college students has been limited; gaps in his vocabulary are to be expected.
“Sam.”
“It’s nothing, Dean. Anyway, yes. We’ve run into a few Greek gods so far, we know they have power.”
“They also don’t like being messed with.”
Dean’s right, of course. But they’re not here to mess with Apollo. If gods have one common weakness it’s that they want to be prayed to, worshipped, especially those gods of the ancient world who have fallen out of favor.
“And you think you found Apollo. Like, the Apollo.”
A few years back that might have been shocking, but what’s one more Greek god after watching Zeus die? “A couple of the Men of Letters tried to keep tabs on various deities, with, uh, limited success. After we ran into Prometheus I went back to see if they had information on him and they did, though not much. We’re lucky, Apollo was one of the easier ones to track.”
“So what do they have on our guy?”
“Well, Apollo was also the god of music, so apparently he likes to appear as a musician. Makes sense-it’s an easy way to get fans and worship. Not great at keeping his head down.”
“What kind of music?”
“Nothing you’re going to like,” Sam admits with a laugh. Before they’d left he found the website for Apollo-or Elio Phoebus as he was known, because gods have never been subtle. The picture-which he absolutely had not shown Dean-was of a young man with a full beard and dark, shaggy hair, surrounded by weathered wood furniture. Dean’s gonna hate it.
Sam catches his brother itching his arm out of the corner of his eyes.
He’s not sure why Dean’s suddenly so gung-ho on finding a cure, when he’d all but given up before. Whatever it is, killing Cain has something to do with it. It wasn’t until after Dean offed the world’s first murderer-according to Abrahamic tradition-that he’d asked Sam about any leads on a cure.
Whatever it is, Sam’s not complaining. Saving Dean is the only play here. He wasn’t exaggerating to Cas when he told him that Dean wasn’t doing well.
It’s not the first time that his brother has lived under the threat of a ticking clock. But Dean was still Dean after his crossroads deal. He was flailing and terrified, but he was Dean. And when he was gone it was like a switch; one moment Sam had a brother, the next he did not.
Now the Mark is stealing Dean away inch by inch. Every day, Sam can see more and more of the Mark’s influence over him, an encroaching shadow that Sam is powerless to stop.
Sam has never done well without Dean, no matter what Dean might think of how Sam spent his Purgatory year. It wasn’t any better when the Mark turned Dean into a demon, either. But he’s never had to deal with this loss by attrition.
Sam knows he’s slipping. If he wanted, he could use that to justify the choices he’s making, the ones he’s yet to make, looming like thunderheads across the wide Kansas plains. Sam’s no good without Dean and the world will be safer if Dean’s safe. The Mark is a threat as well, the seed of a Knight of Hell sitting on Dean’s arm. Saving Dean is what’s best for the world. All true.
He could tell himself that’s why he’s doing this. Sam’s no stranger to lying to himself.
He’s going to save Dean. He hopes Apollo will help, but if he doesn’t then there will be something else. Probably something riskier. It doesn’t matter.
No price is too high.
Apollo plays shitty hipster pop, singing in a wavering voice over an acoustic guitar. Sam and Dean stand at the bar as he croons to the crowd of people in the small club.
“You sure we can’t just gank him?” Dean mutters. “We’d be doing music a favor.”
Sam hums noncommittedly into his beer. It’s a little twee even for him, but Dean likes making fun of his taste in music. It’s safe ground in a conversational plain full of landmines.
Their suits and fake FBI badges get them backstage easily enough. Sam knocks as Dean stands behind him, hand disappearing into his overcoat to clutch at a blessed wooden stake.
The god opens the door and sizes them up, eyes skating over Sam’s FBI badge. “Hunters. To what do I owe the honor?”
There goes any element of surprise. “Can we come in?”
Apollo smirks, not intimidated in the slightest. He opens the door wide. “By all means, make yourself at home.”
The dressing room is just a closet with aspirations above its station. There’s a loveseat jammed into a corner and a counter with a wide mirror framed by vanity lighting. Sam and Dean stand with shoulders pressed together, Apollo just out of arm’s reach on the other side of the room.
“So,” Dean starts off as he enters, “are you Mumford or one of the sons?”
Apollo leans back against the counter and smiles, a smug expression that goes well with his skinny jeans and ironic suspenders. “Cute. I don’t often attract attention from your kind. Not a big body count.” If his nonchalance is affected, then it’s an incredibly good act.
“We aren’t here to cause you any trouble,” Sam says, aiming for an appropriately deferential tone.
“Then you must need my help, and I assume it’s not to write you a song.”
“You’re a god of healing.”
“I am the god of healing.”
Sam can feel the annoyance rolling off of Dean, but he’s got good motivation to keep up the act. “Which is why we sought you out.”
“So what is it? Cancer?” He gives Dean an appraising look. “Liver disease?”
“A curse,” Sam says, nodding at Dean.
Dean takes a step forward and yanks up his sleeve, baring the Mark of Cain.
“’A curse,’ you say.” Apollo grabs hold of Dean’s forearm. “Bit of an understatement.”
“Can you cure it?” Sam asks.
Apollo wrenches Dean’s arm back and forth, studying the glyph.
“This isn’t a simple curse,” Apollo says.
Dean tears his arm out of the god’s grip and tugs his sleeve back down. “If it was simple we wouldn’t need you.”
Apollo shakes his head, hands spread out wide in a full-body shrug. “I stay out of all that Judeo-Christian nonsense. Not really my thing.”
“Don’t want to, or can’t?” Sam needles. Pride is the biggest target for any god.
“My sister told me about you two,” Apollo says, the aloof hipster demeanor falling away. What’s left is harder, wary. Power builds, pressure against Sam’s eardrums like they’re about to pop. “Winchesters, right?”
Dean’s hand snaps up, reaching for his weapon, but Apollo is faster. The god whips a hand out, slapping a palm to Dean’s forehead.
Dean drops like a brick.
“Dean!”
Sam falls to his knees next to him, feeling for a pulse as a cover for surreptitiously searching for the blessed stake.
“He’ll be fine,” Apollo says.
“What’d you do?”
“He’s taking a quick nap. I wanted to talk.”
Sam takes out the stake and stands.
“I thought you wanted me to help you,” Apollo points out. “Killing me seems counter-productive.”
“You already said you won’t.”
“You came to me because I’m the god of healing. But I’m the god of more than that, you know.”
“Right,” Sam says. “Music. The sun. Herds and flocks.”
“Truth and prophecy.”
Sam clenches his teeth. It’s true that that was one of Apollo’s domains. He was the patron god of the Oracle at Delphi. It wasn’t something Sam wanted to dwell on, not with his history.
“Most humans don’t generate enough prophecy to fill a teacup,” the god continues. “Not you two, though. You both reek of it. You, especially.” Apollo smiles, teeth perfectly white and straight, a movie star’s smile. “You were one of mine.”
Some bastard mix of guilt and horror churns in Sam’s stomach. “You said you don’t mess with demons.”
“They may have used the blood to control you, Sam. But visions are visions. All prophets are mine.” Apollo’s smile softens, but his eyes harden. “You just needed a little push.”
Sam brings the stake to bear, but the god is too quick, knocking it from his grasp. Apollo’s palm presses to his forehead and a hole opens in Sam’s mind like the stopper is pulled from a drain, sucking him down and down and down.
A great, black cloud.
A severed arm, dangling on a string.
A bloodied bathtub, a pyre.
Colored lights gleam off of a curved blade.
Sam comes awake in a dark world with a gasp that echoes in his ears.
Now
They manage to get back to the Impala. They mask it like Sam’s not feeling well, his arm slung across Dean’s shoulders, stumbling along next to him, head slumped low. Dean’s hand at the small of his back is enough to direct him out of the club and to the car.
Dean shuts him into the passenger side of the car. The loud squeal of the car door makes it easy to tell when Dean gets in, and the rumble of the car’s engine is a comforting sound.
“That’ll be fun,” Dean mutters to himself.
“What?” Sam asks automatically, before remembering that Dean can’t hear him. He throws a hand out, smacking Dean somewhere around his shoulder. He throws his hands out in the universal gesture of what?
“Getting us a room,” Dean clarifies.
Well, at least that’s one question answered. It’s the middle of the night and the bunker is a six hour drive at best from where they are. Sam approves of the plan; they need to regroup.
Dean pulls out of the parking lot, heading out into the night.
The sound of the Impala may be a comfort, but everything else about driving is disorienting. It’s not as if Sam is always paying attention to the road. He spends a lot of his time in the car reading or researching or conked out. But he’d always had the option to see what was going on, where they were going, to get his bearings if he wanted to.
Now the car travels through a moonless night without headlights. A part of him starts to keep track of the turns, before realizing it’s pointless. He doesn’t know the city, he doesn’t know where he is in space.
Afterimages of the visions he saw when Apollo knocked him out play across his mind. What did they mean? None of them were complete enough to tell him much.
Of course not, it would be too much to ask to actually have helpful visions for once.
Visions.
Fuck, Dean was going to throw a fit when he found out.
It’s not a pleasant thought under the best of circumstances, but it’s especially fraught now. Dean’s temper is short lately, with the Mark still influencing him. Being deafened isn’t going to make him any less tense.
Sam needs to tell him about the visions. Keeping secrets like that has never worked out.
But maybe he waits. It wasn’t as if he’s seen anything they could use. Just fragmented images, useless without context.
If Sam sees anything useful, he’ll tell Dean. Until then they need to focus on Apollo.
The transmission shifts down a gear as Dean slows to a stop. The engine cuts out; they must be at a motel.
Until now, Sam’s been in spaces he’d seen. He’d walked through the club briefly, and he knows the Impala better than he knows his room in the bunker.
Now there’s no telling what’s outside the door.
It might be conceited of Sam, but he’s always thought of himself as brave. He’s certainly endured enough danger to make a case for it. When encountering most obstacles Sam will put his head down, do the work, even when faced with something out of most people’s nightmares. He’s pushed through hallucinations and demon blood withdrawal and insomnia by sheer stubbornness.
But the dark, empty world outside the car chills the marrow inside his bones.
The motel is probably nothing unusual. When Sam steps outside, the ground will probably be asphalt. The sheets will scratchy and the tap water will be hard. He can hear the constant thrum of traffic that’ll be his lullaby from where he sits.
But maybe it won’t be. Maybe he’ll step out of the car and nothing will be there and he’ll fall, darkness all around, a darkness so complete-
“Wait here,” Dean says, snapping Sam out of his thoughts. The door opens with a squeal of hinges. “I’ll be back in five.”
Sam nods and the door slams.
He’s got to keep it together, got to focus on the here-and-now. Summoning Apollo is probably their best bet, but he certainly won’t let them track him down again. Figuring that out is going to be a pain in the ass. Sam has a general idea of some resources that might help, but he’s useless for research right now. There might be some programs that let him search some of their favorite websites, but all of the books in the bunker are beyond him.
And then there’s the matter of actually summoning the god. Of potentially trying to fight him while blind, because if he doesn’t agree to lift the curse then they’re going to have to hope that killing him does the trick.
But what alternative is there?
Sam grabs for the tattered threads of his nerves and pulls them together as much as he can.
SKREEEEEE
The passenger-side door opens with a wail and Sam starts, hard. Dean’s nice enough not to say anything.
“C’mon, Sammy. Got us a nice room.”
Sam stumbles across the parking lot. Dean doesn’t seem to know where to put his hands to best guide him and ends up nearly pushing him over. Their room is on the second floor and Sam manages to ascend the outdoor staircase well enough, but he stumbles at the top, not realizing when the steps ran out.
Dean sits him on the bed in the room and noisily moves around the room.
“Dean,” he says, before remembering that Dean couldn’t hear him. When Dean finally stops his puttering, Sam takes a chance that his brother is watching him. “My laptop.”
It works, and Sam manages to pantomime enough to get Dean to open up a word processor. Dean hands the computer over and Sam balances it on his knees.
He’s good at typing. Dean’s no slouch, but Sam’s the one who had to write five-page papers for his anthropology class after a late shift in the dining hall.
It’s easy enough to settle his fingers on the home row. He goes a little slower than normal, but he’s sure it’s relatively error-free. After, he points the screen at Dean. It says:
I saw you go down after Apollo cursed you. I tried to use the stake, but he dodged. Apollo didn’t want to help us. He probably thinks this will slow us down and keep us from following him. He knocked me out and when I came to, I was blind. I felt around until I found where you were lying on the floor.
It’s not much, Sam knows. He carefully doesn’t think about what he’s leaving out, the brief conversation he had with the god before being knocked out. He can’t see how Dean reacts to the words, and the loss eats at him. Dean’s normally an open book to him, but Sam’s functionally illiterate right now.
Finally, Dean responds. “Okay, well, let’s hit the sack. We’ll get up early tomorrow and head back to the bunker, see if we can figure out where Apollo went.”
“I think we should summon him,” Sam responds, forgetting himself.
“What?” Dean asks.
Sam gestures for the computer back and types the response.
“Why didn’t we just do that in the first place?”
And, sure, that would’ve been a lot easier, but…
We were trying to get him on our good side.
No one, god or demon or angel, is ever thrilled to be summoned.
Sam feels the laptop jerk and manages to withdraw his fingers just quick enough to keep them from being clipped as Dean shuts the lid. If Dean catches Sam’s glare in response, he doesn’t say.
“I call dibs on the bathroom.”
Sam sits alone on the bed, closed laptop on his knees, as he follows his brother’s nightly routine by sound alone. He catches the hiss of the tap and the muted scrubbing of teeth being brushed. The click of a toilet lid.
“All yours,” Dean says as he exits. “Didn’t even stink it up that bad.”
It’s a weak effort at levity, and Sam gives it just as much of a glare as he can spare.
Sam slowly makes his way across the room towards where the sounds had been coming from. He uses his feet to feel out what was just ahead of him and determines the layout of the bathroom by sweeping his arms through the space. He ends up with too much toothpaste on his toothbrush and gets water everywhere while looking for a towel to dry his hands, but muddles through.
He doesn’t bother searching his duffle bag for clothes to sleep in, just strips down to his undershirt and boxers.
It’s strange to close his eyes when it doesn’t change anything, but at least the dark lends itself well to sleep.
Though Sam’s world is dark right now, he still dreams in vivid color.
A great, black cloud. It sweeps over a barren landscape, barrels towards Sam and Dean as they sit in the Impala. Their ears pop as air is displaced by something immeasurably ancient and angry. And then it sweeps backwards, time winding back against itself, and it’s once again locked up. And the key, the lock, the key…
A severed arm, dangling on a string. One member of a large, old family. They die like dominoes, one after another after another. They die brutally, horribly. Their executioner shows no mercy and the violence is familiar, so familiar…
A bloodied bathtub, a pyre. A pale hand, a slight figure, the feeling of incomprehensible grief and guilt. And blame lays heavy between them, a crack that becomes a fissure that becomes a chasm…
Colored lights gleam off of a curved blade. Sam kneels and bares his neck and Dean looks down on him from so high above. The mark burns on Dean’s arm, the poison flows through his veins. Sam closes his eyes, a last gift, and feels the breeze of a blade…
Sam comes awake with a gasp. There’s no way for him to tell what time it is without the ability to consult a clock or the light of the sun outside, but the world is the kind of quiet that suggests early morning. Dean’s breaths across the room are slow and soft.
Sam maneuvers himself until he’s sitting on the side of the bed, elbows on knees and heels of his hands digging into his eye sockets, like if he presses hard enough he might force some sort of connection so they’ll work, damn it.
The last image of his dreams-his visions, though he still balks at thinking of them as such-replays over and over. He can practically taste the metal that bore down on him.
That will bear down on his neck.
He has to tell Dean.
He can’t possibly tell Dean.
All he can see in the darkness behind his eyelids is the raised ridges of the Mark of Cain, slowly corroding everything good in his brother. And Sam worries that a cure may come too late.
Dean wakes up to a world that remains stubbornly silent and Sam’s thousand-yard stare looking straight through him. It’s enough to make him twitch.
“Sammy? You good?”
Sam starts to say something, clearly thinks better of it. He nods with a forced smile. Dean doesn’t bother calling him on it. Banter isn’t fun when it’s one-sided.
Dean had held some hope that the curse might be temporary and disperse with the morning. It was probably dumb of him to think that a god would be that lenient. They never have been before.
They pack up and Dean leads his brother back to the car. The drive back to the bunker is only six hours, practically a Sunday drive under normal conditions. Which is why it’s so frustrating that he spends it bored out of his mind. He never drives without music.
If you’d asked him before all of this, he’d tell you that hearing wasn’t essential for driving. He was wrong. It’s easier once he gets onto the highway, but he still finds himself double checking his mirrors, just to make sure nothing has snuck up on him.
There’s no banter as they drive, either. Dean can’t help but talk to himself a little. It’s what he used to do when he hunted alone, before he went to get Sam at Stanford. It’s nothing that different than he does with Sam riding shotgun; he mumbles about road closures and curses other drivers. Even after ten years on the road with his brother, it takes him right back to those days when he was alone out here. And then he turns his head to see Sam sitting there, staring down at his lap, and it’s a total mind-fuck.
Back in the bunker the research creates new headaches.
With Sam incapacitated, Dean has to be the one to dig up all the books. He’s no slouch when it comes to research, but Sam’s the nerd who’s got the card catalog memorized.
He manages to find the book they used last time they summoned Zeus. Sam has him digging in boxes that were once Bobby’s for the spell he’d used with Chronos.
The problem is that the spells are all specific to the god they summon. Hopefully the people who wrote those spells also tangled with Apollo, but it’s just as likely that they didn’t.
The good news is that they still have a weapon, the blessed stake that Dean took from their first attempt. It’s the same one he used to kill Chronos. Unlike the jury-rigged stake dripped in virgin blood they’d used to gank Vesta, this one is a lot more powerful. Apollo definitely avoided getting anywhere near it, so Sam thinks it’s an equal opportunity weapon.
With Sam’s instructions, Dean manages to find a program that’ll read things on the screen out loud to him. For a brief moment, Dean is grateful to be deaf.
And then it’s just… reading.
For a long time.
The books they inherited from Bobby are dull, poorly-written accounts of encounters with monsters and myth. The books from the Men of Legends archives even more so. They were all written by people who devoted their entire life, and often much of their sanity, to the cause. Some of them are handwritten in scripts that range from frilly Ken Burns cursive to jagged Son of Sam caps. Many of them are not in English, and even those that are can be incomprehensible.
By the time dinner approaches Dean is getting antsy.
He catches movement out of the corner of his eye and looks up in time to see Sam slam the palm of his hand into the table.
“Sammy?”
Sam switches over to the open document he’s been using to communicate, if sparingly, with Dean.
All of the websites about the paranormal are absolute shit about accessibility. Impossible to read.
Dean’s more than familiar with the websites he’s talking about, the aesthetics of which tend to fall neatly into “vaguely goth” or “GeoCities” and often both.
“Well, I haven’t had any luck.”
Sam shakes his head and types again.
I actually found something. There’s an account from a guy who found a way to summon Apollo. You don’t want to know why. But it’s in Greek, which is a pain in the ass for this program. Still looking for the incantation.
Dean checks out the page Sam was looking at. It’s an incomprehensible mishmash of sigmas and epsilons to him.
“Well when you find it you’re going to need to write it out phonetically.”
Sam looks puzzled. Why? Dean reads on his lips.
“Because my Greek is shit and I can’t mimic you if I can’t hear you.” There’s a reason Sam usually does the incantations, besides just being a giant nerd who likes that shit.
Sam points to himself and Dean’s getting good enough at lip-reading that he can catch Sam’s next words: I’ll say it.
“Sam, c’mon. You gotta know you can’t be there.”
It’s obvious to Dean. Yeah, his own lack of hearing is going to be an issue on the hunt, but Sam’s blind. He can’t shoot a gun, can’t wield the blessed stake that is their only weapon against Apollo.
Sam returns to his laptop, typing furiously. When he’s finished he shoves the laptop towards Dean.
This isn’t a normal hunt, it’s a summoning. How are you going to be able to talk to Apollo?
“Don’t need to talk to the guy. That’s what the stake is for.”
Sam glares, though his aim is slightly off, and he ends up staring somewhere to Dean’s left. It doesn’t matter; Dean’s not about to let up on this. This isn’t some haunting or vamp, gods aren’t something to mess around with. Sam knows that.
Is it really so much to ask that Sam listen to him, for once? Their lives certainly would’ve been much better if he did.
Sam starts typing again but Dean slams the laptop closed, pushing it along the long wooden desk and out of reach.
It’s easy to read Sam’s lips now: “what the fuck, Dean?”
Deans hands curl into fists, heat rushes through him. It’d be so easy to deck him. Sam’s an easy target right now, vulnerable in ways they haven’t been in years. That’s the whole point, the reason why Dean can’t let him hunt.
I could show him.
He could easily prove to Sam that he’s not up for a hunt. It would happen quick, a few punches. Enough to make the point.
His arm throbs.
That’d make Sam listen.
He takes a step forward before what he’s about to do crashes into him like a cold shower. He freezes, even as the Mark pulses.
Fucking hell.
But even after the realization, the blood is still pumping hot through his veins.
Dean can’t be here anymore. He can’t.
“I’m heading to the bar,” he says, grabbing his keys where they’re sitting on the end of the table. Sam probably says something in return, but Dean doesn’t look to check.
He drives a couple counties away, far enough that he won’t be recognized. He’s not in the mood for friendly bartender chit-chat.
The bar he finds is a hole-in-the-wall, an actual dive and not some hipster bullshit designed to look quaint. Wood-paneling, dark corners, an electronic slot machine out of the 80s, a layer of dirt on the vinyl tiles so thick it’s practically a finish. There’s a single pool table in the back and a handful of stools at the bar. He can’t hear if there’s music, but if there is it’s probably old country or old rock.
There’s a single old man holding down the far end of the bar, who only briefly looks up as Dean enters.
“Gimme whatever keg’s been sitting around the longest.”
The bartender doesn’t even crack a smile, just fills a pint glass and sets it down and fortunately doesn’t try to make any small talk that Dean can’t hear anyway. He’s got skin like old leather and he’s plenty suspicious of what Dean is doing in a bar like his.
He’s right to be wary. The Mark throbs, restless energy tingling just below his skin. Dean’s gotta work it off somehow or he’s going to be useless on this hunt.
Or worse.
Cain’s words creep around the edges of Dean’s thoughts, his prediction and promise.
…where your story inevitably will end…
Unfortunately, prospects here are dim. Dean needs a fuck or a fight and he doesn’t think the old guy in the corner is up for either. Still, he’s got a beer and time enough to stick around and see who else might show up.
He makes it through a whole pint and starts on a second, lost in his own far too quiet head.
It’s not like this is Dean’s first time being cursed. Hell, he’s two curses deep at this point, what with the deafness and the brand on his arm.
But the Mark of Cain made him a better hunter; losing his hearing is the opposite. Sure, getting cursed to be 70 years old wasn’t going to make hunting very easy, and making a crossroads deal put a year-long timer on all of it, but he could still manage up until he kicked the bucket.
If they don’t get this curse lifted, he’s going to have to hang it up.
Or, more likely, die trying to hunt anyway.
Which, of course, is ill-advised as long as the Mark is still there. Fuck. Maybe being a demon would fix the problem anyway. Dean’s never heard of a deaf demon.
Either way, there’s no way for Sam to hunt. Even research is almost beyond him, and that’s his wheelhouse. Dean’s brother is infinitely adaptable, but there are limits to what even a Winchester can do with sheer stubbornness and gumption.
They need to break the curse so they can both hunt again.
Dean needs to break the curse so Sam stops looking so… weak. Vulnerable. If there’s one thing his brother isn’t, it’s fragile, but something about his sightless gaze pings Dean’s lizard brain as being prey. And the Mark knows what it wants to do with prey.
Cain’s words still haunt him, even as the Mark tries to soothe his worry.
It’d be better this way, it whispers. Sam’s a liability. A weakness. A chink in Dean’s armor.
Fuck, he needs to punch something now.
But beating up on some geriatric farmer or bartender isn’t really his idea of a good time, even with the Mark egging him on. It wants a fight, not a beating.
Dean finishes his beer and gestures silently for another, one last drink for the road. He’s most of the way through it and about to head out to search for a more populated bar when he catches the flash of headlights through the window. They’re bright, high up, probably a truck.
Dean barely shifts, but tilts his head enough to see who walks through the door.
There’s three of them. They’re big, the kind of big that probably inspired adjectives like ‘corn-fed’ when they were linemen on their high school football team. They’re not kids anymore and some of that young muscle has turned to fat, but they’re still strong. Maybe Dean’s age, maybe a little older.
One of them shouts something at the bartender, who’s already pulling their drinks.
They’re perfect.
Dean waits until they’ve got their beers, standing over by the pool table talking. He can’t hear their conversation, but he was sure he’d be able to if he wasn’t currently deaf. Just by looking at them it’s obvious that they’re not trying to be quiet. Dean imagines it’s the usual bullshit-complaints about their bitch wives, their dumb kids, their asshole bosses or neighbors.
Dean knocks back the rest of his drink and saunters over.
He’d usually lead with a little taunting. Poke the bear, see if he can get them riled up.
But he won’t be able to hear their replies anyway, can only barely make out the words what the fuck do you want on one of their lips. So instead he gives a thousand-Watt smile and decks the guy nearest to him.
The guy is big enough that it doesn’t floor him, not even with the Mark juicing Dean up. But he staggers and one of his friends, wearing a John Deere hat, is quick enough on the uptake to get a wild punch in, which Dean neatly sidesteps.
They’re big and strong, but they’re slow. Dean’s under John Deere’s guard and jabbing a fist into his gut before he’s even finished with his swing.
The first guy’s recovered and he tries to charge, only for Dean to push his buddy into him. They stagger into a high-top table, knocking their drinks over.
Blood and adrenaline sing through Dean’s veins.
A sudden crack to the back of Dean’s head catches him by surprise. He stumbles, just a little, lets it move him away from his attacker. It’s the third friend, snuck up behind him. Fuck, he hadn’t heard him coming.
With the adrenaline pumping and the muscle memory of yet another bar fight, it’d been easy to forget his weakness. Amateur move, and a frustrating one. But he doesn’t go down, the Mark pulsing the quick rhythm of his heartbeat. It keeps him up and conscious as he grabs a pool cue off the table next to him and jabs the end of it into Third Friend’s chest, pushing him back.
He puts the pool table at his back this time as the three of them surround him.
Dean grins, wild and free. “C’mon, boys!”
He staggers back to the bunker late that night, sore and bruised. The idiots from the bar will be fine once they go home and lick their wounds. Maybe an ER visit for a few stitches.
Dean thought he’d feel better, coming home after letting off steam. But the Mark doesn’t want a bar fight-it wants blood. Dean pulled back at the last moment and now he’s got the equivalent of murder-curse blue balls. But the last thing they needed was a bar full of dead people within spitting distance of their home.
“Sam!” he yells out as he enters the door.
He’s immediately reminded, in the silence that persists in his head as he yells, that he won’t be hearing Sam’s reply, either.
The library is dark, only one of the lamps on. Sam’s laptop is still open on the desk, screen dark. Dean pokes at it and it comes awake.
There’s a document open:
I have the spell.
Dean manages to catch a couple hours of shut-eye once he figures out that that’s where Sam’s disappeared to. Not a bad idea, being well rested when trying to take out a god, but there’s a little part of him that feels betrayed. Sam used to wait up for him, and yeah, Dean always told him not to be such a nagging wife about it, but he never figured Sam would stop.
Then again, he never figured a lot of things about them. They haven’t been the same, lately. It’d be easy to blame the Mark, especially now that Dean knows what the curse wants from him. But they were on the rocks even before Dean got the damn thing.
They won’t get better until Dean fixes it, though.
By the time Dean’s rolling out of bed early the next morning, Sam’s already back in the library, poking around on his computer.
“Hey Sammy,” Dean says, freshly showered and ready to kick some Greek ass.
Sam turns his head in acknowledgement, but doesn’t bother replying.
Dean leans over his shoulder. “Okay, let’s do this. What nasty-ass ingredients do I need to dig up?”
It’s the only acknowledgement Dean makes that he’s going to let Sam help with the summoning. For all that Dean came out on top of the bar fight last night, it was clear that the lack of hearing was more of a hindrance than he’d expected. No way in hell would a Dean Winchester who was functioning at 100% let someone sneak up behind him like that. He knows that they’re going to need to talk to Apollo, ask him to give them back their senses first, if only as a distraction.
It’s fine. He’ll protect Sam. He always does.
Sam’s got it all translated. It takes a while for Dean to track down the ingredients in the bunker’s storage, but luckily they’ve got everything: palm oil, cicada husk, crow feather, snake skull. Thankfully nothing too weird, at least not by Men of Letters standards.
Sam says the incantation, but it’s Dean who tosses the match into the copper bowl when he gets the signal. A bright green ball of flame shoots upward, bright enough to make them blink.
And once again, Apollo stands before them.
They’ve got the wards on the bunker up as high as they can, but there’s no devil’s trap they can lay down for a god.
Apollo smile, smarmy as ever. “Winchesters.” It’s a familiar enough word that’s it’s easy to read on his lips.
What he says next Dean doesn’t catch. Out of the corner of his eye he spots Sam replying.
He glares at the god, the wood of the blessed stake creaks under Dean’s grip. Being left out of whatever conversation they’re having is making him antsy and pissed off. All the humiliation of a gossipy high school lunchroom plus all the twitchy jitters of anticipating a sudden attack.
Apollo’s eyes flash over to him and the god’s smug grin gains an edge. He raises a single finger to his lips-shhh-and then there’s a pop as sound rushes back in. Dean had never noticed how loud the bunker was-the whirr of the ventilation, the hum of electricity.
Apollo turns back to Sam. “Is it a curse? Did you see something you didn’t like?”
Dean doesn’t feel much like following the god’s orders to be quiet, but his words trip him up.
‘See?’
He glances over at Sam, who is still staring sightlessly ahead. A muscle in his jaw twitches a few times as he clenches his teeth. “I don’t care what I saw.”
Sam’s trying to keep his face as calm as he can, because he knows that Dean can see it. It’s not working because he’s upset. He has no idea that Dean can hear him.
Apollo shakes his head. “You don’t want to know more? It’s not every day that you have an audience with the god of prophecy.”
Prophecy. Fuck.
Dean might not be a nerd on Sam’s level, but he’s still got encyclopedias of mythology crammed in his brain. It’s not what he associates with Apollo, but he definitely should’ve.
He looks back at his brother.
Sam had visions.
Sam, for his part, is unaware of Dean’s silent realization. “I thought you knew who we are. We don’t care about prophecies.”
“Don’t you?” Apollo asks, tilting his head like a bird. “You went to Detroit, after all.”
That hits home, Sam flinches hard.
Apollo strides forward. “And now you find yourself tracing similar patterns, new threads woven by fate. Have you followed where this one leads?” His eyes are fixated on Sam, as if he’s peering into his mind, seeing the visions himself. “Do you want to know how your story ends, Sam?”
…where your story inevitably will end…
Dean moves before he even thinks to attack, operating on blind panic. He swings the stake in his hand.
But once again, the god is faster. Apollo’s a blur as he dodges the strike, ducking out of Dean’s reach, sliding around a defenseless Sam. When he stops moving he’s got an arm around Sam’s throat, hiding behind him like Sam’s a human shield. Apollo’s tall, maybe has an inch on Dean, and he pulls his arm in tight.
Dean freezes, unwilling to chance it, not with a god wrapped around his brother.
Apollo leans in close. “I could tell you where this ends, Sam. Because it ends bloody. I think you know that. I think-”
Sam thrusts an arm back and Dean lunges forward on instinct, grabbing his brother’s shirt and pulling him away from Apollo’s loosened grip.
The god is still standing there, arm out. A breath rushes out of him like he’s been punched and blood rises up to dribble from his mouth.
There’s a shaft sticking out of his chest, the feather fletching angled down from where Sam stabbed the arrow upward into the god’s lungs.
Apollo traces a finger along one of the vanes. The corner of his mouth ticks up a little.
His skin starts to glow, like when you hold your hand over a flashlight. First yellow, then a deep blood red, and then the light bursts through and when Dean finally manages to blink the dark afterimage outline of his body away, there’s nothing left of the god.
He still has a fist twisted into Sam’s flannel. When he looks up, his brother blinks back, eyes watering as he adjusts to the bright bunker lights.
Dean pushes him away and grabs the arrow left behind.
“One of Artemis’,” Sam says.
Dean remembers. He twirls the shaft back and forth between his fingers. “Clever. Good thing it worked without the bow.”
Sam’s smile flickers, just a little. A fraction of an inch. “Well, it worked for Prometheus.”
And that’s true, of course. They take chances when they need to, make educated guesses. That could be what Sam did, grabbing the arrow they’d saved as a last resort.
Except he thinks of Sam saying that he didn’t care what he saw. He thinks of Sam having visions.
More than that, he thinks of Sam keeping his visions from Dean.
Dean bares his teeth in a smile. He pulls up his sleeve. The Mark is still there. All this work for nothing.
“We’ll find something else,” Sam says.
He can’t blame Sam for keeping secrets. Or he shouldn’t, even if there’s a poison that lances through him when he thinks about it. It’s unfair, Dean’s keeping plenty of secrets of his own.
“Yeah,” Dean says. He tries to study Sam’s face, tries to see if he can tell what Sam’s seen. Has he seen the end that Cain warned Dean about? The one that haunts Dean even now? “Yeah, Sammy. We’ll find something else.”