Wind Your Way Down (2/4)

[tekuates]

Title: Wind Your Way Down
Author: tekuates
Pairing: no pairing
Rating: PG-13 ish
Word Count: 14, 671
Warnings/Contains: [spoiler for fic (click to open)]major character death, general darkness, some creepy imagery
Summary: Things hunters are good at: shooting guns, saving lives, thinking on their feet. Things hunters are bad at: moving on. Moving forward. Living life.
Notes: Written for the 2014 Sam Dean OTP Minibang! Title from the Gerry Rafferty song "Baker Street". Art made by the fantastic angelus2hot.




Detectives were an easy alias; suit, badge, harried look. Dean relied on the gullibility of the average person; dress like a detective and people will think you are one. Almost always, anything strange you do will get rationalized away. Sam couldn’t do that; he had always been bad at winging it. He needed to sink entirely into the role, shaking out his suit pants and jacket a little bit before he put them on, rumpling them. He usually changed into his disguise early, sat around in the hotel room wearing it, so it didn’t look like something that had been thrown on, new, ten minutes ago. Sam practiced taking his badge out, flipping it confidently between his fingers. He found safety in making these things second nature.

When they showed up at the house, it was only ten o’clock, and Sam’s stomach was starting to rumble. It was snowing, lightly, or maybe it was just flakes being swept into the air by the light, chilly breeze. Sam was feeling the cold; none of their cold-weather clothes went with the detective suits. Next to him on the front step, Dean, who had always been more susceptible to the cold, was bouncing a little on the balls of his feet, breathing hot air onto his fingers. Sam knocked, and after a moment, the door opened.

“Hello, Mrs. Walker?” Sam said. “Detectives Larkin and Curie.”

She was wiry, and thin, dark-skinned, her hair held back with a paint-splattered bandana. Her face was long, and there were deep laugh lines, curving elegantly around her mouth. She must have laughed a lot in her life to get lines like that, but she wasn’t laughing now; her mouth was lax, almost drooping. She looked like a doll with its strings cut.

“Yes?” she asked.

“We’re very sorry to bother you, ma’am,” Sam said. “We needed to go over some things with you.”

She didn’t say anything, didn’t ask to see their badges, only pulled the door open. They followed her into a book-strewn room, stacks of papers on a desk on the brink of tipping over. Sam sat on the dusty couch, and Dean sank down cautiously beside him.

“My wife is at work,” she said. “I don’t know if you need her as well.”

“I don’t think so,” Sam said. “We just have to - well, we’re not really the right people for the job, but our department is trying to, ah, work with the schools and so on to start some sort of support for depressed students, and,” he was now improvising wildly, going with his instinct that said that it wasn’t facts they needed, times and dates, but personal details, “we were wondering what you could tell us about Kara, what you think could have, ah, helped her in the weeks leading up to her, her - decision.” It was such a stupid word for him to use, sounds like Kara was choosing a college, but Sam thought that saying suicide or took her own life might shatter this woman. There was an awful moment where she just looked at him, silent in her grief.

“Well,” Mrs. Walker began, “I, I’m not sure. What it was, that is, that tipped the, ah…but she was never the same after…” She trailed off.

“After what, Mrs. Walker?” Dean said, too quickly, too eagerly.

“Her brother,” she replied. “I don’t know if you two know about the case - but it changed Clai - her. All of us.” She was hunched over herself, her eyes beginning to well up, red and tired looking.

Sam shot a glance at Dean; Dean was looking at Mrs. Walker, his eyes hooded and considering.

“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Walker,” Sam said. “If you’d like - we could come back, continue this another time - “

He hadn’t even finished before she was nodding. “Yes. I’m sorry, I…it’s hard to talk about.”

“I can’t imagine,” Sam said, somewhat honestly. He had lost a lot of people, after all. “I’ll leave my card, and feel free to call if you want to.”

They left in a hurry, Dean glaring at Sam the whole time. “You know, we might need more than that.”

“I don’t think so,” Sam said, shaking his head. “I think the brother is the piece we were missing. Besides, that was awful. I didn’t exactly want to pump her for information.”

Dean made a conceding face. “Alright, let’s go get some breakfast.”

Dean parked on the street, grudgingly plunking quarters into a meter. They headed to the one restaurant that looked open, a little Mexican place across the street, ordered, and situated themselves at a table in the back.

Dean opened the laptop and started typing. “Okay, so, Walker…”

“You want me to do that?” Sam asked. “You’ve been doing practically all the research.”

Dean waved him off. “Whatever.” He hit enter triumphantly. “Yahtzee. The son, Brandon, went missing about a year and a half ago. Never found.”

“Well, that doesn’t give us much to go on,” Sam said.

“That’s not all. The girl, Tina, was one of his closest friends, and the guy, Mark whatever, was his guidance counselor.”

“So there is a connection,” Sam said, then heard their order number being called. “Hold on a sec.”

He walked over to the counter and showed his receipt to the pretty blonde behind it. “Here you go,” she said, and slid him a tray.

“Thanks,” Sam said. There was something bothering him about this girl, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. “Uh - “

She looked at him expectantly. “Uh, where’s the, uh, hot sauce?”

“Right there, by the soda machine,” she said, pointing.

“Thanks,” he said, and walked over to it, filling a couple of the paper hot sauce cups with green hot sauce before heading back to the table.

He plunked down the tray and sat back down, still feeling uneasy. “Hey, Dean, does that girl look familiar to you?”

Dean looked where Sam was indicating, his hands busily unwrapping his burrito. “What girl?”

Sam turned around to see the counter was now unmanned. “Huh. Must have gone into the kitchen.” He shifted in his chair so he was facing Dean again. “So, did you find anything?”

“Maybe,” Dean said around a mouthful of half-chewed burrito. Sam winced and looked away before he started on his quesadilla.

“But,” Dean continued, still chewing, “it might not work. Gotta call Bobby and find out.”

They finished eating quickly. After they were done, Sam left Dean to call Bobby and headed into the small bathroom to wash his hands.

When he came out, Dean was still on the phone. “Well, that’s good news - what?” Dean looked annoyed. “Huh. Well, we’ll see what we get with it. See ya.” He hung up his phone and dropped it into an inside pocket on his leather jacket.

“So what’s the deal?” Sam asked.

“Tell you in the car. C’mon.”

Once they were in the car, Dean started driving, but not towards the hotel.

“So, I found a spell. Should give us what we need, if it works. Basically, we say the words, plus the name of the person we’re interested in, the spell throws our minds back to the last pivotal moment in their life - or death - and shows us what happened.”

“Wow,” Sam said. “Sounds useful. Why have I never heard of it?” He noticed a crappy pickup truck pulling out after them, and felt nervousness tickle down his spine. His instincts always made him feel like he was being followed; it made it very hard to relax.

“You usually can’t do it,” Dean said. “World-walls are too thick or something. I don’t know.” When Sam gave him a questioning look, he sighed and continued. “Basically, the barriers between worlds, times, whatever, are fragile right now. It’s a cycle, every forty-nine years.”

“Seven times seven,” Sam said. “That’s a powerful number.”

“Thank you, Giles, I can do basic math. Anyway, the other thing is we need to know where it happened. Not where the body is, but
wherever the event we wanna see happened.” They came to a T intersection, turned left. The pickup turned right, and Sam felt tension leave muscles that he hadn’t even known were at the ready.

“How’re we gonna find that?” he asked.

“Don’t know. I thought we’d try a few likely spots at the river, then move to the unlikely ones if that doesn’t pan out.” Dean pulled the Impala into the parking lot they had been in before.

“Okay,” Sam said. “So I assume first on your list is the hot spot.”

“You got it,” Dean said.

They walked across the bridge, each with a shovel held as inconspicuously as you could hold a large, metal, dirt covered tool. In the hand that wasn’t currently occupied with his shovel, Sam carried a duffel bag with a can of gasoline, and a canister of salt. They had learned long ago that having to go back to the car for supplies not only was a tedious waste of time, but once the spirit knew their intentions, was actually dangerous. It just gave whatever they were fighting more time to fling them around, and Sam didn’t need more scars.

They arrived at the spot, an inauspicious-looking stretch of muddy snow. Sam jammed his shovel blade-first into the ground so it stood up and dropped the bag next to it; Dean did the same with his shovel.

Sam raised an eyebrow and looked at Dean.

“Right,” Dean said, and pulled Dad’s journal out of his jacket, flipping it open to the page he wanted, then began to read in Latin.
It wasn’t a long incantation, but it was easy to tell that it wasn’t working. You could feel spells take, once you had done enough of them. Since, technically, exorcisms were spells, Sam and Dean had done plenty. Sam could feel the words slipping uselessly through the air, not gaining traction on anything. He shook his head at Dean, and Dean stopped reading.

“Well, shit,” Dean said. “What do we do now?”

Sam didn’t answer; he was looking at the bridge they had crossed. His hunch from earlier was taking a more definite shape.

“Dean,” he said, “look at the current.”

“Yeah? So what?”

“If you were standing on the bridge,” Sam said, then swallowed thickly, “and you dropped something heavy into the water, say, a body…it would end up right here.”

Dean looked between the bank and the bridge. “Looks about right,” he said. “But how does that help us? The spell didn’t take here.”

“Let’s try it on the bridge, then. But if it shows us what I think it will - our answer is right here.”

“I’d rather check, on the off chance that we won’t have to dig up an ice-cold river bank.” Dean started walking to the bridge, and Sam followed, leaving the shovels and bag. Once they were there, Dean began again, and this time, Sam could feel a minute catch, as if something had locked perfectly into place. As Dean kept reading, the world around him seemed to fade into fog.

There were two shadowy figures; they had hoods pulled over their faces, carrying something large between them. They looked sinister, horrible, moving slowly and bent with the weight. But as they drew closer to the railing of the bridge - and to Sam and Dean - one of them looked up, and Sam saw with surprise that it was a young woman rather than any sort of monster.

“This is stupid,” she hissed. Sam and Dean both startled involuntarily at the sudden sharp sound.

“Maybe,” said the other figure, a man who looked a little older. “But what else are we gonna do?”

“We could explain,” the woman said. “It was an accident, I couldn’t see him there - “

“You think anyone’s gonna listen?” the man asked ferociously. “You were drunk. That’s prison time. Now, this kid is dead, and there’s nothing we can do. But we can save ourselves.”

The woman was silent as they neared the edge of the bridge. The two of them dropped the body on the railing with a grunt, holding it there. “If we get caught, I’m blaming you,” she said finally.

The man gave a dry laugh. “Yeah, whatever. C’mon, give me a hand.” And they both heaved the body into the river. It hit with a heavy splash, and Sam saw the man swallow. Then he said “Come on, let’s go,” and the man and the woman left the bridge.

“No,” said a voice from behind Sam, an unfamiliar voice. He turned to see Brandon Walker, or what was left of him, sitting huddled on the asphalt of the bridge. “No,” the ghost said again.

“Hey - “ Sam started, then remembered that he couldn’t be heard. This was years ago.

“No!” screamed Brandon, standing suddenly. He ran to the railing and leaned over it, staring at his body, now lodged, underwater, in the bank. His lips were moving, and when he stood up Sam could hear that he was saying, in a broken mumble, “Don’t leave me here, don’t, don’t leave me here alone.”

The ghost was crying now. “Don’t leave me alone!” he cried, and as he fell to his knees, his spectral hands clutching uselessly at the railing of the bridge, the world began to blur again -

- and Sam was in the present day again, Dean beside him.

“Wow,” Sam said. “Did you see that?”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “I guess we have our answer. Kid was pulling in people he cared about so he didn’t have to be alone.”

Sam shook his head. “That’s messed up.” Dean said nothing, then suddenly his brow furrowed. He walked quickly over to the edge of the bridge.

“Sam,” he said, quietly, “get over here.”

Sam followed Dean over. “What are you -“ Then he saw; the hole dug in the bank; the fire flickering almost merrily inside of it. He looked at Dean, a very bad feeling starting to form like a knot in his stomach. “Someone did that while we were in the vision.” Sam said, turning, looking all around him, and saw -

“Dean, that pickup truck, I saw it earlier, and I thought it might be following us, but it turned off a different way - “

“This is not good,” Dean said. “Who the hell is here?”

“I don’t know,” Sam said, “But I think we should get the hell out of here. Leave the shovels and stuff.”

“Yeah,” Dean said, already starting in the direction of the Impala. Sam followed. They walked quickly, silently across the bridge. Sam had all of his senses on alert, and he knew that Dean did too. They neared the Impala, and Sam started to relax. Fifty feet - twenty feet - ten feet -

A shape leaped at Dean from the trees around the parking lot, a blur; Sam caught a flash of blonde hair. Dean turned, fast, probably having caught the movement out of his peripheral vision. Before Dean and the person collided, though, Castiel was there, using an open palm to strike Dean’s attacker hard enough that they - whoever they were - flew back and tumbled to the ground.
It was a girl, a teenager. She had long blonde hair, now tied back in a tight bun. She was, Sam realized, the girl from the Mexican
place.

“Who are you?” Sam asked.

The girl grinned with no humor whatsoever. “You don’t remember me? I guess I wouldn’t fit so well in your backseat anymore.”

It was Dean who said, finally, “Claire?”

“Good job,” Claire said, slowly getting to her feet, brushing snow off her legs and back. “It’s fine, Winchesters. I’m not here for you. This is what I’m after.” Her eyes flicked to Castiel.

“Listen, I don’t know what you’re after, Claire, but…“ Sam trailed off. Claire wasn’t listening. She was entirely fixed on Castiel, her right hand going to her waist and pulling out a thin dagger. The point wobbled through the air, a small point of reflected light.

She moved, when she finally moved, faster than Sam would have thought. She knew what she was doing, knew her weaknesses and strengths well, never taking Castiel on head-on. She didn’t have the strength to beat him like that and she knew it. She came at him from the side, ducked and weaved. Castiel held his own, of course. He was fighting her almost casually; without an angel blade, she posed no real threat to him. Castiel’s eyes flicked to Dean, just for a second, and Sam realized that Dean was moving, slowly, stealthily, out of Claire’s vision. Sam took the cue, and also started shifting to a less visible position, in case he was needed. As soon as Claire no longer had a good view of him, Dean moved very fast towards her.

Dean grabbed Claire in a headlock, and she made a sound that was almost surprised, like she had forgotten that anyone was there other than Castiel and herself. The surprise passed quickly, though; her face went hard, and she drove the thin blade backwards at Dean, gouging it into his side. Dean made a pained sound, and tightened his lock. After a moment, Claire’s eyes fluttered as she fell unconscious, and the dagger clattered to the pavement. Her limp weight fell onto Dean, and he lowered her to the ground, not especially gently.

“You okay?” Sam asked.

“Yeah,” Dean said, sounding annoyed. “Just hurts like hell. Give me a hand, will you?”

They tied Claire up, hands behind her back and feet together, and put her in the back of the car. Then, moving together, they walked over to where Castiel was still standing, looking forlorn.

“So, Cas,” Dean said. “Tell me, did you think it wasn’t important that the mysterious hunter we were looking for happened to be the daughter of your vessel? Oh yeah, and that she’s suddenly a pro at hunting?”

“It wasn’t important,” Castiel said emphatically.

“Maybe,” Dean said, “And maybe you just put us both in serious -“ He broke off. “In serious -“

“Dean, are you okay?” Sam asked. Dean didn’t look good, now that he thought of it. His skin looked ashen. Sweat was rolling down his temples. Dean gave him a dazed, dizzy look.

“I,” he said, and collapsed, gravel crunching beneath him as he fell.

“Shit,” Sam swore, and crouched down beside Dean. “Dean, hey, can you hear me?” He looked up at Castiel. “What the hell just happened?”

“I don’t know,” Castiel said, a frown hovering on his brow. “I didn’t think your brother was seriously injured.”

“No, just a…” Sam thought about it for a moment. “The knife, maybe? Cas, can you grab it for me?”

Castiel turned and bent to pick up the dagger, then dropped it immediately, hissing out a pained breath. It lay on the gravel next to Sam, Castiel eyeing it like it was a venomous snake.

“What is it?” Sam asked.

“A spell,” Castiel said, still flexing his hand as if it didn’t feel quite right. “And not a good one. You two are going to need more help than I can give.”

“Bobby?”

Castiel nodded. “Probably your best bet. How long will it take you to drive there?”

“Nine, maybe ten hours. Cas -“

“I would try to get there faster, were I you,” Castiel said, and then he was gone.

“Dammit, Cas!“ Sam swore. After a moment, he bent, got Dean’s weight on his shoulder, and half-dragged, half-carried his brother to the car. There was nothing else he could do.

It should have taken ten hours; Sam did it in eight. Dean lolled in the passenger’s seat. The way he was leaning, his neck looked broken. Sam knew it wasn’t, but it scared him even so. Every time he looked at Dean, he pushed the Impala to go a little faster.

They were an hour or so away from Bobby’s when Sam looked into the rearview mirror to see Claire looking back at him. Her neck craned awkwardly from her position, supine across the back seat, her legs awkwardly dangling off the side of the seat, knees banging every now and then against the door. She was silent, unmoving; she could have been conscious for hours for all Sam knew. This was fine. It didn’t matter what she did at this point, and if she wanted to try escaping from a car going ninety, more power to her.

Claire said nothing when Sam’s eyes met hers, which was good, because Sam was riding on the very edge on control.

It was dusk when they arrived, the light that would usually be a dim, dusky blue magnified by the reflecting snow. It felt like being underwater.

Sam honked the horn as he pulled in to the car lot, and Bobby was outside almost immediately, a shotgun held loosely in one hand.

“What is it?” Bobby asked as Sam got out of the car, slammed the door.

“Dean,” Sam said, “stabbed. With some kind of weird knife, cursed or something - we have the hunter who did it trussed up in the back.”

“A hunter did it? Why?” As Bobby spoke, he opened the back door closest to him, dragged Claire out.

“I mmmph!” Claire was muffled as Bobby pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and stuffed it in her mouth.

“Sorry. I don’t tend to trust hunters who go after other hunters,” Bobby told her, and began towing her into the house. Claire awkwardly hobbled behind him; her feet were still tied together.

Sam opened the passenger’s side door, and Dean fell onto him. Sam pushed him upright and held him there. “Dean? Hey, Dean.
C’mon, wake up. Don’t make me carry you, man.” He shook Dean a little by the shoulders.

Dean made a soft, pained sound at that. His eyes opened about halfway, slid shut again. “Stoppit,” he mumbled. “Hurts.”

“I know, Dean, I’m sorry. But you’ve gotta get up, c’mon. Just walk to the house, okay? And then you can sleep, in a real bed and everything.”

Dean shook his head, eyes more tightly closed now. “Can sleep here.”

“No,” Sam said, “no, you can’t. C’mon, up.” He pulled Dean partway up, and Dean seemed to get the idea, using Sam’s arm to get fully upright, swaying a little bit. Sam kept a hand on the back of Dean’s neck and used the other to close the door of the Impala. Abruptly, he felt Dean lurch, and got an arm around his waist before he could fall. Hooking one of Dean’s arms around Sam’s shoulders, Sam got him to half-walk, half stumble to the house.

Once inside, Sam dropped Dean on the nearest empty chair, and went into the kitchen. Claire was seating in a chair at the kitchen table, with Bobby standing over her holding a small silver dagger. As Sam sat in the chair across from Claire, Bobby made a small cut with the knife, drawing a muffled sound of pain from Claire.

“She’s good,” Bobby said, “as far as the supernatural goes, anyway - did salt, holy water, silver, the works. You wanna tell me what the hell is going on?”

“First,” Sam started, “she’s the daughter of Cas’s vessel, Jimmy. We met her a couple years back.” Bobby raised his eyebrows but said nothing. “Yeah, and apparently she’s been going after angels, which is why we were in the area; Cas put us on her trail.

“So, today we had just finished up a case, when she comes out of nowhere. Cas showed up too, fought with her - Dean grabbed her and she got him pretty good,” Sam reached into an inside pocket and fished out the knife, “with this. He collapsed right after we got her in the car, and Cas freaked out when he touched the thing. Said we needed help.”

Bobby took the knife. “Probably spelled, but I don’t recognize it.” He yanked the gag out of Claire’s mouth, and she coughed,
glaring at him. “What’s up with the pigsticker?”

One side of her mouth tilted up. “Nothing you’re gonna like. Hey, can I have some water?”

Bobby glared at her, and she sighed. “It’s spelled. Think of it like dead man’s blood for angels. It weakens them, but not permanently. As for humans…I don’t know.”

“That’s just great,” Sam said. “You stabbed my brother with a spelled knife, and you don’t know what it’s gonna do to him?” He’d started yelling without realizing it. “Maybe you should be a little more careful with that thing! Or maybe you shouldn’t be hunting at the ripe old age of what, fifteen, if you’re gonna stab the wrong people!”

“I didn’t make a mistake,” Claire said, and she was looking at him with pity, he could see it, but no remorse. “I wasn’t, you know, going for him, but I had to do what I had to do.”

“You weren’t going for him,” Sam practically hissed. “Do you think that matters?” He turned away abruptly, his chest aching, and paused for a moment. Then, he said, trying for calm, “Bobby. What do you think it’ll do?”

“I don’t know, Sam.” Bobby said. “Look, why don’t you make up some beds, and get Dean situated. I’ll start researching.”

Part 3 | Masterpost