The Killing Moon
12. Tenacious Dean
Sam is swallowed up by the darkness almost immediately, and Christ, but what a sucker she is, Hudak thinks, because she should have known the swine would be just as sly and underhand as his brother given the chance. "Dammit Janet," she murmurs under her breath as the pinprick flare of his flashlight dwindles to nothing more than a firefly sparking in the distance. "How the fuck am I supposed to keep him here?"
Get over here boy, take it like a man, no Sam help Sam-Sam-Sam…
Hudak paces, casts quick glances in Dean's direction as the thing keeps up its commentary outside. "Change the fucking record," she breathes, daring to peek through one of the cracks in the door. "You're starting to seriously piss me off."
Dean shifts restlessly, and she holds her breath for the few seconds it takes him to settle, runs through her options. He wakes, panics, and takes off down the tunnel. He either gets lost or hurt in there, or the thing realizes he's on the move and heads back to the other end of the mine, where it gets two meals for the price of one. Can they catch a scent through the earth, through rock? she wonders. "Christ, Bobby, where are you when I need you?" she mutters.
Or he wakes, panics, and cuts loose through the doors straight into the thing's welcoming arms, and becomes part of the tribe.
Either way, they're fucked.
Except… she reaches to her belt loop, unhooks the cuffs. "I'm so sorry about this, Dean," she murmurs, as she gently clicks the cuff into place around his wrist, locks him to the chain holding the doors closed. "If there was any other way, believe me…"
She's right there next to the door, feels her skin crawl, turns, stares through a knothole right into glowing red. She jerks back reflexively, tumbles hard onto her ass, yelps, "How the fuck did you get so close?"
A clawed finger pokes through the hole, starts to sizzle and steam, and she hears the thing's unholy shriek of rage and pain recede into the distance as it leaps back, repelled by the sigils Sam spray-painted on the wood. "Oh, thank fuck," Hudak breathes out. "Thank you, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and all the saints, I swear to God I'll start going to church again, I will."
In the background of her nauseating mix of relief and fear, she can hear clinking, forgets for a minute what it is.
Gabe, boy, get your butt over here, do what you're fuckin' told boy or I'll whup you good, stick it to you, teach you a fuckin' lesson, boy…
"Christ. No… No… Lee… it's Lee…"
Hudak had forgotten Dean was there and she twists to find that he's looming over her, intimidating, because she forgot how damned tall he is with Sam close by. He's staring at the doors, eyes wide, his whole body giving off a vibe of sheer dread like she's never sensed before and hopes never to again, worse than when that fucking creature was spooning with him. She doesn't want to think that means Bender was even more of an abomination, that Dean spent all those weeks being terrorized by something even more frightening than the monstrosity crouched outside the mine serenading him. Or does he even remember the thing? Did the memory of its embrace leave when Dean left?
Dean bolts abruptly, towards the tunnel, and in the next second he's jerked back so violently she hears his shoulder crack. He loses his balance and crashes against the door. "What? What the fuck!" he cries, bewildered, and Hudak thinks he might not even be aware of her in his panic.
He lurches back upright, distraught, spins and braces his boot on the door, pulls with all his might on the chain. Hudak doesn't even think, reacts purely on instinct. She slams into him, fucking terrified herself and desperate too, because she's read all about superhuman displays of strength under duress and if the padlock gives and the doors open it's over, and she sends him reeling back into the corner where he'd been sleeping earlier.
She's right up in Dean's face and his eyes are wide but blind, unseeing, or maybe seeing too much. She grips his face, forces him to look at her, see her. "Lee's right out there, Gabe," she says harshly, deliberately, sounding each word as clearly as she can. "If you pull that door open, he'll get in here. He'll hurt you, Gabe, hurt you bad just like he did before."
Hey purty boy, how's about we just try that one more time, you hold the fuck still…
Dean's teeth are chattering and his eyes are brimming, but he still moves so fast Hudak barely sees the blur of his head streaking the few inches it takes for him to execute a well-timed, perfectly aimed, and highly accurate headbutt, his skull ramming into her cheekbone. The impact drops her to her knees as he tugs on the chain again, starts wrapping it around his hand, prepares to heave in earnest.
Disoriented, her vision tunneling, Hudak reaches up to touch her face and pulls her hand away bloody. "Jesus," she spits out, "you bastard…" She looks up and sees him bracing again, sees them bracing again, the Dean Winchester twins, and she hollers at him.
"Do you want Lee in here, Gabe? Do you want him in here hurting you, making you do things you don't want to do?"
Dean is shaking so hard now he might even be seizing but suddenly he's not pulling, he's maybe listening.
"Answer me," Hudak barks. "Gabe!"
"No…" Dean's voice is barely there, but he doesn't falter, or stammer, just squeezes it out on a breath, the barest whisper.
So that Lee can't hear him, maybe? Hudak guesses, and she uses the lull to her best advantage. "Then sit down," she says, ice-cold. "Sit. Right. There. Slide down that wall and don't move. Do it now. Because that chain you're cuffed to is the only thing keeping the doors closed, keeping Lee out of here. Do you understand me?"
She's still not even sure Dean is seeing her but he must hear, because he slides slowly down the wall to crouch, no, cower, next to the door. Hudak stands, reels, backs away a step, presses her hand to her mouth as her gut lurches, and her head spins, and her cheek throbs. The door rocks as something large and heavy crashes into it, and Dean cries out in distress, makes himself impossibly tiny in the corner.
"You fuck!" Hudak screams then, whirling and getting as close up to the wood as she dares. "Fuck!"
You-fuck-you-fuck-you-fuck-you-fuck-you-fuck-you-fuck…
She falls to her knees again, dizzy and lightheaded, feels tears spring, blocks her ears and sees Dean is doing the same, rocking as the thing performs a medley of its greatest hits.
"Dean," Hudak mutters, crawling up beside him. "Gabe."
"Please. Let me go. Let me go," he's whispering. "I'm leaving. Please let me go."
"You have to stay here," she says, patting delicately at her eye and wincing, fuck, that hurts, as lightning bolts of pain dance along her eye socket. "I'm so sorry, please know that I'm so sorry, Gabe…"
Dean starts rubbing hard at his brow, furious hard, so hard he might draw blood, and Hudak takes his hands, grips them tight between hers. "Gabe, he isn't getting in here. You made it, he can't get in, I won't let him get in here, I promise, but you have to stay here for Sam…"
Dean looks at her and mutters, dazed, confused, barely discernible, and she leans close to listen.
"I'm the best me I can possibly be, I'm the best me I can possibly be, I'm the best me I can possibly be, I'm the best me… possibly be… best me…" And he's staring at her, a question in his eyes, something dawning there. "I'm leaving… I left. I tried, I did… Kathleen…?"
Dean.
"Dean. Dean. Christ, it's good to see you…" Hudak is laughing and crying at the same time. "It's not him. It's not Lee. It's the wendigo. It isn't getting in here, Sam painted the sigils on the door…" She rests her brow on his and he holds onto her hand as tightly as he did in the Impala, Jesus, two, three days ago, is that all it was? "Stay with me," she says. "Stay with me, please Dean, don't go back there."
Dean is still rocking, still shaking so hard she can hear his teeth rattle. "Best me… possibly be…"
Gabe boy, get over here, take it like a man Gabe, mess with my head that's what you get…
The thing's words trail off into sound effects, suggestive and savage, and Dean is hyperventilating, Hudak can see his lips getting darker in the moonlight. "Dean," she barks. "To me. Look to me. Dean. Dean Winchester, that's you, tough guy… come on, deep breaths. Dean fucking Winchester, hell yeah… Dean fucking Winchester, hell yeah… come on!"
"Dean…"
"Yes! Come on!" She pulls him in tight, holds him this time, protects him this time. "Dean fucking Winchester, hell yeah," she murmurs.
Sam can almost hear the silence as he picks his way down the shaft, playing the flashlight out ahead of him, breathing in thick, sooty, peaty air.
He wonders how long it is since another man walked here, how many hikers the thing might have dragged here, wonders if he's likely to keel over at any moment, overcome by invisible toxic gases, fire damp, that's what it's called and Jesus, sometimes it explodes, or maybe it could flood, or there could be a cave-in. He asks himself why he ever thought it was a good idea for a guy pushing six-five to even try this as he cracks his skull on the roof, was everyone a fucking munchkin back in the day?, thinks what an idjit he was to think the tunnel was going to lead to the Indiana Jones kind of mine that has cathedral ceilings and electric lights and railcars he could hitch a ride in.
He thinks of Bobby and pushes on. "Please be okay, Bobby," he mutters out loud. "Dean will kill me if you're not okay." He thinks it might even be true, knows his brother loves the old man with a fervor he conceals expertly, and that Bobby returns the affection with an equal and slightly less well-disguised zeal.
Christ. Dean. What the fuck has he done? What has he set in motion? Hudak's words are rattling about Sam's brain, intermixed with Dean's… No, Sam - that's love. But Sam doesn't want to think love is what his brother was about when he was with Bender, even if it was a profoundly confused, drugged, head injury-fueled love. Doesn't want to think love was even in the same damn county, doesn't want to think Dean ever looked at that bastard and superimposed Sam on top of him.
But most of all he doesn't want the responsibility of a love that might potentially let him hurt Dean in that way, let him abuse, attack, ruin, destroy. He thinks about Dean tapping his chest, thinks about Rockford again. Thinks about the fact his brother handed him the gun, invited him to empty the clip into his face. And he did, and it doesn't matter that it wasn't loaded. Fuck it doesn't matter, because he didn't even fight the urge, didn't even blink at the shattered expression in Dean's eyes as he pulled the trigger, kept pulling it, fully expected to see his brother's face explode in blood and bone and brains, and didn't give a shit about it. If Dean hadn't ejected the clip, and how the fuck did he know to do that? he would have died there, at Sam's hand. Dean had thought Sam would fight it, that he could fight it. But if he really thought that, why did he eject the clip?
Dean would have fought it, Sam thinks - maybe to the extent of turning the gun on himself had their positions been reversed. But that's not love, he thinks, and he realizes that he's saying it, realizes that even without him knowing it, he has come to a halt up against the dynamite-hewn walls of the mine shaft and is sagging against the rock, that tears are meandering down his face. "That's not love… is it?" he mutters, and he wonders if he can shoulder this warped, sick devotion of Dean's, conditioned into him by their dad. Is it even real? Is his brother just well trained?
"I don't want your life," Sam mutters. "I'm not worth that." And he isn't, because he walked away. Walked away from Dean, when Dean would have died for him, still would. Because Dean loves to the exclusion of all else, to the exclusion of himself, and it makes Sam think he can never die, must never die, because he knows as surely as day follows night that if that happens Dean will prevent it, never let Sam go; or that he'll follow Sam. And Sam knows suddenly that Dean deserves so much more than that. It's as if a lightning bolt hits Sam, and after all these years, after more hunts gone wrong than he can count, even after what happened with the rawhead and the knowledge that this was it, that his brother's heart was slowly grinding to a halt, this second, this instant, is the first time he has ever loved Dean as Dean loves him.
"Dad, you fucking bastard," he whispers. "Couldn't you have just left us alone, left us with Bobby… look what you did to him. Look what you did to us." And he thinks how much he wants to leave again, turn his back, walk away, back to Stanford, anywhere.
Anywhere but a future where he will have to watch his brother die for him.
Hudak shifts her leg and squeaks at the angry tingle as her veins fill up again. She's as surreptitious as she can be, can hear the thing shuffling about outside as it issues dire threats in between whining and howling out its irritation, and she thanks Christ she remembered to pack spare flashlight batteries because there just is no way she's going to sit and listen to it in the dark.
She thinks Dean might be asleep, buried down there in her grip, ears well and truly muffled by her left breast and her arm. It deserves a fucking eyeroll, she thinks, so she rolls away even though the shards of pain make her hiss, because this isn't quite how she pictured having Dean Winchester clutched tight to her left breast. Not that she ever has.
The thing jabbers on and she concludes that maybe it's losing its power to shock. It's becoming background noise and she finds she can drift off. Or maybe it's just her exhaustion. "Or maybe it's my black eye and my fractured cheekbone, you fucking psychopath," she murmurs in Dean's general direction as he slumbers on. Or maybe it really is that she's getting used to it, deadened to the horror. And maybe that's good, or maybe it says something about her, that she can tune out that level of pain and suffering.
Kathleen, you think too much.
She wriggles around to get comfortable, finally stretches out her leg, groans in satisfaction as the cramping eases.
"Stop fidgeting," Dean croaks out of nowhere. "And don't let go. It's… comfortable here."
"Oh please," Hudak says witheringly. "Don't tell me you're comfortable crushed up against my breasts. How could that possibly be?"
He shifts. Burrows.
"Dean. You're snuggling."
"The fuck I am."
"Never pegged you for a snuggler."
The thing must have its gaping maw right up against the door again and she feels Dean jump and tense up as it lets loose another tirade.
Lee no don't please, Gabe take it like a man you fuckin' waste of skin, don't Lee, please…
"Talk to me," Dean says then, frantic, but he doesn't look up. "Say anything, just please talk to me, I can't, I just, I can't-"
"I spy with my little eye something beg-"
"Seriously?" he yelps, and he surfaces, eyes squinting at the flashlight beam as it falls across his face, skin shiny with perspiration, and please God, Hudak thinks, please God don't let her have thought that Dean Winchester glows.
"You put me on the spot," she defends. "I'm having to think on my feet here. I don't see you coming up with any ideas."
Dean is staring at her and frowning. "What the fuck happened to your face?" he marvels, and her eyes can't help flicking to his own bruise-cut-dried-blood combo, high on his brow, the bookend to hers.
"Branch swung back as we were hiking," she lies smoothly. "Lucky it missed my eye, huh?"
Dean looks puzzled for a second, looks like he's trying to work something out. "We should clean it up," he says. "Cut looks pretty deep."
Hudak manages a tight smile. "Bobby had the first aid kit."
"Bobby had-had?" He wriggles more upright. "Had?" He glances around uneasily. "What is this place? Where's Bobby? Where's Sam?"
Effectively pinned into the corner by his bulk, Hudak sighs. "You don't remember."
"What? Remember what?" He's leaning right in on her, pressing her back, and he jerks irritably at his arm. "And why the fuck am I cuffed to the door?"
"The wendigo tipped a tree over on you and Bobby, grabbed him," Hudak rushes out. "We think it has him here - it's the nearest mine. Sam's gone in to look for him."
The reply is terse. "Then uncuff me so I can go after him, come on…"
Hudak pushes him back, but he doesn't shift far. "Dean. Listen. Sam needs you here to keep that thing here," she snaps, jerking her head towards the door. "Jurassic Park goat, remember? We think it has another way in, and if you head into the tunnel it could double back and come at Sam and Bobby from the other end."
She can see Dean knows it makes sense, but he doesn't like it. "Fuck." He chews his lip. "How long since he left?"
Hudak squints at her wristwatch in the moonlight. "Forty-five minutes, maybe an hour."
Dean bristles. "He should be back by now."
"Maybe the tunnel branches into two," she suggests.
Unmoved, Dean says, "We should go look for him."
"He needs you here," Hudak tells him firmly. "He was crystal clear on that. He's a big boy, he knows what he's doing."
His voice gone hard, Dean demands, "Uncuff me."
Hudak shakes her head. "Not a chance, Dean."
"I can kill it," he insists.
Hudak can't help a disconsolate glance over at their meager supplies. "Sam took the flaregun."
Jerking at the cuffs again, Dean growls, "We have silver bullets."
She sighs. "Look. Dean. It's dark out there, and this thing is jumping about all over the place. You'll never get a clear shot to the heart."
After a beat, Dean's tone goes even colder. "I maybe could. If we open the doors."
"No way," Hudak snaps. "Maybe doesn't cut it, Dean. I like the doors and the sigils just fine where they are, at least until Sam gets back."
"And Bobby," Dean says, softer now, and something flits across his eyes, worry, fear, hope, and he looks down for a second.
Outside the thing launches into another verse.
"Six degrees of OJ Simpson," Dean says suddenly.
Caught on her back foot, Hudak can't parry that one. "Huh?"
"Get to OJ in six steps or less, Kathleen."
"Jesus, that's-"
"Scared, Kathleen?" Dean glances back up and leers at her.
"The moon landings were faked," she says.
"No they weren't," he snorts. "That's a myth, they-"
"They even made a movie about it."
"Yeah, Capricorn One, but it-"
"Starring OJ Simpson."
Hey Gabe get your ass over here boy, what the fuck you doin'-
They holler in unison, "Shut the fuck up."
And it does, abruptly, and a puzzled silence seeps in.
"Maybe it can't mimic two voices at once?" Hudak wonders.
Dean considers it for a second. "That's so fuckin' ludicrous it might actually be true," he says. "And I can't believe you beat me at Six Degrees of OJ Simpson. I invented that game."
Hudak is suddenly claustrophobic, shoves against him. "Yeah, well. You're stressed. Can you get off now? Personal space and all?"
"Uh." Dean clears his throat. "No, actually. Not right now. I… need a minute."
He shifts uncomfortably, looks away, and glances down, back up, down again, and Hudak follows his eyes, blurts it out high-pitched.
"Oh. Oh. Okay. Well. Take your time." She stumbles straight into the silver lining without care or thought. "It's working again, then."
"I guess," Dean replies drily. "Maybe it's the whole breast thing. Especially since you used the handcuffs. Or it could just be that I'm scared stiff."
Honking great bugs the size of skateboards. Skittering, too, and Sam hates the word skitter, it's what rats do, and honking great bugs, and he knows that if he listens hard enough he'll hear them skitter, hear their - claws? Heels? Honking great bugs that sound like they're wearing teeny-tiny Manolos like the ones Jessica had, clickety-clicking across the rocks. And Sam works it out, six legs, that's three pairs at, what, five hundred bucks plus tax a pair, that's well over three thousand dollars on shoes, for Christ's sake. Four thousand if you're a spider. "Serves you damned right for having so many fucking feet," he snaps.
God, he's losing it, and he suddenly wonders who he'd be if he wasn't himself. A different version of poor, lost Gabe Bender? "I'll be… Chad," he mutters to himself as he peers ahead into the pitch black, praying his flashlight battery doesn't give out because if it does he's stuck here, in the dark, with things skittering all around him. "Chad's studying to be a sewer diver in Mexico city…" His voice trails off as his flashlight picks out a shape further ahead that might be a boot. Is a boot, in fact.
Yahtzee. Must be close.
"Bobby," Sam calls in a low voice, wincing as he does because he almost expects the thing to tap him on the shoulder and ask him what the hell he's doing trespassing on its property and didn't he see the fucking sign saying it's private, so piss off before it calls the Five-O or sets the dog on him.
There are fallen rocks ahead, and Sam clambers over them, ducking down even further as he does. "Bobby," he calls again cautiously.
There's an opening at the top of the pile, and Sam sends smaller rocks tumbling, shines his flashlight through into the rest of the shaft behind the roughly six-foot wide blockage. He can see that the rockfall has sectioned off part of the tunnel, forming a separate chamber in the shaft, and there are dark shapes scattered over near the far wall. Body-shaped. Bobby-shaped?
"Bobby!" he tries again, but there's nothing. Unconscious? Sam isn't even thinking about the alternative, just isn't going there, isn't going to trudge back through this dank, dripping pit of despair and tell his brother that, nosirree bub.
He pulls desperately at the rocks, starts yomping across the top of them, flashlight gripped between his teeth, until he executes a less-than-perfect dismount, spilling down into what resembles a bricked-off mausoleum rich with the musty stench of the long dead. He darts his eyes everywhere at once, listens, watches for any sign of movement, breathes in shallow pants, his gorge rising, things fluttering about inside his stomach, until he's used to the smell.
He crawls towards the first shape then, heaves it over, only not so much, because it's nothing more than bones rattling inside tattered rags, just like all the others are as he crawls from one to the next. He hunts through pockets with shaking hands, and there's nothing to say who they were because these people died here, were consumed here, long before credit cards, and photo IDs, and till receipts that might give him a clue as to the date it killed them, maybe even before the drivers' license was invented. They mock Sam with empty sightless sockets staring out of sad, gray, cracked skulls and he kicks disconsolately at smashed bones, chewed ribs and no Bobby.
At what he supposes might be oh-dark-thirty or so, because here time has no meaning, and heck, he thinks, there's no way he didn't get that line anywhere but an Outer Limits rerun, Bobby has a eureka moment. It jerks him out of a light doze into a silence that's so hushed, so stifled, he reckons he could hear a rat piss on cotton if a rat happened to be nearby pissing on cotton.
He's cold, lightheaded, hungry. He sips some more of the water, gags because Christ, it's fuckin' lumpy, chewy, and he can taste the typhoid on his lips. He shakes his head, gathers his senses, retraces his steps to the eureka moment, analyzes it carefully, comes to a conclusion.
Well, fuckety-fuck, he thinks, because this hunt just damn well jumped the shark as far as he's concerned.
There's a reason this mine shaft is fifteen by twelve feet.
It isn't a mine shaft.
The thing wears Dean down steadily, and it's like almost-second-base never happened, like OJ never even entered the conversation, like he never rallied and thought for a little while that he'd beaten it, beaten the sick disgust of hearing his own cowardice and submission lathered, rinsed and repeated, over and over and over and then once more with feeling; an endlessly looping, brutal, pitiless, remorseless onslaught, assaults played out in minute detail from Bender's first summons to Gabe's final, shellshocked silence.
He knows Hudak is shooting worried glances in his direction, thinks she looks as browbeaten as he knows he must, and she isn't even trying to talk over the thing now, just sits, dumb, downcast, dull-eyed with tiredness and maybe even embarrassment.
"I'm sorry," he mutters, his guts curling in misery and mortification. "That you have to hear this."
Hudak huffs out in something that might be annoyance but turns out it isn't. "You're a piece of work Dean, you really are. They threw away the mold after they cast you." She crawls over to sit next to him again. "The sad thing is that I think you really are sorry. That you're sitting here thinking about me and not yourself."
She wedges up next to him and it's warm, comforting, so much so that he can't, just can't. "Uncuff me," he says weakly. "Please. I need to find my brother. He should be back by now."
"You said something," Hudak diverts. "Before you came back. Right after you came back too."
Dean is backfooted, flounders for a minute, frowns. "You said that before. That I came back. But I wasn't gone."
Hudak taps her fingers on her leg and now Dean i learning how to read her he knows that's code for Hudak's pondering, might be nervous.
"You're pondering," he says acidly. "Nervously."
She nods agreeably. "Yeah. About that…" She taps some more. "Do you remember anything about how we got here, how we found the mine?"
"No… just walking with Bobby, feeling like… something was there. In the trees. Watching. That's it until I woke up here…" Dean stares at her, suspicious now. "Is there something you're not telling me?"
The tapping grows even more frantic, William fuckin' Tell Overture frantic, in fact.
"Kathleen," he growls. "What are you not telling me here?"
She shrugs. "You have been gone, sort of. You've been Gabe. Were Gabe. Since about nine thirty this morning right up until you switched back."
Dean doesn't challenge her, doesn't tell her it's crap even though he wants to, because he knows she isn't feeding him a line. So he doesn't say anything.
"Do you remember any of it?" She waits for him to answer, continues when he doesn't, and her voice is gentle. "Do you remember what might have set it off?"
He shakes his head, wordless.
"Sam thought it might be what he said. About how you should have left."
"It doesn't always lead back to Sam," Dean snaps then. "I'm capable of fucking up all by myself. And that didn't come out right."
At least Hudak isn't tapping any more. "I think it's important," she says slowly, like she's slotting pieces together for him as she speaks. "That it happened for a reason. You said - Gabe said - that he was leaving, Dean. He was making a break for it."
There is a second where Dean trawls his memory, hunts for that moment where he might have had the cojones to do it, but there is nothing, only the recall of his own fear. "Gabe was a gutless fuckin' coward," he retorts. "Gabe rolled over and took it, let that bastard… let him…"
"No, no, no," Hudak soothes him, crabbing around to sit in front of him. "Gabe did what he had to do Dean, to survive. So Lee wouldn't kill him. He didn't have a choice."
In his mind's eye Dean sees his real brother's bewilderment, but the surety he felt when he answered Sam's question is gone. "He could have left."
"Dean, Dean. You're not listening to me." Hudak hurries out the words. "Gabe did leave. We found him, me and Sam. Gabe left. Gabe survived and he left as soon as he could walk. He got away, do you see? Do you see that?"
Dean doesn't know if he's seeing or not. But he knows his vision is blurring, knows his voice is choking, knows his lips are trembling, knows his hands are fisting, knows his muscles are tensing, knows his head is aching, knows his heart is racing, knows his mask is shattering.
And maybe Hudak knows it too, maybe right now he's with someone who knows him better at this moment than anyone ever has or ever will again, and she's whispering, her breath tickling warm on his skin, then cool on his tears, and now he's listening to her, now there's no one else there but her, and her voice is loud and true in his head even though she's barely murmuring, hushed, soothing tones.
"Dean, you did what you had to do to survive, idiot boy… you survived, and you left, you got away, don't you see…"
And it's like a wave of something overwhelming, something dizzying, and shining, bright colors and flashing lights, Christ, like a trip, and it's a huge fuckin' mistake but it makes perfect sense here and now because it's the right time and the right one, and it's featherlight kisses and he swallows her words, he's fisting her hair, great handfuls of it, can't get enough of her, "Kathleen… Please. Kathleen…"
Gabe get the fuck over here, boy, spread 'em, messin' with my head see what you get…
But this is louder, and it drowns out Dean's shame, his humiliation, his devastation and desolation and guilt, this noise is louder, the noise of want, and need, and good, and right.
It's sighing and breathing out slow and then fast, it's yes, like that, right there, again, more, don't stop, don't listen to it, it's muffled sounds that aren't proper words at all. It's choked-out desire and pleasure, it's gentle then rough, it's soft then hard, it's tender then brutal, it's smooth then friction, it's tongues and teeth and fingers on skin, it's damp, moist, then wet, then heat and sliding and clutching and fluttering and climbing, climbing and then letting go and falling, and it's sappy, chick flick things Dean knows damn well he'll probably deny saying tomorrow, but he'll smile while he denies it; it's I care, I adore, and fuck, yes, God, yes, in that moment of release it's anything and everything and something that might even be I love.
Getting out isn't as easy as getting in, Sam finds, the uphill trajectory much steeper on this side of the tunnel collapse. He tries bouncing himself off a pile of skulls by way of a foot up, but they crumble like dried-out plaster under his sneakers, and all the time he's thinking that Bobby isn't there, thinking about the time they wasted looking for this hole in the ground, and it's the wrong hole in the ground, and fuck, irony can be pretty ironic at times.
Sam wonders grimly if the shock of not seeing him approach with Bobby in tow will scare his brother back into himself just like the shock of seeing the wendigo grab the old man scared him back into Gabe. And in the back of his mind he can't help thinking that isn't right, isn't really as logical a jump as it should be, because Gabe didn't know anything about the wendigo, did he? Surely Gabe would have to have seen the thing before to be jolted back into Dean?
"Christ, for a simple salt and burn," he grouses, as he hauls himself up and over. "Thick fucking plots, tangled webs, this whole mess is like a mad woman's knitting. Who needs it?" It's not fucking fair, he thinks. "I should be at college," he mutters, because he might as well keep himself company on this hunt. "At fucking college. Living any life but this one."
But that feeling… that he's missing something, has missed something, something so elementary…
About three-quarters of the way across the pile of rocks, Sam comes face to face with the wasp-and-the-jelly-jar conundrum.
"Wasp. Jelly jar," he murmurs. "Wasp crawls through wasp-sized hole punched into lid of jar from the outside. But. Law of physics or some crap like that mean hole is too small when trying to crawl through it from opposite direction. Wasp is trapped."
He sighs, sinks his head into his hands. "Sam crawls across rocks perfectly shaped and positioned to let him slither from A to B. But not from B to A… as Confucius fucking say!" And he hollers it out in frustration because of course, of course, and why did he even think it might be a remote possibility that he wouldn't somehow get fucked over in here?
But heck, it could be worse. At least he knows the wendigo won't be heading back here any time soon. He rests his head on his forearms and waits for Dean. Or Gabe.
And still he just can't shake the feeling that he's missing something, a connection. A clue.
Hudak squints blearily at her wristwatch. Five-fifteen.
She's warm because she's covered up with a couple of blankets. She most definitely isn't warm because Dean Winchester is pressed up next to her.
She pushes up onto her elbows, looks over at the door, the chain, the handcuffs hanging empty and mocking her shinily.
"Slippery sonofabitch," she breathes out.
Next
Sam is swallowed up by the darkness almost immediately, and Christ, but what a sucker she is, Hudak thinks, because she should have known the swine would be just as sly and underhand as his brother given the chance. "Dammit Janet," she murmurs under her breath as the pinprick flare of his flashlight dwindles to nothing more than a firefly sparking in the distance. "How the fuck am I supposed to keep him here?"
Get over here boy, take it like a man, no Sam help Sam-Sam-Sam…
Hudak paces, casts quick glances in Dean's direction as the thing keeps up its commentary outside. "Change the fucking record," she breathes, daring to peek through one of the cracks in the door. "You're starting to seriously piss me off."
Dean shifts restlessly, and she holds her breath for the few seconds it takes him to settle, runs through her options. He wakes, panics, and takes off down the tunnel. He either gets lost or hurt in there, or the thing realizes he's on the move and heads back to the other end of the mine, where it gets two meals for the price of one. Can they catch a scent through the earth, through rock? she wonders. "Christ, Bobby, where are you when I need you?" she mutters.
Or he wakes, panics, and cuts loose through the doors straight into the thing's welcoming arms, and becomes part of the tribe.
Either way, they're fucked.
Except… she reaches to her belt loop, unhooks the cuffs. "I'm so sorry about this, Dean," she murmurs, as she gently clicks the cuff into place around his wrist, locks him to the chain holding the doors closed. "If there was any other way, believe me…"
She's right there next to the door, feels her skin crawl, turns, stares through a knothole right into glowing red. She jerks back reflexively, tumbles hard onto her ass, yelps, "How the fuck did you get so close?"
A clawed finger pokes through the hole, starts to sizzle and steam, and she hears the thing's unholy shriek of rage and pain recede into the distance as it leaps back, repelled by the sigils Sam spray-painted on the wood. "Oh, thank fuck," Hudak breathes out. "Thank you, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and all the saints, I swear to God I'll start going to church again, I will."
In the background of her nauseating mix of relief and fear, she can hear clinking, forgets for a minute what it is.
Gabe, boy, get your butt over here, do what you're fuckin' told boy or I'll whup you good, stick it to you, teach you a fuckin' lesson, boy…
"Christ. No… No… Lee… it's Lee…"
Hudak had forgotten Dean was there and she twists to find that he's looming over her, intimidating, because she forgot how damned tall he is with Sam close by. He's staring at the doors, eyes wide, his whole body giving off a vibe of sheer dread like she's never sensed before and hopes never to again, worse than when that fucking creature was spooning with him. She doesn't want to think that means Bender was even more of an abomination, that Dean spent all those weeks being terrorized by something even more frightening than the monstrosity crouched outside the mine serenading him. Or does he even remember the thing? Did the memory of its embrace leave when Dean left?
Dean bolts abruptly, towards the tunnel, and in the next second he's jerked back so violently she hears his shoulder crack. He loses his balance and crashes against the door. "What? What the fuck!" he cries, bewildered, and Hudak thinks he might not even be aware of her in his panic.
He lurches back upright, distraught, spins and braces his boot on the door, pulls with all his might on the chain. Hudak doesn't even think, reacts purely on instinct. She slams into him, fucking terrified herself and desperate too, because she's read all about superhuman displays of strength under duress and if the padlock gives and the doors open it's over, and she sends him reeling back into the corner where he'd been sleeping earlier.
She's right up in Dean's face and his eyes are wide but blind, unseeing, or maybe seeing too much. She grips his face, forces him to look at her, see her. "Lee's right out there, Gabe," she says harshly, deliberately, sounding each word as clearly as she can. "If you pull that door open, he'll get in here. He'll hurt you, Gabe, hurt you bad just like he did before."
Hey purty boy, how's about we just try that one more time, you hold the fuck still…
Dean's teeth are chattering and his eyes are brimming, but he still moves so fast Hudak barely sees the blur of his head streaking the few inches it takes for him to execute a well-timed, perfectly aimed, and highly accurate headbutt, his skull ramming into her cheekbone. The impact drops her to her knees as he tugs on the chain again, starts wrapping it around his hand, prepares to heave in earnest.
Disoriented, her vision tunneling, Hudak reaches up to touch her face and pulls her hand away bloody. "Jesus," she spits out, "you bastard…" She looks up and sees him bracing again, sees them bracing again, the Dean Winchester twins, and she hollers at him.
"Do you want Lee in here, Gabe? Do you want him in here hurting you, making you do things you don't want to do?"
Dean is shaking so hard now he might even be seizing but suddenly he's not pulling, he's maybe listening.
"Answer me," Hudak barks. "Gabe!"
"No…" Dean's voice is barely there, but he doesn't falter, or stammer, just squeezes it out on a breath, the barest whisper.
So that Lee can't hear him, maybe? Hudak guesses, and she uses the lull to her best advantage. "Then sit down," she says, ice-cold. "Sit. Right. There. Slide down that wall and don't move. Do it now. Because that chain you're cuffed to is the only thing keeping the doors closed, keeping Lee out of here. Do you understand me?"
She's still not even sure Dean is seeing her but he must hear, because he slides slowly down the wall to crouch, no, cower, next to the door. Hudak stands, reels, backs away a step, presses her hand to her mouth as her gut lurches, and her head spins, and her cheek throbs. The door rocks as something large and heavy crashes into it, and Dean cries out in distress, makes himself impossibly tiny in the corner.
"You fuck!" Hudak screams then, whirling and getting as close up to the wood as she dares. "Fuck!"
You-fuck-you-fuck-you-fuck-you-fuck-you-fuck-you-fuck…
She falls to her knees again, dizzy and lightheaded, feels tears spring, blocks her ears and sees Dean is doing the same, rocking as the thing performs a medley of its greatest hits.
"Dean," Hudak mutters, crawling up beside him. "Gabe."
"Please. Let me go. Let me go," he's whispering. "I'm leaving. Please let me go."
"You have to stay here," she says, patting delicately at her eye and wincing, fuck, that hurts, as lightning bolts of pain dance along her eye socket. "I'm so sorry, please know that I'm so sorry, Gabe…"
Dean starts rubbing hard at his brow, furious hard, so hard he might draw blood, and Hudak takes his hands, grips them tight between hers. "Gabe, he isn't getting in here. You made it, he can't get in, I won't let him get in here, I promise, but you have to stay here for Sam…"
Dean looks at her and mutters, dazed, confused, barely discernible, and she leans close to listen.
"I'm the best me I can possibly be, I'm the best me I can possibly be, I'm the best me I can possibly be, I'm the best me… possibly be… best me…" And he's staring at her, a question in his eyes, something dawning there. "I'm leaving… I left. I tried, I did… Kathleen…?"
Dean.
"Dean. Dean. Christ, it's good to see you…" Hudak is laughing and crying at the same time. "It's not him. It's not Lee. It's the wendigo. It isn't getting in here, Sam painted the sigils on the door…" She rests her brow on his and he holds onto her hand as tightly as he did in the Impala, Jesus, two, three days ago, is that all it was? "Stay with me," she says. "Stay with me, please Dean, don't go back there."
Dean is still rocking, still shaking so hard she can hear his teeth rattle. "Best me… possibly be…"
Gabe boy, get over here, take it like a man Gabe, mess with my head that's what you get…
The thing's words trail off into sound effects, suggestive and savage, and Dean is hyperventilating, Hudak can see his lips getting darker in the moonlight. "Dean," she barks. "To me. Look to me. Dean. Dean Winchester, that's you, tough guy… come on, deep breaths. Dean fucking Winchester, hell yeah… Dean fucking Winchester, hell yeah… come on!"
"Dean…"
"Yes! Come on!" She pulls him in tight, holds him this time, protects him this time. "Dean fucking Winchester, hell yeah," she murmurs.
Sam can almost hear the silence as he picks his way down the shaft, playing the flashlight out ahead of him, breathing in thick, sooty, peaty air.
He wonders how long it is since another man walked here, how many hikers the thing might have dragged here, wonders if he's likely to keel over at any moment, overcome by invisible toxic gases, fire damp, that's what it's called and Jesus, sometimes it explodes, or maybe it could flood, or there could be a cave-in. He asks himself why he ever thought it was a good idea for a guy pushing six-five to even try this as he cracks his skull on the roof, was everyone a fucking munchkin back in the day?, thinks what an idjit he was to think the tunnel was going to lead to the Indiana Jones kind of mine that has cathedral ceilings and electric lights and railcars he could hitch a ride in.
He thinks of Bobby and pushes on. "Please be okay, Bobby," he mutters out loud. "Dean will kill me if you're not okay." He thinks it might even be true, knows his brother loves the old man with a fervor he conceals expertly, and that Bobby returns the affection with an equal and slightly less well-disguised zeal.
Christ. Dean. What the fuck has he done? What has he set in motion? Hudak's words are rattling about Sam's brain, intermixed with Dean's… No, Sam - that's love. But Sam doesn't want to think love is what his brother was about when he was with Bender, even if it was a profoundly confused, drugged, head injury-fueled love. Doesn't want to think love was even in the same damn county, doesn't want to think Dean ever looked at that bastard and superimposed Sam on top of him.
But most of all he doesn't want the responsibility of a love that might potentially let him hurt Dean in that way, let him abuse, attack, ruin, destroy. He thinks about Dean tapping his chest, thinks about Rockford again. Thinks about the fact his brother handed him the gun, invited him to empty the clip into his face. And he did, and it doesn't matter that it wasn't loaded. Fuck it doesn't matter, because he didn't even fight the urge, didn't even blink at the shattered expression in Dean's eyes as he pulled the trigger, kept pulling it, fully expected to see his brother's face explode in blood and bone and brains, and didn't give a shit about it. If Dean hadn't ejected the clip, and how the fuck did he know to do that? he would have died there, at Sam's hand. Dean had thought Sam would fight it, that he could fight it. But if he really thought that, why did he eject the clip?
Dean would have fought it, Sam thinks - maybe to the extent of turning the gun on himself had their positions been reversed. But that's not love, he thinks, and he realizes that he's saying it, realizes that even without him knowing it, he has come to a halt up against the dynamite-hewn walls of the mine shaft and is sagging against the rock, that tears are meandering down his face. "That's not love… is it?" he mutters, and he wonders if he can shoulder this warped, sick devotion of Dean's, conditioned into him by their dad. Is it even real? Is his brother just well trained?
"I don't want your life," Sam mutters. "I'm not worth that." And he isn't, because he walked away. Walked away from Dean, when Dean would have died for him, still would. Because Dean loves to the exclusion of all else, to the exclusion of himself, and it makes Sam think he can never die, must never die, because he knows as surely as day follows night that if that happens Dean will prevent it, never let Sam go; or that he'll follow Sam. And Sam knows suddenly that Dean deserves so much more than that. It's as if a lightning bolt hits Sam, and after all these years, after more hunts gone wrong than he can count, even after what happened with the rawhead and the knowledge that this was it, that his brother's heart was slowly grinding to a halt, this second, this instant, is the first time he has ever loved Dean as Dean loves him.
"Dad, you fucking bastard," he whispers. "Couldn't you have just left us alone, left us with Bobby… look what you did to him. Look what you did to us." And he thinks how much he wants to leave again, turn his back, walk away, back to Stanford, anywhere.
Anywhere but a future where he will have to watch his brother die for him.
Hudak shifts her leg and squeaks at the angry tingle as her veins fill up again. She's as surreptitious as she can be, can hear the thing shuffling about outside as it issues dire threats in between whining and howling out its irritation, and she thanks Christ she remembered to pack spare flashlight batteries because there just is no way she's going to sit and listen to it in the dark.
She thinks Dean might be asleep, buried down there in her grip, ears well and truly muffled by her left breast and her arm. It deserves a fucking eyeroll, she thinks, so she rolls away even though the shards of pain make her hiss, because this isn't quite how she pictured having Dean Winchester clutched tight to her left breast. Not that she ever has.
The thing jabbers on and she concludes that maybe it's losing its power to shock. It's becoming background noise and she finds she can drift off. Or maybe it's just her exhaustion. "Or maybe it's my black eye and my fractured cheekbone, you fucking psychopath," she murmurs in Dean's general direction as he slumbers on. Or maybe it really is that she's getting used to it, deadened to the horror. And maybe that's good, or maybe it says something about her, that she can tune out that level of pain and suffering.
Kathleen, you think too much.
She wriggles around to get comfortable, finally stretches out her leg, groans in satisfaction as the cramping eases.
"Stop fidgeting," Dean croaks out of nowhere. "And don't let go. It's… comfortable here."
"Oh please," Hudak says witheringly. "Don't tell me you're comfortable crushed up against my breasts. How could that possibly be?"
He shifts. Burrows.
"Dean. You're snuggling."
"The fuck I am."
"Never pegged you for a snuggler."
The thing must have its gaping maw right up against the door again and she feels Dean jump and tense up as it lets loose another tirade.
Lee no don't please, Gabe take it like a man you fuckin' waste of skin, don't Lee, please…
"Talk to me," Dean says then, frantic, but he doesn't look up. "Say anything, just please talk to me, I can't, I just, I can't-"
"I spy with my little eye something beg-"
"Seriously?" he yelps, and he surfaces, eyes squinting at the flashlight beam as it falls across his face, skin shiny with perspiration, and please God, Hudak thinks, please God don't let her have thought that Dean Winchester glows.
"You put me on the spot," she defends. "I'm having to think on my feet here. I don't see you coming up with any ideas."
Dean is staring at her and frowning. "What the fuck happened to your face?" he marvels, and her eyes can't help flicking to his own bruise-cut-dried-blood combo, high on his brow, the bookend to hers.
"Branch swung back as we were hiking," she lies smoothly. "Lucky it missed my eye, huh?"
Dean looks puzzled for a second, looks like he's trying to work something out. "We should clean it up," he says. "Cut looks pretty deep."
Hudak manages a tight smile. "Bobby had the first aid kit."
"Bobby had-had?" He wriggles more upright. "Had?" He glances around uneasily. "What is this place? Where's Bobby? Where's Sam?"
Effectively pinned into the corner by his bulk, Hudak sighs. "You don't remember."
"What? Remember what?" He's leaning right in on her, pressing her back, and he jerks irritably at his arm. "And why the fuck am I cuffed to the door?"
"The wendigo tipped a tree over on you and Bobby, grabbed him," Hudak rushes out. "We think it has him here - it's the nearest mine. Sam's gone in to look for him."
The reply is terse. "Then uncuff me so I can go after him, come on…"
Hudak pushes him back, but he doesn't shift far. "Dean. Listen. Sam needs you here to keep that thing here," she snaps, jerking her head towards the door. "Jurassic Park goat, remember? We think it has another way in, and if you head into the tunnel it could double back and come at Sam and Bobby from the other end."
She can see Dean knows it makes sense, but he doesn't like it. "Fuck." He chews his lip. "How long since he left?"
Hudak squints at her wristwatch in the moonlight. "Forty-five minutes, maybe an hour."
Dean bristles. "He should be back by now."
"Maybe the tunnel branches into two," she suggests.
Unmoved, Dean says, "We should go look for him."
"He needs you here," Hudak tells him firmly. "He was crystal clear on that. He's a big boy, he knows what he's doing."
His voice gone hard, Dean demands, "Uncuff me."
Hudak shakes her head. "Not a chance, Dean."
"I can kill it," he insists.
Hudak can't help a disconsolate glance over at their meager supplies. "Sam took the flaregun."
Jerking at the cuffs again, Dean growls, "We have silver bullets."
She sighs. "Look. Dean. It's dark out there, and this thing is jumping about all over the place. You'll never get a clear shot to the heart."
After a beat, Dean's tone goes even colder. "I maybe could. If we open the doors."
"No way," Hudak snaps. "Maybe doesn't cut it, Dean. I like the doors and the sigils just fine where they are, at least until Sam gets back."
"And Bobby," Dean says, softer now, and something flits across his eyes, worry, fear, hope, and he looks down for a second.
Outside the thing launches into another verse.
"Six degrees of OJ Simpson," Dean says suddenly.
Caught on her back foot, Hudak can't parry that one. "Huh?"
"Get to OJ in six steps or less, Kathleen."
"Jesus, that's-"
"Scared, Kathleen?" Dean glances back up and leers at her.
"The moon landings were faked," she says.
"No they weren't," he snorts. "That's a myth, they-"
"They even made a movie about it."
"Yeah, Capricorn One, but it-"
"Starring OJ Simpson."
Hey Gabe get your ass over here boy, what the fuck you doin'-
They holler in unison, "Shut the fuck up."
And it does, abruptly, and a puzzled silence seeps in.
"Maybe it can't mimic two voices at once?" Hudak wonders.
Dean considers it for a second. "That's so fuckin' ludicrous it might actually be true," he says. "And I can't believe you beat me at Six Degrees of OJ Simpson. I invented that game."
Hudak is suddenly claustrophobic, shoves against him. "Yeah, well. You're stressed. Can you get off now? Personal space and all?"
"Uh." Dean clears his throat. "No, actually. Not right now. I… need a minute."
He shifts uncomfortably, looks away, and glances down, back up, down again, and Hudak follows his eyes, blurts it out high-pitched.
"Oh. Oh. Okay. Well. Take your time." She stumbles straight into the silver lining without care or thought. "It's working again, then."
"I guess," Dean replies drily. "Maybe it's the whole breast thing. Especially since you used the handcuffs. Or it could just be that I'm scared stiff."
Honking great bugs the size of skateboards. Skittering, too, and Sam hates the word skitter, it's what rats do, and honking great bugs, and he knows that if he listens hard enough he'll hear them skitter, hear their - claws? Heels? Honking great bugs that sound like they're wearing teeny-tiny Manolos like the ones Jessica had, clickety-clicking across the rocks. And Sam works it out, six legs, that's three pairs at, what, five hundred bucks plus tax a pair, that's well over three thousand dollars on shoes, for Christ's sake. Four thousand if you're a spider. "Serves you damned right for having so many fucking feet," he snaps.
God, he's losing it, and he suddenly wonders who he'd be if he wasn't himself. A different version of poor, lost Gabe Bender? "I'll be… Chad," he mutters to himself as he peers ahead into the pitch black, praying his flashlight battery doesn't give out because if it does he's stuck here, in the dark, with things skittering all around him. "Chad's studying to be a sewer diver in Mexico city…" His voice trails off as his flashlight picks out a shape further ahead that might be a boot. Is a boot, in fact.
Yahtzee. Must be close.
"Bobby," Sam calls in a low voice, wincing as he does because he almost expects the thing to tap him on the shoulder and ask him what the hell he's doing trespassing on its property and didn't he see the fucking sign saying it's private, so piss off before it calls the Five-O or sets the dog on him.
There are fallen rocks ahead, and Sam clambers over them, ducking down even further as he does. "Bobby," he calls again cautiously.
There's an opening at the top of the pile, and Sam sends smaller rocks tumbling, shines his flashlight through into the rest of the shaft behind the roughly six-foot wide blockage. He can see that the rockfall has sectioned off part of the tunnel, forming a separate chamber in the shaft, and there are dark shapes scattered over near the far wall. Body-shaped. Bobby-shaped?
"Bobby!" he tries again, but there's nothing. Unconscious? Sam isn't even thinking about the alternative, just isn't going there, isn't going to trudge back through this dank, dripping pit of despair and tell his brother that, nosirree bub.
He pulls desperately at the rocks, starts yomping across the top of them, flashlight gripped between his teeth, until he executes a less-than-perfect dismount, spilling down into what resembles a bricked-off mausoleum rich with the musty stench of the long dead. He darts his eyes everywhere at once, listens, watches for any sign of movement, breathes in shallow pants, his gorge rising, things fluttering about inside his stomach, until he's used to the smell.
He crawls towards the first shape then, heaves it over, only not so much, because it's nothing more than bones rattling inside tattered rags, just like all the others are as he crawls from one to the next. He hunts through pockets with shaking hands, and there's nothing to say who they were because these people died here, were consumed here, long before credit cards, and photo IDs, and till receipts that might give him a clue as to the date it killed them, maybe even before the drivers' license was invented. They mock Sam with empty sightless sockets staring out of sad, gray, cracked skulls and he kicks disconsolately at smashed bones, chewed ribs and no Bobby.
At what he supposes might be oh-dark-thirty or so, because here time has no meaning, and heck, he thinks, there's no way he didn't get that line anywhere but an Outer Limits rerun, Bobby has a eureka moment. It jerks him out of a light doze into a silence that's so hushed, so stifled, he reckons he could hear a rat piss on cotton if a rat happened to be nearby pissing on cotton.
He's cold, lightheaded, hungry. He sips some more of the water, gags because Christ, it's fuckin' lumpy, chewy, and he can taste the typhoid on his lips. He shakes his head, gathers his senses, retraces his steps to the eureka moment, analyzes it carefully, comes to a conclusion.
Well, fuckety-fuck, he thinks, because this hunt just damn well jumped the shark as far as he's concerned.
There's a reason this mine shaft is fifteen by twelve feet.
It isn't a mine shaft.
The thing wears Dean down steadily, and it's like almost-second-base never happened, like OJ never even entered the conversation, like he never rallied and thought for a little while that he'd beaten it, beaten the sick disgust of hearing his own cowardice and submission lathered, rinsed and repeated, over and over and over and then once more with feeling; an endlessly looping, brutal, pitiless, remorseless onslaught, assaults played out in minute detail from Bender's first summons to Gabe's final, shellshocked silence.
He knows Hudak is shooting worried glances in his direction, thinks she looks as browbeaten as he knows he must, and she isn't even trying to talk over the thing now, just sits, dumb, downcast, dull-eyed with tiredness and maybe even embarrassment.
"I'm sorry," he mutters, his guts curling in misery and mortification. "That you have to hear this."
Hudak huffs out in something that might be annoyance but turns out it isn't. "You're a piece of work Dean, you really are. They threw away the mold after they cast you." She crawls over to sit next to him again. "The sad thing is that I think you really are sorry. That you're sitting here thinking about me and not yourself."
She wedges up next to him and it's warm, comforting, so much so that he can't, just can't. "Uncuff me," he says weakly. "Please. I need to find my brother. He should be back by now."
"You said something," Hudak diverts. "Before you came back. Right after you came back too."
Dean is backfooted, flounders for a minute, frowns. "You said that before. That I came back. But I wasn't gone."
Hudak taps her fingers on her leg and now Dean i learning how to read her he knows that's code for Hudak's pondering, might be nervous.
"You're pondering," he says acidly. "Nervously."
She nods agreeably. "Yeah. About that…" She taps some more. "Do you remember anything about how we got here, how we found the mine?"
"No… just walking with Bobby, feeling like… something was there. In the trees. Watching. That's it until I woke up here…" Dean stares at her, suspicious now. "Is there something you're not telling me?"
The tapping grows even more frantic, William fuckin' Tell Overture frantic, in fact.
"Kathleen," he growls. "What are you not telling me here?"
She shrugs. "You have been gone, sort of. You've been Gabe. Were Gabe. Since about nine thirty this morning right up until you switched back."
Dean doesn't challenge her, doesn't tell her it's crap even though he wants to, because he knows she isn't feeding him a line. So he doesn't say anything.
"Do you remember any of it?" She waits for him to answer, continues when he doesn't, and her voice is gentle. "Do you remember what might have set it off?"
He shakes his head, wordless.
"Sam thought it might be what he said. About how you should have left."
"It doesn't always lead back to Sam," Dean snaps then. "I'm capable of fucking up all by myself. And that didn't come out right."
At least Hudak isn't tapping any more. "I think it's important," she says slowly, like she's slotting pieces together for him as she speaks. "That it happened for a reason. You said - Gabe said - that he was leaving, Dean. He was making a break for it."
There is a second where Dean trawls his memory, hunts for that moment where he might have had the cojones to do it, but there is nothing, only the recall of his own fear. "Gabe was a gutless fuckin' coward," he retorts. "Gabe rolled over and took it, let that bastard… let him…"
"No, no, no," Hudak soothes him, crabbing around to sit in front of him. "Gabe did what he had to do Dean, to survive. So Lee wouldn't kill him. He didn't have a choice."
In his mind's eye Dean sees his real brother's bewilderment, but the surety he felt when he answered Sam's question is gone. "He could have left."
"Dean, Dean. You're not listening to me." Hudak hurries out the words. "Gabe did leave. We found him, me and Sam. Gabe left. Gabe survived and he left as soon as he could walk. He got away, do you see? Do you see that?"
Dean doesn't know if he's seeing or not. But he knows his vision is blurring, knows his voice is choking, knows his lips are trembling, knows his hands are fisting, knows his muscles are tensing, knows his head is aching, knows his heart is racing, knows his mask is shattering.
And maybe Hudak knows it too, maybe right now he's with someone who knows him better at this moment than anyone ever has or ever will again, and she's whispering, her breath tickling warm on his skin, then cool on his tears, and now he's listening to her, now there's no one else there but her, and her voice is loud and true in his head even though she's barely murmuring, hushed, soothing tones.
"Dean, you did what you had to do to survive, idiot boy… you survived, and you left, you got away, don't you see…"
And it's like a wave of something overwhelming, something dizzying, and shining, bright colors and flashing lights, Christ, like a trip, and it's a huge fuckin' mistake but it makes perfect sense here and now because it's the right time and the right one, and it's featherlight kisses and he swallows her words, he's fisting her hair, great handfuls of it, can't get enough of her, "Kathleen… Please. Kathleen…"
Gabe get the fuck over here, boy, spread 'em, messin' with my head see what you get…
But this is louder, and it drowns out Dean's shame, his humiliation, his devastation and desolation and guilt, this noise is louder, the noise of want, and need, and good, and right.
It's sighing and breathing out slow and then fast, it's yes, like that, right there, again, more, don't stop, don't listen to it, it's muffled sounds that aren't proper words at all. It's choked-out desire and pleasure, it's gentle then rough, it's soft then hard, it's tender then brutal, it's smooth then friction, it's tongues and teeth and fingers on skin, it's damp, moist, then wet, then heat and sliding and clutching and fluttering and climbing, climbing and then letting go and falling, and it's sappy, chick flick things Dean knows damn well he'll probably deny saying tomorrow, but he'll smile while he denies it; it's I care, I adore, and fuck, yes, God, yes, in that moment of release it's anything and everything and something that might even be I love.
Getting out isn't as easy as getting in, Sam finds, the uphill trajectory much steeper on this side of the tunnel collapse. He tries bouncing himself off a pile of skulls by way of a foot up, but they crumble like dried-out plaster under his sneakers, and all the time he's thinking that Bobby isn't there, thinking about the time they wasted looking for this hole in the ground, and it's the wrong hole in the ground, and fuck, irony can be pretty ironic at times.
Sam wonders grimly if the shock of not seeing him approach with Bobby in tow will scare his brother back into himself just like the shock of seeing the wendigo grab the old man scared him back into Gabe. And in the back of his mind he can't help thinking that isn't right, isn't really as logical a jump as it should be, because Gabe didn't know anything about the wendigo, did he? Surely Gabe would have to have seen the thing before to be jolted back into Dean?
"Christ, for a simple salt and burn," he grouses, as he hauls himself up and over. "Thick fucking plots, tangled webs, this whole mess is like a mad woman's knitting. Who needs it?" It's not fucking fair, he thinks. "I should be at college," he mutters, because he might as well keep himself company on this hunt. "At fucking college. Living any life but this one."
But that feeling… that he's missing something, has missed something, something so elementary…
About three-quarters of the way across the pile of rocks, Sam comes face to face with the wasp-and-the-jelly-jar conundrum.
"Wasp. Jelly jar," he murmurs. "Wasp crawls through wasp-sized hole punched into lid of jar from the outside. But. Law of physics or some crap like that mean hole is too small when trying to crawl through it from opposite direction. Wasp is trapped."
He sighs, sinks his head into his hands. "Sam crawls across rocks perfectly shaped and positioned to let him slither from A to B. But not from B to A… as Confucius fucking say!" And he hollers it out in frustration because of course, of course, and why did he even think it might be a remote possibility that he wouldn't somehow get fucked over in here?
But heck, it could be worse. At least he knows the wendigo won't be heading back here any time soon. He rests his head on his forearms and waits for Dean. Or Gabe.
And still he just can't shake the feeling that he's missing something, a connection. A clue.
Hudak squints blearily at her wristwatch. Five-fifteen.
She's warm because she's covered up with a couple of blankets. She most definitely isn't warm because Dean Winchester is pressed up next to her.
She pushes up onto her elbows, looks over at the door, the chain, the handcuffs hanging empty and mocking her shinily.
"Slippery sonofabitch," she breathes out.
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