SPN fic: The violet hour (Sam, Dean)
Title: The violet hour
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG13
Pairing/Characters: Sam, Dean
Disclaimer: Fun, not profit
Wordcount: c. 5500
Notes: Pronoun use in the fic reflects Sam's POV.
Title from T.S.Eliot's The Waste Land. Much love to parenthetical for betaing - she's amazing <3
Summary: Written for lgbtfest to the prompt: "AU of the Pilot. Sam hasn't seen his sister in four years: a lot more has changed than he ever imagined. (Dean is FtM.)"
In the bright glare of the overhead light it's impossible to ignore what he's been seeing all along: the broad, masculine shape of his sister's shoulders underneath the jacket.
The violet hour
There's someone in the house.
Sam's on his feet before he's even finished processing the thought, tense and alert. No matter how nice and normal everything seems here in Palo Alto, there are still things which go bump in the night. He creeps out into the hallway, freezing when he glimpses something moving past the kitchen doorway. When he makes out the shape of a man, silhouetted against the dark of the room, it's a relief. Sam's dealt with worse things than housebreakers.
Of course, just because it looks like a man, that doesn't mean it really is.
The move that should have had the guy on the floor - and in a world of pain - is parried easily, and Sam feels a stab of fear. Whoever or whatever this is, it's no mere burglar. This guy knows what he's doing.
Sam fights back harder, forcing his opponent back with one well-aimed kick after another. The guy reels a little, then steadies himself, letting out a little grunt of effort as he brings his arm up to deliver another blow. The sound is familiar: the same low noise in the back of the throat that Sam's heard his sister make a thousand times when they're sparring. The movement that accompanies it is familiar too, all sure, confident grace, and in the rush of recognition Sam lets his guard down.
"Whoa, easy tiger."
Sam blinks dazedly up from the floor. The room is too dark to make out any features, but the amused, easy tone is one hundred percent familiar. "Deanna?"
His sister laughs, clapping him on the shoulder affectionately.
"Christ, you scared the crap out of me." Sam shifts experimentally, and wow, Deanna's done some working out in the last four years - with the muscles she's built up it's no wonder Sam mistook her for a guy.
"That's 'cause you're out of practice." Deanna's grip slackens a little, and there's no way Sam's letting that little taunt go unchallenged. He shifts his weight and heaves his sister off him, smirking down at her.
Deanna laughs. "Or not." Sam feels a flush of warmth at the pride in her voice. "Get off me."
Sam rolls off her and stands up, extending a hand to haul her up. "Deanna, what are you doing here?"
Deanna shrugs and avoids his eyes, her smirk just visible in the darkness. "Well, I was looking for a beer." Her voice is lower than Sam remembers, husky and rasping, and he feels a renewed surge of uneasiness. Something is definitely off.
"What the hell are you doing here?" he repeats.
"Okay." Deanna raises her hands in surrender. "We have to talk."
"Uh, the phone?" His growing unease makes Sam sound meaner than his sister deserves. She called him after he left for college, more than once, but Sam was still too angry to speak to her. Or maybe just too guilty: it was Dad who told him to stay gone, but she was the one who stayed behind, Daddy's good little soldier.
That hasn't changed, Sam notes, surveying his sister in the light coming up from the street. She's wearing jeans and a flannel shirt - practically a uniform for hunters - under Dad's old leather jacket, and her hair is cut short even for her.
Deanna voices his thoughts. "If I'd called, would you have picked up?"
"Sam?" The light snaps on and Jess appears in the doorway, saving Sam from answering.
"Jess, hey." He gives her a reassuring smile. "This is - "
"I'm Sam's brother, Dean," Deanna cuts in.
"Dea- " The words die in Sam's mouth as he turns to look at his sister, because in the bright glare of the overhead light it's impossible to ignore what he's been seeing all along. The broad, masculine shape of his sister's shoulders underneath the jacket. The faint dusting of stubble along her jawline.
Deanna's always dressed like a guy - passed as one more than once when they were younger and the need arose - but this... This is something different.
"Sam's brother...?" Jess says uncertainly. Sam can feel her tension as she shifts closer to him. "I thought - "
Deanna smirks at her, a passable imitation of unconcern that only Sam can see through. "The one and only. I gotta tell you, you are way out of my brother's league."
Jess looks up at Sam for guidance, but he's still frozen, mouth dry as he tries to figure out what to do. "I'll just go put something on," she offers finally.
"No," Deanna says hastily, and smirks even more when Jess colors up. "No, seriously, I wouldn't dream of it. I gotta borrow your boyfriend here, talk about some private family business, but, uh, nice meeting you."
"You too," Jess says. She looks up at Sam again, presses a quick kiss to his cheek. "I'll give you guys some privacy," she offers.
"Jess - " Sam hesitates. He wants to argue, insist that whatever Deanna's here to say can be said before her. But whatever's going on with Deanna, it's nothing normal. He's going to have enough to do explaining the appearance of a so-called brother, after all he's told Jess about his big sister.
Jess is still waiting, paused in the doorway. "Sam?"
"Go back to bed," he tells her. "We have to go outside."
Jess gives him a searching look before she nods. "Okay. I'll wait for you."
Sam gives her one last kiss before he heads outside. "I know you will."
"What the hell is going on?" Sam rounds on his sister the moment they're clear of the apartment.
"Dad's hunting something, and I haven't heard from him in a few days," Deanna says heavily. "He's gone off the radar: isn't answering his cell, nothing."
"What the - ?" Sam grabs her wrist. "I don't give a fuck about Dad. What's happened to you? Is this - did you get hit by some kind of curse? What's going on, Deanna?"
His sister jerks her wrist away. "I told you, it's Dean. And it's not a fucking curse, Christ knows I'm not that lucky. Can you focus on something that matters? Dad is missing, Sam."
"How can you show up here with... like this, and tell me that it doesn't matter?" Sam can hear his voice getting louder. "You're sick or something, Deanna, look at yourself."
"I'm not sick, fuck you very much." Deanna sounds exactly the way she did when Sam told her he was going to Stanford. "Dad is missing, and I need you to help me find him."
"Why would I go looking for Dad now?" Sam spits out, the familiar rush of anger at his father distracting him from whatever the hell is going on with Deanna. "It's not like this is the first time he's gone missing. Remember the poltergeist in Amherst? Or the Devil’s Gates in Clifton? He's always missing, and he's always fine."
"Not for this long." Deanna's voice is steady, but Sam can hear the edge of worry underneath. "Are you gonna come with me, or not?"
"I'm not." Sam stops short on the stairs.
"Why not?" Deanna does a good job of sounding incredulous, like they haven't had a version of this argument every time they've ever moved on. Like there hasn't been four years of silence between them.
"I swore I was done hunting, Deanna." Sam uses her name like a weapon. "For good."
"Come on." Deanna doesn't rise to the bait, keeps her tone light. "It wasn't easy, but it wasn't that bad."
"Yeah?" Sam could give her a thousand arguments about how fucked up the whole hunting thing is - how fucked up their whole lives have been. There's a reason he hasn't spoken to his father in four years. "Are you gonna tell me it didn't fuck with your head?" he says instead.
"Knowing what's out there?" Deanna asks. "Yeah, Sam, it fucks with my head. That's why I try and kill as many evil sons of bitches as I can."
Sam flinches, but he's not done. "Look at us, Deanna. Look at yourself. You think Mom would have wanted this for us?"
"So what are you gonna do?" If Deanna notices Sam's dig at her, she doesn't show it. "You’re just gonna live some normal, apple pie life? Is that it?"
Sam thinks of Jess, warm and waiting in their bed upstairs. An hour ago he was curled up with her, safe and secure, knowing that somewhere out there his family was still taking care of business. He wants to be back there, instead of out here listening to this mocking, abrasive guy who both is and isn't his sister.
Deanna - Dean - is still looking at him.
"There's nothing wrong with normal," Sam says, and this time he has the satisfaction of seeing his sister flinch.
It's only a second before Deanna shrugs it off. "Yeah, well, Dad's in trouble right now, if he's not dead already. I can feel it." She hesitates. "I can't do this alone, Sam."
Sam fights back the urge to punch her, because it's not fair. He's never been dumb enough to think his old life wouldn't show up on his doorstep eventually, but... Well. This isn't his old life, not exactly.
Besides, Deanna's never been the one who needed him. "Yes, you can," he tells her.
"Yeah, well." His sister glances away, the reflexive gesture more familiar than her new face, and Sam knows he's not going to refuse her. "I don't want to."
Sam wakes with a crick in his neck, face pressed up against cold glass. He has a moment of disorientation where he thinks it's four years ago - expects to see his dad in the driver's seat - then another when he can't remember why he's not back in the apartment with Jess.
"Breakfast?" Deanna opens the driver's side door and tosses a handful of slim jims and ho-hos in his lap, and the night before comes back to Sam in a sickening rush.
"No, thanks." He sits up and stretches, looking at his sister out of the corner of his eye. In the daylight, her appearance is both less and more strange. When he looks at her objectively, Sam can see that she - that Dean - would pass as a guy to anyone not looking for the difference. A girly guy, okay - Deanna's full lips and high cheekbones aren't exactly macho man material - but nobody would expect those broad, muscled shoulders to belong to a girl, not to mention the faint shadow of stubble showing across her jaw. More than that, though, she moves like a guy, the sprawling spread of her legs as she sits back down behind the wheel as convincing as if she really did have a dick.
Sam doesn't want to think about that too hard.
"Gotta take a piss," he says instead, and levers his aching limbs out of the car. Once he's standing, he realizes it's not even an excuse: the dull throb of his bladder painful enough that when he's finally standing over the urinal it takes a moment before he can let go.
When he's done, he stands there for a few seconds more, holding on to the sense of mindless relief. He has no idea what he's doing here.
When he gets back to the car, Deanna's antsy, turning the key in the ignition when he's barely closed the door. Once she has them back out on the highway, though, she relaxes, falling into the easy posture that Sam knows will let her drive for hours without a break.
"How come you weren't working this job with Dad, anyway?" Sam asks suddenly. They've been over the case already, EVP on Dad's voicemail and the handful of details Deanna's picked up, but by common consent they've stayed away from anything remotely personal.
"I'm twenty-six, dude," Deanna scoffs, and Sam can't decide if it's feigned or real. Okay, so he's been gone four years now, but he can't imagine Dad ever letting either of them work a job without him. Maybe if Deanna had really been a boy -
"Wait, is that what this is?" Sam feels sick at the thought.
Deanna gives him a baffled look. "Is what what this is?"
"This - you and Dad splitting up. You told him about... this - " Sam waves a hand vaguely at his sister, not quite able to say it out loud "- and he freaked out and took off."
"Dad was working a job," Deanna says, low and dangerous. "And now he's missing. That is all. Seems to me you're the one freaking out, Sammy."
"It's Sam," Sam says automatically, mind seizing on an old argument because he's riding on the edge of hysteria with the new one. "And damn right I'm freaking out. It's been four years, Deanna, and then you show up out of the blue expecting me to drop everything and take off, and you're not - you're not even you."
"Dean." His sister's voice rises abruptly to a shout. "It's Dean. And I am me, Sam. I'm the same me I've always fucking been, and you know it. You're the one who's spent four years busy trying to be someone else. So fuck you, do you hear? I'll drop you at the next town, you can get the bus back to your nice normal life."
She breaks off as abruptly as she started, breathing hard, knuckles white on the steering wheel.
"I - " Sam starts, and then falters again. He doesn't know what he wants to say, argument or apology or something else entirely. He's wishing with every fiber of his body that he was still back in Palo Alto, prepping for his interview on Monday and blissfully oblivious of everything that's shifted and changed in his absence. But he can't unknow what he knows.
Deanna swings the car abruptly, pulling off onto the shoulder and shutting off the engine. They both sit there motionless for a few minutes, listening to the faint pings as the engine cools.
Finally Deanna turns to him. "Okay. I get why you're freaked, Sam. I do. And I'm sorry I turned up like this without telling you. But you were the one who left, man."
"I was just going to college," Sam objects. "Dad was the one who said if I was going I should stay gone."
"Yeah, well." Deanna doesn't need to voice the rebuke.
"How could you not tell me?" Sam sounds young even to himself, plaintive. "You could have come to me."
"Could I," Deanna says, flat enough that it's not quite a question. "You were living your life, Sam, and I... I haven't changed, you get that, right?"
Sam looks at the firm line of her mouth and the shadow of stubble above it, the familiar warring with the unfamiliar. It feels wrong, like a crown in place of a missing tooth. But he'd be lying if he said he'd ever thought his sister loved being a girl. "You're still a jackass," he says shakily.
Deanna snorts. "You love it." She starts the car, and slots a tape into the cassette player. AC/DC blasts from the speakers.
"And your taste in music still sucks," Sam tells her.
"Driver picks the music," Deanna tells him. "Shotgun shuts his cakehole."
She smirks at Sam and turns the music up, and Sam knows they're done talking for now.
"Federal Marshals," Deanna says, nudging Sam to show his badge.
The sheriff scrutinizes them both suspiciously, but all he says is, "You two are a little young for Marshals, aren’t you?" and Sam realizes that it hasn't even crossed the man's mind that he's seeing anything other than two guys. Which shouldn't be surprising - they were mistaken for brothers plenty of times when they were younger - but it's still a little weird and unsettling.
"Thanks, that's awfully kind of you," Deanna says smoothly, and launches into questions about the investigation. Predictably, the police have turned up precisely nothing that's of any use - however much Sam might wish it was otherwise, this is their sort of gig through and through.
Questioning the girls in town, it's the same deal: no one blinks an eyelid when they introduce themselves as Sam and Dean, and all the details point to the kind of urban legend that really does kill. Asking questions and doing the research feels normal, and Sam can feel himself falling into the routine, as if "Dean" has always been one half of the team. Which he guesses is true, in a way, even if whenever he looks over he still sees his sister, the person who made his meals and patched up his cuts and scrapes, and did all the other things that their mom should have been there to do.
Or the things that their dad should have been doing, but despite everything they're turning up, there's absolutely nothing which gives them a lead on Dad.
"We'll keep digging until we find him," Deanna says, like they have all the time in the world. "Might take a while."
"I told you," Sam objects, "I’ve gotta get back by Monday - "
"Monday. Right." The deeper dark in the shadow of the bridge isn't enough to conceal Deanna's glower. "The interview."
"Yeah." Sam doesn't offer any apology, because he promised Jess he would be back in time, and he knows he didn't leave Deanna under any illusions about how big a deal the interview is.
"Yeah, I forgot," Deanna says insincerely. She looks scornful. "You’re really serious about this, aren’t you? You think you’re just going to become some lawyer? Marry your girl?"
"Maybe." Sam can feel the uneasy truce between them evaporating. He's worked hard to build the life he has, damnit. "Why not?"
"Does Jessica know the truth about you?" The question sounds almost careless, but Sam knows that it's not. "I mean, does she know about the things you’ve done?"
Sam doesn't equivocate. "No, and she’s not ever going to know."
"Well, that’s healthy," Deanna scoffs. "You can pretend all you want, Sammy. But sooner or later you’re going to have to face up to who you really are."
Sam's actually speechless for a moment, too shocked and angry to respond. He knows in his heart that the reason it's such a gut-punch is that Deanna's right. He's lying to Jess, and he knows exactly what she would say if she knew, because if there's one thing she thinks is important, it's honesty. But the truth is just too fucked-up to tell.
"Like you have?" he spits, guilt and anger making him cruel. "Dressing up in boy's clothes. Wake up, Deanna. Who's the one who's pretending, here?"
"Fuck you, Sam." Deanna rounds on him, and Sam braces himself for a punch. "You know what's out there. You have a responsibility to - "
"To what? To man up and join Dad's crusade?" Sam lets out a humorless laugh. "Seems to me you're doing that well enough for the both of us. I guess you really are the perfect son."
"Yeah, well," Deanna snarls. "You give Dad such a hard time, but he's not the one who couldn't take it when I told him that this is how I'm supposed to be, Sam. And I actually give a shit about finding the thing that killed Mom, so yeah, I guess I am the perfect son."
"If it weren’t for pictures I wouldn’t even know what Mom looks like," Sam shoots back. "And what difference would it make if I did? Even if we do find the thing that killed her, Mom’s gone. And she isn’t coming back."
Deanna grabs him by the collar, slamming him back against the bridge with all the force of her new muscle. "Don’t talk about her like that."
"I'm only telling the truth," Sam whispers. His heart's beating wildly, flight almost winning out over fight in the rush of adrenalin. "The only mom I remember is you."
"Sam - " Deanna starts, and then her tone changes abruptly. "Sam, look - "
All the words rising up in Sam's mouth are forgotten at the sight of the woman standing at the edge of the bridge.
She's only there for a moment, big eyes regarding them sadly, and then she turns and falls. Sam feels an abortive urge to grab her back, even though he knows that he's too late - about twenty-five years too late.
His sense of pity for Constance abates a little when he hears the rumble of a car engine behind them and turns to see the Impala surging into life, lights blazing. "Who's driving your car?" he says slowly, and watches his sister wordlessly hold up the keys.
Sam would swear he feels the car scrape against his legs as he throws himself up and over the edge of the bridge.
Sam's arms ache and his heart hammers against his ribs as he holds on, struggling to decide whether it's safe to climb back up. Finally, his grip starts slipping, forcing him to choose between potential death-by-possessed-car or falling. He hauls himself back up onto the bridge and looks around warily, but the car is standing silent and dark, and there's no sign of Constance.
There's also no sign of Deanna.
"Deanna?" Sam shouts. He peers over the edge of the bridge, expecting to see her hauling herself up hand-over-hand. Instead all he sees is dark water rushing by too fucking far below.
"Deanna," he yells again, and then, in desperation, "Dean!"
Like a miracle, he's rewarded with the sight of his sister - his brother - crawling up onto the muddy bank.
"Dean," he says again, in gratitude. "You okay?"
"I'm super." It's delivered with expressive disgust, and Sam feels a rush of affection. Whatever he might think about all this fucked-up shit, there are some things he would never want to change.
When Deanna makes it back up to the bridge, she's coated from head to foot in mud. She scowls at Sam. "That Constance chick, what a bitch."
"Yeah," Sam agrees, not quite managing to keep a straight face. "She doesn't want us sticking around, that's for sure. Where do we go from here?"
Deanna throws up her arms in frustration, sending up a stench of dirty river.
Sam wrinkles his nose. "You smell like a toilet."
Dean flips him off, flicking a lump of mud in Sam's eye in the process. "You're a gentleman and a scholar, Sammy."
When they find Dad's room, still filled with all the paraphernalia of a hunt in process and circled in salt, Sam's heart sinks. It's not like Dad to leave shit behind, especially not halfway through a case. He's not a tidy man, but he's well-nigh obsessive about covering their tracks when they move on.
It's almost as disturbing to realize how easy it is to pick up the threads of the case. Sam would like to think that he owes his reasoning powers to four years at Stanford, but honestly? It's in his blood, and he knows it. He sifts through the contents of the room, following Dad's research and making connections, and it's obvious that Joseph Welch is their next stop.
There is really a lot of crap left in the room, more stuff than Sam ever remembers seeing Dad leave around at one time. Whatever he was doing here, it's clear the Woman in White was the least of his worries. Sam picks up a photo of the three of them, one he doesn't remember seeing for years. He remembers the day all right, though - the last day of school someplace in South Carolina. Deanna had bitched all semester about being made to take Home Ec., then cooked the three of them the best dinner Sam had eaten in his entire life. Sam feels a pang at the memory.
When he heads back to the room they paid for, Deanna is just emerging from the bathroom, scrubbed clean of river mud and wearing just her jeans and a t-shirt. She flushes when she sees Sam and grabs a shirt, covering herself up under her habitual layers, but not before Sam's glimpsed the outline of her breasts, squashed close to her chest. It fills him with a weird sense of relief. He's not stupid, and even if Deanna's done a prize job of failing to have the coming out talk, he gets that this whole guy thing is a lot more than cross-dressing. But the thought of her having surgery - he's not ready to go there.
"Hey - Dean," Sam says carefully. "What I said earlier about Mom and Dad... and about you. I'm sorry."
She holds up a hand. "No chick-flick moments."
Sam feels a rush of relief. "All right. Jerk."
"Bitch." Deanna grabs her jacket and heads for the door. "I'm starving, I'm gonna grab a little something to eat in that diner down the street. You want anything?"
Sam thinks of the voicemail Jess left him, the one he still hasn't listened to. He needs to start thinking about what he's going to tell her when he gets back, and he wants to hear her voice. "No thanks, I'm good."
His sister shrugs and heads out of the room.
When his phone chirps at him a couple of minutes later, halfway through Jess' message, Sam's heart sinks. A fake 911 call is one thing, but he knows he'll get his ass kicked for hot-wiring the Impala.
Joseph Welch is pathetically easy to read, despite his firm denials that Constance ever laid a finger on her children. Sam finds himself going heavier on the guy than he meant to, excusing himself with the thought that he needs to confirm what they're dealing with. He doesn't know whether he's angrier at the thought of the guy cheating on his picture-perfect young wife, or at Constance herself for betraying her children. Or at something else entirely.
He's on the road to the old Welch place by the time his phone rings again, and he starts, suddenly aware of how much time has passed while he's been chasing down leads. It makes him more than a little uncomfortable to realize how absorbed he already is in the case, exhilarated by the way things are falling into place.
"Where are you?" Deanna demands. It's hard to read her new voice, the deepened pitch throwing off Sam's sense of her intonations, but she sounds off.
"I'm driving," Sam tells her. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Deanna says quickly. "Listen, we gotta talk."
"Yeah, tell me about it." Sam knows a brush-off when he hears one, but now's not the time to push it. "So, turns out the husband was unfaithful, which explains why all the victims were guys - we are dealing with a Woman in White. She's buried behind their house - that must have been Dad's next stop."
"Yeah, well, he never got there," Deanna interrupts. "He's gone. Dad left Jericho."
"He's gone?" Sam feels his sense of foreboding deepen. Dad's gone, and there's something else that Deanna's not telling him, and together those add up to some seriously bad shit.
"Yeah - " Deanna starts, but then Sam looks up to see Constance Welch standing smack bang in the middle of the road.
He slams on the brakes, phone tumbling from his hand.
"Take me home," she says from the back of the car.
Sam can still hear Deanna's voice, tinny and frantic from the phone on the floor, but he can't get to it.
"Take me home," Constance pleads again, and the car roars into life.
Sam must have blacked out: the sound of the shotgun is nothing more than a dull boom, hardly registering over the pain in his chest. The sound repeats another three times before he manages to lurch upright and get his hands on the wheel. He doesn't spare Deanna more than a glance, because he gets it now. However painful it is, Constance has to go home.
When he hits the wall of the house, he has a panicked moment where he's sure he's going to die, and then another one when he thinks how Deanna is going to kill him. She fucking loves this car. Then his sister is yanking open the door, checking him over with gentle hands.
"Dean," Sam croaks, the wind still knocked out of him.
"You okay?"
"Yeah." Sam coughs and draws a proper breath. "Help me?"
He struggles out of the car, grateful for his sister's solid support, and straightens up. Only then does he get a look at Deanna's face, the bruise purpling on her cheekbone. "Jesus. What happened?"
"Just had a little disagreement with the sheriff, that's all," Deanna says evasively. "Nothing I couldn't handle."
"A disagreement with the sheriff?" Sam repeats, stupidly. This isn't that kind of town, not the kind where local law enforcement are keen to practice their own interrogation techniques.
"Yeah, Sammy," Deanna snaps. "He thinks we're the kind of sick fucks who - Sam."
Sam feels something slam into him, hard, and then he blacks out for the second time that day.
He's only out for a second, but he wakes up to find Constance leaning over his sister, pressing desperate, deadly hands against Dean's chest. Shit. Sam hadn't even considered the notion she might see Dean as a target.
"Hold me," she pleads. "I'm so cold."
"Dean." Sam struggles to get to them, but he can't move, pinned fast by the heavy bureau that must have hit them.
Constance is leaning closer, her face distorting in a parody of a kiss as she digs her fingers in deeper.
"It's not me you want," Dean grits out. "You're home now, Constance. You have to see them."
Sam makes another desperate effort to move, shoving the bureau back with all his might. He gropes for the gun that he knows his sister must have holstered, fingers closing desperately around the barrel, and brings it up to Constance's head.
Constance flickers out of sight.
Sam's suddenly aware of the rush of water, turning from a trickle to a roar as it pours down the stairs. He wheels to see Constance's children clinging to her skirts, holding on tight while she writhes and twists, melting into flame and ash.
As quickly as it started, it's over: nothing left but a pool of water on the floor.
"That's why she could never go home," Sam realizes. "She was too scared to face them."
"Nice work, Sammy," Dean croaks from behind him.
"Dean." Sam hurries to check his sister over. "I'm sorry, I couldn't get to the gun in time."
"Yeah, well." Dean raises an eyebrow. "Just as well you didn't, genius. The Beretta's got real bullets in it."
Sam looks at the gun in his hand with horror. "Oh my god. Shit, man, I'm sorry."
His sister laughs shakily and punches him in the arm. "Not as sorry as you'll be if you've fucked up my car."
It's oddly hard to walk back into the apartment, despite the fact that Sam has spent a good part of the last forty-eight hours wishing he could do exactly that. Jess is going to have questions, a lot of them. He's going to have to explain why the sister he's been telling her about for the past two years showed up as his brother, for a start. The fact that that will be the easiest question to answer speaks volumes about how fucked-up his life is.
He relaxes a little when he hears the shower running and flops backwards onto the bed. Explanations can wait for morning: for now he's just going to curl up with his girl.
A drop of wetness falls onto his face.
Sam's still screaming Jess' name and fighting to get back to the house when the firefighter comes over to them.
"I'm sorry." The guy's face is smoke-blackened and grim. "It's a miracle anyone got out of there alive."
Sam stops fighting all at once, hanging heavy in Dean's arms. He tries to speak and can't: the ache of tears stealing what's left of his voice.
"I know, Sammy," Dean says, hands cradling him steady and sure. "I know."
Sam turns his face to his brother's chest and sobs.
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG13
Pairing/Characters: Sam, Dean
Disclaimer: Fun, not profit
Wordcount: c. 5500
Notes: Pronoun use in the fic reflects Sam's POV.
Title from T.S.Eliot's The Waste Land. Much love to parenthetical for betaing - she's amazing <3
Summary: Written for lgbtfest to the prompt: "AU of the Pilot. Sam hasn't seen his sister in four years: a lot more has changed than he ever imagined. (Dean is FtM.)"
In the bright glare of the overhead light it's impossible to ignore what he's been seeing all along: the broad, masculine shape of his sister's shoulders underneath the jacket.
The violet hour
There's someone in the house.
Sam's on his feet before he's even finished processing the thought, tense and alert. No matter how nice and normal everything seems here in Palo Alto, there are still things which go bump in the night. He creeps out into the hallway, freezing when he glimpses something moving past the kitchen doorway. When he makes out the shape of a man, silhouetted against the dark of the room, it's a relief. Sam's dealt with worse things than housebreakers.
Of course, just because it looks like a man, that doesn't mean it really is.
The move that should have had the guy on the floor - and in a world of pain - is parried easily, and Sam feels a stab of fear. Whoever or whatever this is, it's no mere burglar. This guy knows what he's doing.
Sam fights back harder, forcing his opponent back with one well-aimed kick after another. The guy reels a little, then steadies himself, letting out a little grunt of effort as he brings his arm up to deliver another blow. The sound is familiar: the same low noise in the back of the throat that Sam's heard his sister make a thousand times when they're sparring. The movement that accompanies it is familiar too, all sure, confident grace, and in the rush of recognition Sam lets his guard down.
"Whoa, easy tiger."
Sam blinks dazedly up from the floor. The room is too dark to make out any features, but the amused, easy tone is one hundred percent familiar. "Deanna?"
His sister laughs, clapping him on the shoulder affectionately.
"Christ, you scared the crap out of me." Sam shifts experimentally, and wow, Deanna's done some working out in the last four years - with the muscles she's built up it's no wonder Sam mistook her for a guy.
"That's 'cause you're out of practice." Deanna's grip slackens a little, and there's no way Sam's letting that little taunt go unchallenged. He shifts his weight and heaves his sister off him, smirking down at her.
Deanna laughs. "Or not." Sam feels a flush of warmth at the pride in her voice. "Get off me."
Sam rolls off her and stands up, extending a hand to haul her up. "Deanna, what are you doing here?"
Deanna shrugs and avoids his eyes, her smirk just visible in the darkness. "Well, I was looking for a beer." Her voice is lower than Sam remembers, husky and rasping, and he feels a renewed surge of uneasiness. Something is definitely off.
"What the hell are you doing here?" he repeats.
"Okay." Deanna raises her hands in surrender. "We have to talk."
"Uh, the phone?" His growing unease makes Sam sound meaner than his sister deserves. She called him after he left for college, more than once, but Sam was still too angry to speak to her. Or maybe just too guilty: it was Dad who told him to stay gone, but she was the one who stayed behind, Daddy's good little soldier.
That hasn't changed, Sam notes, surveying his sister in the light coming up from the street. She's wearing jeans and a flannel shirt - practically a uniform for hunters - under Dad's old leather jacket, and her hair is cut short even for her.
Deanna voices his thoughts. "If I'd called, would you have picked up?"
"Sam?" The light snaps on and Jess appears in the doorway, saving Sam from answering.
"Jess, hey." He gives her a reassuring smile. "This is - "
"I'm Sam's brother, Dean," Deanna cuts in.
"Dea- " The words die in Sam's mouth as he turns to look at his sister, because in the bright glare of the overhead light it's impossible to ignore what he's been seeing all along. The broad, masculine shape of his sister's shoulders underneath the jacket. The faint dusting of stubble along her jawline.
Deanna's always dressed like a guy - passed as one more than once when they were younger and the need arose - but this... This is something different.
"Sam's brother...?" Jess says uncertainly. Sam can feel her tension as she shifts closer to him. "I thought - "
Deanna smirks at her, a passable imitation of unconcern that only Sam can see through. "The one and only. I gotta tell you, you are way out of my brother's league."
Jess looks up at Sam for guidance, but he's still frozen, mouth dry as he tries to figure out what to do. "I'll just go put something on," she offers finally.
"No," Deanna says hastily, and smirks even more when Jess colors up. "No, seriously, I wouldn't dream of it. I gotta borrow your boyfriend here, talk about some private family business, but, uh, nice meeting you."
"You too," Jess says. She looks up at Sam again, presses a quick kiss to his cheek. "I'll give you guys some privacy," she offers.
"Jess - " Sam hesitates. He wants to argue, insist that whatever Deanna's here to say can be said before her. But whatever's going on with Deanna, it's nothing normal. He's going to have enough to do explaining the appearance of a so-called brother, after all he's told Jess about his big sister.
Jess is still waiting, paused in the doorway. "Sam?"
"Go back to bed," he tells her. "We have to go outside."
Jess gives him a searching look before she nods. "Okay. I'll wait for you."
Sam gives her one last kiss before he heads outside. "I know you will."
"What the hell is going on?" Sam rounds on his sister the moment they're clear of the apartment.
"Dad's hunting something, and I haven't heard from him in a few days," Deanna says heavily. "He's gone off the radar: isn't answering his cell, nothing."
"What the - ?" Sam grabs her wrist. "I don't give a fuck about Dad. What's happened to you? Is this - did you get hit by some kind of curse? What's going on, Deanna?"
His sister jerks her wrist away. "I told you, it's Dean. And it's not a fucking curse, Christ knows I'm not that lucky. Can you focus on something that matters? Dad is missing, Sam."
"How can you show up here with... like this, and tell me that it doesn't matter?" Sam can hear his voice getting louder. "You're sick or something, Deanna, look at yourself."
"I'm not sick, fuck you very much." Deanna sounds exactly the way she did when Sam told her he was going to Stanford. "Dad is missing, and I need you to help me find him."
"Why would I go looking for Dad now?" Sam spits out, the familiar rush of anger at his father distracting him from whatever the hell is going on with Deanna. "It's not like this is the first time he's gone missing. Remember the poltergeist in Amherst? Or the Devil’s Gates in Clifton? He's always missing, and he's always fine."
"Not for this long." Deanna's voice is steady, but Sam can hear the edge of worry underneath. "Are you gonna come with me, or not?"
"I'm not." Sam stops short on the stairs.
"Why not?" Deanna does a good job of sounding incredulous, like they haven't had a version of this argument every time they've ever moved on. Like there hasn't been four years of silence between them.
"I swore I was done hunting, Deanna." Sam uses her name like a weapon. "For good."
"Come on." Deanna doesn't rise to the bait, keeps her tone light. "It wasn't easy, but it wasn't that bad."
"Yeah?" Sam could give her a thousand arguments about how fucked up the whole hunting thing is - how fucked up their whole lives have been. There's a reason he hasn't spoken to his father in four years. "Are you gonna tell me it didn't fuck with your head?" he says instead.
"Knowing what's out there?" Deanna asks. "Yeah, Sam, it fucks with my head. That's why I try and kill as many evil sons of bitches as I can."
Sam flinches, but he's not done. "Look at us, Deanna. Look at yourself. You think Mom would have wanted this for us?"
"So what are you gonna do?" If Deanna notices Sam's dig at her, she doesn't show it. "You’re just gonna live some normal, apple pie life? Is that it?"
Sam thinks of Jess, warm and waiting in their bed upstairs. An hour ago he was curled up with her, safe and secure, knowing that somewhere out there his family was still taking care of business. He wants to be back there, instead of out here listening to this mocking, abrasive guy who both is and isn't his sister.
Deanna - Dean - is still looking at him.
"There's nothing wrong with normal," Sam says, and this time he has the satisfaction of seeing his sister flinch.
It's only a second before Deanna shrugs it off. "Yeah, well, Dad's in trouble right now, if he's not dead already. I can feel it." She hesitates. "I can't do this alone, Sam."
Sam fights back the urge to punch her, because it's not fair. He's never been dumb enough to think his old life wouldn't show up on his doorstep eventually, but... Well. This isn't his old life, not exactly.
Besides, Deanna's never been the one who needed him. "Yes, you can," he tells her.
"Yeah, well." His sister glances away, the reflexive gesture more familiar than her new face, and Sam knows he's not going to refuse her. "I don't want to."
Sam wakes with a crick in his neck, face pressed up against cold glass. He has a moment of disorientation where he thinks it's four years ago - expects to see his dad in the driver's seat - then another when he can't remember why he's not back in the apartment with Jess.
"Breakfast?" Deanna opens the driver's side door and tosses a handful of slim jims and ho-hos in his lap, and the night before comes back to Sam in a sickening rush.
"No, thanks." He sits up and stretches, looking at his sister out of the corner of his eye. In the daylight, her appearance is both less and more strange. When he looks at her objectively, Sam can see that she - that Dean - would pass as a guy to anyone not looking for the difference. A girly guy, okay - Deanna's full lips and high cheekbones aren't exactly macho man material - but nobody would expect those broad, muscled shoulders to belong to a girl, not to mention the faint shadow of stubble showing across her jaw. More than that, though, she moves like a guy, the sprawling spread of her legs as she sits back down behind the wheel as convincing as if she really did have a dick.
Sam doesn't want to think about that too hard.
"Gotta take a piss," he says instead, and levers his aching limbs out of the car. Once he's standing, he realizes it's not even an excuse: the dull throb of his bladder painful enough that when he's finally standing over the urinal it takes a moment before he can let go.
When he's done, he stands there for a few seconds more, holding on to the sense of mindless relief. He has no idea what he's doing here.
When he gets back to the car, Deanna's antsy, turning the key in the ignition when he's barely closed the door. Once she has them back out on the highway, though, she relaxes, falling into the easy posture that Sam knows will let her drive for hours without a break.
"How come you weren't working this job with Dad, anyway?" Sam asks suddenly. They've been over the case already, EVP on Dad's voicemail and the handful of details Deanna's picked up, but by common consent they've stayed away from anything remotely personal.
"I'm twenty-six, dude," Deanna scoffs, and Sam can't decide if it's feigned or real. Okay, so he's been gone four years now, but he can't imagine Dad ever letting either of them work a job without him. Maybe if Deanna had really been a boy -
"Wait, is that what this is?" Sam feels sick at the thought.
Deanna gives him a baffled look. "Is what what this is?"
"This - you and Dad splitting up. You told him about... this - " Sam waves a hand vaguely at his sister, not quite able to say it out loud "- and he freaked out and took off."
"Dad was working a job," Deanna says, low and dangerous. "And now he's missing. That is all. Seems to me you're the one freaking out, Sammy."
"It's Sam," Sam says automatically, mind seizing on an old argument because he's riding on the edge of hysteria with the new one. "And damn right I'm freaking out. It's been four years, Deanna, and then you show up out of the blue expecting me to drop everything and take off, and you're not - you're not even you."
"Dean." His sister's voice rises abruptly to a shout. "It's Dean. And I am me, Sam. I'm the same me I've always fucking been, and you know it. You're the one who's spent four years busy trying to be someone else. So fuck you, do you hear? I'll drop you at the next town, you can get the bus back to your nice normal life."
She breaks off as abruptly as she started, breathing hard, knuckles white on the steering wheel.
"I - " Sam starts, and then falters again. He doesn't know what he wants to say, argument or apology or something else entirely. He's wishing with every fiber of his body that he was still back in Palo Alto, prepping for his interview on Monday and blissfully oblivious of everything that's shifted and changed in his absence. But he can't unknow what he knows.
Deanna swings the car abruptly, pulling off onto the shoulder and shutting off the engine. They both sit there motionless for a few minutes, listening to the faint pings as the engine cools.
Finally Deanna turns to him. "Okay. I get why you're freaked, Sam. I do. And I'm sorry I turned up like this without telling you. But you were the one who left, man."
"I was just going to college," Sam objects. "Dad was the one who said if I was going I should stay gone."
"Yeah, well." Deanna doesn't need to voice the rebuke.
"How could you not tell me?" Sam sounds young even to himself, plaintive. "You could have come to me."
"Could I," Deanna says, flat enough that it's not quite a question. "You were living your life, Sam, and I... I haven't changed, you get that, right?"
Sam looks at the firm line of her mouth and the shadow of stubble above it, the familiar warring with the unfamiliar. It feels wrong, like a crown in place of a missing tooth. But he'd be lying if he said he'd ever thought his sister loved being a girl. "You're still a jackass," he says shakily.
Deanna snorts. "You love it." She starts the car, and slots a tape into the cassette player. AC/DC blasts from the speakers.
"And your taste in music still sucks," Sam tells her.
"Driver picks the music," Deanna tells him. "Shotgun shuts his cakehole."
She smirks at Sam and turns the music up, and Sam knows they're done talking for now.
"Federal Marshals," Deanna says, nudging Sam to show his badge.
The sheriff scrutinizes them both suspiciously, but all he says is, "You two are a little young for Marshals, aren’t you?" and Sam realizes that it hasn't even crossed the man's mind that he's seeing anything other than two guys. Which shouldn't be surprising - they were mistaken for brothers plenty of times when they were younger - but it's still a little weird and unsettling.
"Thanks, that's awfully kind of you," Deanna says smoothly, and launches into questions about the investigation. Predictably, the police have turned up precisely nothing that's of any use - however much Sam might wish it was otherwise, this is their sort of gig through and through.
Questioning the girls in town, it's the same deal: no one blinks an eyelid when they introduce themselves as Sam and Dean, and all the details point to the kind of urban legend that really does kill. Asking questions and doing the research feels normal, and Sam can feel himself falling into the routine, as if "Dean" has always been one half of the team. Which he guesses is true, in a way, even if whenever he looks over he still sees his sister, the person who made his meals and patched up his cuts and scrapes, and did all the other things that their mom should have been there to do.
Or the things that their dad should have been doing, but despite everything they're turning up, there's absolutely nothing which gives them a lead on Dad.
"We'll keep digging until we find him," Deanna says, like they have all the time in the world. "Might take a while."
"I told you," Sam objects, "I’ve gotta get back by Monday - "
"Monday. Right." The deeper dark in the shadow of the bridge isn't enough to conceal Deanna's glower. "The interview."
"Yeah." Sam doesn't offer any apology, because he promised Jess he would be back in time, and he knows he didn't leave Deanna under any illusions about how big a deal the interview is.
"Yeah, I forgot," Deanna says insincerely. She looks scornful. "You’re really serious about this, aren’t you? You think you’re just going to become some lawyer? Marry your girl?"
"Maybe." Sam can feel the uneasy truce between them evaporating. He's worked hard to build the life he has, damnit. "Why not?"
"Does Jessica know the truth about you?" The question sounds almost careless, but Sam knows that it's not. "I mean, does she know about the things you’ve done?"
Sam doesn't equivocate. "No, and she’s not ever going to know."
"Well, that’s healthy," Deanna scoffs. "You can pretend all you want, Sammy. But sooner or later you’re going to have to face up to who you really are."
Sam's actually speechless for a moment, too shocked and angry to respond. He knows in his heart that the reason it's such a gut-punch is that Deanna's right. He's lying to Jess, and he knows exactly what she would say if she knew, because if there's one thing she thinks is important, it's honesty. But the truth is just too fucked-up to tell.
"Like you have?" he spits, guilt and anger making him cruel. "Dressing up in boy's clothes. Wake up, Deanna. Who's the one who's pretending, here?"
"Fuck you, Sam." Deanna rounds on him, and Sam braces himself for a punch. "You know what's out there. You have a responsibility to - "
"To what? To man up and join Dad's crusade?" Sam lets out a humorless laugh. "Seems to me you're doing that well enough for the both of us. I guess you really are the perfect son."
"Yeah, well," Deanna snarls. "You give Dad such a hard time, but he's not the one who couldn't take it when I told him that this is how I'm supposed to be, Sam. And I actually give a shit about finding the thing that killed Mom, so yeah, I guess I am the perfect son."
"If it weren’t for pictures I wouldn’t even know what Mom looks like," Sam shoots back. "And what difference would it make if I did? Even if we do find the thing that killed her, Mom’s gone. And she isn’t coming back."
Deanna grabs him by the collar, slamming him back against the bridge with all the force of her new muscle. "Don’t talk about her like that."
"I'm only telling the truth," Sam whispers. His heart's beating wildly, flight almost winning out over fight in the rush of adrenalin. "The only mom I remember is you."
"Sam - " Deanna starts, and then her tone changes abruptly. "Sam, look - "
All the words rising up in Sam's mouth are forgotten at the sight of the woman standing at the edge of the bridge.
She's only there for a moment, big eyes regarding them sadly, and then she turns and falls. Sam feels an abortive urge to grab her back, even though he knows that he's too late - about twenty-five years too late.
His sense of pity for Constance abates a little when he hears the rumble of a car engine behind them and turns to see the Impala surging into life, lights blazing. "Who's driving your car?" he says slowly, and watches his sister wordlessly hold up the keys.
Sam would swear he feels the car scrape against his legs as he throws himself up and over the edge of the bridge.
Sam's arms ache and his heart hammers against his ribs as he holds on, struggling to decide whether it's safe to climb back up. Finally, his grip starts slipping, forcing him to choose between potential death-by-possessed-car or falling. He hauls himself back up onto the bridge and looks around warily, but the car is standing silent and dark, and there's no sign of Constance.
There's also no sign of Deanna.
"Deanna?" Sam shouts. He peers over the edge of the bridge, expecting to see her hauling herself up hand-over-hand. Instead all he sees is dark water rushing by too fucking far below.
"Deanna," he yells again, and then, in desperation, "Dean!"
Like a miracle, he's rewarded with the sight of his sister - his brother - crawling up onto the muddy bank.
"Dean," he says again, in gratitude. "You okay?"
"I'm super." It's delivered with expressive disgust, and Sam feels a rush of affection. Whatever he might think about all this fucked-up shit, there are some things he would never want to change.
When Deanna makes it back up to the bridge, she's coated from head to foot in mud. She scowls at Sam. "That Constance chick, what a bitch."
"Yeah," Sam agrees, not quite managing to keep a straight face. "She doesn't want us sticking around, that's for sure. Where do we go from here?"
Deanna throws up her arms in frustration, sending up a stench of dirty river.
Sam wrinkles his nose. "You smell like a toilet."
Dean flips him off, flicking a lump of mud in Sam's eye in the process. "You're a gentleman and a scholar, Sammy."
When they find Dad's room, still filled with all the paraphernalia of a hunt in process and circled in salt, Sam's heart sinks. It's not like Dad to leave shit behind, especially not halfway through a case. He's not a tidy man, but he's well-nigh obsessive about covering their tracks when they move on.
It's almost as disturbing to realize how easy it is to pick up the threads of the case. Sam would like to think that he owes his reasoning powers to four years at Stanford, but honestly? It's in his blood, and he knows it. He sifts through the contents of the room, following Dad's research and making connections, and it's obvious that Joseph Welch is their next stop.
There is really a lot of crap left in the room, more stuff than Sam ever remembers seeing Dad leave around at one time. Whatever he was doing here, it's clear the Woman in White was the least of his worries. Sam picks up a photo of the three of them, one he doesn't remember seeing for years. He remembers the day all right, though - the last day of school someplace in South Carolina. Deanna had bitched all semester about being made to take Home Ec., then cooked the three of them the best dinner Sam had eaten in his entire life. Sam feels a pang at the memory.
When he heads back to the room they paid for, Deanna is just emerging from the bathroom, scrubbed clean of river mud and wearing just her jeans and a t-shirt. She flushes when she sees Sam and grabs a shirt, covering herself up under her habitual layers, but not before Sam's glimpsed the outline of her breasts, squashed close to her chest. It fills him with a weird sense of relief. He's not stupid, and even if Deanna's done a prize job of failing to have the coming out talk, he gets that this whole guy thing is a lot more than cross-dressing. But the thought of her having surgery - he's not ready to go there.
"Hey - Dean," Sam says carefully. "What I said earlier about Mom and Dad... and about you. I'm sorry."
She holds up a hand. "No chick-flick moments."
Sam feels a rush of relief. "All right. Jerk."
"Bitch." Deanna grabs her jacket and heads for the door. "I'm starving, I'm gonna grab a little something to eat in that diner down the street. You want anything?"
Sam thinks of the voicemail Jess left him, the one he still hasn't listened to. He needs to start thinking about what he's going to tell her when he gets back, and he wants to hear her voice. "No thanks, I'm good."
His sister shrugs and heads out of the room.
When his phone chirps at him a couple of minutes later, halfway through Jess' message, Sam's heart sinks. A fake 911 call is one thing, but he knows he'll get his ass kicked for hot-wiring the Impala.
Joseph Welch is pathetically easy to read, despite his firm denials that Constance ever laid a finger on her children. Sam finds himself going heavier on the guy than he meant to, excusing himself with the thought that he needs to confirm what they're dealing with. He doesn't know whether he's angrier at the thought of the guy cheating on his picture-perfect young wife, or at Constance herself for betraying her children. Or at something else entirely.
He's on the road to the old Welch place by the time his phone rings again, and he starts, suddenly aware of how much time has passed while he's been chasing down leads. It makes him more than a little uncomfortable to realize how absorbed he already is in the case, exhilarated by the way things are falling into place.
"Where are you?" Deanna demands. It's hard to read her new voice, the deepened pitch throwing off Sam's sense of her intonations, but she sounds off.
"I'm driving," Sam tells her. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Deanna says quickly. "Listen, we gotta talk."
"Yeah, tell me about it." Sam knows a brush-off when he hears one, but now's not the time to push it. "So, turns out the husband was unfaithful, which explains why all the victims were guys - we are dealing with a Woman in White. She's buried behind their house - that must have been Dad's next stop."
"Yeah, well, he never got there," Deanna interrupts. "He's gone. Dad left Jericho."
"He's gone?" Sam feels his sense of foreboding deepen. Dad's gone, and there's something else that Deanna's not telling him, and together those add up to some seriously bad shit.
"Yeah - " Deanna starts, but then Sam looks up to see Constance Welch standing smack bang in the middle of the road.
He slams on the brakes, phone tumbling from his hand.
"Take me home," she says from the back of the car.
Sam can still hear Deanna's voice, tinny and frantic from the phone on the floor, but he can't get to it.
"Take me home," Constance pleads again, and the car roars into life.
Sam must have blacked out: the sound of the shotgun is nothing more than a dull boom, hardly registering over the pain in his chest. The sound repeats another three times before he manages to lurch upright and get his hands on the wheel. He doesn't spare Deanna more than a glance, because he gets it now. However painful it is, Constance has to go home.
When he hits the wall of the house, he has a panicked moment where he's sure he's going to die, and then another one when he thinks how Deanna is going to kill him. She fucking loves this car. Then his sister is yanking open the door, checking him over with gentle hands.
"Dean," Sam croaks, the wind still knocked out of him.
"You okay?"
"Yeah." Sam coughs and draws a proper breath. "Help me?"
He struggles out of the car, grateful for his sister's solid support, and straightens up. Only then does he get a look at Deanna's face, the bruise purpling on her cheekbone. "Jesus. What happened?"
"Just had a little disagreement with the sheriff, that's all," Deanna says evasively. "Nothing I couldn't handle."
"A disagreement with the sheriff?" Sam repeats, stupidly. This isn't that kind of town, not the kind where local law enforcement are keen to practice their own interrogation techniques.
"Yeah, Sammy," Deanna snaps. "He thinks we're the kind of sick fucks who - Sam."
Sam feels something slam into him, hard, and then he blacks out for the second time that day.
He's only out for a second, but he wakes up to find Constance leaning over his sister, pressing desperate, deadly hands against Dean's chest. Shit. Sam hadn't even considered the notion she might see Dean as a target.
"Hold me," she pleads. "I'm so cold."
"Dean." Sam struggles to get to them, but he can't move, pinned fast by the heavy bureau that must have hit them.
Constance is leaning closer, her face distorting in a parody of a kiss as she digs her fingers in deeper.
"It's not me you want," Dean grits out. "You're home now, Constance. You have to see them."
Sam makes another desperate effort to move, shoving the bureau back with all his might. He gropes for the gun that he knows his sister must have holstered, fingers closing desperately around the barrel, and brings it up to Constance's head.
Constance flickers out of sight.
Sam's suddenly aware of the rush of water, turning from a trickle to a roar as it pours down the stairs. He wheels to see Constance's children clinging to her skirts, holding on tight while she writhes and twists, melting into flame and ash.
As quickly as it started, it's over: nothing left but a pool of water on the floor.
"That's why she could never go home," Sam realizes. "She was too scared to face them."
"Nice work, Sammy," Dean croaks from behind him.
"Dean." Sam hurries to check his sister over. "I'm sorry, I couldn't get to the gun in time."
"Yeah, well." Dean raises an eyebrow. "Just as well you didn't, genius. The Beretta's got real bullets in it."
Sam looks at the gun in his hand with horror. "Oh my god. Shit, man, I'm sorry."
His sister laughs shakily and punches him in the arm. "Not as sorry as you'll be if you've fucked up my car."
It's oddly hard to walk back into the apartment, despite the fact that Sam has spent a good part of the last forty-eight hours wishing he could do exactly that. Jess is going to have questions, a lot of them. He's going to have to explain why the sister he's been telling her about for the past two years showed up as his brother, for a start. The fact that that will be the easiest question to answer speaks volumes about how fucked-up his life is.
He relaxes a little when he hears the shower running and flops backwards onto the bed. Explanations can wait for morning: for now he's just going to curl up with his girl.
A drop of wetness falls onto his face.
Sam's still screaming Jess' name and fighting to get back to the house when the firefighter comes over to them.
"I'm sorry." The guy's face is smoke-blackened and grim. "It's a miracle anyone got out of there alive."
Sam stops fighting all at once, hanging heavy in Dean's arms. He tries to speak and can't: the ache of tears stealing what's left of his voice.
"I know, Sammy," Dean says, hands cradling him steady and sure. "I know."
Sam turns his face to his brother's chest and sobs.