True north- The Winchesters
-SAM-
Sam reached out and steadied his brother. Again. “You wanna rest a bit?”
This was the third time in as many minutes that he’d had to keep his brother from taking a header and they still had another mile to go to reach the hospital building. The ghost’s energy passing through Dean had done a number on him. He was still shivering, Sam noted, feeling the quake of his skin through the layers of clothing when their shoulders touched.
Dean twisted his shoulders and pulled free. “No, no resting.” Hands tucked into his pits, he pushed on. “Let’s just get back. Fu-fucking freezing out here.”
Reluctantly, Sam let him go and followed. “Well, at least it stopped raining,” he offered as he came up alongside his brother. “You know, Dean,” he gave his brother a sidelong glance. “You look really pale. Like-”
“If you say ghost,” Dean started, only to pause as a shiver ran up his spine and his body did a full visible shake. “I’m gonna s-s-start sw-swinging.”
Sam smirked. “Right, and you’d end up in a heap without me touching you.”
Dean stopped and glared at Sam a moment and just as suddenly as his ire had flared, it died. “C’mon,” he growled and managed to pick up the pace. “I gotta get outta these clo-” his sentence died as he collided with Sam’s outstretched arm. “Hey-”
“There.” Sam interrupted and pointed.
Not ten yards away, a spirit stood staring at them. Unlike the spirit they’d encountered at the unmarked graves, this girl seemed younger, maybe in her teens, though spectral appearance made ages a bit iffy to gauge. Her eyes moved from one Winchester to the other before settling, Sam swore, squarely on Dean.
“Aw, c’mon!” Dean shouted, his outrage directed at the ghost. “Can’t you cut us a friggin’ break?”
In something that mirrored a response, the spirit cocked its head to one side and stared at Dean. Hard.
The spirit’s face grew dark and she darted forward threateningly. Sam’s protective instincts kicked in and he stepped in front of his brother. “Quit pissing it off,” he whispered out of one side of his mouth.
“Would you cut it out!” Dean snapped and grabbed Sam’s shoulder, effectively yanking him back. “I don’t need you to protect me!” he growled.
“Apparently you do,” Sam fired back and turned to face his brother, “because I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not but our last encounter with a spirit on this island ended with you flat. On your back.”
Sam’s assessment brought Dean up a little short and he cut his gaze over at the spirit; she wasn’t there.
“Shit.” Dean breathed. “Where’d…”
Sam saw as Dean pulled their EMF reader from his pocket, scanning the area. “Is that thing even working?”
A loud whining sound, coming from the device, answered Sam’s question. The ghost wasn’t gone. “I swear, it’s like playing friggin’ ‘Where’s Waldo?’” he murmured, turning in a complete 360 degrees.
“Over there!” Sam called and swallowed. This time, only the top of her head and eyes were visible as she peered at them, from behind a partially fallen tree. This time she was glaring accusatory. At Dean.
“Okay,” Dean straightened. “Now that’s just creepy.”
“Yeah, no kidding.” Sam braced his legs and kept a wary eye on her as he spoke. “So, you still think this isn’t the work of an angry spirit?”
“An angry spirit, sure,” Dean answered, “but that doesn't make them vengeful.”
“Seriously Dean?” Sam snapped angrily. He'd had about as much of Dean's cryptic reasoning as he could handle for one day.
“Look, I think they’re pissed about something,” Dean argued, “but I also think there’s enough of them that, if they’d wanted us dead, we'd have stopped breathing by now.”
While Dean’s point seemed valid, Sam didn’t let it go. “Well, we keep traipsing around here, they’ll get to it, I’m sure.”
“Well I’m not.”
“Well,” Sam flapped his arms helplessly, “why?”
“Be-” Dean looked at Sam and lowered his voice. “Because it’s more like they’re trying to tell us -or me- something.”
Sam folded his arms in front of him and drew back. “Oh? And why’s that? Why you?”
Dean shrugged and canted back himself, mimicking Sam’s posture but not crossing his arms. Instead notching his chin up and squaring his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he said turning to face the ghost - she was out in the open now and not nearly as close as before, but she hadn’t taken her eyes off him. “But I’m sure as hell going to find out.”
The older Winchester got no more than a step in the direction of the spirit before Sam grabbed him. “Oh no, you don’t,” he said, securing Dean by both shoulders and glaring at him. “Not this time. You’re staying here. Out of their cross-hairs. I’m going.” He was already shifting toward the ghost but still reluctant to release his brother.
“But-” Dean looked over Sam’s shoulder toward the spirit and - crap, it was smiling at him, but it was cold and unnerving, not a pleasant sort of smile. “What if you need help?”
Sam was already inching down the path but stopped and looked at Dean. “Just stay here. If something goes down, I’ll holler. But don’t move unless I call, got that?” he asked pinning Dean with an expectant gaze.
Dean’s mouth opened to protest again then he caught sight of the ghost over Sam’s shoulder. The thing had at some point moved to stand fully back in the center of the clearing, but it was drifting back, as if ready to take lead Sam somewhere. This was wrong, his mind screamed. This was his doing. He could get these things to-
“Dean!”
“What!” Dean snapped and met Sam’s glare. “Fine. I’ll wait here, but …” he pointed at Sam. “You be careful.”
-DEAN-
Dean paced. The ground squelched and squished beneath his feet, soil and foliage soft and squishy from the latest deluge of rain. A cool wind had chilled the air and shook the trees, occasionally hard enough to shower him with rainwater collected in the leaves; but adrenaline and worry tamped down both the cold and the wet, leaving only a dull tremble.
Alone, he had time to think. Time to wonder about everything he’d seen. That carved image on that dead animal; his signature.
Something cold and ice blue swept by his arm and Dean halted abruptly. His breath came out in a cold cloud and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise in warning. “Son of a bitch,” he breathed, admitting internally that Sam had at least been right about the ghosts targeting him. in his pocket, the EMF would not shut up.
Another bone chilling gust followed but this one seemed closer, stabbing through his wet, already chilled clothes, painfully dimpling his flesh. “Fine,” Dean said as he turned very slowly, “lets just try to be civil here-” He came eye to eye with the now familiar spirit from the grave site.
“Oh, hell no,” he said and stumbled back a step, keeping a wary eye on her. When her hands lifted toward him he shook his head. “No-no, no touching, if it's all the same to you. I'm sure in your day-” he looked her up and down, “-when you were alive and all, you were a real looker, but we just need to be friends here, okay?”
She looked at him perplexed and if Dean didn't know better, just a little bit hurt as her hands lowered.
Dean breathed a sigh of relief. “That's better,” he gave her a small uncertain smile. “So... how do we do this, huh?” He looked around uncertainly. “How do we figure out what it is you and your friends want?” he asked, more to himself than anything, but she heard and took another step toward him.
Dean retreated a step, hands outstretched imploring her to stop the strange dance they had going on. “Wait! Alright? Just... wait.”
And she did, cocking her head to one side and staring at him vacantly. “You mean we, you... you gotta do that,” he circled one hand in the air between them, “that some kind of ghost mind-meld thing to communicate with me?”
As if she were trying to answer, her mouth opened. Instead of a response he could understand, another blast of cold air shot toward him.
“Son of a bitch!” Dean cursed, feeling like his extremities were about to fall over. He liked his extremities.
What followed was far worse. A loud screeching sound, like a million nails on a chalk board that went on and on and on. Dean's hands instinctively shot up to cover his ears, for all the good it did.
It was that same sound that he’d heard when she’d passed through him, only this time it was sustained. High and sharp, it raked across his skin, teeth, eyes, bladed across his scalp and he squinted against the onslaught.
“No...” he tried to reason. “Wait. I-” The noise got impossibly louder and he doubled over. “Shit. Stop!”
But it didn't stop. The pressure was intense and he felt like his eyes were going to either implode or pop from their sockets. Feeling as if his heart had swollen in his chest, he instinctively began to retreat, only stopping at the feel of something solid with a scratchy surface at his back. A tree.
“Lady--” he gritted out, squinting against the pain, growing desperate to put an end to this -- “you gotta... stop...” He felt something ooze beneath his left hand, leaking out of his ear and cutting a path down the side of his head. “I can’t--” His brain... his whole head was going to explode if she didn’t--
Then it stopped. Dean felt air rush from his lungs in relief. He opened his eyes and found her only inches from his face. His ears were still ringing.
“Okay,” he panted, “you win. Clearly, talking isn't gonna get us anywhere and either way, this is gonna hurt like a bitch. So,” he stood up slowly, one hand against the tree for both support and to brace for the pending rush. “Go on, do your-your ghost mind-meld thing or whatev-”
The last word barely left his lips when she rushed forward. Her force consuming him, washing over him like a river of icy knives, driving under his skin, just below the surface. The rush of sound crashing against his brain, just like before but deeper, less grating. The darkness that followed was absolute. Eyes open or closed he couldn't tell. There was just. Nothing.
“Give them back...”
Color. Her voice snapped, sparking into the inky black.
It hurt. When she talked, it sent tiny shocks all through his body and every time his body wanted to push her out but he fought to hold her in. The energy, it was pure rage, palpable and blazing through him. “What?”
“Fugitives. Monsters. Unfair.”
“You-- you,” he felt weak, realized he was losing his ability to think. Consciousness was fading, the cold numbing his senses. “D-didn't kill those kids?” he ground back. That very question seemed to ignite her wrath further and Dean felt her energy spark sharp and bright. “Okay--- ca-- calm down. Wh-who then?”
“Mar-”
Dean waited longer this time, but it was getting harder to hold on.
“M-Mar?” he pushed.
“Mart.”
“Bitch!” Another voice shouted from around them.
Dean felt the energy double. Two of them. God, no way he could- her spirit suddenly convulsed. The shrill noise was back, etching along his nerves. “NO!” he shouted. He could feel her anxiety.
She was thrust violently out. Dean felt her leave, like having his gut punched hard. The other energy, it was stronger, it remained and he couldn't do this. Not this one. It was too intense. Too much. The noise. The knives.
Dean felt himself fall. Felt a pit open up and swallow him... down.
~o~
Ropes.
No, colder.
Chains.
They held him prisoner. Eyes opening, the world went from black to fire, and fear.
Spread eagle, chains bound his limbs, kept him pulled taut. Helpless. Powerless.
This was...“Hell...” he panted. “No,” Dean shook his head in denial. “No. It can't be.”
“Sure it can, Dean.” Alistair. His face suddenly appeared, leering, looming at him over head, nine inch knife dripping with blood and entrails. “Trust you had a nice trip, but don't think you'll get off that easy next time.”
“Wh-What?” Dean looked at his wrists. It wasn't chains, not rope, the bindings were alive. Hands with talons that dug into his wrists and shoulders. Monsters. Holding him, digging into his flesh to strike bone. “Aaargh..” he shouted in pain. “Y-you- I got out. You're not real.”
Alistair laughed. “My boy, you never left. You're still mine.” He looked at his knife, brandishing it in front of Dean's face. “Now, where were we...? Ah, yes.”
Something snarled and whined and Dean twisted to look behind him. Two black dogs sat, waiting impatiently at his back. At their feet, a woman writhed, the contents of her gut visible, and she still breathed, tears streaking down her face, tears and blood and meat...
“Now boys,” Alistair chided as if they were children. “It isn't polite to play with your food.”
The dogs snarled and Dean was sure some of the woman's flesh was hanging from the sides of their mouths. One of them yipped in complaint and Alistair sighed. “Ah, so I did.” He backed up and placed his knife on a table full of other bloodied instruments. “Well, a promise is a promise,” he finished and snapped his fingers.
Dean was falling. The world rushed by, hands grabbed, raked at him, grabbed and nicked off chunks from his flesh until the ground rose up to meet him. Air driven from his lungs, eyes closed, he lay there breathing heavily. The sound of his own heartbeat driving fast and heavy in his ears.
The sound of a growl off to his left and his eyes snapped open.
Dean rolled slowly to his left and looked up. The black dog’s eyes gleamed bright yellow, drool and blood dripping from its teeth. But that wasn't all. A man stood next to this one.
“And to think,” he teased unkindly, “that bitch almost ruined my fun.” The dog inched away from him and toward Dean. “Now, now, gotta wait for Spot, don't we? Won't do to start this dance without him.”
Another dog walked up and stood opposite the man, at perfect heel. It's eyes too were yellow, muzzle gleamed in something dark and thick; blood. The other dog rose to its feet now and both dogs were clearly itching to tear Dean apart.
“No,” Dean shook his head, deep in denial as he rolled to his hands and knees. He felt he might throw up here and now. “This- this can't be.”
The man's face twisted in a cruel smile. “Sure it can. But you know,” he glanced down and that seemed to be the cue because both dogs started inching forward, their haunches spring-board tight, ready to launch. “You can make it stop.”
Dean shook his head again. “No, it already st--” he had to get a grip. It wasn't the first time he'd though about making it stop, but he had to deal. This, this wasn't... had to think. The ghost. What she had said... “Mart!”
The man's sneer melted. The dogs launched.
The world spun, top over bottom. Side over end, the violent tumble sent Dean's stomach reeling.
And it stopped.
The world slowly formed in front of him. Light. Sunlight, out of place in-
Dean pushed to sitting position. Too fast. The world tipped and he with it, just managing to catch himself but not his stomach. Leaning over he heaved bile and spit into the leafy ground. When it was over, he coughed, dry heaved a few times until he was sure it was under control.
“Your brother needs you...”
Dean's head snapped up. A young girl, it was the same one that had led Sam- “Sam,” he said with a sudden overwhelming shower of fear. “Where is he?” he growled as he pushed unsteadily to his feet. His body felt numb and yet there wasn't a muscle that didn't feel bruised and wrung out.
The girl didn't speak this time, just lifted a hand and pointed.
Dean's eyes followed the direction she'd indicated and he suddenly realized; he was not where he had been before, when he and that ghost had mind-melded, or whatever. Consciousness, he remembered losing consciousness, but, before that-
He shook his head, trying to clear it. After that… ghost mind-meld thing, at some point he'd somehow ended up here. Wherever here was.
“Your brother needs you...”
“What?” Dean turned. The girl was gone. “Oh, shit.” This time he didn't hesitate; he took off. “Sam!”
-SAM-
“Sam!”
“Dean...?” Sam stood up and looked around. Nothing but half walls surrounded him, obviously able to withstand the passing of time as well as some of the other buildings.
“Sammy!”
They nearly collided as Sam came around one of the still-standing walls at nearly the same moment as Dean rounded from the other side. Hands locked on shoulders to steady one another and Sam's eyes widened when he got a look at his brother.
“Dean what-” Sam started then stopped to look at the area where Dean had just come from because the way he was moving, the way he looked, it appeared he was running from something. “Where the hell have you been?”
“God, Sammy, are you alright?”
“Am I-” Sam looked incredulously at his brother. Dean was a sight; wild-eyed, blood streaming from one side of his head- from his ear- and covered in mud and leaves. He looked ready to come out of his skin, and his hands, they were like ice where they gripped Sam's forearm. “Dean, I've been looking for you. Went back to where I left you and-” He looked Dean up and down. “What the hell happened to you?”
Dean seemed to settle, once he was assured Sam was okay. “She said you needed me, so...” he panted then backed up a step, his gaze catching on a spot just behind Sam. “Is that what I think it is?”
She? Sam didn't take his eye off Dean for a full half-minute before turning and nodding. “Yeah,” he nodded, “just found it not too long ago.” He started to turn to pursue his earlier question but Dean walked right past him, toward the main center piece of the room. The table.
It was one of the ancient examination tables, obviously pulled to this area from the main hospital-- there was precious little left of this building. Five small bowls sat on another smaller table that had likely been used to hold instruments for whatever procedure was to occur. In this case, it would seem that the procedure had been some kind of ritual.
One startling thing decorated the entire ruined area. The exam table. The floor. What was left of the walls.
Blood.
Dried but plentiful. One of the bowls was coated in it, the others were full of rainwater. Dean stood at the table staring down at it.
And Sam stared at Dean. “Dean, where were you?” he tried a little less emphatically. “When I lost the ghost, I went back for you and you were gone.”
“I uh,” his gaze slowly moved around the old ruins as he turned to face Sam, “I had a little run in with our touchy-feely ghost from the grave yard.”
Sam's head canted forward. “The- shit, it was a trick. To separate us.”
“Apparently,” he said moving over to the bowls. Dirt, leaves and sticks floated on top of the water in each. “Remember when she passed through me before?” Sam nodded. “Well, this time she sorta... hung out.”
“Meaning...”
“She went in and stayed for a bit.”
“You were ghost-possessed?”
“I prefer mind-melded. Like the Vulcan Mind Meld?”
“Dean, that takes a lot of mojo to pull off; it's not your garden variety ghost thing.”
“Yeah, I got that. Especially when I woke up in a different place.”
Sam stood back and stared curiously at his brother. Not for the first time, he worried about Dean. Not just for his physical health but, ever since he'd returned from Hell, he seemed shaky, erratic and a little too reluctant in the hunt. “You okay?”
“Aside from the pounding headache, peachy.”
Sam turned away, trying to piece all of this out. And unsuccessfully. “And when I woke, that creepy kid ghost from before, she said you needed me so...”
Sam shook his head. “This makes no sense. Why would she posses you, and not...”
“Kill me?” Dean finished and Sam nodded reluctantly. “Because she's not a vengeful spirit, Sam. That's what I've been trying to tell you.”
“Then what's the point, Dean. Why-”
“Because,” Dean cut him off. “It seemed to be the only way to talk without my head exploding.” He pointed at the trail of dried blood on the side of his head. “All I can figure is that maybe she's been dead so long that she's forgotten how to talk, or maybe she was a mute in life or something.”
“She talked to you? What'd she say?”
“Aside from the gibberish, nothing much. But I remember asking her directly about the college kids and her saying they weren't responsible.”
“And we’re going to buy it because... a ghost that possessed you told you so?”
The look Dean threw him was half pissed off and the rest resignation. He couldn’t be so far gone that he’d forgotten how narrow sighted spirits could be. Black and white in ghost-land did not always translate into the same colors in the land of the living.
“Yeah, Sam, I think we do. Look, I know you want to blame this on some vengeful ghost but look around you, man! There's more evidence that something else is going on here.”
Sam couldn't argue that and backed off, albeit reluctantly. “Yeah,” he said eyeing their surroundings. “Looks like a ritual site.”
“Exactly,” Dean followed up quickly. “And for all we know, this could also be the reason we’re seeing all of these spirits walking around.”
While his gut told him there was more to it, that regardless of what he saw, Dean was hiding something from him, Sam had to concede this one. “So, yeah, maybe the spirits weren’t the ones responsible for butchering those kids, but I bet you they’re involved somehow.”
“Fine,” Dean, reluctantly, agreed.
“Fine,” Sam mimicked, even though he was not fine at all with Dean’s apparent disregard for what was right in front of him.
As one, they both started moving carefully around the room, pushing trash and leaves around on the floor, often stopping and picking something up to examine it closely.
“Jesus,” Dean murmured, picking up a large, rust coated knife left on the floor. Looking closer, he realized it wasn't rust. “Blood all over the place.”
Sam looked over his shoulder and nodded agreement. “Definitely some kind of blood ritual.” He moved away but glanced at Dean curiously. “So, you learn anything else from your little spirit encounter?” he asked. He noticed the second Dean's face seemed to shudder before the tight control he always held onto was back in place.
“Nah,” Dean shook his head and seemed far too interested in something beneath the altar table. “It got a little weird after that.”
Maybe it was the evasiveness, or the way he said it but that got Sam's attention. “How so?” he asked looking point blank at his brother.
Dean hesitated, wondering how much he could omit without raising suspicion.
“When she was in me, it was like this low buzz electric current, like that time we touched that low-volt electric fence; just a steady stream. Then,” he seemed at a loss to describe it. “Then it was like I could feel another energy, this one way stronger - maybe why I passed out - but it seemed to push her out.”
“Wait.” Sam smirked at his brother. “You fainted?”
Dean raised a brow, showing how much he despised the term. “I momentarily lost track of my senses... in a manly way,” he corrected, miffed. “Hence, passed out.”
Sam nodded, not really listening. Internally, he was eyeing his brother and reassessing Dean’s outer condition. He moved closer to his brother. “So, you think she took you out for a stroll...?”
“There's a disturbing thought...” Dean replied but clearly engrossed in something as Sam moved in to see what it was. “Would you look at this,” he reached in and between the tips of his fingers picked up a small rectangular item. He looked back at Sam. “Cell phone.”
“Yeah,” Sam swallowed. “Covered in dried blood.”
“Yup,” Dean inched back and Sam followed as they both stood to examine their find. Thumbing the power button the phone came out of sleep mode; the wallpaper was a clear image of a young girl with a familiar face next to her. Michael.
“Dammit,” Sam sighed.
Dean merely nodded. He pressed the menu button and... “Sam,” he held it up to show his brother, “it still has juice in the battery!”
“For real? How can it possibly still have any power left?”
“Don’t care,” Dean rushed to point out. “What matters is that I can give up on fixing ours and use this one before it dies,” Dean finished with a smile, his fingers already pressing familiar numbers. He waited a few seconds, fingernail trapped between his teeth, nibbling in distraction. The taste of blood and mud had just registered when the call was finally answered. “Bobby?” he asked, spitting the taste out in disgust. “Hey... no, we’re good. Say... are you busy in the next couple of days?”
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