Films About Ghosts (3/4)
On the one hand, it was nice to finally be out of the rain. On the other, I really hadn't been looking to find myself tied to a chair in an abandoned warehouse. My subconscious -- mine, shit, this was all in my head, and how fucked was I? -- was determined not to do me any favors.
"You know, this is really just . . . delicious." Ruby loomed over me, all blond hair and hateful spite. I'd forgotten just how nasty she'd been in that body. "I mean, you have to be such a goddamn hero that your coma dream is about rescuing Sam from a coma dream? Seriously, Dean, your issues are incredible."
"What can I say?" I rolled my shoulders, careful not to let the wire wrapping my wrists bite in too deeply. I couldn't be sure how long we'd been here, now, but my body was already aching. "I'm an overachiever."
She punched me in the face again, sending flares of white light across my vision. I felt something hot gush down over my lips. Dream broken noses hurt just as much as regular ones. "Not now, Dean. I'm trying to get in a good monologue, here."
"Oh goody."
"I mean," she continued, pretending to ignore me while she jammed her thumb between my teeth and pressed her hand back towards my ear, forcing my mouth open and my head back. "We all thought Sam would win the crazy race. After everything he went through, and then Lucifer and the Pit like the evil cherry on top -- but you. Did you really think you made it out of Hell whole? That you got a some panic attacks and a little raging alcoholism and that's it?"
I couldn't make more than a faint squawk with her thumb digging into the soft tissue behind my molars, but she took it as an answer, anyway.
"That's okay, sweetie. You've got plenty of time to make up for ignoring all of us. The gang's all here, you know. Everything you've ever hated and feared is lining up for a run at you."
I swallowed down on the pain in my jaw and my gag reflex and bit her thumb. She yanked her hand back and whacked me across the face. I spat blood onto the dusty floor and looked up, panting. Just like old times.
"That's great," I said. "Really. Like I don't already know how to handle all of you."
"You do have your defenses," Ruby said with a nod. "Too bad you're stuck on the wrong side of them."
I started to laugh that off, then winced and choked as blood from my nose started to run down the back of my throat. "Wh-what?"
"Didn't you know? You've got a wall of your very own in here, Dean. And unlike Sam's, yours wasn't plastered in place by Death. Yours you built all. By. Your. Self." She grinned, blackness flooding her eyes in slow motion as she loomed over me. "The night on this side is so much longer. Sam will never find you before we've broken you down to your icky, gooey little component parts." She cracked her knuckles, then jammed both thumbs in my mouth, prying it open until I was sure my jaw would come off. "Now, say ah."
I let myself scream, a choking, beaten sound, while my fingers explored my restraints.
She'd screwed up. She'd let it slide that Sam was here, actually here, that he was real and coming to find me. And no pain was greater than my will to find Sam. No pain in any world.
*
Admittedly, that was easier to say before they pulled out the needle and thread and went after my lips.
It wasn't just Ruby, anymore, oh no. She'd invited Ruby 2.0 along for shits and giggles, and, well, apparently a demon chick couldn't work me over without Meg getting wind of it.
Say what you would about Meg, and hell, I'd already said most of it, but girl knew her sadism. It was clear she'd trained under Alistair, even if she'd actually belonged to old Yellow-Eyes.
"Now hold still," she said. She was wearing Sam, pre-built-like-a-door Sam, back before his hair had quite reached its Pantene-ad glory. The Ruby's were rocking their full black-eyed glory, but Meg was a traditionalist. Either that, or she knew just how much seeing Sam's eyes staring down at me with that much venom hurt.
Fuck, what was I saying? Of course she knew that. She lived in my head, she knew everything.
She sat on my lap, her massive hand pressed against the bottom of my already swollen jaw, holding the large, hooked suture needle by my eye to make sure I got a good look at it. "You really don't want me missing with this, do you?"
I jerked against the wires around my wrists, no longer worried about cutting myself open on them. They'd long since sliced their way down to the bone. I lost feeling in my fingers sometime around the third round of tag-team whack-a-mole with the Ruby twins.
In the real world, I'd be screwed. In the real world, they couldn't just reboot me when I lost too much blood to stay conscious.
I tried to tell myself that in the real world, the feel of the needle stabbing through my lip and jamming into my gum would hurt a lot more, but frankly, I didn't want to think too much about what having my goddamn lips sewn shut would feel like for real.
Meg was anything but gentle. With all four of Ruby's hands holding my head in place, she didn't have to be. They had me pinned down, even as I shook and twitched, unable to control my body's reaction to the pain. She tied off the last stitch with a flourish and stroked my forehead. "There. That wasn't so bad, now, was it?"
I panted through my nose and glared at her, doing my best to keep my stomach from turning over. The last thing I needed right now was to choke to death. Not before Sammy found me.
He would. I just had to hold on. Sam was coming. Sam was coming.
"Well," Ruby 1.0 said, letting go of my head and folding her arms. "I'm bored."
God, I really hated her.
"Relax, honey," Meg told her, shifting forward so that her hips were flush against my stomach, my nose just about buried in her chest -- her goddamn Sam-shaped chest. "We're just getting started." And she leaned forward, nearly smothering me with my own brother's body while she locked lips with Ruby 2.0. I turned my head and let out an angry grunt, and Meg pulled back with a grin. "Oh, sorry." She cupped my jaw with her hand. "Feeling a little left out, huh?" And she leaned down, all set to press Sam's lips against the ones she'd just spent the last five minutes destroying.
"Come, now, ladies," a new voice said, just before Meg got to work violating me with my brother's body. I felt all three of them shift, turning towards the invader. "Don't you have any sense of artistry?"
Fucking hell. Bela.
Her nails scraped across my scalp, and I cracked my eyes open just wide enough to glare at her. "Of course they don't," she said, her lips curling in that infuriating smirk of hers. "They're part of your head, after all, and you've never been much interested in beauty that didn't come with chrome or breasts."
Meg smacked her hand away, like she was trying to be my fucking hero or something. "And who invited you to this party?"
"Oh trust me," Bela said, circling, smirk firmly in place. "You want me here. If there's one thing I know how to do, it's make the most of any situation. Just ask Dean."
I grunted, the most I could do without pulling painfully on the stitches in my lips.
"See?" Bela said, smirk going full, canary-grin.
"What exactly are you suggesting?" Ruby 2.0 asked.
"I'm not much one for telling, really," Bela said, waving them all back. When Meg refused to relinquish her seat, Bela's grin turned dark. "I wouldn't make me ask twice, darling. It's impolite."
Meg stared, still straddling my waist with Sam's legs, Sam's elbows propped on my shoulders. Bela stared back, one immaculate eyebrow lifted. "Whatever," Meg said, pushing herself to her feet. "I was getting bored, anyway." She turned as if to walk away, then paused and wrapped her hand around my chin, yanking my face upwards before leaning in and pressing a kiss against my lips. It was all I could do not to scream, and by the time I caught my breath, panting harshly through my nose, she and the Ruby's were lined up in front of me, identical expressions of skepticism on their faces. Bela looked as if she'd just been invited to a tea party with the Queen -- or more likely, to sell the Queen back her own crown jewels, piece by piece.
"Alright," she said, rubbing her hands together. She circled me again, looking me over. I watched her as best as I could, forcing myself not to shake. Bela had been a lot of things, a grade-A, cold-hearted bitch not the least of them, but I'd never known her to be a torturer. "If we learned anything from Alistair," she leaned in over my shoulder, "and I know we did, it's that true torture can't simply be physical. We have to get Dean where he lives."
"Yeah," Ruby 1.0 said. "That's why we sewed his mouth shut."
"He does spend a lot of time there," Bela said. "The food, the snappy comments, even the sex. But that's not really what I meant." She snapped her fingers, and I felt the wires around my wrists begin to shift, twining together and stretching up my forearms, crisscrossing each other like ribbons as they bound my arms together even tighter, drawing my shoulders and upper body back against the chair. She made her way to the front of my chair again and tilted her head, nodding to the my legs. More wire seemed to erupt from the chair itself, snapping across my ankles and wrapping up around my calves and thighs. Another snap, and the wire turned barbed, sending tiny stabs of pain into my arms and legs, shredding my clothing as it continued to grow.
"Poetic, isn't it?" she asked. "The way your bonds grow all by themselves."
The wires had made it to my chest, the ones from my arms snaking their way over my collarbones towards my throat. I tilted my head back automatically, trying to pull away from them, but all I managed to do was let the barbs dig deeper into my flesh. They wrapped their way up my neck just tight enough to be uncomfortable without cutting off my breathing, then started up the sides of my face, looping over my ears and cupping my jaw until I couldn't move a muscle for fear of it ripping into the delicate skin and scarring me for life. At last they made it up to my eyes and I couldn't help the muffled squeal of fear as the sharp ends came into focus only inches from me, before jabbing down.
I was only moments from hyperventilating by the time I realized that they hadn't stabbed my eyes out. Instead, they pressed into my eyelids, holding them wide open.
"There," Bela said. "Now isn't that pretty?"
"Gorgeous," Meg said. My eyes flicked in her direction -- she was examining Sam's nails as if wondering how sharply she could file them. "Can we get back to hurting him, now?"
"Just a few more details." Bela leaned back into my field of vision, teeth bright, bright white between blood red lips. "Have you worked it out yet, Dean?" My only response was to gasp through my nose, but she took it as an affirmative. "Well, then, any requests? You're partial to Led Zeppelin, I believe."
I squawked again, my body going tense as the warehouse went dark and an old projector started up somewhere behind me. The wall of the warehouse lit up with dusty, faded images, the kind that Dad might have taken if we'd ever had the time or the money for home movies. The opening chords of "Ramble On" came pounding out of nowhere, in perfect synch with crackle of the projector as Sam, tiny, innocent, happy Sammy waved out at me, grinning to show off his first missing tooth.
Meg and the Ruby's went back to work, slicing into my body wherever the wires hadn't already cut, and the sound that spilled forth from my throat, refusing to be held back by my clamped jaw or my throbbing lips, was filled with more pain than I knew I still had inside me.
Bela had gone fucking Clockwork Orange on me.
*
They kept it up for what seemed like hours. "Ramble On" bled into "Kashmir", then "Immigrant Song", and on and on until we'd run through the entire Led Zeppelin catalog. On the wall, every happy moment with Sam I'd ever clung to played out, blurry, jumping, and so warm I would have cried if my eyes hadn't been so dry.
And they laughed. Meg and the Ruby's and Bela laughed it up like they were having the time of their lives as they carved into me, doodling patterns along my arms and across my chest with the points of their knives.
Then the wall lit up with the sparks of the first firecracker, ushering in the final scene, the last truly, purely happy moment Sam and I had before it all started turning to bitterness and shit, the memory that had ushered me into my brief stint in Heaven.
I snapped.
They couldn't take that away from me. Not that. Not Sam. I heaved against the wires holding me to the chair with all my strength. I imagined it would be like watching the Hulk ripping off his own bonds in a fit of howling rage. Instead, I was the T-1000, slipping through and past the wires like my body had turned to liquid, reforming only when I was free. Meg and the Ruby's scattered, cursing each other as they went. I caught Ruby 1.0 by the ankle, tripping her up as she ran. She slammed into the floor and shattered, shards of her scattering across the concrete before dissolving into smoke. I grabbed her knife and caught Ruby 2.0 below the ribs and she vanished the same way. I turned, still fuming, my body trembling in my rage, but Meg had gone and only Bela remained, standing by the chair, applauding silently.
I lifted the knife to my mouth, carefully slicing through each stitch in turn until I could finally gasp in a full breath. I lowered my chin, spitting blood and drool onto the floor, then carefully wiped my chin with the back of my hand, the remains of my sleeve flapping in the breeze.
"Give me one good reason not to gut you right here."
"Now Dean," Bela said, tilting her head with that knowing smirk. "You didn't really think we were enemies here, did you?"
"Honestly Bela?" I smirked back, though it pulled at the various wounds on my face. "I don't think much of you at all."
"Well now." She looked around the warehouse, her eyebrow raised. "I think it's abundantly clear that that's not true." She sobered, lifting her chin proudly, baring her throat without raising a single finger to stop me as I pressed my knife against it. She lowered her voice to a whisper. "You remember everyone you didn't save."
And the warehouse blew away, taking the chair, the wires, the projector, the blood, and Bela all with it, and leaving behind nothing but dust and dry air.
*
The desert stretched out unbroken in every direction, just an endless sea of rolling dunes and diamond-sharp sky. The sand was a mixture of tropical-beach white and Arizona red, banded in uneven lines all converging on my feet. I gripped my knife in my fist, the breeze making the tattered remains of my clothes flap without cooling me down in the least.
I tried to remember why I was here, but all my mind could grab on to was a grainy, over-bright image of Sam waving out at me, and white pain ripping up from the center of my belly, setting off flares behind my eyes.
-- seizing again --
Ramble the fuck on.
I was supposed to go somewhere. To find someone. A wall. I had to go to a wall so I could find --
Sam, asleep in the back seat of the Impala while Robert Plant crooned from the radio and a knife pressed down into the small bones of my left hand.
-- ccs of lorazepam --
I collapsed down, my knees gone weak. The sand made a terrible scrunching sound beneath my ass, though it was no more yielding than solid stone.
"I'm lost," I said. The breeze caught the words and carried them off somewhere far away from anyone who might hear, anyone who would care and come to help. "I've lost. I can't."
You basically have been looking out for me your whole life. Now you finally get to take care of yourself. About time.
"I can't!" I screamed it out this time, an almost primal noise against the vast, hot emptiness of sand and sun and sky.
-- got him. We got --
--re's his brother? --
"Don't know." I shrugged my shoulders, pulling into myself on the sand. Whatever presence had been haunting me from the road -- the thing in the back seat, the killer on the mountain -- was gone. I was completely, thoroughly, desolately alone.
"I'm lost." I shut my eyes and pressed my forehead into the hot sand, the sun beating down on my back through the rips in my shirt.
I'd never liked deserts. They played tricks, casting out mirages and rearranging distances. She was far away at first, no more than a flash on the horizon, and then she was so close, all white skin and red hair and such wide, wide eyes. It was as if she'd been formed from the desert itself.
"Anna."
"Dean."
I swallowed. It wasn't easy; the desert wind had already almost sucked me dry. "I've -- I'm lost."
She reached out a hand and pressed it to my forehead. "Don't be silly, Dean. We've found you."
And as the world vanished in an all consuming flash, I remembered she wasn't the one who was supposed to have found me.
*
Cool, smooth sheets. A pillow case, smelling of soap and flowers and just a hint of sex. Soft lips pressed against my temple.
"Dean." She whispered it in my ear, her hand a warm weight on my shoulder, just above the old handprint scar. She traced its outline with one finger, then slid her hand lower, over my arm and across my chest to my nipple, which she gave a wicked flick. "Dean, honey."
I grunted, turning my face more firmly into the pillow. She had feather pillows, as soft and yielding as anything I'd ever felt.
Feathers. There was something about feathers. Feathers meant I was home.
She laughed, a soft snort through her nose that she always tried to smother. "Oh come on. What are you, Ben? It's time to get up."
My eyes came open and I stared down into the wide white and red expanse of a striped pillowcase. "Lisa?"
"You were expecting to wake up next to someone else?" She held up a hand. "Actually, no. I don't think I want to know."
"Lisa." I blinked blearily, propping myself up on my elbow so I could look around the room, but she'd shifted around in front of me, now, and blocked my view.
"That's it. Me Lisa. You Dean. Boy waiting to be fed and driven to school Sam."
I jerked. "What?"
"Ben? My son? Kinda short, thinks you're the second coming of awesome. This ringing any bells, big guy?"
I shook my head, sitting up and bringing my hands up to run through my hair. I was naked. I hadn't slept naked since. . . .
No. I had it there, but it went away. I blinked up at Lisa, standing above me in one of my blue button downs and nothing else. She held out a glass of water, eyebrows raised at me, waiting for me to catch up.
She was good like that. She always gave me the minute I needed to readjust.
"Sorry. I, uh. Had a really weird dream."
"Yeah?" She smiled. "Clowns or midgets?"
I frowned. "Wait, you stealing my lines, now?"
"Is that one yours? I could have sworn I stole it from Ben."
"Well, he must've gotten it from me." I couldn't remember ever saying it to him, but I must have. I could almost picture it, packing up my bag in a motel with flamingoes on the wall, Ben gaping after me, like after more than twenty years, he still couldn't believe the things that came out of my mouth.
That wasn't Ben, though. That was -- it was --
"Come on, then. Don't keep me waiting here, Dean."
I looked up. The light of the sun coming in through the window had turned the edges of Lisa's hair gold, silhouetting her body perfectly under the loose material of my shirt. It was like looking up at an angel.
Angels are watching over you.
I flinched, but Lisa didn't mind.
She always gave me time to catch up.
"Dean. Dean. Dean. Dean. Dean. Dean. Dean."
"What? Jesus!"
Ben stood at my elbow, looking up. "Will you take me driving today?"
"I -- what?"
We were in the kitchen now, though the light hadn't changed. Lisa looked up from where she stood at the stove, still dressed in my shirt. I looked down, hoping I'd at least managed to put on some shorts.
"You promised, Dad."
I looked down, and Ben's hair had gone floppy, hanging down into his eyes. I reached out to muss it up and he groaned, batting me away with one of his massive hands.
"You're not old enough to do that yet." I frowned again, shaking my head. "You were eight only a couple years ago."
"Yeah, well, I'm all grown up, now," Ben said. He leaned against the counter next to me, all elbows and angles in his black t-shirt.
I shook my head again. "No you're not. You're not. It hasn't been that long."
"Don't tease him, Dean," Lisa said. She set down her frying pan, filled with burnt bacon and runny, red eggs. "You know you're like a father to him."
I pulled back, the smell of the meat and smoke setting off an alarm in the back of my head. "No."
Ben's eyes teared up, and he was staring up at me again, head barely clearing the counter. "You don't love me?"
Fuck. "Jesus, kid, I didn't --" I ran my hand over my head. "Just, both of you, slow down a minute. My head's not -- I don't -- I'm lost, okay?"
Lisa put her hand on my arm. "It's okay, Dean. You're not lost. You're home."
Ben wrapped his arms around my waist in a hug and buried his face in my side. I stared down at him, then carefully set my hand between his shoulder blades. Lisa leaned in to kiss my cheek again.
"Now eat up, men," she said. "We've got training in thirty."
Sam came over after breakfast. He had his hair pulled back away from his face with a wide black headband, and wore a pink shirt.
"It's salmon, Dean," he said.
"Sam and Dean," I corrected.
"Not for a long time now, actually," he said, and he pushed past me to kiss Lisa on the cheek. "How far are you two along?"
"How -- what?" Why did I feel like I was always half a lap behind in this conversation?
"Five months," Lisa said, and she pressed her hand to her belly proudly. Sam whistled.
"Do you know what it is, yet?"
She shook her head. "Not yet. If it's a girl, we're going to name it Mary Ellen. If it's a boy, Garth." She leaned in to Sam, tilting her head up and shooting me a wicked grin as she whispered "Me, I'm hoping it's a yeti."
"Hot damn," Sam said, and he clapped me on the shoulder. "Maybe you'll luck out and get all three!"
"There's something weird here," I tried, holding up my hand to ask for a time out.
Sam looked over at Lisa, his brows raised. "Bad morning, huh?"
Lisa sighed, leaning back to counterbalance the wide curve of her stomach. "Worst we've had in a while."
Sam shook his head sadly, then pressed his hands against either side of my jaw, holding my head still so I had to look him in the eye. "It's okay. Your name is Dean. I'm Sam, and this is Lisa."
I jerked back, flailing my hand at his face to keep him from diving in for another try. "I know that, you jackass! I just -- she's pregnant! With a yeti!"
Lisa pouted. "We don't know if it's a yeti, yet."
"I'm sure it is," Sam said with a smile. "Monsters run in our family."
That was about enough for me. I turned and leaped off the front porch, running flat out across the lawn, nearly running over the garden gnome ambling up with the morning paper before I made it to the street and out into the searing red and white sand.
*
When my legs went out again, Anna was there, kneeling in front of me, her hands on my shoulders the only things holding me up.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I thought you'd like that one. It's okay, though, I've found another."
And the world exploded again before I could protest.
*
Ghostbusters was on, the scene where Bill Murray has an eating contest with the weird little green blob and Egon turns into a blue demon with a giant white pompadour. Ben sat on the floor at my feet, leaning his back against my legs while Lisa sprawled out across the couch, her feet propped in my lap. All three of us had shotguns. Ben was almost done stripping his.
"Not bad," Lisa said. "Your timing's getting better."
"I don't like this one," Ben said. "It's got too many little bits."
"Those little bits might save your life sometime," Sam told him from where he was sharpening knives at the coffee table. "If you get this down, I bet Dean will let you pick at next week's movie night."
"Will you?" Ben asked, looking up at me. I stared down, wondering why I was having so much trouble pulling in a full breath.
"How --" I shook my head sharply, setting the shotgun aside on one of Lisa's throw pillows. Lisa and Sam exchanged one of their 'he's slipping again' looks, and I swallowed the question. "Yeah, sure. Why don't you finish cleaning it up and you can show me how fast you can reassemble it?"
A knock came from the door, and Ben perked up. "It's Grandma and Granddad!" He bounced up, leaving all the little bits scattered across the floor, and rushed to the door. I leaned back in my seat, craning my neck to get at look at the door.
Mom and Dad came in, wearing heavy coats, loaded down with suitcases and packages. Mom made it through the door first and leaned over to scoop Ben into a big hug. Dad looked up and caught my eye over the back of the couch, flashing me a small, proud smile.
"He's getting big," he said.
"Yeah." I looked at where Mom was now pulling Lisa into just as big of a hug, then pulling back to admire her new pearl-handled Colt revolver. "Just wish he was mine."
"I know what you mean," Dad said. "I always felt the same way about your brother."
Fuck. "What?"
Dad blinked at me. "What what, son?"
"You just -- about Sam --"
"No I didn't." He turned around to pick Ben up into the air like he was no more than a sack of flour and the moment was lost. Lisa came up beside me, threading her arm around my lower back.
"Now we're just waiting on Bobby and Castiel, right?" she asked.
Castiel. A flash of pain and overwhelming guilt washed over me, followed by the smell of ozone and scorched trenchcoat. I frowned, turning my head to look Lisa over.
"How -- how do you know me?"
"What do you mean?"
"I had Cas wipe your memories. You and Ben. You shouldn't even know who I am."
Lisa scoffed. "Honey, even if Cas could do something like that, why would he? Then Ben and I wouldn't know anything about hunting at all. We'd be helpless."
"I know, I thought about all that, but you -- you'd been kidnapped. The demons used you against me." My breath started coming fast and hard, and the room swam. "I couldn't let them do that to you again. I had to -- I had to let you go. I couldn't leave you in danger."
"Dean, you're not making any sense."
"Why does a garden gnome deliver your paper?"
"Okay, really, you're worrying me, now." She grabbed my arm, her hand matching up perfectly with the scar Castiel had left. "Why don't you come sit down? I'll make you some coffee."
"None of this is real."
"Quick, Mom," Sam muttered. "Hide the silver."
I backed up until I ran into a wall. "No, I'm not -- it's not a djinn. I can't get out that way. I have to be more careful, this time."
"Dean?" Lisa stepped forward, her hand coming up. "Dean, look at me. Please, honey."
A door swung open beside me, and everyone looked over, letting out a chorus of "Cas!" like they were the cast of Cheers. Castiel stood in the doorway, looking wide-eyed at them. The edges of his trenchcoat were crisped.
"Dean," he said. "What are you doing here?"
"Jesus, man, how the hell should I know?"
"We need to go." He grabbed hold of my wrist, and I didn't pull away. "Sam's looking for you. I can't --" he flinched, shying away from something I couldn't see, then straightened. "I can't take you all the way out. I guided Sam in, but I'm nearing the end of my power."
I nodded, grabbing him in return. "Anna, it was Anna, she's out there in the desert, she keeps sending me here --"
"Dean." Castiel stared me down. Anna might have been the desert sand, but Castiel's eyes were its sky, and they pressed into me, holding me in place. "Anna is not real. Everything you're seeing here, they're just remnants, pieces of your own psyche. You must remember that."
"Are you real?"
Cas nodded. "I am, but not all of me will be. You have memories of me in here along with all the others."
I tried to pull away. "How do I know? How can I tell who's real?"
"I don't know." Cas looked around. The room and the door had faded, taking Lisa and Ben and Mom and Dad and Sam all with them, leaving us standing once more in the enormous desert. He checked the sky and the ground, scuffing his foot deep into the sand, then looked me over. "Your amulet."
I reached up, wrapping my fingers over it. It was warm in my grip. "You want me to find God?"
"No, Dean. This isn't your actual amulet, just as most of the people you've encountered are not your actual friends and enemies. It can represent anything you want it to. Does it feel warm now?"
I nodded. It was even hot now, warmed by more than just my grip.
"Good. It's responding to me. It'll help guide you to Sam."
"Wait." I grabbed for his arm, terror welling up in my stomach. "Aren't you coming with me?"
"I -- I can't." He was starting to blur around the edges, his trenchcoat swirling around him. "I'm not what I once was. It's taking most of my power to hold Sam's Lucifer at bay." He faded even further, but offered me a weak smile. "It'll be okay. You'll be fine."
"Cas, wait!" I tried to grab for him again, but he blew away through my fingers. "Cas!"
I was alone again, just me and the sand. The amulet went cold and I squeezed my eyes shut.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
I wondered if I'd ever be able to say that to his face.
*
The desert stretched out forever in every direction. I wondered how many people I'd met would believe I had this vast wasteland in my head.
Probably all of them.
I should have known that this wasn't Sam's mind I was wandering through. Sam's mind probably had some endless library stuffed full of all the facts he kept crammed in his head, ready to whip out just at the right moment to make me look like a total ass. Maybe it even had an alarm, some klaxon that went off blaring "DEAN WON'T KNOW THIS" with just enough warning for Sam to scurry through and dust off just the right fact to spout off in such a know-it-all tone.
Goddamn it was hot. And bright. I was thirsty and aching and apparently just delirious enough to imagine Sam's subconscious mind as a crazy librarian submarine captain. Did submarines have libraries? Where'd he get a klaxon if they didn't?
Fuck.
I had no idea which way to go. Every time I tried to pick, I got three steps and became convinced I was wrong. There were no landmarks here, not even my own footprints, just endless, eternal sand.
That was me. A big ass hunk of waste. Wasted potential, wasted time, wasted space. It wouldn't even matter if I didn't find a way out of here. I might as well just go back to that warehouse with Bela and Meg and the Rubys. My life -- my mind -- was an empty desert.
"Dammit all to hell. You idjit, get your ass up off the sand."
I looked up, having not even noticed when I fell. "Bobby?"
"You were expecting someone else?"
I shook my head. "No, I --" I swallowed. "You're not real."
"Yeah, yeah, I'm a construct of your damn fond memories of me or some such thing. A function of your brain power. Tell me, kid, what were you and your brother always coming to me for out there in the real world?"
"Advice?"
"Damn straight. So what do you think I'm gonna be able to provide in here in your noggin?"
My lips started to stretch into a pained, exhausted smile. "You know the way out."
"And I'll give it to you once you get your rear up off the ground."
"Dean!"
I'd nearly made it to my feet when the second voice rang out, echoing over the dunes like we were in a vast cavern of blue, white, and red rock instead of an empty desert. I turned to look, and if it hadn't been already, my mouth would have gone dry at the person striding over the next dune.
"Dad."
He broke into a run, feet kicking up tiny clouds of dust as he went. I couldn't move, my feet trying to melt into the sand itself. "Dad." It came out as a whisper, this time. I could hear Bobby shouting for my attention, but couldn't bring myself to turn away from my father as he barreled up, slowing only as he began to crest the dune I stood on, his hand coming up as if about to land on my shoulder.
"Dean." He smiled at me and shook his head, and it was as if I was lying on that hospital bed all over again, my father bending over me to give me his last words.
If you can't save Sam, you're going to have to kill him.
I reeled back as though I'd been slapped. Dad fisted his hand when I pulled away, drawing it back to his chest and nodding.
"I deserve that."
"Jesus, Dad." I felt like all the breath had been knocked from my lungs. "You deserve a hell of a lot more than that."
"I know, Dean. At the time I couldn't see another way out."
"You told me to kill him! My own brother! You said 'don't be scared' and then told me I'd have to murder the only family I had left!"
"And I was wrong. Wasn't the first time, either."
"Why --" I bit the words off and swallowed, desperately trying to wet my mouth in the baking heat of the desert. "Why are you here?"
"I want to make up for it. I'm going to get you out of here." Bobby cleared his throat, and Dad looked up, over my shoulder, and nodded. "Singer."
"John," said Bobby. "Nice that you finally want to lend a hand, but I got it from here."
Dad's expression darkened. "He was never yours, Bobby. No matter how much you wanted him to be."
"Done better by him than you did," Bobby said. I could feel him coming right up behind me, glaring at Dad. Something opened up deep in my chest that I'd locked away years ago.
"Guys," I started, twisting and stepping back to get out from between them. Dad moved in quick, filling the space with the same bulk and power I remembered from when I was small, when Dad was a vengeful hero, infallible and indestructible.
He hadn't been that in a long time.
Bobby straightened his shoulders, refusing to be cowed, his moustache twitching with barely suppressed rage. He didn't even look over at me when he spoke.
"Come on, Dean. The way out is over this way." He held out an arm, pointing back and to his left.
"Don't listen to him, Dean," Dad said. "We need to head that way." If Bobby's direction was north, Dad pointed southeast.
"The hell are you taking him that way?" Bobby growled. "We're trying to get him out, not dead."
"We don't have time to do this your way, Singer." Dad loomed over Bobby, arm still stretched out. "We're going to have to take some chances, here."
"Bein' an idiot ain't the same as takin' chances, John." And Bobby suddenly looked at me, his face softening as it did. "I steer you wrong yet, son?"
And then Dad was staring at me, too, though he'd never been one for emotional pleas. "Well, Dean? Which is it going to be?"
I stared from one to the other, my father to my mentor, and damn if it wasn't hard to keep straight any more which of them was which. Bobby and Dad stared back, mouths curved down in identical frowns. I stepped back, shaking my head. My foot hit something solid in the sand and I stumbled, my ribs twinging, and suddenly I was angry. I stood my ground, hands fisting at my sides.
"What the hell?!" I demanded. "I'm not choosing between the two of you! Jesus, what is this, some kind of crappy movie?" I stomped forward, hands coming up to push both of them back as I stormed between them. "Fuck that. I'm a fucking adult, and this is my head. I'll figure it out myself."
"Dean --" Dad started, and I cut him off with a wave of my hand.
"No, Dad. Sam and I have been on our own for awhile now. We may have fucked it up along the way, but dammit, we've done our best." I stared him in the face, knowing as I did that this wasn't my real father, that it was only my twisted memory of him, of a lifetime of following his orders without question. "I love you," I said. "But I haven't needed you for a long time. Which is probably a good thing, 'cause you were one fucked up son of a bitch."
Dad stared back, his frown twisting into the sad smile I'd seen in the cemetery in Wyoming. He nodded, then flickered and vanished in a juddering flash of white light.
"Atta boy," Bobby said, and I turned to him. "Now, let's get out of here, huh?"
I shook my head. "You've never been anything but good to me, Bobby," I said. "But Dad was right. I don't have time to play it safe, here. And I can't -- I can't always be waiting for you to back me up, anymore. I gotta let you go, too."
Bobby stared at me for a long moment, searching my face for some crack in my resolve. He nodded slowly. "Alright, then."
And he vanished as well. I let out a breath and nearly gagged, suddenly convinced I'd made a huge mistake. "Bobby?" I looked around me. "Dad?"
I waited for some sign that they hadn't left completely, that they were still lurking just out of sight, ready to catch me when I fucked this up.
All I found was sand.
My eyes ached. I ran my hand down my face, breathing in deep as I tried not to let that ache turn into full blown tears.
I'd thought I was done mourning Dad. That I could get past losing Bobby. But that wasn't how grief worked. I shut my eyes, swallowing down on the stone resting high in my throat.
"Thank you," I muttered, figuring it was about as close as I'd ever really get to saying "good-bye" to either of them. Then I opened my eyes again, picked a path that split the difference between the one Dad pointed out and the one Bobby wanted me to take, and I started walking.
*
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