they'll never catch us
first second third fourth
Percy Garris was a short rolypoly sort of man with a brown vest too tight across his gut, gray beard around a mouth stuffed with rotted teeth and chaw. A couple times a minute, he spat a plug at a target, said either dammy or bingo, depending.
They met him near the mines in Santa Cruz, where he was doing some business with the men off their shifts. He gave Sam and Dean a skeptical look, noting their frayed coats and low-heeled boots.
"So you want jobs," he stated plainly, squinting through a magnifier at some shiny bit of quartz. "You're from the U.S. of A and you are seeking after employment. Bingo. Well, you couldn't have picked a more out-of-the-way place in all of Bolivia, I'll tell you that."
He scribbled something on a tablet and passed it off to a young man named Jesús, turned to give them his full attention. Dean shifted his weight, one hand hooked on his gun belt. He didn't know how you were supposed to act when asking for a straight job.
"Now, ordinarily you've got to wait to work for Percy Garris. But this ain't ordinarily. Dammy."
Sam glanced at Dean, eyebrows tipped up. "You mean there are jobs."
"Yes there are jobs, there are lots of jobs, don't you want to know why?"
Sam got a sure-I'll-bite look on his face. "Yeah, why?
Garris spat brown. "Dammy. Because I cannot promise to pay you. Don't you wanna know why?"
"Okay, why?" Dean asked, taking his turn.
"On account of the payroll thieves, fellow citizens." Garris explained like they were maybe slow, hand gestures and everything. "You see, every mine around gets its payroll from La Paz. And every mine around gets its payroll held up. Some say it's the Bolivian bandits, some say it's the bandidos yanquis."
He'd come to stand near Dean, eyeing his weapon. "That's a fairly nice-lookin' piece. Can you hit anything?"
Dean looked at him, nonplussed. "Sometimes."
Garris nodded to himself, walked out away from the stall and pitched a plug of tobacco out about twenty feet. "Hit that," he said.
Dean went out to him, squinting at the plug blending in almost identical to the dirt. He measured the distance and brought his gun out in a neat little spin, showing off a little and he could feel Sam rolling his eyes behind him. This would be no problem, and then they would get their straight job and make the money for their ranch and melt easily into the scenery or whatever it was Sam wanted for them, and Dean lifted his weapon, sighted down his arm and fired, missing by a good six inches.
He stared in shock at the intact plug of tobacco, the skidded bullet trail in the dirt. Garris made a disapproving harrumph noise, spat and said, "Dammy." He turned away, shaking his head as he walked back towards the cantina. Dean watched him go feeling worthless, robbed of the only thing he could do well and he didn't even know why, and then Sam was saying loud:
"Hey Dean, hit this,"
making Garris and Dean both turn back to see him rear and whip a silver coin high and far into the air, and without thought Dean picked it cleanly out of the sky, a deafening ring echoing over them.
Dean nodded to himself, spun his gun back into the holster and shot Sam a grin. He turned to Garris, schooling his expression into one of unhurried confidence, eyebrows hiked slightly. Garris came back vaguely awed and trying to hide it, hands on his gut.
"Well, uh, considering that I'm desperate and you are just what I'm looking for, on top of which you stem from the U.S. of A., we start tomorrow morning."
He started away again, and Sam called, "You mean we got jobs?"
"Payroll guards. Bingo."
Sam and Dean went drinking that night, blew the last of their money on a room in a boarding house, hot water by the bucketful and a real bed. They tumbled each other across the sheets, clumsy and drunk-handed, and Sam was laughing so hard his face was the color of cherries, eyes screwed up and his mouth wide open. Dean was dumbstruck and unable to do anything but press himself full length against his brother and grind him down, rock into him steadily until he passed out, blissful and most of the way hard but he couldn't help it, just died a little bit right there because there could be no better moment; it was exactly what he wanted.
Sam woke him up around dawn, anyway, sucked him off as slow as a hallucination, and Dean never even got his eyes open until he'd finished and Sam had slid up his body looking for his turn. Dean couldn't do half as good, but Sam didn't seem to mind, hunching over him and whispering raggedly all the things he'd be doing to Dean if they weren't riding so far today.
It was a pretty good way to start the day, and then they napped for a little while longer, cleaned up and ate and they went to meet Garris.
The ride down the mountain was not far from idyllic, a masterfully designed day and the landscape unspooling around them verdant and seething with life. Garris yodeled 'Sweet Betsy from Pike,' taking special pleasure trilling on the hoodle dang hoodie eye doh, hoodle dang hoodie ay. Sam and Dean gauged the path ahead for possible ambushes until Garris called them morons and told them nobody was going to rob them going down the mountain, as they had no money going down the mountain.
They brushed it off, rolling their eyes at each other behind his back. Garris maybe held the most dangerous job in Bolivia, but he didn't know a fraction of what he ought to be afraid of.
La Paz was more like a real city than anything they'd seen so far, but they had no time to enjoy it, a full afternoon's ride back up the mountain to the first mine. The three of them ate in a cantina and the specialty of the house was still moving, but the beer was cold and that went a long way.
Coming back the way they'd come with the heavy leather sacks of silver money slung on the back of Garris's saddle, Dean got a creeping feeling in his gut, a sense of imminent violence that he'd developed through years of practice. He looked at Sam and Sam was looking back, face tight--he felt it too.
Garris was rambling on about Bolivian ways and being colorful, and Dean was just waiting for a half-second of space to break in and get him on his guard, when there was a brief sudden barrage of gunfire and red mushroomed on Garris's chest.
Sam shouted, and they all three rolled off their mounts, although only the Winchesters under their own power. Dean scrambled for some rocks, heard another burst of fire and one of the horses screaming, thumping headlong into the ground. He looked frantically for Sam and Sam was a little higher up, pressed into the rocks too. They exchanged quick flashing signals, four shots in the first assault and three in the second and it was at least three men, they concluded without a word spoken aloud.
Garris was bleeding out in the dirt, his hat knocked off and the shot horse struggling to rise on its forelegs nearby, collapsing in agony. The money bags had come off the horse with him and were lying mostly hidden by his body.
"Sam," he whispered urgently. "You see 'em? Can you get to 'em?"
Sam glanced down at him, shook his head. Dean wiped at his mouth with the side of his wrist, his chest hitching and crowded with hysterical laughter. Their first day of straight work ever, and look what had happened.
Dean cast about for anything that might help, some better cover maybe, and his eyes met those of a freakish-looking little monkey who tipped its head at him, its paw just like a hand curled around the branch. Dean experienced a moment of outraged bewilderment--what are we doing here--but he fought that off.
They had to get the hell away. Dean signaled to Sam and they made to run but shots cracked all around them and they scurried back to the rocks, next to each other now.
Dean took off his hat, slapped it on his knee. "Fuck this. Get me those payrolls, Sammy, would you."
Sam gave him a look. "You sure? They'll see."
"I really can't come up with anything I care less about, right now. Get me the goddamn money."
Sam exhaled fast, raised his hand and brought the money sliding up the hill to them. Two shots bit at the earth right around it, and one hit the silver itself, belling a high ting, and Dean could hear the sounds of astonishment and fear somewhere up to his left, the broken bits of a prayer.
Dean got his hands on the sacks, got to his feet and hurled them cartwheeling up the slope towards the bandits. Sam and Dean gave it a minute, and then hightailed it into the woods. They found the tracks of one of the horses that had spooked at the gunfire, and followed them to a creek where Garris's mount was drinking calmly as if nothing had happened and no man had been killed on its back ten minutes ago.
Dean unhooked the canteen from the saddle and knelt to fill it up, passing his wet hand over his face and hair, adrenaline pouring off him. He heard Sam pacing behind him, swearing low to himself.
"Cowardly sons of bitches, fuckin' hiding like that, no real man kills from cover," and Sam was just upset, Dean knew, shaken and feeling powerless despite all the things he could do. It had been awhile since they'd actually had conversations with any of the people they'd seen killed.
"Come drink some water and calm down," Dean told him, tried to make it an order, which had never really worked on Sam.
His brother stalked over to him, wrenched his hand in the collar of Dean's coat. "We're gettin' that money back."
"What?" Dean went to shrug him off but Sam didn't let go. "You're outta your head, Sammy, and this little going-straight experiment is over."
Sam shook his head hard, his jaw stubborn and set and Dean despaired absently, knowing that look on Sam's face and knowing the argument was already pretty much over.
"You heard Garris, those guys have been killing men on this path for three years running."
"You don't know it was the same guys," Dean said, at least going through the motions. "Maybe this was their first one."
"So what if it was? Garris is still dead, ain't he?" Sam's expression gave briefly, his mouth weak for a moment before he pulled it together, glaring down at his brother. "All right, Dean, lemme put it like this: a phantom traveler just killed a man up at the pass there. Let's go wipe the fucker out."
Sam was too smart for anyone's good sometimes. Dean gave him a baleful look and stood up, leading the horse and lashing it to a tree proximal to some grass. He went back to his brother still scowling but Sam put a hand on his shoulder and that helped some.
They tracked the bandits up the mountain, through the brush and heavily layered undergrowth, following a broken trail. They didn't talk, Sam holding his Colt and Garris's revolver, Dean holding his gun and the one Colt with the four demon-killing bullets shook out and replaced with regular ones. He really hoped it didn't turn into a firefight, not wanting to use the sixty-year-old Colt more than absolutely necessary. Fuckin' Sam and his irrefutable sense of justice.
The bandits, three of them with bandoliers sparkling in the sun, were clustered on their knees in a small clearing, bickering over the distribution of the money and paying no attention to their surroundings. Dean could only make out about one word in ten, they were talking so fast and rough, but he knew the tone, and the shifty cunning looks on their dirty faces, just the same as the villains back home.
They were able to take up position on the rise just above them, Dean just in front of Sam so that he'd take the first blow and give Sam time to respond. The sun was in his eyes, but he wasn't scared, really. People couldn't really scare him much anymore.
Sam said something sharply in Spanish, making their heads jerk up. Sam spoke again, level and stern, and Dean wasn't listening close enough to understand it, but he could read the bandits' faces pretty well.
The evident leader of the men answered Sam, his hands black with grime and shining with silver coins. Every one of them had his hand on a weapon, and Dean was getting a bad feeling in stomach.
"Deja el dinero y salga," Sam said, and Dean knew salga, at least, knew the bandits weren't doing anything like it.
The leader looked leery and malicious and kind of confused, a bad combination, and as he responded in a flat dull voice, his compatriots slowly got to their feet behind him, hands hovering over their weapons.
"It's not going well, Sam," Dean said without looking at him. He wasn't taking his eyes off these guys for a second.
"Don't you think I know that?" Sam said, sounding frustrated. He said again, louder, "¡Salga!," and then, "Please," which made the men's faces crease with bafflement, so Sam tried, "Por favor," and the leader repeated, "¿Por favor?" and then they were drawing on the Winchesters, three hands darting and Dean was motionless for a split second and one of them was just fast enough, just barely.
Dean dropped down into a crouch, and Sam cried out behind him, Sam was shot, and Dean didn't think, didn't have time. He put a hole in the hand of the leader of the gang, sparking off his weapon, and then there was a bare instant to recognize the overwhelming terror flooding the men's faces as they froze in place and that meant Sam was alive, still strong enough to hold them.
Dean stepped forward, plugged the leader in the chest, then again, and again, and again. The man toppled backwards, a gurgling truncated scream as he rolled down in a mess of blood and dust and winking silver coins. Glancing back at his brother, Dean found Sam on his knees, clutching the shoulder of his outstretched arm, his face dug deep with pain and exertion.
Snarling, Dean turned back on the two remaining men, raising both his guns and steadying the barrels directly between their eyes. The men were blank with horror, pale as paper with their eyes bugging out and their hands in bloodless fists, darting from Sam to Dean like they weren't sure who scared them more.
"Run," Dean said with his teeth bared, and they might not have known what that meant, but Sam let them go at that moment and they obeyed without hesitation anyway, crashing away through the trees.
Dean dropped both weapons. He was staring at the dead man in the yellow grass, watching the blood soak in and river downhill. Dean thought for a second about how he'd never killed someone who was totally human at the time. It was a man lying there, nothing more.
He turned back to his brother, breathing out, "Sammy," and coming up to crouch beside him, pressing his hand over Sam's own on his shoulder. "Are you okay?"
Sam was white-lipped, gouged creases at the corners of his eyes. He nodded jerkily, but his hand was covered in red. Dean pulled him up, supported him when he teetered.
"C'mon, let's get you back to that creek and I'll get the bullet out." Dean's voice was shaking, not caring if Sam could hear.
Sam stumbled, strength sapping out of him, and he leaned hard on Dean, whining under his breath from the pain. Dean grabbed the money up, babbling at his brother, it's okay not much farther you're doin' fine, and concentrated on keeping Sam upright, trying not to replay what had just happened.
"Never, never done that before," Sam managed to say, kinda wheezing.
"Keep quiet, Sam, we're real close now."
Sam banged his head off Dean's shoulder, losing his hat. "Just held him so you could kill him, never ever used it like that before."
Dean couldn't swallow, couldn't breathe. "Shut up, please," he begged, hauling his brother along and slamming off trees.
"Don' wanna go straight if it's people we have to kill," Sam mumbled into Dean's back, and Dean nodded, blinking fast because his eyes ached and he thought he might be about to cry.
"It's okay," Dean told him, probably lying but who could blame him, and then, "We'll think of something," which was something he'd said to his brother a hundred times and it had always been true before. As they came into view of the water, waiting to wash the blood off their hands, Dean thought hopelessly that he would trade all the silver on his back in a heartbeat if they would just be given one more chance to get out.
*
The two bandits that had survived were named Beto and Pablo, and they sprinted all the way down the mountain, guns banging on their hips, heads full of panic and awe. There was a cantina where they were known, where a man who worked in the mines met to tell them when the payrolls were due, and they fell in through the door hanging on each other and stuttering through their story.
They said that there had been a sorcerer up at the pass. A foot taller than a normal man with slitted marble eyes like a caiman, he had lifted his hand and denied gravity. He had lifted his hand and frozen time. The other man, the monster's first, had been as any other, scarred up and plainly mortal without that blaze of vicious energy around him, but he surely must have sold his soul and all human decency to partner with such a thing, and he had slaughtered Guillermo without the slightest pause.
Beto and Pablo spoke with genuine fear still rioting in their faces and voices, and they were believed because they were not drunk, because strange things happened sometimes, sometimes evil walked the earth in unanticipated forms and anyone who'd spent any time at all in the jungle could attest to that.
By nightfall there were thirty men listening to the two bandits. Other people soon had their own stories about the pair of tall Americans, so recently arrived but it was quickly learned that three farms they'd passed had gotten blight, and a man had lost six llamas to some unknown infection that had passed to his son against all the mercies of nature and now the boy was in the ground by his father's hand, and who was going to answer for that?
By noon the next day, their numbers were up to fifty, outlaws and respectable men both spilling out of the cantina onto the baked dirt courtyard, honing their machetes and cleaning their arms to gleam in the blinding light. In everything but dress, they looked for all the world like a small company of soldiers, readying for their next assault.
They sent lookouts to watch the path down from the mountains. They picked positions, filled their pockets with ammunition, making barbaric promises for what they would do when the demon and his man rode into town.
If Sam and Dean had known about any of this, they would have done things a lot differently.
*
The bullet came out of Sam's shoulder excruciatingly slow, and he clenched his teeth on Dean's gun belt so hard the tendons in his neck stood out flushed and thick, doing his best to muffle his moans but a few snuck out all throttled and warped. Sam was sweating, jerking, and Dean couldn't get a grip. He was kneeling on Sam's chest at the edge of the creek, digging the tip of his knife into the hole in his brother's shoulder, and he couldn't, he had to stop, had to fall off with a splash and get sick in the water.
He got it out eventually. He got Sam stitched up and cleaned and bandaged, fed him sips of whiskey until his eyes were muddy and unfocused. Dean wanted to get them off this fucking mountain, find a town and a room and a bed with white sheets for Sam, see if any of those cruddy little plaza stalls sold morphine. But Sam was passing out fast and so Dean got him wrapped in a blanket and tucked up against the base of a tree, settled him in for the night.
It was just early evening and Dean wasn't going to sleep. He laid a small circle of salt around his brother, tiny island like a fingerprint on the ocean, and went to find the other horse. He checked Garris's body while he was there and found that his pocket watch had a thumb-sized photograph fit into it, a pretty Spanish woman in a dress forty years out of fashion. Dean took the watch and the half-finished pack of tobacco, brought the horse back and settled cross-legged next to Sam. He counted the payroll money, making the coins clack and sing against each other. He watched his brother, Sam all hunched up with hurt lines written across his face.
Dean had a quick stab of that disquieting feeling again, that untethered odyssean sense of being half a world away from the place where he was born. He swallowed against it, forced it back. He had to remember, home was a small fire on the open land; home was the man still beside him.
Sam slept for a dozen hours at least, prodded awake by Dean to have some more whiskey every time he started moaning in his sleep. Sam blinked, found Dean's face in the murk and said something to him in Spanish, and Dean murmured, "Yeah, yeah, you're exactly right," hand cupped around the base of Sam's head levering him up to drink.
In the morning Sam was moaning more about his headache than anything else, still kinda drunk and moving stiff and sore. He pretended like he was too out of it to talk, but Dean thought it was probably just an act.
They made their way down the mountain gingerly, like their horses' hooves had turned to glass. Dean let Sam ride in front because he needed to keep an eye on him, make sure he didn't slip into unconsciousness and out of the saddle. Sam was slumped, riding with his shoulders in a broken tired curve and favoring his left side, and he only growled when Dean asked him if he was all right.
Coming into the foothills, Dean rode up abreast with his brother, angling looks at him from under his hat brim. Sam's mouth was twisted at the edges, his knuckles tight white stones.
"He didn't outdraw me," Dean said.
Sam twitched, looked over at Dean with molasses-slow surprise. "What?"
"Guy back there. I beat him on the draw."
Sam mulled over that. "Think my shoulder would beg to differ."
"I did." Dean wasn't defensive about it, honestly more like sad. "Coulda killed him before he touched the trigger, but I, I, I don't know what it was, I just didn't for a second."
Dean glanced at Sam, rubbing the back of his neck and kinda shrugging. He was trying to forget the sounds Sam had made when Dean had had a knife in his shoulder. He remembered that moment, weapons in both hands and seeing the men reach and doing nothing, less than an eyeblink worth of time but still enough.
"Like missing that plug for Garris," Dean continued, his voice hoarse but he blamed the trail dust. "I don't know, man, maybe I'm losing it."
Sam snorted, spat. "Fat chance a that."
Dean glowered, wishing Sam would take him seriously. "How'd you explain it, then?"
"You missed the plug because you've never actually had to stand still and prove that you're a good shot to someone. You missed because you were calm; you know your eye's better the worse the adrenaline."
It sounded pretty good, though Sam was nothing like unbiased. Dean had overheard him bragging to strangers that his brother could outshoot a firing squad, which was probably how most of the stories about him got started up. Dean could appreciate the impulse, always three or four drinks in when he started wanting to tell people about how Sam was magic.
Dean made an inconclusive noise, a kinda acknowledging grunt that meant Sam's ideas were still under review but showing merit, and asked, "So what about the bandit, then?"
He should have just let it be, and Dean cursed himself as Sam stayed quiet for a moment. He knew what Sam was going to say; it felt like anyone on the planet could have been dropped into this moment and still known what Sam was going to say.
"He was a person, Dean. You let him reach because. He was just a guy."
Dean's stomach hiked and roiled, and he nodded foolishly, eyes locked on the steady roofs of the town below. He didn't feel any better and he didn't know what to say next.
Sam saved him from it, saying wearily, "So, no more going straight."
"Agreed."
"What, then?"
"Just the face, Sammy."
"You aren't, you know."
Something steely in Sam's tone and Dean looked over, found Sam looking back, color ripe on his cheeks, typical look of irritated affection on his face.
"You like to play like I'm the smart one," Sam told him. "But this whole thing, everything we do, it's you that keeps it going, not me."
Dean shook his head, feeling an instinctive refusal. "I just go where you go, that's all."
"Nah." Sam smiled, pressed his fingers lightly against the wound in his shoulder, testing it. "That's backwards, man. I been following you around my whole life."
"Jesus, no wonder we only ever go in circles."
Dean watched Sam smirking, his hand pallid against the rust-red stains on his shirt. Sam's skin was still a sallow ashen color, still in pain in ways that he would prefer not to let Dean see.
"The next place we go," Sam said, "we'll work on traveling in just one direction."
"Where's that?" Dean asked, a jumping feeling in his chest at the thought of all the other oceans they had left to cross.
Sam shrugged carefully with his good shoulder. He was mostly revived now, straighter in the saddle and casing the beautiful day.
"I don't know, Argentina or Chile, maybe? Maybe Australia."
"Australia?" Dean half-laughed; it sounded almost made-up the way Sam said it.
"Sure. They speak English there, so we wouldn't be foreigners. They got horses in Australia, hell, they got thousands of miles of land we can hide out in. Good climate, nice beaches. We'll go see what kinda monsters they got way down there, see who needs saving."
Dean thought about Bobby's leather-colored globe and how Australia had been so far south it almost seemed in danger of falling off the edge. He saw it in his mind as low rolling hills, linksland as green as the Amazon jungle, the ocean wide open, so blue there was no telling it from the sky.
"It's a long way, though, isn't it," Dean said just by rote, heard Sam blow out a breath.
"Ah, everything's gotta be perfect with you."
Grinning at nothing, Dean nickered his horse ahead, taking point again now that Sam was in a better state to watch his own back. He poured some water from the canteen into his hat, the sun at its zenith, cool trails eking down his neck and seeping into his shirt.
They rode into town blind and innocent as children, hundreds of eyes on them from behind the chipped walls.
There was a boy of maybe fourteen years old loitering in the courtyard outside the cantina, a frightened look on his face that stuck even when Dean tried to joke around by making his Spanish particularly bad, grinning all big and dumb and American. The boy took their horses and stuttered something that Dean didn't quite get, but Sam was saying, "Bien, gracias," so he figured it was all right.
Sam nudged him as they walked up to the cantina, and Dean turned, got an eyeful of white sunlight as Sam said:
"And I'll tell you what else-"
and then Dean was shot in the back.
It felt like a punch at first, solid jab just under his shoulder blade, and Dean was shoved forward, tripping almost off his feet. Then agony burst rich and full all through him, and he choked, half-bent over with his legs not working, his hands gone dead.
Sam was hollering his name, wild edge to it. He was taking hold of Dean and hauling him bodily somewhere and Dean couldn't see, his vision whited out by sun and dust and pain. Cracks all around them like ladder rungs snapping, a dim ferocious roar in the background and Dean's well-trained mind provided him with the make and model of the rifles and revolvers being fired before he quite registered the noise as gunshots.
He shook his eyes clear and latched onto Sam's shirt, each breath searing like acid. He could feel the bullet in his back, metal still white-hot cooking his flesh.
Then Sam cried out and his leg buckled and gave, almost pitching them both to the ground, he was shot, again, and Dean's heart jolted so hard against his ribs that it bruised. He wrenched up strength from somewhere and took up his brother's weight, dragging both of them hobbling and falling into the blessed shadow of the cantina.
Dean slammed down on his shoulder and anguish ripped through him. Sam was a little ways away, struggling up and screaming at someone across the room, "Get out get the fuck out right now," with feral power shredding his voice.
Dean forced his head up to see Sam thrusting his hand out, every muscle strung with tormented effort, and across the room a table flew massive and bulky through the air, crushing into two of the men standing there with their guns drawn and sending all six of them scurrying out the back patio, their expressions cast back in abhorrence.
Sam collapsed on the floor, sucking in huge wrecking gasps. Dean tried to push himself up and couldn't, the bullet an intractable weight. He coughed, face jammed against the stamped-smooth floor, and there was red mixing in with the dirt now.
"Dean," Sam moaned, and Dean tried to reach for him but it hurt so badly, made him half-yell and Sam was mumbling, "No, no, stay, don' move," and crawling close to him.
Sam tipped him carefully on his back, Dean's teeth slicing into the inside of his lip, and then Sam's hands were all over his face, his throat. Sam was crying, and Dean got a hand fisted in his brother's shirt, gasping at him.
"Dean, Dean, you're okay, it's all right," Sam said, all scored and jagged. His rough fingers scuffed hard under Dean's jaw.
"Yeah," Dean managed, tasting blood. "Sam, you, did you get-"
Sam shook his head, but said, "Just my leg, it's no problem."
"Jesus, Sammy," and Dean tried to sit up, see what kind of damage his idiot brother had managed to incur, but Sam held him down. His mouth was like a wire, his eyes bigger than Dean could ever remember, swimming at him.
"Just stay there, Dean, please."
Sam slid away, dragging his leg behind him and Dean could see it, the blood soaking his pants around a wound in his lower thigh. The stitches at his shoulder were open again too, wet crimson re-dyeing his shirt, and Dean wanted to say something about how soon Sam's clothes would match perfectly, but he didn't because he was afraid he'd break down entirely.
Breathing raggedly and unsteady, stifling most of his groans, Sam slumped against the wall, hands cupped carefully around his leg. He hissed, tried to breathe out slow.
"Sam," Dean said in a croak. "Why is this happening again?"
Sam tipped his head back on the wall, his long throat dirty-brown and streaked with sweat. Dean could see the dangerous flutter of his pulse in his throat.
"It's not demons," Sam told him. "They wouldn't have run."
"We, we haven't done anything," Dean said, his voice breaking. "What have we done?"
The pain in his back was leveling, a crippling riptide instead of a tidal wave, and he wedged an elbow under himself, shoved up despite Sam saying his name half-desperate. Dean pulled himself to sit against the wall next to his brother, canting onto him because he couldn't brace his back. Sam's hand fumbled for his knee and his side, reaching up to gracelessly palm across his face.
"'s okay, Dean, it's gonna be okay."
"Sam." Dean had his face hidden in Sam's shoulder, reaching to curl his hand around his brother's neck. He could feel Sam's heart racing, his skin too hot. "Can you get us out?"
Sam's chest hitched under him, a terrified thrum low in his throat. "I. Yes."
Dean pushed up, his face contorted. He got a look at Sam's eyes, brilliant and white with pain. His muscles were shivering under Dean's hands.
"You can't."
Lines of metal showed up in Sam's expression. He glared at his brother, both hands cradling Dean's head and neither of them was talking about that.
"I can," Sam insisted. "I can hold 'em off long enough for us to get to the horses, at least. Long as it's the last thing I have to do, I can do it."
Dean shook his head, coughing weakly against his hand and it speckled red and Sam's face became stricken. Dean thought it was probably a pretty good bet that he was dying.
"You don't even know how many are out there."
Sam swept his thumbs along Dean's cheekbones, tear tracks cut clear down his face. He looked manic, power burring in him and Dean wanted so badly to believe that it could be enough.
"I think the six in here were the bulk of it," Sam told him, dead certain. "Maybe three or four left out there to drive us inside so they could finish us off in close quarters."
Dean clutched at Sam's wrist, trying to remember how many individual weapons he'd heard discharged out there, but it was all clamor and din in his memory, the drill of the bullet, Sam crying out. He squeezed his eyes shut, felt a single tear burn down his cheek. Sam wiped it away, pressed his mouth to the edge of Dean's, pleading to him, swearing:
"I can take ten, Dean, I can get us out."
Dean nodded without opening his eyes, and then turned away from Sam, keening in pain and spitting a mouthful of blood onto the ground. He felt dizzy, drunk from it, the slug lodged very close to his heart.
He slumped back on his brother.
"Okay, Sammy, I believe you, I know you can."
Dean kept his eyes closed. Sam wouldn't be able to tell he was lying if his eyes were closed.
Dean's nerves weren't really working, his fingers thick and numb around the Colt, so Sam took his brother's hand in both of his and used his handkerchief to tie the gun to Dean's hand. Sam rested his forehead against Dean's as he worked, breathing unevenly and biting his lip.
There were things that Dean should have said. He stared at his brother's intent face and thought of all the standards and everything he had planned for this moment. It was always going to come down to this, to dirt and blood, and there was a proper epitaph somewhere, the farewell this whole catastrophe truly deserved, but it wasn't for Dean to say. No matter what Sam thought, Dean had never been the smart one.
So Dean didn't mention it. Sam pulled himself to his feet using the wall and pulled Dean up after him, and they leaned there catching their breath, looking at each other and Sam kinda smiled, so Dean was obliged to smile back. Dean could feel his pulse start to go shocky and fitful and he didn't mention that either.
"Soon as we get to the horses-" Sam started to say, then stopped. He lifted his hand to Dean's face, his throat ducking as he swallowed. Sam's face was heartbroken and alight, glittering with dismay, and Dean knew that he wasn't fooling him at all, not for a second. Dean had to laugh, sagging into his brother's arms.
"Ride like the devil's chasing," Dean mumbled into Sam's throat, and Sam made a sound that was more sob than laugh, fingers carding hard through Dean's hair.
Sam pulled Dean back, wiped the blood off his mouth, and kissed him. Dean kissed him back, and wished that it could happen now, just like this, the two of them holding each other up against the wall, this perfect quiet moment that they'd found.
He got one more look at his brother, one more chance to love him like crazy, as Sam sidled up to the door and swiped his forearm across his face. The sunlight fell in huge chunks, packed with clouds of dust thick as cotton, and Dean saw the light angled across Sam, drawing his planes into sharp relief and making him glow all over.
It seemed true then, at that moment. Dean's vision was graying in and out and he couldn't feel the gun bound to his hand, and in spite of it all his faith came flooding back, staggering him. Sam was lit up gold and Dean believed him, believed him with everything and all he had. There were only ten men out there and Sam could take them. Sam could do anything.
Sam looked over at him, gave him a reckless grin that unlocked some last small piece of Dean, opened him up all the way for the very first time, and then together they ran through the door, out into the pure white light of day.
THE END
Extensive endnotes, attributions, and that rambling that I love so well:
This is what Paul Newman wants you to know about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: "It's a love affair between two men. The girl is incidental."
Like ninety percent of their problems in that movie would be solved if they'd just split up, and the idea never even occurs to them.
So. Basically I have been wanting to write Butch and Sundance slash since before I knew what slash was. Fandom's a magical thing, kids.
And, you know, if the last one was Bruce's fault, this one is William Goldman's. He is pretty much my favorite writer, which is interesting because a) he's really more a screenwriting guru than novelist (Butch and Sundance, The Princess Bride (book and movie), Marathon Man (book and movie), All the President's Men, Maverick, Chaplin, Misery, I could go on), and b) most of his novels have been out of print as long as I've been alive. I am happy to say that I have read them all, though, thanks to a lifelong search of every used bookstore I ever went into (that is like a whole city made up entirely of used bookstores), and my older bro, who found me the very last unacquired one on eBay for Christmas a couple years ago. Anyway, I love him, almost dangerously so, always have. I wanna write just like him when I grow up.
The whole thing is ripped off the film, obviously, but various lines were directly taken from either the published screenplay I have or the movie itself (there are superficial differences between the two, and [brackets] are from the screenplay too). Mostly during the Superposse sequence, because it is nothing but fantastic lines.
The Hole in the Wall Gang, led by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, are all dead now . . . but once they ruled the West!
MACON: You can die. You can both die--no one's immune.
BUTCH: Boy, you know, every time I see Hole-in-the-Wall again it's like seein' it fresh, for the very first time. And whenever that happens I keep askin' myself the same question: how can I be so damn stupid as to keep comin' back here?
BUTCH: Not till Harvey and me get the rules straightened out.
LOGAN: Rules? In a knife fight? No rules.
[Butch delivers the most aesthetically exquisite kick in the balls in the history of modern American cinema.]
BUTCH: You know when I was a kid I always thought I was going to grow up to be a hero.
SUNDANCE: Well, it's too late now.
BUTCH: What'd you say something like that for? You didn't have to say something like that.
SALESMAN: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, friends and enemies: meet the future!
MAN: Future what?
SALESMAN: The future mode of transportation for this weary western world. The horse is dead!
BUTCH: I think we lost 'em. Do you think we lost 'em?
SUNDANCE: No.
BUTCH: Neither do I.
BUTCH: How long you figure we been watching?
SUNDANCE: Oh, awhile.
BUTCH: How long till you figure they're not after us?
SUNDANCE: Awhile longer.
BUTCH: How come you're so talkative?
SUNDANCE: Just naturally blabby, I guess.
BUTCH: Torches, you think?
SUNDANCE: Maybe. Maybe lanterns.
BUTCH: That's our trail they're following.
SUNDANCE: Dead on it.
BUTCH: I couldn't do that. Could you do that? How can they do that?
SUNDANCE: You're the brains, Butch, you'll think of something.
BUTCH: Well, that's a load off my mind.
BUTCH: We'll jump!
SUNDANCE: Like hell we will.
BUTCH: No, it'll be okay. Just so it's deep enough we don't get squished to death--they'll never follow us.
SUNDANCE: How do you know?
BUTCH: Would you make that jump if you didn't have to?
SUNDANCE: I have to, and I'm not gonna.
. . . .
BUTCH: I'll jump first.
SUNDANCE: No.
BUTCH: Okay, you jump first.
SUNDANCE: No I said!
BUTCH: What'sa matter with you?
SUNDANCE: I CAN'T SWIM!
BUTCH: Are you crazy? The fall'll probably kill ya!
SUNDANCE: Got enough to feed us?
ETTA: Don't you know I do? . . . They said you were dead-
SUNDANCE: Don't make a big thing out of it.
[Sundance watching as Etta moves away.]
No--make a big thing out of it.
[Etta starting to whirl toward him but before the move is half-done he has her and she completes the spin with his arms already around her, and it's dark and they don't embrace for long, but still, we can see it: they care about each other. They care.]
BUTCH: All of Bolivia can't look like this.
SUNDANCE: How do you know? This might be the garden spot of the whole country. People may travel hundreds of miles just to get to this spot where we're standing now.
BUTCH: Boy, a few dark clouds on your horizon and you just go all to pieces, don't ya?
***The entire first scene with Percy Garris is substantively identical to the movie, because Percy Garris is just that awesome.
GARRIS: Morons. I've got morons on my team. Nobody is going to rob us going down the mountain. We have got no money going down the mountain.
GARRIS: You got to relax, you fellas. You got to get used to Bolivian ways. You got to go easy--dammy--like I do. Of course you probably think I'm crazy, but I'm not--bingo--I'm colorful. That's what happens when you live for ten years alone in Bolivia. You get colorful. [And as a sudden unexpected blast of gunfire starts--Butch and Sandance and Garris rolling off their mules.]
SUNDANCE: Australia's no better than here.
BUTCH: Ah, shows what you know.
SUNDANCE: Name me one thing, one thing-
BUTCH: They speak English in Australia.
SUNDANCE: They do?
BUTCH: That's right, smart guy, so we wouldn't be foreigners. They got horses in Australia, hell, they got thousands of miles to hide out in. Good climate, nice beaches. You could learn to swim.
SUNDANCE: Oh, swimming . . . isn't important.
. . .
SUNDANCE: It's a long way, though, isn't it?
BUTCH: Ah, everything's gotta be perfect with you.
And the title comes from Sheriff Bledsoe's speech in the movie which I really wanted Bobby to deliver or paraphrase in some way, but eh, it didn't really fit. Here 'tis:
BLEDSOE: There's something out there that scares ya, huh? Well, it's too late. You should have let yourself get killed a long time ago while you had the chance. See, you may be the biggest thing ever to hit this area, but you're still two-bit outlaws. I never met a soul more affable than you, Butch, or faster than the Kid, but you're still nothing but two-bit outlaws on the dodge. It's over--don't you get that? Your times is over and you're gonna die bloody and all you can do is choose where. I'm sorry, I'm gettin mean in my old age. C'mon, shut me up, Sundance.
This is apropos of mostly nothing, because it never made it into the film but it is in the screenplay right after Garris is killed and it kinda ruins me:
SUNDANCE: Butch . . .
BUTCH: [He is trying desperately to locate where the firing is coming from.] What?
SUNDANCE: Butch.
BUTCH: I'm right beside you-
[Suddenly Sundance hits him on the back.]
Hey-
[As Sundance hits him again-]
Cut it out!
SUNDANCE: [Turning, we see his face now--he is terribly moved.]
What are we doing here?
[Butch says nothing.]
You gotta tell me--I gotta know--what are we doing?--I'm not sure anymore--are we outlaws?--you're smart Butch so you tell me--
BUTCH: [And now he is moved too.]
We're outlaws. Outlaws, I don't know why. 'Cause we're good at it. I been one since I was fifteen and my wife left me on account of it and she took our kids on account of it and I'm not sure anymore either.
SUNDANCE: You had a family? I didn't know that.
[Butch. Close-up. He says nothing.]
SUNDANCE: Let's find Garris and get the hell out of here.
The last 26,000 words of it were written in one week and I was sorta delirious by the end, so apologies for some unevenness there.
No one is more against deathfic than me, by the way, but the reason it's one of the greatest movies ever is the ending. Bandaging each other up and Australia and "for a moment there I thought we were in trouble." Every single time, that goddamn ending just kills me.
And finalmente, did I order the DVD from Netflix, report it as having never arrived, and keep it running on mute in the background the entire time the story was being written? *cough* Maybe. It's thievery with the best of intentions, people. And if they'd just pay me what they're spending to make me stop robbin' 'em, I'd stop robbin' 'em.
goddamn i love that movie.