Crusaders 5/7
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Samuel was quiet and thoughtful for most of the afternoon’s journey, and Dean thought he knew the reason but could not be sure and did not like to ask in company with the others. So while they made ready to sleep that night, Dean asked softly, “What troubles thee, brother?”
Samuel sighed. “This notion of changing history-sooth, the fact that we are even here. I would not question an angel, but... I fear making the wrong choice, making the outcome worse. They cannot tell us too much, that is plain, and it is wise, but....”
“Wouldst fain know in sooth that the case is too hard to do otherwise.”
“Just so.”
Dean nodded; it was indeed as he had thought. “As would I. Perchance Castiel would show us more.”
“Show? As in....”
“A dream. Naught of import, just....”
“A chance to see the men they know. Naught but a glimpse.”
“Aye.”
Samuel nodded thoughtfully. “Aye. Aye, that would be a boon worth the asking.”
“Come, then.”
“What, now?”
“Shalt not sleep else,” Dean noted. “And should there be more slavers about, or Turks, shalt have need of rest this night.”
Samuel huffed but followed Dean toward Castiel, who had offered to stand the watch while Gabriel went to scout ahead.
Castiel looked at them with his head tilted to one side slightly in question. “Samuel, Dean. Can I help you?”
Dean took the lead. “Castiel... our namesakes. You said you knew them.”
Castiel nodded. “I am proud to call them my friends.”
Dean glanced at Samuel once more and, at his nod, said, “We would fain see them.”
Castiel frowned. “Dean... I am weakened. I do not have the power to send you forward so far.”
“No, no,” Samuel said quickly. “We seek but a vision, not to meet them face to face.”
The angel’s face cleared. “Yes. That I can do. Lie down.”
The brothers did so, and Castiel stretched forth his hands and touched each of them on the forehead, sending them at once into a deep sleep.
When Dean became aware of his dream, he seemed to be sitting on a cushioned settle covered in leather, and the settle was moving. Samuel sat beside him, and in front of them was another settle where sat two men-and though he did not often get the chance to use a looking-glass, Dean could tell at once which man had been named for him and which for Samuel.
They were different, of course, and not simply because they looked closer to 30 and 26 than to 26 and 22. Both had shorn their beards; his namesake had cut his hair quite short and applied some kind of grease to make it stand on end, and Samuel’s namesake was not tonsured and seemed loath to cut his hair at all. He also seemed more muscled than Samuel, perchance because of age or choice of trade. The green of the namesakes’ eyes tended more toward hazel, and such birthmarks and scars as Dean could see were in different places. Yet however great the gulf of time between the two pairs of brothers, the younger were still very like the older.
Once Dean got over that shock, he finally concluded that they were seated in some sort of coach or wain that had windows fitted with glass, though he could see no horse ahead of them. And somehow he fancied he heard music, though of a different kind from the ballads he knew. The melody was strange, and the instrument he could hear accompanying the voices was of a different timbre from the stringed instruments of his day. The words, too, made little sense:
Because I’m easy come, easy go,
Little high, little low,
Any way the wind blows
Doesn’t really matter to me,
To me….
As the song went on, Dean took a closer look at the coach in which they were riding. The doors were lined with cushioned leather like the two settles, and each had an armrest with a handhold and a small metal compartment that, when opened, smelled of some acrid kind of ash. The one on Samuel’s side held a small green figure of a man holding a weapon of some kind. The roof and the floor both seemed to be covered in some kind of cloth, and there was a round object in the middle of the ceiling that looked like it might be a lantern. A mirror was affixed to the front piece of glass to let Young Dean, who seemed to be driving, see behind the coach, and another mirror stood out from each side for the same purpose. There were signs of age here and there, but on the whole, the coach seemed well tended. And a quick tap on the window nearest him showed that, indeed, it was fitted with real glass.
It must have cost a great deal, Dean concluded. His offspring must be very wealthy indeed.
He had just leaned forward to try to find the source of the lights that shone on the namesakes’ faces, however, when a new noise-there was no other word for it-entered the song, a screeching sound that changed like a plucked lute but was not nearly as pleasant. Dean sat back quickly, stunned... but Young Dean nodded his head in time with the beat as if he enjoyed it!
It was good for all concerned that Young Samuel chose that moment to point to a spot in the distance and say, “There.”
Young Dean nodded, and the coach slowed... and slowed... and slowed until it came to a stop at the side of the road. Dean had not known that they were moving so fast. Then Young Dean turned a key, and everything stopped-the music, the rumbling noise that he had first thought had come from the coach wheels; even the lights inside and the lanterns outside went out. The namesakes turned at the same time, opened their coach doors, and stepped out, leaving Dean and Samuel inside staring at each other in amazement.
“What the blazes is this thing?!” Samuel finally whispered.
“Blessed if I know,” Dean whispered back. “But let us follow.” It took a moment to find the lever to open the door, but open it he did, noting the creak of the metal hinges as the door swung wide.
And the ground was much closer than he had expected. It was good that he looked down before stepping out, or he might have stumbled. Samuel chose to slide across to Dean’s door and step out after him, then ventured a few steps further to look at the road, which seemed to be paved with gravel and pitch and bore painted lines, perchance to prevent passing wains from crowding one another. On closing the door, Dean marked the strange shape of the coach, which was built wholly of metal (blacked steel, unless he missed his guess), and the fact that there seemed to be no horse at all to pull it.
How very odd. Dean could only trust that it was driven by some machine not known in his own day rather than by magic. After all, if they could afford real glass for the windows, they could probably afford some kind of clockwork to make it go. And it would account for the rumbling noise.
The namesakes were stretching their backs and legs, which gave Dean a good chance to look at them and their clothes. Their boots were strange, with thicker soles and more rounded toes than his own, and their long trousers were of a coarse, heavy woven cloth that appeared to be dyed with indigo. Young Dean wore two short tunics-they might better be called shirts-and a kind of leather overgarment that seemed a bit too big for him; Young Samuel wore but one short tunic, it seemed, but his overgarment was of thick cloth and had an attached hood. And how tall they both were! Dean and Samuel were hardly short by the standards of their day, but Young Dean was even taller than Samuel, and Young Samuel was practically a giant.
Taking no notice of Dean and Samuel, Young Dean looked around then at the open field and up at the cloudless sky and nodded once. “Good choice, Sammy.”
“Nice out,” Young Samuel said. “Good night for it.”
Dean risked a glance upward. The stars were... ones he knew, but in completely different places in the sky. Given the location of Pegasus, he believed the time of year to be mid-October, but the rest baffled him.
“We are far to the west of England, I deem,” Samuel finally murmured, “and not a little south. See thou, the Pole Star stands nearer the northern horizon.” He pointed, and Dean saw what he meant; the Pole Star was roughly where they might have expected the third star of the Little Bear’s tail.
“Passing strange,” Dean murmured back. “Think thou that we are in Vinland?”
“I know not, but so far as I have heard, the Danes said naught of plains such as this. Mayhap this land is beyond even the Skrælings’ ken. We might ask Cynehunde, though; he hails from the Danelaw and may know the tales better.”
Dean wondered briefly what could cause his kin to move so far from England-in a ship, no doubt, which made his stomach turn-but that line of thought was broken when his namesake unlocked a chamber at the back of the coach and drew out a green-and-white box and a blanket. The latter he handed to Young Samuel before closing the chamber and withdrawing the key, and they walked around to the front of the coach and spread the blanket on the flat surface there. Young Dean set the box on the ground and opened the lid to reveal strangely-shaped brown bottles with metal caps set in a bed of crushed ice. Two of these he withdrew and handed one to Young Samuel. Then they sat down on the blanket, took the caps off the bottles, touched the mouths of the bottles together in silent salute, and drank.
Dean thought he caught the scent of ale.
Wondering, he sought to draw out a bottle himself, and to his very great surprise, he succeeded. Then he drew out another and handed it to Samuel, who gave him the Art mad, brother?! look but took the bottle from him when it seemed that the namesakes still paid them no heed, only leaned back against the glass to look at the stars. To remove the cap from the bottle took but a sharp twist, and Dean smiled happily at Samuel and drank.
It was cheap ale, but not so thin as he had had in some of the meanest inns where he had stayed. He took another drink and rethought his notion of the family’s wealth.
They stayed that way for a long moment, Dean and Samuel watching their namesakes and the namesakes watching the sky. But after a time Young Samuel became troubled, and Young Dean noted it almost at once-and Dean noted of a sudden how very weary they both looked, old beyond their years, as though their doom were more than any man ought to bear.
“What?” quoth Young Dean.
Young Samuel sighed. “Nothing.”
“Sam.” After a pause, Young Dean spoke again. “This is about what Cas said, isn’t it? You been beatin’ yourself up about that this whole time.”
“He was right.”
“About you, maybe. Partly. But Jesse fixed what he could. You got through to him, dude. And Cas had been callin’ him a thing, like he didn’t even deserve to be called half-human.”
“Dean....”
“Cas was wrong, Sam. Yeah, you made some bad choices, but that doesn’t make you evil.”
Young Samuel huffed. “‘Bad choices’ is kind of an understatement.”
“Yeah, well. I... could have handled things better myself.”
“Dude.”
“And Jesse’s not gonna have some demon whispering in his ear, at least not now. We take out Lucifer, he should be fine.”
“Dean, he’s a cambion.”
“Merlin was a cambion, Sam. Look how he turned out.”
Young Samuel sighed again and studied his ale.
“Sam. I meant what I said.”
Young Samuel looked up at Young Dean and frowned. “When?”
“Few weeks back. About us keeping each other human. And I didn’t just mean me ridin’ herd on you. I can go pretty dark myself when I don’t have someone to call me on things the way you do.”
“Still? After... after everything?”
Young Dean met his gaze solemnly. “You’re still my brother, Sammy.”
Young Samuel smiled a little. “Thanks, Dean.”
The namesakes turned their eyes back to the sky... and the dream faded.
Dean woke with a start and sensed Samuel do the same. But the figure crouched between them was no longer Castiel. It was Gabriel.
“Ye needed to know,” Gabriel said quietly. “Castiel did not hear that conversation. And please, keep it to yourselves. What he saw, what he wanted you to see, was the stargazing-brothers simply being brothers, the bond that drove him to risk everything to save them. He had been pretty hard on Sam right before that, though, and he is not exactly good with apologies.”
“And Sam took it to heart,” said Samuel.
“Yes. I’m not sure Castiel quite appreciates how much he’s hurt Sam. Heck, it took me a couple of years and a lecture from Dean to figure out how much I’d hurt both of ’em. But that... that conversation... I mean, without telling you things you should not know, it tells you what you wanted to know.”
Dean frowned a little. “They spoke of having to stop Lucifer, as if... as if they meant to kill him, and as if he were already loosed from his cage.”
Gabriel sighed. “Yeah. They had a plan. It failed.” He looked at Dean more closely then and added, “They had a Joanna and an Ellen, too. They went with the boys....” He stopped, plainly loath to say what happened.
But Dean could guess, to his horror. “No...” he breathed.
“They’ll have the same story you have, guys, but they’ll lose everyone. When they’re not staying in some shabby inn, they’ll live in that car you saw. They’ll lose Mary just like you did. They’ll lose John. Sam will consider marriage, but his intended will be killed. Dean won’t even get that far. And imagine-of the people who were at the Eagle and Child the night we arrived, the only person who’d be left with Sam and Dean within three years of the moment you saw is Robert. They’ll even lose each other a few times.”
“But what of you?” Samuel asked, so softly Dean could barely hear him.
Gabriel’s gaze fell, and he did not answer. Samuel burst into tears.
Dean felt a tear roll down his own cheek as he slid across and wrapped an arm about Samuel’s shoulders in comfort. “So, then. We know what we must do.”
Samuel nodded and curled against Dean’s shoulder, the way he had done as a child.
Dean rested his cheek against the top of Samuel’s head and looked at Gabriel. “What of the weapon?”
“Castiel still has it,” Gabriel said. “And he should keep it until we get Azazel trapped. But I will make a copy and show you how to use it tomorrow.”
Dean nodded and rubbed Samuel’s shoulder gently. Gabriel stood and turned to go back to his post.
“Gabriel.”
The angel stopped and looked back.
Dean met his eyes. “Thank you.”
Gabriel’s smile was sad but fond. “Get some rest, muttonheads.”
Dean knew not when he and Samuel fell asleep, curled together like pups stolen from their dam. He only knew that the sky was barely lightening when Gabriel shook them both awake.
“Morning, campers,” Gabriel said cheerfully when Dean cracked an eye open. “We’d better get this over with so we can get on the road after breakfast.”
Both brothers groaned as they sat up. “Ought we not break our fast first?” Samuel asked.
“Need not. C’mon, both of you.” He picked up a piece of wood and a steel rod and walked away.
Dean groaned again as Samuel helped him to his feet. He was not looking forward to trying out this new weapon without having eaten.
Gabriel led them a short distance from the camp before snapping his fingers. A target appeared, though it seemed to be made of parchment over a board and was colored roughly in the shape of a man. The target rings marked distances from points on the head and chest that would be fatal arrow wounds.
“Is’t a bow, then?” Dean frowned.
“Close,” Gabriel replied.
Then he looked hard at the rod and the wood, and they joined together and changed shape to form a very odd weapon indeed. The wood had become a bell-shaped handle, and the metal... well, there was a long eight-sided tube, and a part with five filled chambers that looked like it turned, and a lever at the back that, when pulled down a little, caused another lever to spring forth at the front. When Gabriel handed it to him, Dean noted words marked on the barrel and a pentagram on the handle.
“Non timebo mala,” Samuel read over Dean’s shoulder. “-Should be malum, surely?”
Gabriel shrugged. “I didn’t write it. I think the man who made it was not familiar with the Vulgate.”
Samuel nodded thoughtfully.
Dean studied the thing for a few moments longer before shaking his head. “What is it?”
“It’s called a gun,” said Gabriel. “Here, let me show you how it works.”
Dean handed it back, and Gabriel talked them through the way it was held at arm’s length in one hand, the way to aim it, how one primed the shot. He pulled down the lever at the back until it caught, then squeezed the lever at the front toward the handle a little to show that it would move the back lever forward. Then he swiftly squeezed it hard to make the back lever strike the chambered part.
There was a loud bang and a flash of fire.
Smoke poured from the front of the gun, and Dean thought he smelled burnt brimstone and burnt charcoal. Samuel went over to the target and called that aught had struck it. Dean joined him and lent him his misericorde, and Samuel dug out what looked like a piece of lead.
Frowning, Dean went back to look at the gun again. The chamber that the back lever had struck appeared to be empty.
“So,” Dean said slowly as Samuel rejoined them. “This part strikes something in the chamber that makes the fire, which speeds the lead through the tube, which aims the lead toward the target like an arrow.”
Gabriel laughed in delight. “You are sharp!”
Dean grinned. “Let me try it, then.”
Gabriel handed it to him and showed him again how to hold it. Then Dean carefully pulled down the back lever (hammer, Gabriel called it), took aim, and squeezed the front lever (trigger). The bang jolted his wrist back, and Samuel reported that the lead had struck quite a bit higher than Dean had aimed, though the shot had not gone onto the white. He tried again with the three remaining shots, and each got nearer to the mark above the heart. Then Gabriel showed him how to reload the chambers, and he took another ten shots before letting Samuel have a go. By sunrise, both brothers were confident they could shoot and kill Azazel with the gun that Castiel kept as long as the devil was holding still.
“Aiming at a moving target’s not that much different from doing so with a bow,” Gabriel noted. “But we will try to make sure he can’t run far if he runs at all.”
Dean ran his thumb over the pentagram... and suddenly had flashes of showings of Young Dean with this same gun (or, rather, the real one)-trying and failing to shoot Azazel in two other hosts before finally succeeding with the help of his father’s shade... but too late to stop the hellmouth he guarded from opening, too late to save Young Samuel’s life by any means but trading his own soul to Tamar. The sheer wanhope in his namesake’s eyes left Dean barely able to breathe.
“Dean?!” said Samuel, drawing Dean back to the present.
Dean had never quite known what to do with the showings he had received in the past. These things were usually far more Samuel’s concern; he had the Sight more strongly, and his dreams tended to be longer and more detailed than Dean’s. But this time, though his heart hammered, Dean did know what to do.
“Dean?” Samuel asked again as Dean looked at him at last. “Hast seen aught?”
Dean took a deep breath and let it out again. Then he growled, “Let him run. He shall not scape me now.”
Samuel hugged him, and Gabriel squeezed his shoulder.
Next | Notes
Samuel was quiet and thoughtful for most of the afternoon’s journey, and Dean thought he knew the reason but could not be sure and did not like to ask in company with the others. So while they made ready to sleep that night, Dean asked softly, “What troubles thee, brother?”
Samuel sighed. “This notion of changing history-sooth, the fact that we are even here. I would not question an angel, but... I fear making the wrong choice, making the outcome worse. They cannot tell us too much, that is plain, and it is wise, but....”
“Wouldst fain know in sooth that the case is too hard to do otherwise.”
“Just so.”
Dean nodded; it was indeed as he had thought. “As would I. Perchance Castiel would show us more.”
“Show? As in....”
“A dream. Naught of import, just....”
“A chance to see the men they know. Naught but a glimpse.”
“Aye.”
Samuel nodded thoughtfully. “Aye. Aye, that would be a boon worth the asking.”
“Come, then.”
“What, now?”
“Shalt not sleep else,” Dean noted. “And should there be more slavers about, or Turks, shalt have need of rest this night.”
Samuel huffed but followed Dean toward Castiel, who had offered to stand the watch while Gabriel went to scout ahead.
Castiel looked at them with his head tilted to one side slightly in question. “Samuel, Dean. Can I help you?”
Dean took the lead. “Castiel... our namesakes. You said you knew them.”
Castiel nodded. “I am proud to call them my friends.”
Dean glanced at Samuel once more and, at his nod, said, “We would fain see them.”
Castiel frowned. “Dean... I am weakened. I do not have the power to send you forward so far.”
“No, no,” Samuel said quickly. “We seek but a vision, not to meet them face to face.”
The angel’s face cleared. “Yes. That I can do. Lie down.”
The brothers did so, and Castiel stretched forth his hands and touched each of them on the forehead, sending them at once into a deep sleep.
When Dean became aware of his dream, he seemed to be sitting on a cushioned settle covered in leather, and the settle was moving. Samuel sat beside him, and in front of them was another settle where sat two men-and though he did not often get the chance to use a looking-glass, Dean could tell at once which man had been named for him and which for Samuel.
They were different, of course, and not simply because they looked closer to 30 and 26 than to 26 and 22. Both had shorn their beards; his namesake had cut his hair quite short and applied some kind of grease to make it stand on end, and Samuel’s namesake was not tonsured and seemed loath to cut his hair at all. He also seemed more muscled than Samuel, perchance because of age or choice of trade. The green of the namesakes’ eyes tended more toward hazel, and such birthmarks and scars as Dean could see were in different places. Yet however great the gulf of time between the two pairs of brothers, the younger were still very like the older.
Once Dean got over that shock, he finally concluded that they were seated in some sort of coach or wain that had windows fitted with glass, though he could see no horse ahead of them. And somehow he fancied he heard music, though of a different kind from the ballads he knew. The melody was strange, and the instrument he could hear accompanying the voices was of a different timbre from the stringed instruments of his day. The words, too, made little sense:
Because I’m easy come, easy go,
Little high, little low,
Any way the wind blows
Doesn’t really matter to me,
To me….
As the song went on, Dean took a closer look at the coach in which they were riding. The doors were lined with cushioned leather like the two settles, and each had an armrest with a handhold and a small metal compartment that, when opened, smelled of some acrid kind of ash. The one on Samuel’s side held a small green figure of a man holding a weapon of some kind. The roof and the floor both seemed to be covered in some kind of cloth, and there was a round object in the middle of the ceiling that looked like it might be a lantern. A mirror was affixed to the front piece of glass to let Young Dean, who seemed to be driving, see behind the coach, and another mirror stood out from each side for the same purpose. There were signs of age here and there, but on the whole, the coach seemed well tended. And a quick tap on the window nearest him showed that, indeed, it was fitted with real glass.
It must have cost a great deal, Dean concluded. His offspring must be very wealthy indeed.
He had just leaned forward to try to find the source of the lights that shone on the namesakes’ faces, however, when a new noise-there was no other word for it-entered the song, a screeching sound that changed like a plucked lute but was not nearly as pleasant. Dean sat back quickly, stunned... but Young Dean nodded his head in time with the beat as if he enjoyed it!
It was good for all concerned that Young Samuel chose that moment to point to a spot in the distance and say, “There.”
Young Dean nodded, and the coach slowed... and slowed... and slowed until it came to a stop at the side of the road. Dean had not known that they were moving so fast. Then Young Dean turned a key, and everything stopped-the music, the rumbling noise that he had first thought had come from the coach wheels; even the lights inside and the lanterns outside went out. The namesakes turned at the same time, opened their coach doors, and stepped out, leaving Dean and Samuel inside staring at each other in amazement.
“What the blazes is this thing?!” Samuel finally whispered.
“Blessed if I know,” Dean whispered back. “But let us follow.” It took a moment to find the lever to open the door, but open it he did, noting the creak of the metal hinges as the door swung wide.
And the ground was much closer than he had expected. It was good that he looked down before stepping out, or he might have stumbled. Samuel chose to slide across to Dean’s door and step out after him, then ventured a few steps further to look at the road, which seemed to be paved with gravel and pitch and bore painted lines, perchance to prevent passing wains from crowding one another. On closing the door, Dean marked the strange shape of the coach, which was built wholly of metal (blacked steel, unless he missed his guess), and the fact that there seemed to be no horse at all to pull it.
How very odd. Dean could only trust that it was driven by some machine not known in his own day rather than by magic. After all, if they could afford real glass for the windows, they could probably afford some kind of clockwork to make it go. And it would account for the rumbling noise.
The namesakes were stretching their backs and legs, which gave Dean a good chance to look at them and their clothes. Their boots were strange, with thicker soles and more rounded toes than his own, and their long trousers were of a coarse, heavy woven cloth that appeared to be dyed with indigo. Young Dean wore two short tunics-they might better be called shirts-and a kind of leather overgarment that seemed a bit too big for him; Young Samuel wore but one short tunic, it seemed, but his overgarment was of thick cloth and had an attached hood. And how tall they both were! Dean and Samuel were hardly short by the standards of their day, but Young Dean was even taller than Samuel, and Young Samuel was practically a giant.
Taking no notice of Dean and Samuel, Young Dean looked around then at the open field and up at the cloudless sky and nodded once. “Good choice, Sammy.”
“Nice out,” Young Samuel said. “Good night for it.”
Dean risked a glance upward. The stars were... ones he knew, but in completely different places in the sky. Given the location of Pegasus, he believed the time of year to be mid-October, but the rest baffled him.
“We are far to the west of England, I deem,” Samuel finally murmured, “and not a little south. See thou, the Pole Star stands nearer the northern horizon.” He pointed, and Dean saw what he meant; the Pole Star was roughly where they might have expected the third star of the Little Bear’s tail.
“Passing strange,” Dean murmured back. “Think thou that we are in Vinland?”
“I know not, but so far as I have heard, the Danes said naught of plains such as this. Mayhap this land is beyond even the Skrælings’ ken. We might ask Cynehunde, though; he hails from the Danelaw and may know the tales better.”
Dean wondered briefly what could cause his kin to move so far from England-in a ship, no doubt, which made his stomach turn-but that line of thought was broken when his namesake unlocked a chamber at the back of the coach and drew out a green-and-white box and a blanket. The latter he handed to Young Samuel before closing the chamber and withdrawing the key, and they walked around to the front of the coach and spread the blanket on the flat surface there. Young Dean set the box on the ground and opened the lid to reveal strangely-shaped brown bottles with metal caps set in a bed of crushed ice. Two of these he withdrew and handed one to Young Samuel. Then they sat down on the blanket, took the caps off the bottles, touched the mouths of the bottles together in silent salute, and drank.
Dean thought he caught the scent of ale.
Wondering, he sought to draw out a bottle himself, and to his very great surprise, he succeeded. Then he drew out another and handed it to Samuel, who gave him the Art mad, brother?! look but took the bottle from him when it seemed that the namesakes still paid them no heed, only leaned back against the glass to look at the stars. To remove the cap from the bottle took but a sharp twist, and Dean smiled happily at Samuel and drank.
It was cheap ale, but not so thin as he had had in some of the meanest inns where he had stayed. He took another drink and rethought his notion of the family’s wealth.
They stayed that way for a long moment, Dean and Samuel watching their namesakes and the namesakes watching the sky. But after a time Young Samuel became troubled, and Young Dean noted it almost at once-and Dean noted of a sudden how very weary they both looked, old beyond their years, as though their doom were more than any man ought to bear.
“What?” quoth Young Dean.
Young Samuel sighed. “Nothing.”
“Sam.” After a pause, Young Dean spoke again. “This is about what Cas said, isn’t it? You been beatin’ yourself up about that this whole time.”
“He was right.”
“About you, maybe. Partly. But Jesse fixed what he could. You got through to him, dude. And Cas had been callin’ him a thing, like he didn’t even deserve to be called half-human.”
“Dean....”
“Cas was wrong, Sam. Yeah, you made some bad choices, but that doesn’t make you evil.”
Young Samuel huffed. “‘Bad choices’ is kind of an understatement.”
“Yeah, well. I... could have handled things better myself.”
“Dude.”
“And Jesse’s not gonna have some demon whispering in his ear, at least not now. We take out Lucifer, he should be fine.”
“Dean, he’s a cambion.”
“Merlin was a cambion, Sam. Look how he turned out.”
Young Samuel sighed again and studied his ale.
“Sam. I meant what I said.”
Young Samuel looked up at Young Dean and frowned. “When?”
“Few weeks back. About us keeping each other human. And I didn’t just mean me ridin’ herd on you. I can go pretty dark myself when I don’t have someone to call me on things the way you do.”
“Still? After... after everything?”
Young Dean met his gaze solemnly. “You’re still my brother, Sammy.”
Young Samuel smiled a little. “Thanks, Dean.”
The namesakes turned their eyes back to the sky... and the dream faded.
Dean woke with a start and sensed Samuel do the same. But the figure crouched between them was no longer Castiel. It was Gabriel.
“Ye needed to know,” Gabriel said quietly. “Castiel did not hear that conversation. And please, keep it to yourselves. What he saw, what he wanted you to see, was the stargazing-brothers simply being brothers, the bond that drove him to risk everything to save them. He had been pretty hard on Sam right before that, though, and he is not exactly good with apologies.”
“And Sam took it to heart,” said Samuel.
“Yes. I’m not sure Castiel quite appreciates how much he’s hurt Sam. Heck, it took me a couple of years and a lecture from Dean to figure out how much I’d hurt both of ’em. But that... that conversation... I mean, without telling you things you should not know, it tells you what you wanted to know.”
Dean frowned a little. “They spoke of having to stop Lucifer, as if... as if they meant to kill him, and as if he were already loosed from his cage.”
Gabriel sighed. “Yeah. They had a plan. It failed.” He looked at Dean more closely then and added, “They had a Joanna and an Ellen, too. They went with the boys....” He stopped, plainly loath to say what happened.
But Dean could guess, to his horror. “No...” he breathed.
“They’ll have the same story you have, guys, but they’ll lose everyone. When they’re not staying in some shabby inn, they’ll live in that car you saw. They’ll lose Mary just like you did. They’ll lose John. Sam will consider marriage, but his intended will be killed. Dean won’t even get that far. And imagine-of the people who were at the Eagle and Child the night we arrived, the only person who’d be left with Sam and Dean within three years of the moment you saw is Robert. They’ll even lose each other a few times.”
“But what of you?” Samuel asked, so softly Dean could barely hear him.
Gabriel’s gaze fell, and he did not answer. Samuel burst into tears.
Dean felt a tear roll down his own cheek as he slid across and wrapped an arm about Samuel’s shoulders in comfort. “So, then. We know what we must do.”
Samuel nodded and curled against Dean’s shoulder, the way he had done as a child.
Dean rested his cheek against the top of Samuel’s head and looked at Gabriel. “What of the weapon?”
“Castiel still has it,” Gabriel said. “And he should keep it until we get Azazel trapped. But I will make a copy and show you how to use it tomorrow.”
Dean nodded and rubbed Samuel’s shoulder gently. Gabriel stood and turned to go back to his post.
“Gabriel.”
The angel stopped and looked back.
Dean met his eyes. “Thank you.”
Gabriel’s smile was sad but fond. “Get some rest, muttonheads.”
Dean knew not when he and Samuel fell asleep, curled together like pups stolen from their dam. He only knew that the sky was barely lightening when Gabriel shook them both awake.
“Morning, campers,” Gabriel said cheerfully when Dean cracked an eye open. “We’d better get this over with so we can get on the road after breakfast.”
Both brothers groaned as they sat up. “Ought we not break our fast first?” Samuel asked.
“Need not. C’mon, both of you.” He picked up a piece of wood and a steel rod and walked away.
Dean groaned again as Samuel helped him to his feet. He was not looking forward to trying out this new weapon without having eaten.
Gabriel led them a short distance from the camp before snapping his fingers. A target appeared, though it seemed to be made of parchment over a board and was colored roughly in the shape of a man. The target rings marked distances from points on the head and chest that would be fatal arrow wounds.
“Is’t a bow, then?” Dean frowned.
“Close,” Gabriel replied.
Then he looked hard at the rod and the wood, and they joined together and changed shape to form a very odd weapon indeed. The wood had become a bell-shaped handle, and the metal... well, there was a long eight-sided tube, and a part with five filled chambers that looked like it turned, and a lever at the back that, when pulled down a little, caused another lever to spring forth at the front. When Gabriel handed it to him, Dean noted words marked on the barrel and a pentagram on the handle.
“Non timebo mala,” Samuel read over Dean’s shoulder. “-Should be malum, surely?”
Gabriel shrugged. “I didn’t write it. I think the man who made it was not familiar with the Vulgate.”
Samuel nodded thoughtfully.
Dean studied the thing for a few moments longer before shaking his head. “What is it?”
“It’s called a gun,” said Gabriel. “Here, let me show you how it works.”
Dean handed it back, and Gabriel talked them through the way it was held at arm’s length in one hand, the way to aim it, how one primed the shot. He pulled down the lever at the back until it caught, then squeezed the lever at the front toward the handle a little to show that it would move the back lever forward. Then he swiftly squeezed it hard to make the back lever strike the chambered part.
There was a loud bang and a flash of fire.
Smoke poured from the front of the gun, and Dean thought he smelled burnt brimstone and burnt charcoal. Samuel went over to the target and called that aught had struck it. Dean joined him and lent him his misericorde, and Samuel dug out what looked like a piece of lead.
Frowning, Dean went back to look at the gun again. The chamber that the back lever had struck appeared to be empty.
“So,” Dean said slowly as Samuel rejoined them. “This part strikes something in the chamber that makes the fire, which speeds the lead through the tube, which aims the lead toward the target like an arrow.”
Gabriel laughed in delight. “You are sharp!”
Dean grinned. “Let me try it, then.”
Gabriel handed it to him and showed him again how to hold it. Then Dean carefully pulled down the back lever (hammer, Gabriel called it), took aim, and squeezed the front lever (trigger). The bang jolted his wrist back, and Samuel reported that the lead had struck quite a bit higher than Dean had aimed, though the shot had not gone onto the white. He tried again with the three remaining shots, and each got nearer to the mark above the heart. Then Gabriel showed him how to reload the chambers, and he took another ten shots before letting Samuel have a go. By sunrise, both brothers were confident they could shoot and kill Azazel with the gun that Castiel kept as long as the devil was holding still.
“Aiming at a moving target’s not that much different from doing so with a bow,” Gabriel noted. “But we will try to make sure he can’t run far if he runs at all.”
Dean ran his thumb over the pentagram... and suddenly had flashes of showings of Young Dean with this same gun (or, rather, the real one)-trying and failing to shoot Azazel in two other hosts before finally succeeding with the help of his father’s shade... but too late to stop the hellmouth he guarded from opening, too late to save Young Samuel’s life by any means but trading his own soul to Tamar. The sheer wanhope in his namesake’s eyes left Dean barely able to breathe.
“Dean?!” said Samuel, drawing Dean back to the present.
Dean had never quite known what to do with the showings he had received in the past. These things were usually far more Samuel’s concern; he had the Sight more strongly, and his dreams tended to be longer and more detailed than Dean’s. But this time, though his heart hammered, Dean did know what to do.
“Dean?” Samuel asked again as Dean looked at him at last. “Hast seen aught?”
Dean took a deep breath and let it out again. Then he growled, “Let him run. He shall not scape me now.”
Samuel hugged him, and Gabriel squeezed his shoulder.
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