Fic: Ichneumon (1/2)
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Minor language and violence. Sick, fevered Sam and worried, protective Dean. Could be set in any season. No spoilers except to the premise of the show.
Author’s Notes: This is for the_ladykiki for this year's spn-summergen. I’ve sort of worked a couple of the prompts into this, though I’ve also taken some liberties with the interpretation. I really hope you like this!
As always, a huge thank you to my wonderful beta, nygirl7of9.
The fic is split for length.
Summary: Sam and Dean are hunting a cockatrice. But Sam’s the one who did the research, and now he’s sick and more out of it than with it. Dean needs to bring his fever down, make sense of his rambling, and kill the monster. All in a day’s work for a Winchester.
Ichneumon
“Remember the time I sleepwalked when I was a kid?” Sam asked.
He looked like he was only half-awake now, but Dean was too worried about the fever Sam was spiking to enjoy his spaced-out expression.
“I remember the time you scared the crap out of me by falling down a flight of stairs while sleepwalking when you were a kid,” Dean said. “You hit your head on the way down. There was blood everywhere. I had to take you to the emergency room and I was terrified you were going to bleed out in the car before we got there. I remember that.”
“Deeeeean,” Sam protested, drawing out his brother’s name like he always did when he was sick or tired. “You’re ruining the atmosphere.”
“The atmosphere?”
“We’re camping, Dean. You’re supposed to tell stories.”
“First, we’re not camping. We’re hunting, and that damn cockatrice is kicking our asses.” He paused, checking on the soup bubbling over their little campfire. “Or at least, that damn cockatrice is kicking my ass. This fever is kicking your ass. Second, you’re supposed to tell scary stories.”
“Cockatrices aren’t real, Dean,” Sam said.
“What do you mean cockatrices aren’t real? You’re the one who did the research and told me that’s what this is - and it looks exactly like you said it would.”
“Research?” Fever-bright eyes looked at Dean through the tangle of Sam’s hair. “Is there a library here? I can look it up for you.”
Dean shut his eyes for a moment. Of course. The fever. Sam was confused.
“You already did the research,” he said reassuringly, reaching out to brush hair off Sam’s forehead. Sam’s skin was hot enough to make him wince, but it was dry. So were his lips. All the throwing up earlier had probably dehydrated him. “Don’t worry about that.”
“I said it was a cockatrice?” Sam asked suspiciously.
“Yeah, kiddo, you did.” Dean ladled some soup into a bowl and set it down to cool. “You want to try sitting up, Sammy? See if you can keep some water down, and then we’ll try the soup.”
“You only make me soup when I’m sick. Am I sick?”
Dean sighed, getting behind Sam and hooking his hands under his brother’s arms. “I’m going to sit you up now, OK?”
“Am I sick?”
Dean knew there was no avoiding the question. Sam could be a persistent little brat. “Yes, Sammy, you’re sick.”
“With what?”
“I was hoping it was just a cold, but your temp’s too high for that. I’m pulling you up on three, OK? One… two… up.”
The change of position brought on a coughing fit. Dean waited it out with a hand on Sam’s back, finally relaxing when the coughs had subsided to shaky gulps of air.
“Water first.”
“You don’t know what I’m sick with, do you?” Sam’s voice was hoarse.
“Drink,” Dean said firmly, holding the cup to Sam’s lips. “Slowly. We’ll talk about it later.” He let Sam take a few sips before he took the cup away. “You feel OK?”
“Fine,” Sam mumbled, turning his face into Dean’s shirt. “Am I going to die?”
“What?” Dean gasped. “Where the hell is that coming from? Do you feel that bad?”
“I don’t know. You won’t tell me what I’m sick with.”
Dean sighed, reminding himself that there was no need to panic. Sammy always got emo and clingy when he was sick.
“I don’t know what you’re sick with, kiddo. Maybe it’s just a really bad case of the flu. But we need to get you to a doctor to be sure.”
“No doctor,” Sam protested. “There were clowns.”
“Clowns?”
“When I sleepwalked and fell down the stairs. There were clowns.”
Thinking back, Dean did remember clowns on the wallpaper of the Paediatric Ward. It had freaked Sam out, and Dean had had to sit by the bed until he fell asleep.
“There won’t be clowns,” Dean promised. “Do you feel like you’re going to throw up?”
Sam made a face. “No.”
“Great. Soup time.” Dean picked up the bowl. It had cooled just enough that Sam wouldn’t burn his tongue. “Open up, Sammy.”
Sam obediently opened his mouth for the first spoonful.
“I read about cockatrices,” he said after he swallowed it.
“Yeah?” Dean asked, trying not to let his voice betray his excitement. If this was a period of lucidity, it might be short, and he couldn’t afford to scare it away by startling Sam. He needed the info too desperately. The last forty-eight hours had made it clear that the only way they were getting out of this goddamned forest, the only way he could get Sam to a hospital, was by killing the monster currently terrorizing it. “What did you read?”
“They thought it was the same as a basilisk.” Dean fed Sam another spoonful of soup. “It’s not, though. Well, it’s the same in one way. You die if you look it directly in the eye. But you can’t kill it like a basilisk.”
“How do you kill a basilisk?” Sam made a little movement that was half-shrug and half-shiver, followed by a short cough that fortunately didn’t turn into more. “You cold?”
“No,” Sam said, but he tugged the blanket closer around himself. “Snake.”
“What, kiddo?” Dean nudged Sam’s lips with the spoon. “Open up.”
Sam swallowed the spoonful and then said, more forcefully, “Snake. You can kill a basilisk like a snake. Cut off its head or whatever, just don’t look. Doesn’t work on a cockatrice. Not a snake. It’s got dragon hide. No blade we’ve got can penetrate that.”
“So how do you kill a cockatrice?” There was no answer. Dean shook Sam lightly. “Hey. Sammy. How do you kill a cockatrice?”
Sam stared up at him. “Cockatrices are real?”
“Crap,” Dean muttered.
“Cold.”
“I know you’re cold. You need to stay under the blanket, OK?”
“But you have to stay with me!” Sam stuck a hand out to grab Dean’s shirt. “You have to stay with me, or they’ll come.”
“Hands inside the blanket,” Dean said, disentangling Sam’s fingers from his shirt.
“But they’ll come.”
Dean really wanted to ask what Sam meant, because his brother’s delirious rambling could be pretty hilarious - and provide incredible blackmail material - but there was no time. He had to figure out what to do about the cockatrice.
“Don’t look,” Sam said suddenly.
“What?”
“If the cockatrice comes, don’t look - not even in a mirror.”
“Sam, what are you talking about?”
“It’s not a basilisk. You can meet a basilisk’s eyes in a mirror and you’ll be fine. Like Medusa. Because they’re all snakes. All Medusa’s snakes. Like the basilisk. Not a cockatrice. It’s a dragon. Can’t look at it in a mirror.”
Dean’s breath caught.
“How do you look at it?” he asked.
“You don’t. You kill it.”
“How, Sam?”
“Don’t look at it in a mirror,” Sam said again. “It’s fatal to meet a cockatrice’s eyes, even in a mirror.”
“Yeah, I get that. But how do I kill the thing?”
Sam opened his mouth to speak, but ended up coughing instead. Dean waited, running a hand through his hair, until Sam finally said, “It doesn’t come from a rooster’s egg.”
“Sam.”
“That’s what people believed. Maybe they thought that was how it got its name. Rooster’s egg.” Sam sighed. “No such thing.”
“Sam,” Dean said, trying his best not to sound frustrated, because that would only be counterproductive, “there is such a thing as a cockatrice. You did the research, four days ago when you weren’t so sick I had to spoon-feed you soup, and you told me that cockatrices are a real thing and this is a cockatrice. I’m willing to stake my life you were right.”
Sam looked at him like was crazy. “Of course cockatrices are real. Rooster’s eggs aren’t.”
“Sammy, please. Try to remember. What do I need to do? How do I track it?”
“Pliny called it a calcatrix. That’s how it gets its name. Means a tracker.” Sam smiled beatifically at him. “You don’t track it, Dean. It tracks you.”
Dean’s blood went cold. “Could it be tracking us now? I thought we were safe here.”
“Maybe. But it won’t come while you’re standing guard.”
“Sam, I’m flattered you have that much faith in me, but -”
“That’s not what I mean.” Sam grabbed Dean’s shirt again, using it to lever himself into a sitting position - which, of course, made him cough. Little idiot. “It’s a stealth killer,” Sam got out at last. “It doesn’t attack watchful prey. It waits for the crocodile to open its jaws. That’s when it strikes.”
“This thing attacks crocodiles?”
“Nile crocodiles,” Sam said, sounding drowsy now. He settled his head under Dean’s jaw, apparently deciding his big brother made a better pillow than the rolled-up jacket Dean had tucked under his head. “Big. Not as big as saltwater crocodiles.”
“Sam -”
“Crocodiles keep growing. As long as they can get food, they don’t stop growing.”
“Sammy, listen to me. I need you to focus. As long as I’m awake and paying attention, it won’t attack, is that what you’re saying?”
“Yup.”
“It attacked us this afternoon. I was awake then.”
“You weren’t paying attention.”
“What are you talking about? Of course I was paying attention.”
“Not to the cockatrice. You were paying attention to me.”
Dean sighed. He had been paying attention to Sam, more worried about his little brother’s fever and weakness than about the monster they were hunting.
“So what do we do?” he wondered aloud.
“Stop worrying about me,” Sam said, in the big brothers are so stupid voice that he could pull off perfectly even when he was half-conscious.
“Like that’s going to happen,” Dean muttered, lowering Sam to the ground and draping the blanket over him again. “Next time, Sammy, we’re carrying your notes with us, even if they do weigh eight thousand pounds and your gigantor brain is capable of remembering everything.”
“I do remember my notes,” Sam said indignantly. “I remember all my notes. Even from that one Art History course I took.”
“Go to sleep, Sam.”
“Nile crocodiles attack by ambush too,” Sam muttered. “So it serves them right cockatrices get them the same way. Or got them the same way. I don’t know if there are that many still left.”
“What, crocodiles?”
“Nile crocodiles aren’t endangered. I meant cockatrices.”
“Of course you did. Go to sleep, Sam.”
“Dean?”
“What?”
“You need to go.”
“Sam -”
“You can’t stay awake forever. At some point you’ll fall asleep. Then it’ll just get us both. It’s much more sensible if you -”
“Sam, finish that sentence and I will kick your ass when you’re better. I’m not leaving you alone here when you’re sick and there’s some kind of terror-monster out to kill you by looking at you.”
“Can’t kill me by looking at me. I have to look at it.”
Dean paused. “So… If I blindfolded you and left you here and went back to the motel for your notes, it couldn’t hurt you?”
“So you’ll go?”
“Answer my question - and don’t you dare lie to me, Sammy.”
Sam shrugged. “Legend says cockatrices can also kill people by breathing on them. But it’s not been conclusively proven.”
Dean shook his head. Legend was enough for him. It was at least a five-hour trek back to the motel, or to any kind of civilization. Five hours there, five hours back, he wasn’t leaving Sam alone that long unless he was completely certain the thing couldn’t hurt him.
“Sleep, Sam,” he said. “And maybe in the morning you’ll feel better and remember how to kill it.”
“I told you how to kill it,” Sam mumbled, shutting his eyes.
“What? How?” Dean patted his brother on the arm. “Sam!”
Sam groaned and opened his eyes. “What?”
“How do you kill a cockatrice?”
“A cockatrice? Like Pliny’s cockatrice?”
Dean suppressed a sigh. “Go back to sleep, kiddo. We’ll talk in the morning.”
Part II
Rating: PG
Warnings: Minor language and violence. Sick, fevered Sam and worried, protective Dean. Could be set in any season. No spoilers except to the premise of the show.
Author’s Notes: This is for the_ladykiki for this year's spn-summergen. I’ve sort of worked a couple of the prompts into this, though I’ve also taken some liberties with the interpretation. I really hope you like this!
As always, a huge thank you to my wonderful beta, nygirl7of9.
The fic is split for length.
Summary: Sam and Dean are hunting a cockatrice. But Sam’s the one who did the research, and now he’s sick and more out of it than with it. Dean needs to bring his fever down, make sense of his rambling, and kill the monster. All in a day’s work for a Winchester.
Ichneumon
“Remember the time I sleepwalked when I was a kid?” Sam asked.
He looked like he was only half-awake now, but Dean was too worried about the fever Sam was spiking to enjoy his spaced-out expression.
“I remember the time you scared the crap out of me by falling down a flight of stairs while sleepwalking when you were a kid,” Dean said. “You hit your head on the way down. There was blood everywhere. I had to take you to the emergency room and I was terrified you were going to bleed out in the car before we got there. I remember that.”
“Deeeeean,” Sam protested, drawing out his brother’s name like he always did when he was sick or tired. “You’re ruining the atmosphere.”
“The atmosphere?”
“We’re camping, Dean. You’re supposed to tell stories.”
“First, we’re not camping. We’re hunting, and that damn cockatrice is kicking our asses.” He paused, checking on the soup bubbling over their little campfire. “Or at least, that damn cockatrice is kicking my ass. This fever is kicking your ass. Second, you’re supposed to tell scary stories.”
“Cockatrices aren’t real, Dean,” Sam said.
“What do you mean cockatrices aren’t real? You’re the one who did the research and told me that’s what this is - and it looks exactly like you said it would.”
“Research?” Fever-bright eyes looked at Dean through the tangle of Sam’s hair. “Is there a library here? I can look it up for you.”
Dean shut his eyes for a moment. Of course. The fever. Sam was confused.
“You already did the research,” he said reassuringly, reaching out to brush hair off Sam’s forehead. Sam’s skin was hot enough to make him wince, but it was dry. So were his lips. All the throwing up earlier had probably dehydrated him. “Don’t worry about that.”
“I said it was a cockatrice?” Sam asked suspiciously.
“Yeah, kiddo, you did.” Dean ladled some soup into a bowl and set it down to cool. “You want to try sitting up, Sammy? See if you can keep some water down, and then we’ll try the soup.”
“You only make me soup when I’m sick. Am I sick?”
Dean sighed, getting behind Sam and hooking his hands under his brother’s arms. “I’m going to sit you up now, OK?”
“Am I sick?”
Dean knew there was no avoiding the question. Sam could be a persistent little brat. “Yes, Sammy, you’re sick.”
“With what?”
“I was hoping it was just a cold, but your temp’s too high for that. I’m pulling you up on three, OK? One… two… up.”
The change of position brought on a coughing fit. Dean waited it out with a hand on Sam’s back, finally relaxing when the coughs had subsided to shaky gulps of air.
“Water first.”
“You don’t know what I’m sick with, do you?” Sam’s voice was hoarse.
“Drink,” Dean said firmly, holding the cup to Sam’s lips. “Slowly. We’ll talk about it later.” He let Sam take a few sips before he took the cup away. “You feel OK?”
“Fine,” Sam mumbled, turning his face into Dean’s shirt. “Am I going to die?”
“What?” Dean gasped. “Where the hell is that coming from? Do you feel that bad?”
“I don’t know. You won’t tell me what I’m sick with.”
Dean sighed, reminding himself that there was no need to panic. Sammy always got emo and clingy when he was sick.
“I don’t know what you’re sick with, kiddo. Maybe it’s just a really bad case of the flu. But we need to get you to a doctor to be sure.”
“No doctor,” Sam protested. “There were clowns.”
“Clowns?”
“When I sleepwalked and fell down the stairs. There were clowns.”
Thinking back, Dean did remember clowns on the wallpaper of the Paediatric Ward. It had freaked Sam out, and Dean had had to sit by the bed until he fell asleep.
“There won’t be clowns,” Dean promised. “Do you feel like you’re going to throw up?”
Sam made a face. “No.”
“Great. Soup time.” Dean picked up the bowl. It had cooled just enough that Sam wouldn’t burn his tongue. “Open up, Sammy.”
Sam obediently opened his mouth for the first spoonful.
“I read about cockatrices,” he said after he swallowed it.
“Yeah?” Dean asked, trying not to let his voice betray his excitement. If this was a period of lucidity, it might be short, and he couldn’t afford to scare it away by startling Sam. He needed the info too desperately. The last forty-eight hours had made it clear that the only way they were getting out of this goddamned forest, the only way he could get Sam to a hospital, was by killing the monster currently terrorizing it. “What did you read?”
“They thought it was the same as a basilisk.” Dean fed Sam another spoonful of soup. “It’s not, though. Well, it’s the same in one way. You die if you look it directly in the eye. But you can’t kill it like a basilisk.”
“How do you kill a basilisk?” Sam made a little movement that was half-shrug and half-shiver, followed by a short cough that fortunately didn’t turn into more. “You cold?”
“No,” Sam said, but he tugged the blanket closer around himself. “Snake.”
“What, kiddo?” Dean nudged Sam’s lips with the spoon. “Open up.”
Sam swallowed the spoonful and then said, more forcefully, “Snake. You can kill a basilisk like a snake. Cut off its head or whatever, just don’t look. Doesn’t work on a cockatrice. Not a snake. It’s got dragon hide. No blade we’ve got can penetrate that.”
“So how do you kill a cockatrice?” There was no answer. Dean shook Sam lightly. “Hey. Sammy. How do you kill a cockatrice?”
Sam stared up at him. “Cockatrices are real?”
“Crap,” Dean muttered.
“Cold.”
“I know you’re cold. You need to stay under the blanket, OK?”
“But you have to stay with me!” Sam stuck a hand out to grab Dean’s shirt. “You have to stay with me, or they’ll come.”
“Hands inside the blanket,” Dean said, disentangling Sam’s fingers from his shirt.
“But they’ll come.”
Dean really wanted to ask what Sam meant, because his brother’s delirious rambling could be pretty hilarious - and provide incredible blackmail material - but there was no time. He had to figure out what to do about the cockatrice.
“Don’t look,” Sam said suddenly.
“What?”
“If the cockatrice comes, don’t look - not even in a mirror.”
“Sam, what are you talking about?”
“It’s not a basilisk. You can meet a basilisk’s eyes in a mirror and you’ll be fine. Like Medusa. Because they’re all snakes. All Medusa’s snakes. Like the basilisk. Not a cockatrice. It’s a dragon. Can’t look at it in a mirror.”
Dean’s breath caught.
“How do you look at it?” he asked.
“You don’t. You kill it.”
“How, Sam?”
“Don’t look at it in a mirror,” Sam said again. “It’s fatal to meet a cockatrice’s eyes, even in a mirror.”
“Yeah, I get that. But how do I kill the thing?”
Sam opened his mouth to speak, but ended up coughing instead. Dean waited, running a hand through his hair, until Sam finally said, “It doesn’t come from a rooster’s egg.”
“Sam.”
“That’s what people believed. Maybe they thought that was how it got its name. Rooster’s egg.” Sam sighed. “No such thing.”
“Sam,” Dean said, trying his best not to sound frustrated, because that would only be counterproductive, “there is such a thing as a cockatrice. You did the research, four days ago when you weren’t so sick I had to spoon-feed you soup, and you told me that cockatrices are a real thing and this is a cockatrice. I’m willing to stake my life you were right.”
Sam looked at him like was crazy. “Of course cockatrices are real. Rooster’s eggs aren’t.”
“Sammy, please. Try to remember. What do I need to do? How do I track it?”
“Pliny called it a calcatrix. That’s how it gets its name. Means a tracker.” Sam smiled beatifically at him. “You don’t track it, Dean. It tracks you.”
Dean’s blood went cold. “Could it be tracking us now? I thought we were safe here.”
“Maybe. But it won’t come while you’re standing guard.”
“Sam, I’m flattered you have that much faith in me, but -”
“That’s not what I mean.” Sam grabbed Dean’s shirt again, using it to lever himself into a sitting position - which, of course, made him cough. Little idiot. “It’s a stealth killer,” Sam got out at last. “It doesn’t attack watchful prey. It waits for the crocodile to open its jaws. That’s when it strikes.”
“This thing attacks crocodiles?”
“Nile crocodiles,” Sam said, sounding drowsy now. He settled his head under Dean’s jaw, apparently deciding his big brother made a better pillow than the rolled-up jacket Dean had tucked under his head. “Big. Not as big as saltwater crocodiles.”
“Sam -”
“Crocodiles keep growing. As long as they can get food, they don’t stop growing.”
“Sammy, listen to me. I need you to focus. As long as I’m awake and paying attention, it won’t attack, is that what you’re saying?”
“Yup.”
“It attacked us this afternoon. I was awake then.”
“You weren’t paying attention.”
“What are you talking about? Of course I was paying attention.”
“Not to the cockatrice. You were paying attention to me.”
Dean sighed. He had been paying attention to Sam, more worried about his little brother’s fever and weakness than about the monster they were hunting.
“So what do we do?” he wondered aloud.
“Stop worrying about me,” Sam said, in the big brothers are so stupid voice that he could pull off perfectly even when he was half-conscious.
“Like that’s going to happen,” Dean muttered, lowering Sam to the ground and draping the blanket over him again. “Next time, Sammy, we’re carrying your notes with us, even if they do weigh eight thousand pounds and your gigantor brain is capable of remembering everything.”
“I do remember my notes,” Sam said indignantly. “I remember all my notes. Even from that one Art History course I took.”
“Go to sleep, Sam.”
“Nile crocodiles attack by ambush too,” Sam muttered. “So it serves them right cockatrices get them the same way. Or got them the same way. I don’t know if there are that many still left.”
“What, crocodiles?”
“Nile crocodiles aren’t endangered. I meant cockatrices.”
“Of course you did. Go to sleep, Sam.”
“Dean?”
“What?”
“You need to go.”
“Sam -”
“You can’t stay awake forever. At some point you’ll fall asleep. Then it’ll just get us both. It’s much more sensible if you -”
“Sam, finish that sentence and I will kick your ass when you’re better. I’m not leaving you alone here when you’re sick and there’s some kind of terror-monster out to kill you by looking at you.”
“Can’t kill me by looking at me. I have to look at it.”
Dean paused. “So… If I blindfolded you and left you here and went back to the motel for your notes, it couldn’t hurt you?”
“So you’ll go?”
“Answer my question - and don’t you dare lie to me, Sammy.”
Sam shrugged. “Legend says cockatrices can also kill people by breathing on them. But it’s not been conclusively proven.”
Dean shook his head. Legend was enough for him. It was at least a five-hour trek back to the motel, or to any kind of civilization. Five hours there, five hours back, he wasn’t leaving Sam alone that long unless he was completely certain the thing couldn’t hurt him.
“Sleep, Sam,” he said. “And maybe in the morning you’ll feel better and remember how to kill it.”
“I told you how to kill it,” Sam mumbled, shutting his eyes.
“What? How?” Dean patted his brother on the arm. “Sam!”
Sam groaned and opened his eyes. “What?”
“How do you kill a cockatrice?”
“A cockatrice? Like Pliny’s cockatrice?”
Dean suppressed a sigh. “Go back to sleep, kiddo. We’ll talk in the morning.”
Part II