09x05 - Sleeping Village - Part Four: Peace of Mind
Episode Number: 09x05 of Season 9 Fan Fiction (S9FF)
Title: Sleeping Village
Subtitle: Peace of Mind
Author: dracox-serdriel
Word Count: 2,745
Rating: R
Warnings: language, violence, terror
Status: Complete. Feedback appreciated.
"No way," Dean said, "you can't be serious."
"Dean, the thing that killed Goodheart left talon marks on his chest and stomach. Do you see any talons?"
"Well, no."
"That's because I'm not hurting anyone," Ahanah said. "Let me go!"
"Not until you tell us what's going on," Dean said.
"If I knew, I would happily tell you," she continued. "Baku protect humanity, and this thing, whatever it is, it does nothing but destroy."
Sam pulled out a knife and cut open the net, shushing Dean's avid protests. The Baku bowed to Sam, then disappeared.
"Fantastic! You just let it go kill someone else," Dean shouted. "What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking, the Baku isn't doing this," Sam replied.
"Didn't we agree like last week, there's never two crazy things going on at one time?"
"Maybe," Sam replied, "but I believe her."
"But I don't!"
"I'd love to ask, Cas, but Sam cut the damn thing loose!" Dean shouted into the phone. A few moments later he said, "Sorry I didn't mean to yell, I'm just frustrated."
Sam picked up in the sudden change in tone and wondered if Cas had told Dean off. He was impressed.
He pulled up research on sudden death in sleep, loss of breath, and loss of voice. Part of him felt stupid for not having done this earlier, as he immediately found that they were dealing with a Mora.
"Can we talk about this when I get back?" Dean asked Cas through the phone.
Sam motioned to Dean to pass him the phone.
"Sam wants to speak to you," Dean said glumly, handing his brother the phone.
" - Dean, you can't just pass me off to - "
" - Cas, it's Sam."
"Hi, Sam."
"What do you know about Mora?" Sam asked.
"They're evil. They steal the breath of life from people while they sleep. Those who survive the experience qualify it as terrifying," the angel responded.
"So, do their attacks steal people's voices?"
"Not successful ones."
"I mean, could that happen, if they almost killed the person but failed?"
"I suppose, yes, that could happen, but they look nothing like Baku," Castiel continued. "They're humanoid and have scales and talons."
"Talons?" Sam said.
"Yes."
"Okay, Cas, how do we kill one?"
"I have no idea," Cas admitted. "But Dean said you caught a Baku - "
"She's been driving the damn thing off, Cas," Sam cut him off by accident. "Look, we need to find this thing and kill it, so if you can think of anything, please."
"I will look into it immediately," Cas said. Then he hung up.
"Seriously, Sam, you believe the elephant in the room?" Dean yelled. "You just let it go, just like that?"
"Because the evidence didn't line up."
"Evidence? Really?" Dean turned his head. "That's what you're going with?"
"Are you listening to yourself?"
"Are you?"
"Dean!"
"Sam, you can't just choose like that," Dean scoffed. "You can just say, 'Hey, I decided this monster isn't guilty' and let it go. She could've told us what it looked like, what it - "
" - I already know what it is," Sam cut him off. "So calm down and get your crap together, okay?"
Dean sat down on his bed seethed.
"It's one," Sam said. "Maybe we should call it?"
"Fine," Dean snapped.
"So, gotta ask, why are you here?" Charlie spoke to Cas.
"Is that a metaphysical question?"
"No, I mean, instead of out on the case? I can handle being here by myself, I don't need company."
Cas tilted his head. "I'm not suppose to leave unless necessary until I've done more training," he explained.
"But I thought you were a bad-ass angel?"
"I am an angel," he replied.
"Then couldn't they use your help?"
Cas wasn't sure how to respond. He decided to try one of Dean's lines, "It's complicated."
He pulled another book on monsters out and opened to its entry on the Mora.
"What the frack is a Mora?" Charlie asked, peering over his shoulder.
"Bad news."
"So, you're dating Dean?" Charlie asked non-sequitur-style.
"We are involved in a romantic relationship, yes," Cas responded.
"Can I ask, how is it going?"
For some reason, Cas felt unguarded around Charlie. Something about her made him think he could speak openly without condemnation. "I find his inability to conceptualize and communicate his emotions frustrating. He finds my lack of cultural background and limited social skills obtuse and difficult. Right now I am annoyed that he is unable to openly speak to me unless he believes he is about to die or is otherwise compromised."
Charlie wasn't sure if the angel was versed in sarcasm. The monotone of his voice, coupled with his inelegant and concise explanation, made his response sound false.
"Are you being serious?"
"Yes," he replied.
"Well, that's all normal stuff," she dismissed. "I'm talking about the whole angel/human thing. Does that get in the way?"
Cas's confused look made her add, "I'm dating a fairy, and right now it's great. I guess I'm just wondering if it, you know, could work out."
"You said my complaints were normal."
"I did," Charlie felt awkward.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, if you were both human, that'd stuff would still happen," she said. "That's just, normal couple stuff."
Cas suddenly had hundreds of questions for this woman who just validated his relationship. "You mean normal for two men?"
She laughed. "I date women, and that crap happens to us, too. And from my brief stint trying to date boys back in high school, it's all the same."
"So you're saying the reason for the conflicts in my relationship with Dean has nothing to do with me being an angel? Or in a male body?"
Charlie wondered if she was talking to a five year old. "Correct."
"You're concerned your relationship with another species might become complicated beyond normal relationship stuff?" Cas asked, trying to mimic her expressions.
"Well, I feel better now," she said. "You've known Dean longer than I've known Gilda. If you two are making it work, why not me?"
"You think our relationship is working?" Cas asked.
"You're happy," she said. "I can tell. He's happy. Even with what you said, you're happy."
"I am," he said it as if it were a surprise.
"That means you'll work it out with Dean, right?" she asked.
"Yes, it does."
"Okay, so it's working."
Cas found himself feeling guilty over the last few conversations he'd had with Dean. He emphasized Dean's inability to communicate, and while it was true, he wondered if he had been too harsh on his hunter.
Pulling another non sequitur, Charlie said, "What're we looking for again?"
"Uh," Cas had to think. "How to kill a Mora."
Dean didn't sleep that night. He tossed and turned and finally gave up around four when he decided to take a walk to clear his head. Whatever the stupid nightmares were, they didn't screw with his head near as much as Sam did with his damn dream-jacking.
The motel's parking lot was large enough for a decent walk, so Dean circled back. As he strolled, he looked up to the stars, and found himself thinking about what Cas told him.
"In my true form, I am one thousand and fifty feet tall, by human reckoning. I have one head with four faces: human, ox, eagle, and lion. I have six wings, although only two are used for flying. Down my back, along my sides, there are..." he struggled to find the right word, "...whiskers, that's the closest physiological equivalent. Except they're much more like arms, capable of grabbing, carrying, and the like. But my real arms, they're much larger, and they have hands, each with five fingers. Pigmentation is very different for angels, in the heavenly plane. Humans describe it as pure white, blinding. The truth is the human optic nerve cannot process what color my true form holds, which is comprised of light, similar to how the sun works, I suppose, but my body doesn't hemorrhage energy nor will it implode. My skin, well, it's not actually skin, but it's similar, is the density of osmium but lighter than helium, down to my prehensile tail. My eyes burn blue. They used to be."
Dean swallowed hard when he remembered what Castiel had said next.
"When I gulped down all those souls from Purgatory, it changed me. Physically, I mean. Of course in other ways, but... Death said I was a mutated angel when he saw me. He was right. Now my eyes are dark, brown maybe? They don't burn anymore. And my non-flying wings no longer have feathers as they once did. My fingers are different... my hands and arms, are, too. It's difficult to explain. My tail is no longer like a dove's. Now it's more like a fox's. Unfortunately, all of this does little to answer your question, what I look like. I wish I could just show you. But this plane only has three dimensions, so my form could never be adequately represented here. Only rough comparisons and allegory that probably make me sound ugly and terrifying."
Nothing Castiel described sounded ugly or terrifying to Dean. He'd told Cas as much, but now, as he looked up at the stars, he realized the angel's true form would reach up like a skyscraper. What's someone like that, someone as amazing as Cas was, doing with him? Dean couldn't even sleep right, which most people just did naturally. It's a biological function. It hit Dean that his relationship with Cas was modulated by a vessel, a human body. He couldn't lay eyes on his partner without them burning out of his head. Beyond that, Dean was human. He would grow old and die in the best of circumstances. What, did he even have fifty more years left in him? But Castiel had lived for thousands, hundreds of thousands, billions of years, even.
Dean Winchester had seen wonderful and terrible things. He'd been to hell, purgatory, and heaven alike. Yet only Cas had ever made Dean feel in awe of anything. Had he really missed all that for five years?
What was the solution to Dean's fleeting, blip of a life to Castiel? Were he to fall, he'd be giving up everything he had been for eons to live a short, bloody life in a vessel. And then what? Dean had died enough times to know what was next. But did angels have souls that passed to heaven, hell, or otherwise when they died? What about fallen angels who became human? Not knowing bothered him. That wasn't fair to Cas, and all it did was make Dean feel vindictive and petty.
"So," Dean whispered up to the stars, "Uh, God, I guess. Got any advice for a human in love with an angel?"
The only response was silence. "Me neither," he whispered. "Thought it couldn't hurt to check."
The sun was rising. Had he really been out here that long? He couldn't remember, and he felt like he'd been drugged. Did he just stand outside and pray for advice? Was he really counting the years he had left with Castiel? What the hell was going on?
"Dean?" Sam had come out of the room. "What're you doing?"
"Just clearing my head," he said. "Couldn't sleep."
"I got another call, or, well you did, but I answered," he said. "Mrs. Goodheart is dead. And another was attacked last night, no voice now."
"Damn it," Dean cursed, heading back into the motel.
"Got an e-mail from Charlie," Sam said as his phone pinged. "She and Cas found a spell to kill the Mara. Sort of."
"Sort of?"
"Well, we can't kill it in - "
"The stupid dream plane, right."
"So we have to pull it into this plane and kill it."
"How?"
"As soon as it's here, we can kill it like anything else, but..."
"Why is there always a but?"
"It's covered in tough scales, so we need machetes. And, we can't summon it... we have to attract it, then pull it into this plane."
"Attract it? With what? Axe Body Spray?"
"The Mara attacks people who are sleeping," Sam said. "And we can induce the state of sleep it attacks in with a tea similar to the dream hopping one. If we do it during the day, we'd be like chum."
"Unfortunately, we'd also be unconscious," Dean pointed out. "So it's just one of as bait."
"Okay, I'll - "
"No, Sam, it's gotta be me."
"Dean, I - "
" - Sam, you've already jacked into my dreams this week. Drinking that crap too much screws with your brain. So I'll be the chum, you cast the spell and gank the creepy crawly. Okay?"
"All right, I guess."
Inducing a state of REM paralysis, when the Mara attacks, involved a particularly bitter drink that Dean had to ingest. "Blink your eyes three times," Sam reminded him, "when it's in the room."
Dean prepared a snarky comment, but he fell asleep before he could say it.
Sleep paralysis, as a phenomenon, sucked balls. Dean made a mental note of this for later. The paralysis was one thing, and he had prepared himself for it, but the paranoia, the pain up and down his back... it made him feel like prey. He hadn't felt that way for a very, very long time.
Then he felt it. The eyes of something nearby. He looked, but nothing was there. But he could feel it. He knew it was nearby. 'Come on you bastard,' he thought to himself. 'Show yourself.'
He felt a talon wrap around his ankle, then he saw it. Ugly like a toad and bare like a skeleton, it crept onto his chest. He couldn't help it; his eyes went wide. Then he remembered, he needed to tell Sam -
Dean blinked three times.
Sam tossed the vial of potion and yelled, "Sequitur ut hic et nunc!" Even though he thought whoever translated the spell could've done a better job.
Like a ripple in water, the air around Dean's bed shifted. On top of his brother knelt a reptilian monster, choking Dean by crushing his chest.
The little goblin was so busy and focused, it didn't even notice it had shifted planes. It didn't notice when Sam moved towards it, machete at the ready. The Mara made an oddly high-pitched squeal when Sam brought the blade down and chopped at his neck. It took to swings to decapitate the damn thing.
Dean, however, was still unconscious. He saw Sam decapitate the Mara, heard it cry out as it lost its head, then fell out of paralysis and back into sleep.
He sat at a card table in an old-looking building. Everything everywhere was empty.
"Dean?"
Dean looked up. It was Bobby Singer, down to the same old base ball cap.
"Bobby? What're you doing here?"
"No," he said. "I took this form because you respect this man, and I needed to approach you as someone familiar."
"You're, what, a demon?"
"No, I am Ahanah," Bobby said. "The Baku you captured."
"Yeah, sorry 'bout that," Dean said with no apology in his voice.
"You and your brother killed the creature attacking my charges," Ahanah-as-Bobby said. "And so I have come to help you."
"Help me? How?"
"You've been having Communal Nightmares."
"Sorry?"
"A nightmare that someone has conjured for you, usually as a warning. Spirits often do this to warn those they love that danger is nearby."
"Don't you eat nightmares?"
"Baku are of the few gifted with the Sight needed to tell nightmares apart from one another, and we can clear the water for those receiving them."
"And that means what, exactly?"
"I can show you who is sending you this message, and why."
"What're you waiting for?"
"Your permission."
Dean thought about this and said, "Sure."
"Goodbye, Dean Winchester. And thank you." Ahanah-as-Bobby disappeared as this was said.
Dean opened his eyes in bed at the motel, very much awake and on earth.
"Holy crap."
"Are you going to talk at all?" Sam asked. Dean had climbed into the back seat when they left Moneta.
"No."
"Was it another nightmare?"
"Sam, this isn't about - that kind of crap, okay?"
"Then what is it about?"
"It's about Cas, okay, so will you drop it?"
Uncertain if his brother was being truthful, Sam decided to drop the topic in favor of turning up AC/DC.
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Part Five: Soft Breeze
Primary Post: 09x05 Sleeping Village
Primary Post: Season 9 Fan Fiction (S9FF)
Title: Sleeping Village
Subtitle: Peace of Mind
Author: dracox-serdriel
Word Count: 2,745
Rating: R
Warnings: language, violence, terror
Status: Complete. Feedback appreciated.
"No way," Dean said, "you can't be serious."
"Dean, the thing that killed Goodheart left talon marks on his chest and stomach. Do you see any talons?"
"Well, no."
"That's because I'm not hurting anyone," Ahanah said. "Let me go!"
"Not until you tell us what's going on," Dean said.
"If I knew, I would happily tell you," she continued. "Baku protect humanity, and this thing, whatever it is, it does nothing but destroy."
Sam pulled out a knife and cut open the net, shushing Dean's avid protests. The Baku bowed to Sam, then disappeared.
"Fantastic! You just let it go kill someone else," Dean shouted. "What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking, the Baku isn't doing this," Sam replied.
"Didn't we agree like last week, there's never two crazy things going on at one time?"
"Maybe," Sam replied, "but I believe her."
"But I don't!"
"I'd love to ask, Cas, but Sam cut the damn thing loose!" Dean shouted into the phone. A few moments later he said, "Sorry I didn't mean to yell, I'm just frustrated."
Sam picked up in the sudden change in tone and wondered if Cas had told Dean off. He was impressed.
He pulled up research on sudden death in sleep, loss of breath, and loss of voice. Part of him felt stupid for not having done this earlier, as he immediately found that they were dealing with a Mora.
"Can we talk about this when I get back?" Dean asked Cas through the phone.
Sam motioned to Dean to pass him the phone.
"Sam wants to speak to you," Dean said glumly, handing his brother the phone.
" - Dean, you can't just pass me off to - "
" - Cas, it's Sam."
"Hi, Sam."
"What do you know about Mora?" Sam asked.
"They're evil. They steal the breath of life from people while they sleep. Those who survive the experience qualify it as terrifying," the angel responded.
"So, do their attacks steal people's voices?"
"Not successful ones."
"I mean, could that happen, if they almost killed the person but failed?"
"I suppose, yes, that could happen, but they look nothing like Baku," Castiel continued. "They're humanoid and have scales and talons."
"Talons?" Sam said.
"Yes."
"Okay, Cas, how do we kill one?"
"I have no idea," Cas admitted. "But Dean said you caught a Baku - "
"She's been driving the damn thing off, Cas," Sam cut him off by accident. "Look, we need to find this thing and kill it, so if you can think of anything, please."
"I will look into it immediately," Cas said. Then he hung up.
"Seriously, Sam, you believe the elephant in the room?" Dean yelled. "You just let it go, just like that?"
"Because the evidence didn't line up."
"Evidence? Really?" Dean turned his head. "That's what you're going with?"
"Are you listening to yourself?"
"Are you?"
"Dean!"
"Sam, you can't just choose like that," Dean scoffed. "You can just say, 'Hey, I decided this monster isn't guilty' and let it go. She could've told us what it looked like, what it - "
" - I already know what it is," Sam cut him off. "So calm down and get your crap together, okay?"
Dean sat down on his bed seethed.
"It's one," Sam said. "Maybe we should call it?"
"Fine," Dean snapped.
"So, gotta ask, why are you here?" Charlie spoke to Cas.
"Is that a metaphysical question?"
"No, I mean, instead of out on the case? I can handle being here by myself, I don't need company."
Cas tilted his head. "I'm not suppose to leave unless necessary until I've done more training," he explained.
"But I thought you were a bad-ass angel?"
"I am an angel," he replied.
"Then couldn't they use your help?"
Cas wasn't sure how to respond. He decided to try one of Dean's lines, "It's complicated."
He pulled another book on monsters out and opened to its entry on the Mora.
"What the frack is a Mora?" Charlie asked, peering over his shoulder.
"Bad news."
"So, you're dating Dean?" Charlie asked non-sequitur-style.
"We are involved in a romantic relationship, yes," Cas responded.
"Can I ask, how is it going?"
For some reason, Cas felt unguarded around Charlie. Something about her made him think he could speak openly without condemnation. "I find his inability to conceptualize and communicate his emotions frustrating. He finds my lack of cultural background and limited social skills obtuse and difficult. Right now I am annoyed that he is unable to openly speak to me unless he believes he is about to die or is otherwise compromised."
Charlie wasn't sure if the angel was versed in sarcasm. The monotone of his voice, coupled with his inelegant and concise explanation, made his response sound false.
"Are you being serious?"
"Yes," he replied.
"Well, that's all normal stuff," she dismissed. "I'm talking about the whole angel/human thing. Does that get in the way?"
Cas's confused look made her add, "I'm dating a fairy, and right now it's great. I guess I'm just wondering if it, you know, could work out."
"You said my complaints were normal."
"I did," Charlie felt awkward.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, if you were both human, that'd stuff would still happen," she said. "That's just, normal couple stuff."
Cas suddenly had hundreds of questions for this woman who just validated his relationship. "You mean normal for two men?"
She laughed. "I date women, and that crap happens to us, too. And from my brief stint trying to date boys back in high school, it's all the same."
"So you're saying the reason for the conflicts in my relationship with Dean has nothing to do with me being an angel? Or in a male body?"
Charlie wondered if she was talking to a five year old. "Correct."
"You're concerned your relationship with another species might become complicated beyond normal relationship stuff?" Cas asked, trying to mimic her expressions.
"Well, I feel better now," she said. "You've known Dean longer than I've known Gilda. If you two are making it work, why not me?"
"You think our relationship is working?" Cas asked.
"You're happy," she said. "I can tell. He's happy. Even with what you said, you're happy."
"I am," he said it as if it were a surprise.
"That means you'll work it out with Dean, right?" she asked.
"Yes, it does."
"Okay, so it's working."
Cas found himself feeling guilty over the last few conversations he'd had with Dean. He emphasized Dean's inability to communicate, and while it was true, he wondered if he had been too harsh on his hunter.
Pulling another non sequitur, Charlie said, "What're we looking for again?"
"Uh," Cas had to think. "How to kill a Mora."
Dean didn't sleep that night. He tossed and turned and finally gave up around four when he decided to take a walk to clear his head. Whatever the stupid nightmares were, they didn't screw with his head near as much as Sam did with his damn dream-jacking.
The motel's parking lot was large enough for a decent walk, so Dean circled back. As he strolled, he looked up to the stars, and found himself thinking about what Cas told him.
"In my true form, I am one thousand and fifty feet tall, by human reckoning. I have one head with four faces: human, ox, eagle, and lion. I have six wings, although only two are used for flying. Down my back, along my sides, there are..." he struggled to find the right word, "...whiskers, that's the closest physiological equivalent. Except they're much more like arms, capable of grabbing, carrying, and the like. But my real arms, they're much larger, and they have hands, each with five fingers. Pigmentation is very different for angels, in the heavenly plane. Humans describe it as pure white, blinding. The truth is the human optic nerve cannot process what color my true form holds, which is comprised of light, similar to how the sun works, I suppose, but my body doesn't hemorrhage energy nor will it implode. My skin, well, it's not actually skin, but it's similar, is the density of osmium but lighter than helium, down to my prehensile tail. My eyes burn blue. They used to be."
Dean swallowed hard when he remembered what Castiel had said next.
"When I gulped down all those souls from Purgatory, it changed me. Physically, I mean. Of course in other ways, but... Death said I was a mutated angel when he saw me. He was right. Now my eyes are dark, brown maybe? They don't burn anymore. And my non-flying wings no longer have feathers as they once did. My fingers are different... my hands and arms, are, too. It's difficult to explain. My tail is no longer like a dove's. Now it's more like a fox's. Unfortunately, all of this does little to answer your question, what I look like. I wish I could just show you. But this plane only has three dimensions, so my form could never be adequately represented here. Only rough comparisons and allegory that probably make me sound ugly and terrifying."
Nothing Castiel described sounded ugly or terrifying to Dean. He'd told Cas as much, but now, as he looked up at the stars, he realized the angel's true form would reach up like a skyscraper. What's someone like that, someone as amazing as Cas was, doing with him? Dean couldn't even sleep right, which most people just did naturally. It's a biological function. It hit Dean that his relationship with Cas was modulated by a vessel, a human body. He couldn't lay eyes on his partner without them burning out of his head. Beyond that, Dean was human. He would grow old and die in the best of circumstances. What, did he even have fifty more years left in him? But Castiel had lived for thousands, hundreds of thousands, billions of years, even.
Dean Winchester had seen wonderful and terrible things. He'd been to hell, purgatory, and heaven alike. Yet only Cas had ever made Dean feel in awe of anything. Had he really missed all that for five years?
What was the solution to Dean's fleeting, blip of a life to Castiel? Were he to fall, he'd be giving up everything he had been for eons to live a short, bloody life in a vessel. And then what? Dean had died enough times to know what was next. But did angels have souls that passed to heaven, hell, or otherwise when they died? What about fallen angels who became human? Not knowing bothered him. That wasn't fair to Cas, and all it did was make Dean feel vindictive and petty.
"So," Dean whispered up to the stars, "Uh, God, I guess. Got any advice for a human in love with an angel?"
The only response was silence. "Me neither," he whispered. "Thought it couldn't hurt to check."
The sun was rising. Had he really been out here that long? He couldn't remember, and he felt like he'd been drugged. Did he just stand outside and pray for advice? Was he really counting the years he had left with Castiel? What the hell was going on?
"Dean?" Sam had come out of the room. "What're you doing?"
"Just clearing my head," he said. "Couldn't sleep."
"I got another call, or, well you did, but I answered," he said. "Mrs. Goodheart is dead. And another was attacked last night, no voice now."
"Damn it," Dean cursed, heading back into the motel.
"Got an e-mail from Charlie," Sam said as his phone pinged. "She and Cas found a spell to kill the Mara. Sort of."
"Sort of?"
"Well, we can't kill it in - "
"The stupid dream plane, right."
"So we have to pull it into this plane and kill it."
"How?"
"As soon as it's here, we can kill it like anything else, but..."
"Why is there always a but?"
"It's covered in tough scales, so we need machetes. And, we can't summon it... we have to attract it, then pull it into this plane."
"Attract it? With what? Axe Body Spray?"
"The Mara attacks people who are sleeping," Sam said. "And we can induce the state of sleep it attacks in with a tea similar to the dream hopping one. If we do it during the day, we'd be like chum."
"Unfortunately, we'd also be unconscious," Dean pointed out. "So it's just one of as bait."
"Okay, I'll - "
"No, Sam, it's gotta be me."
"Dean, I - "
" - Sam, you've already jacked into my dreams this week. Drinking that crap too much screws with your brain. So I'll be the chum, you cast the spell and gank the creepy crawly. Okay?"
"All right, I guess."
Inducing a state of REM paralysis, when the Mara attacks, involved a particularly bitter drink that Dean had to ingest. "Blink your eyes three times," Sam reminded him, "when it's in the room."
Dean prepared a snarky comment, but he fell asleep before he could say it.
Sleep paralysis, as a phenomenon, sucked balls. Dean made a mental note of this for later. The paralysis was one thing, and he had prepared himself for it, but the paranoia, the pain up and down his back... it made him feel like prey. He hadn't felt that way for a very, very long time.
Then he felt it. The eyes of something nearby. He looked, but nothing was there. But he could feel it. He knew it was nearby. 'Come on you bastard,' he thought to himself. 'Show yourself.'
He felt a talon wrap around his ankle, then he saw it. Ugly like a toad and bare like a skeleton, it crept onto his chest. He couldn't help it; his eyes went wide. Then he remembered, he needed to tell Sam -
Dean blinked three times.
Sam tossed the vial of potion and yelled, "Sequitur ut hic et nunc!" Even though he thought whoever translated the spell could've done a better job.
Like a ripple in water, the air around Dean's bed shifted. On top of his brother knelt a reptilian monster, choking Dean by crushing his chest.
The little goblin was so busy and focused, it didn't even notice it had shifted planes. It didn't notice when Sam moved towards it, machete at the ready. The Mara made an oddly high-pitched squeal when Sam brought the blade down and chopped at his neck. It took to swings to decapitate the damn thing.
Dean, however, was still unconscious. He saw Sam decapitate the Mara, heard it cry out as it lost its head, then fell out of paralysis and back into sleep.
He sat at a card table in an old-looking building. Everything everywhere was empty.
"Dean?"
Dean looked up. It was Bobby Singer, down to the same old base ball cap.
"Bobby? What're you doing here?"
"No," he said. "I took this form because you respect this man, and I needed to approach you as someone familiar."
"You're, what, a demon?"
"No, I am Ahanah," Bobby said. "The Baku you captured."
"Yeah, sorry 'bout that," Dean said with no apology in his voice.
"You and your brother killed the creature attacking my charges," Ahanah-as-Bobby said. "And so I have come to help you."
"Help me? How?"
"You've been having Communal Nightmares."
"Sorry?"
"A nightmare that someone has conjured for you, usually as a warning. Spirits often do this to warn those they love that danger is nearby."
"Don't you eat nightmares?"
"Baku are of the few gifted with the Sight needed to tell nightmares apart from one another, and we can clear the water for those receiving them."
"And that means what, exactly?"
"I can show you who is sending you this message, and why."
"What're you waiting for?"
"Your permission."
Dean thought about this and said, "Sure."
"Goodbye, Dean Winchester. And thank you." Ahanah-as-Bobby disappeared as this was said.
Dean opened his eyes in bed at the motel, very much awake and on earth.
"Holy crap."
"Are you going to talk at all?" Sam asked. Dean had climbed into the back seat when they left Moneta.
"No."
"Was it another nightmare?"
"Sam, this isn't about - that kind of crap, okay?"
"Then what is it about?"
"It's about Cas, okay, so will you drop it?"
Uncertain if his brother was being truthful, Sam decided to drop the topic in favor of turning up AC/DC.
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Primary Post: 09x05 Sleeping Village
Primary Post: Season 9 Fan Fiction (S9FF)