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A while ago, someone brought up the idea of a crossover between Supernatural and the incomparable Lemony Snicket books, A Series of Unfortunate Events. I was intrigued by the possibilities presented by some kind of intersection between the worlds of the unlucky Baudelaire orphans - inventive Violet, clever Klaus, sharp-toothed Sunny - and our own attractive but fairly stupid Sam and Dean Winchester. I remember thinking, How cool! What terrific potential there is for such a story! Too bad it would probably get written by some idiot with no sense of style or characterization, which would completely defeat the purpose of writing such a thing.
Friends, Romans, countrymen: that is me. I am that idiot.
Title: The Deadly Deal
Author: guns_and_butter
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG13
Word count: 8,910
Spoilers: through Mystery Spot. All available A Series of Unfortunate Events canon is fair game.
Note: Many thanks to my superb editors rejeneration and sirryluv, whose support has been essential in finally bringing the tale of the Winchester brothers to the general public.
Disclaimer: I could not have completed this report without the resources graciously provided to me by Mr Lemony Snicket and Mr Eric Kripke. One of the accompanying photographs was procured from the archives of marishna.
Summary: Dear Reader,
If you are in the mood for a heartwarming tale about the thrilling adventures of two handsome and carefree brothers, I regret to inform you that you have made a most unfortunate miscalculation. This particular story documents the trials and tribulations of Sam and Dean Winchester, the simple fact of which is enough to make it one of the most unpleasant stories in all the world.
The plot, I’m sorry to say, includes such miseries as missed opportunities, lime-green bathtubs, an unfamiliar code, stolen gasoline, a mysterious disappearance, and clowns.
I am compelled by love and executive decree to record the ghastly and ghostly details of the Winchester brothers’ lives, but you are under no such obligation, so I urge you to close your browser at once and go do something productive with your life, or at the very least select another story.
With all due respect,
G. N. Butter
G. N. Butter
THE DEADLY DEAL
by G. N. BUTTER
For Mary.
Our passion burned with the fire of a thousand suns. Then you did.
It is often remarked upon, mostly by people less clever than you and I, that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. This expression can be taken literally or it can be understood figuratively, a word which here means “not literally.” Literally, when a person sees smoke, they might confidently assume the source of that smoke is a fire. For example, if you were to set fire to your computer rather than proceed with this story - as I would strongly suggest that you do - the fire would result in a large cloud of smoke. Upon seeing said smoke leaking from your doors and windows, your neighbors would reasonably infer that there was a fire in your home, and they would alert the fire brigade to come put it out, unless you have particularly nasty neighbors or are one yourself.
Figuratively, however, the expression means that if there is a hint or rumor of trouble, such trouble probably exists, although perhaps not in quite the way you expect.
Dean and Sam Winchester had in their tumultuous lives encountered a great number of fires, both literal and figurative - and now, as they sped down the interstate in their black Chevrolet Impala, they were about to encounter one more.
“You got anything yet?” Dean asked.
Sam shuffled the stack of newspaper articles in his hands, squinting down at the small print and the scribbled notes between columns. “I’m still working on it.”
“I don’t see why we couldn’t just take that case in Florida with the disappearing nannies,” Dean said, drumming his fingers loudly against the steering wheel. “I’m telling you, man, that’s a necromancer circle, no question. Open and shut case. We’re in, we’re out, we shoot some evil sons of bitches, maybe get in some quality time with the local beach bunnies - what’s not to like?” Dean, who at twenty-nine was the oldest surviving Winchester, was generally very much in favor of shooting evil sons of bitches and spending quality time with nice young ladies of a certain persuasion. He loved his brother, his car, and his guns more than anything else in the world, although he only expressed open affection for the car. The guns weren’t concerned about it one way or another, and as for Sam - well. Dean thought Sam probably knew.
“Because, Dean, this is all too weird to just be a coincidence,” Sam said, brushing off his brother’s libido and impatience as he often felt he had been doing for all of his twenty-five years. Sam was the more serious brother, with tousled hair and very long legs that were only occasionally under his premeditated control; combined with a knack for shyly earnest smiles, these traits had the effect of making him look like a very sweet and somewhat dim overlarge puppy.
The younger Winchester loved to read. When he was a boy, he had read every book he could get his hands on. These days he read newspapers and online search engines, looking for articles like the ones he was studying now. “Wherever these kids go, trouble follows," he said. "Deaths, weird accidents, fires - plus, I mean, they’re on the run from the cops.”
“Yeah, I can’t imagine what that’d be like,” Dean said sardonically, a word which here means “rudely and while on the run from the cops.”
“I’m serious. There’s something bigger going on here,” Sam insisted.
Dean sighed, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “What if there’s not?” Sam looked surprised, and Dean pressed on. “We have no proof that there’s anything supernatural involved here. What if they’re just kids, really goddamn unlucky kids, who - ”
“There was a fire,” Sam said quietly.
Dean sent his brother a sharp look. “What?” Often, when people are not sure they have heard something correctly, they will say, “What?” instead of the more polite, “Would you please repeat that, perhaps a little louder?” But Dean did not say, “What?” because he had not heard Sam. When Dean said, “What?” what he meant was, “Please elaborate on that statement, which I sincerely hope does not mean what I think it means, seeing as how I only have fifty-five days left to live and I would much rather spend them shooting necromancers than chasing down the dubious legacy of the demon who killed our parents and possibly made you the Antichrist.”
“A fire,” Sam repeated. “A couple years ago, when the youngest was a baby. Whole house burned to the ground. Both parents died.” He waved the sheaf of articles. “That’s when all this started.”
The car went quiet as both brothers thought back to the nursery fire that had killed their mother, the fire that had made their father sick with grief and set the remaining Winchesters on an endless quest for answers and revenge. The fire that was the first in a long line of misfortunes and tragedies that had brought the brothers to where they were now: orphaned and bone-tired, pursued by unpleasant men and even more unpleasant demons, alone but for each other and the rumble of their faithful old car.
Dean cleared his throat. “So,” he said, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. “Where are we headed?”
&&&
“Schadenfreude” is a German word that, like many German words, is terribly difficult to spell. Also like many German words, it means something rather nasty, in this case “pleasure taken from other people’s misfortune.” Everyone is guilty of this at some time or another. You yourself may laugh when a passing car splashes through a puddle and drenches a man waiting for the bus, or smirk when the class brain receives a B+ on an exam, or entertain yourself by watching reality television programs documenting the misfortunes and humiliations of others. No matter the situation, the warm glow of pleasure in your chest at the sight of someone else’s trouble is an unmistakable symptom of schadenfreude, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Standing outside the first stop on Sam’s list of locations to investigate, the glow in Dean’s chest was warm indeed.
“Oh, come on,” Sam whined.
Dean was delighted. Dean was thrilled. Dean was not at all ashamed of himself. “No, no, this is perfect. Move it or lose it, man. I’m starving.”
“I hate you,” Sam said, following Dean into the restaurant. Almost immediately, his shoulder knocked into a herd of brightly colored balloons, which happily clung to his jacket when he attempted to shake them off. He slumped down at the nearest table, scowling. “I hate you, I hate this case, I hate the Baudelaires, I hate - augh!” By that, Sam probably meant, “I hate being startled by men in clown costumes.” Unfortunately for him, this was precisely what had just occurred.
“I’m Eddie, your waiter,” said Eddie, the waiter in the clown costume. “Welcome to the Anxious Clown restaurant - where everybody has a good time, whether they like it or not. Can I start you off with some Silly Soda Pop? Or maybe you’d like to try the Surprising Chicken Salad? It’s very fresh.”
“Urngh,” Sam said miserably, sinking lower in his chair.
Dean’s grin was nearly as obnoxious as Eddie’s. “We’ll both have the, uh - ” He glanced at the menu. “Friendly Chicken Fingers. Make his extra-friendly.”
“Sure thing,” Eddie agreed, and ambled back to the kitchen, enormous shoes whacking the floor at every step.
Sam shuddered.
“Come on, Sammy, lighten up,” Dean said, still grinning. “This place is great.” Sam looked skeptical, and also as though he were considering punching Dean in the nose, which he was. Dean quickly changed the subject. “So what’s the deal with this town, anyway?”
Sam sat up in his chair and began to sort through his jumble of newspaper articles. “According to this, a woman named Josephine Anwhistle was the Baudelaires’ third guardian after the fire. She lived up on the hill, on a cliff overlooking the lake. Weird old lady, by all accounts. Not that that’s too surprising, I guess. This whole town’s kind of weird.”
“Looks pretty dead to me,” Dean said, looking around the empty restaurant.
“Lake Lachrymose is a resort town, apparently. Fills up during the summer. Lots of city people own houses on the lake.” Sam scratched idly at the back of his neck. “You know they’ve got leeches here? Lachrymose Leeches. They’re fascinating - nothing else like them in the world. Get this: they’re man-eaters. Anything-eaters, really. Six rows of teeth. They say a handful of them can rip the flesh off a human within minutes.” He grinned across the table. “Weird, right?”
“Someday the nerds will rise up and make you their queen,” Dean said. “Until then, can we skip to the part where this has anything to do with the case?”
Sam frowned, feeling a bit put out, a phrase which here means “annoyed by his brother’s lack of interest in Lachrymose Leeches.” He sighed and turned back to the newspaper articles. “A week after the Baudelaires arrived, Josephine Anwhistle disappeared. There was a big hurricane that came through here, Hurricane Herman, and - ”
“A hurricane,” Dean said disbelievingly.
“Yeah.”
“On a lake.”
“Yeah.”
“Dude,” Dean said, “that doesn’t even make sense.”
“Dude,” Sam retorted, “man-eating leeches.”
Dean sighed. “This town is fucked.”
Just then, Eddie returned with two plates of fried, greasy-looking food. “I’ve got two platters of Friendly Chicken Fingers,” he announced in a loud, irritating voice.
“Thanks,” Sam said distractedly, leaning away from where Eddie was sliding the plates onto the table. Dean smirked. “Anyway, supposedly the hurricane knocked her house off the cliff.”
“But the kids survived,” Dean interrupted.
“Yeah. Here’s the thing: there are witnesses who say they saw the Baudelaires in town the day of the hurricane. Like they knew what was going to happen. Some people even said they thought the kids had already killed her, then got out of the house before the storm hit.”
“Maybe it was just luck,” Dean said doubtfully.
“Some luck,” Sam said. “They lost their aunt and their house on the same day, and got shipped off to work at some crappy sawmill.”
“But they survived,” Dean said. “That’s what matters.”
Sam swallowed hard around a lump of emotion and Friendly Chicken Finger. “Yeah. They survived.” Despite Dean’s words, Sam knew all too well that sometimes surviving was not all that mattered. He had recently survived a string of repeating Tuesdays in which he had watched Dean die over and over again, followed by a Wednesday and a Thursday and a Friday and a Saturday and a hundred lonely days more, during which the fact that he had survived the circumstances that had killed his brother was no comfort at all. “At least they had each other,” he said quietly, looking down at his plate to avoid meeting Dean’s eyes.
A famous English Romantic poet of the eighteenth century wrote a long and well-received poem about an ancient mariner, which here means “a sailor who kills an albatross, which is a kind of large seabird.” In the poem, the mariner’s ship is cursed with terrible luck, and his fellow sailors force him to wear the dead bird around his neck as a reminder of what he has done and as a physical representation of the burden of guilt he bears for their misfortunes.
These days, when someone talks about the albatross around their neck, they very rarely mean that they have a bird carcass laid across their shoulders. When someone has an albatross around their neck, it usually means that they are weighed down by an unforgettable problem, often one for which they are carrying the burden of guilt.
Sam’s albatross was heavy indeed. Dean had made his terrible deal to save Sam, and in return he was going to endure unspeakable suffering for all eternity. Rightly or wrongly, Sam carried the burden of guilt for his brother's deal, and he was determined to find a way to save Dean and make things right. He thought about it constantly, from the moment he opened his eyes in the morning until the dark hour when he drifted away into unsettling dreams at night. He had tried everything he could think of to get Dean out of the deal, and as time passed and Dean’s year came to a close, the albatross grew heavier and heavier while Sam became increasingly desperate to find the solution he was looking for.
Dean watched his brother carefully from across the table. He didn’t know exactly what Sam was thinking, but he had a good idea, and he did not like it one bit. Dean could sometimes be accused of being a bit dense, which here means “not about to win any critical-thinking contests,” but he had spent his entire life trying to keep Sam safe and happy, and he could see that his brother was exhausted and afraid, worrying himself sick over the deal. Dean did not want to die, and he especially did not want to leave his younger brother alone in the world, but most of all he did not want to watch Sam waste away in front of him, as if he were the one dying instead of Dean.
Dean shifted his legs under the table and accidentally-on-purpose nudged Sam’s foot with his own. “Sammy,” he said in a low voice, which meant something like, “We’re going to be okay.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, and accidentally-on-purpose nudged him back. “Yeah, I know,” meaning something along the lines of, “I’m not sure I believe you, but I’ll pretend to, because I cannot bear to imagine what happens if you’re wrong.” “Don’t call me that,” he added.
Dean grinned. “Let’s hit the road. We’ve got a long ways to go.”
&&&
The Winchesters did have a long ways to go, and they were exhausted by the time they called it a day, a phrase which here means “pulled into the parking lot of the first hotel they spotted.” They had spent the day investigating an abandoned sawmill, a deeply depressing boarding school, and the charred remains of a hospital, all places where the Baudelaire children had stayed for days or weeks before departing under mysterious circumstances. Dean and Sam had explored the sawmill, eavesdropped on students, and picked through the ashy ruins of the hospital, but they had come no closer to discovering the truth behind the mystery of the Baudelaires, and so it was with heavy hearts that they pulled into the parking lot of the first hotel they spotted.
The hotel was a small, unglamorous place with peeling paint and a flickering VACANCY sign. It did not look very inviting or comfortable, but the brothers had spent many nights in places that were much less inviting and much less comfortable, so Dean gladly paid the tall, skinny manager at the front desk for a room with two beds and plenty of hot water.
“Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to make your stay more enjoyable,” said the manager, handing Dean the key to their room. He was serious-looking and gangly, which here means “nearly as tall as Sam, with long arms and legs sticking out at odd angles, as if he were made of drinking straws instead of flesh and bone.” He smiled politely and said, “Sleep well.” Dean thanked him and went back to the car to help Sam bring in their things.
Despite the manager’s encouragement, the Winchester brothers did not sleep well. Even after tucking his favorite gun beneath his pillow and laying out thick lines of salt along the threshold and windowsills, Dean could not stop listening to the tick of the clock on the bedside table and worrying about the terrible things that seemed to draw ever closer to the brothers as the days passed and his year neared its end. Even after reviewing his research a dozen times and studying his notes until his eyes burned, Sam could not stop thinking about the mystery of the Baudelaire orphans and the strange fires they had left in their wake, and wondering if he would find the miracle he was looking for before it was too late.
By the time sunlight crept through the thin curtains, both Winchesters were more tired than ever. They left the hotel early, drove toward the city, and didn’t speak until hours later, when they stopped for breakfast at a small roadside restaurant, whose cheerful neon sign welcomed the Winchesters to Valerie’s Family Diner.
The door jingled as they walked in, and the waitress behind the counter looked up with a big, friendly smile. “I’ll be right with you,” she mouthed, then turned back to her telephone conversation. “Uh huh. Uh huh. Well, you just tell him I said - yes, that’s just exactly what I said. Isn’t that what I told him? I know. I know. You too. Bye now.” She hung up the telephone and turned to Sam and Dean. “My sister,” she said apologetically. “She and her husband are having trouble at home. You know how it is.”
The Winchesters did not, in fact, know how it was, but they nodded politely anyway.
“I swear,” the waitress continued, bustling around behind the counter, “all day, it’s just ring ring ring. You never know where’s the fire this time. Never mind that. Are you hungry? Look at me talking away and you boys being so polite. My son was like that, too, till he followed that girl to - but you’re not here for me to run my mouth, are you. Eggs and toast? Coffee? Let’s see, now -”
The phone rang.
“I’m sorry, boys, this won’t be but a minute,” she said, and picked up the receiver. “Did you tell him?”
Dean and Sam exchanged a knowing glance and squeezed into one of the tiny booths across from the counter.
“She’s chatty,” Dean noted.
Sam nodded in agreement. “How long till we hit the city?”
“A couple hours, maybe,” Dean said. “What are our leads?”
“I want to try to talk to the woman who wrote these articles, see what she knows,” Sam said. “And we need to go by the Baudelaire mansion and see if we can pick up any readings.”
Dean frowned. “I thought you said it burned down.”
“It did. The lot’s still untouched, though. Who knows what might be hanging around?” Sam shrugged. “It’s worth a shot. Plus, a few of the children’s guardians lived in the city: the executor of their estate, the Squalors, some guy named Olaf or Omar or something - now that is a weird - ”
“Coffee?” asked the waitress with a smile. Sam and Dean both nodded eagerly, still tired from their long, sleepless night, and the subject of the Baudelaire orphans and their many incompetent and villainous guardians was dropped while the Winchester brothers ate breakfast and prepared themselves for another very long day.
&&&
When faced with a very difficult task, it can often be helpful to work through the situation step by step. For instance, if you were to find yourself trapped in a dank prison cell awaiting the arrival of your most nefarious enemy, you might first concentrate on the step of removing your shackles. Your initial instinct may be to agonize over memories of the last time you and your enemy were face-to-face, or to fret about whether she knows it was you who slipped the truth serum into her drink on Christmas Eve three years ago, or to wonder whether she still wears Mary’s locket on a chain around her neck, but the fact is that worrying about these things will do you no good at all if you are still chained to the wall when she arrives. Once you have accomplished the task of removing your shackles, you could then move on to another step, such as acquiring a good digging spoon, or faking your own death, or braining the prison guard with your typewriter. Whatever the predicament - a word which here means “size and physical strength of the prison guard” - it is often the case that very big, frightening problems become much less troublesome if they can be broken down into smaller, more manageable tasks.
The Winchesters were doing their best to solve the mystery of the Baudelaire orphans step by step, but they were finding it to be very slow going indeed.
“Jesus,” Dean said, wheezing. “These steps go on forever.”
Sam shook his head and leaned hard against the banister. “No,” he managed to say between gasps. “Not forever. Sixty…sixty-six floors.”
Sam’s correction was correct. The penthouse apartment formerly owned by Jerome and Esmé Squalor was on the sixty-sixth floor of 667 Dark Avenue, the most trendy and expensive building in the most trendy and expensive neighborhood in the entire city. Unfortunately for Dean and Sam, elevators had not been trendy for a very long time, and so the only way to reach the apartment was to climb the long, long, long, long, long, long spiral staircase, step by step, just as the Baudelaires had done months before.
“Who are these people, anyway?” Dean asked as they rounded another curve in the staircase.
Sam wiped the sweat from his forehead and tried to remember what he had read. “Jerome Squalor was an old friend of the Baudelaires’ mother. They seem to have lost touch after he married Esmé, but the Squalors ended up taking the kids in after they left the boarding school. It didn’t last long. The Baudelaires got moved to another guardian after Esmé ran off with her boyfriend, some foreign auctioneer.” Although Sam did not realize it at the time, "auctioneer" is a word which here means "notorious villain pretending to be a person who sells things at auctions, as part of his plot to get his greedy hands on the Baudelaire fortune.”
“Yikes.”
“Jerome stayed here for a while, but disappeared not long after. No one’s seen either of them since. Luckily for us, their rent’s been paid through the rest of the year, so the apartment has been left alone.”
“Yeah,” Dean said, eyeing the seemingly never-ending staircase ahead of them. “Lucky us.”
Up they went, step by step by step, until at last the brothers arrived on the final landing and collapsed together on the top stair to catch their breath.
“Man, I haven’t had a work-out like that since Dad thought I was getting fat,” Sam panted.
Dean chuckled, remembering their father’s frustration with Sam’s adolescent chubbiness. “Couldn’t blame him. You were getting pretty tubby, kiddo.”
Sam rolled his eyes and knocked his shoulder into Dean’s. “Nice, Dean. I bet you always picked on the fat kid in gym class.”
“Only when he was my kid brother,” Dean said cheerfully, reaching over to ruffle Sam’s hair. “Come on, it’s not like any of us knew you were going to turn into some gigantic freak overnight.”
Sam slapped Dean’s hand away and drew in a long, shaky breath. “I hate these people already,” he said, glaring over his shoulder at the double set of dusty elevator doors.
Dean hauled himself to his feet, clapping Sam heavily on the shoulder as he went. “You’ll feel better when we’ve gone through their stuff. Come on.”
Unsurprisingly, the door to the apartment was locked. Dean took from his pocket two long, thin pieces of metal, and within seconds, the lock tumbled and the doorknob turned, allowing the Winchesters to enter the largest apartment either of them had ever seen.
“How can two people possibly use this much space?” Dean wondered.
Sam groaned under his breath, already feeling tired. “Let’s get started,” he said, and the brothers began working their way through the Squalors’ apartment, step by step.
The penthouse was enormous. The rooms seemed to go on forever, one after another after another. Sam and Dean searched bathrooms and sitting rooms, gymnasiums and kitchens, studies and walk-in closets, but it wasn’t until they got to the eighth bedroom that either of them found anything helpful.
“Check this out,” Sam said, holding up a leather-bound notebook he’d found tucked between the mattress and the frame of the bed. “One Very Fashionable Diary, property of Esmé Squalor.”
“Under the mattress, huh? It never fails,” Dean said. “You girls and your diaries.”
Sam flushed. “I told you, it was a journal. For…research purposes.”
“Right,” Dean agreed. “And I read Playboy for the articles.” He gestured at the book in Sam’s hands. “Better get reading, princess.”
As you know, it is not very polite to read someone else’s diary, even when that someone is the girlfriend of a notorious villain and a wearer of very silly fashions, and besides which is probably dead. Of course, it is also not very polite to rifle through people’s belongings while they’re not at home, or to pretend to be a detective or a clergyman in order to gain someone’s trust, or to shoot someone in the head while they are speaking to you, no matter how desperate you are to save your brother. However, Sam and Dean had done all of these not very polite things for what they thought were very good reasons, and so Sam did not feel too guilty about flipping through Esmé Squalor’s Very Fashionable Diary looking for clues about the Baudelaire orphans.
“Apparently baby carrots, prescription medications, cross-stitching, lime-green bathtubs, and headlamps are ‘in,’” Sam said, skimming a page of Esmé’s small, loopy handwriting. “Whatever that means.”
“I guess that explains the ugly-ass bathrooms,” Dean said, rummaging through a closet filled with dozens of pinstripe suits. “Find anything about the kids?”
“Not yet.” Sam skimmed a few more pages. “AM radio is out. ‘Outie’ belly buttons are in. Jogging is out. Velvet swimsuits are out. Talking on a cell phone while driving is in. God, this diary is insipid,” he sighed, using a word which here means “completely devoid of any useful information about the Baudelaires.” Indeed, aside from an underlined notation that orphans were now “in,” the diary did not contain a single reference to the Baudelaire children.
“What’s that thing on the cover?” Dean asked.
“What thing?”
“The eye thing,” Dean said, pointing to the symbol pressed into the leather of the Very Fashionable Diary’s front cover. “It’s like - I think it’s an eye. I’ve seen that before somewhere.”
“It was embroidered on the towels in the third bathroom,” Sam said, taking a closer look at the symbol. “And etched into the coasters in that room with the bearskin rug.”
“Family crest?” Dean suggested.
“No,” Sam said slowly, as if he were only now realizing something. “No, it’s not. Look, it’s not just an eye - it’s letters. These are initials. I think it says - ”
“V.F.D.,” Dean finished. “So what the hell does that mean?”
Sam didn’t answer. As soon as Dean had spoken the letters aloud, he had begun to flip once more through the Very Fashionable Diary, scanning every page for clues.
As I have already mentioned, one reason to work through things step by step is to make a big problem seem more manageable. Another reason is that if you do not go through things step by step, you risk missing crucial pieces of information. For instance, if I had merely walked through the sooty and abandoned house on that cold autumn morning so many years ago, without bothering to search each room thoroughly, I would have never found the message left for me in the refrigerator by the one person I loved most in the world. Similarly, if Sam had thrown down the Very Fashionable Diary in disgust, having only skimmed the tedious lists of things that had been declared in or out, he would have never noticed the one phrase that was repeated over and over again, in increasingly larger and more frantic handwriting - a phrase that had caused immeasurable trouble for the Baudelaire children, for a notorious villain with one long eyebrow and a tattoo of an eye on his ankle, for the hundreds of noble and wicked people that may or may not have died in the fire at the Hotel Denouement, for a certain taxi driver, and for the author of this story. It was a phrase that - like many things the Winchesters were discovering and many more they never would - shared the initials of a secret organization that had long ago suffered a terrible and destructive schism, which had set into motion a seemingly endless series of unfortunate events for everyone involved. It was a phrase that you or I might have had trouble making sense of, but that Sam worked out immediately, thanks to the youngest Winchester’s familiarity with Latin and the many hours he had spent studying for science tests.
Between the insipid lists of all things in and out, the author of the Very Fashionable Diary had repeatedly scrawled the phrase “Vessel For Disaccharides.”
“My question is,” Sam said, “why was Esmé Squalor so obsessed with a sugar bowl?”
&&&
“You have to call her,” Sam said.
“The hell I do,” Dean snapped, tightening his hands on the steering wheel. “She’s a thief, Sam. She’s a thief and a liar and she stole the Colt, in case you’ve forgotten, and - ”
“And she’s the only person who might be able to tell us what all this is about,” Sam said. “Just call her now and get it over with.”
“God damn it,” Dean grumbled. He fumbled for his cell phone while trying to keep an eye on the road. “I hate you both.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. Dean sighed heavily, swallowed his pride, and dialed an annoyingly familiar number.
There may come a day when you, like Dean, will have to swallow your pride. This does not mean you will physically swallow the sense of your own dignity, although you may have to swallow other things, such as nasty words or the urge to vomit. Swallowing your pride simply means doing something embarrassing or uncomfortable, such as calling a woman you have vehemently sworn to never speak to again, simply because you have no other choice. In this case, Dean would rather have swallowed a thousand Lachrymose Leeches than dialed the number of the woman who was at that very moment smirking at the screen of her expensive cell phone.
The phone rang three and a half times before being interrupted by a beep. A tinny voice on the other end said, thick with scorn and amusement, “Dean Winchester.”
“What do you know about sugar bowls?” Dean asked.
There was no response.
Dean frowned, pressing the phone closer to his ear. “Bela?”
“I’m sorry, I believe I’m suffering some sort of auditory hallucinations. No need for concern; it’s probably only a side effect of these pearls I procured for a client,” said the tinny voice. “Procured” is a word which here means “stole.” “I would have sworn you just asked me about sugar bowls.”
“Hilarious. You should really consider going into comedy if this whole ‘robbing people, leaving them for dead’ thing doesn’t pan out,” Dean said.
“Unlikely,” said the tinny voice. “Why are you calling me, Dean?”
“I told you. I need everything you know or can find out about sugar bowls. Cursed, blessed, any kind of artifact or talisman - anything you’ve got. Oh, and anything having to do with the initials V.F.D.”
The phone was quiet for a long moment. “What’s in it for me?”
“How about another week of me not kicking your ass for stealing the fucking Colt?” Dean growled.
“Oh, Dean, you’re funny,” said the tinny voice with a tinny little laugh. “Tell you what, I’ll consider it. Meanwhile, why don’t you try thinking of something to make this tiresome little task worth my while?”
The line went dead. Dean ground his teeth and deliberately did not throw his phone at Sam’s head.
“I am going to stab her in the eye,” he announced.
Sam opened his mouth to reply, but he was interrupted by a terrible sound that made both Winchesters cringe.
The worst sound in the world - or, indeed, the best - is very much a matter of personal opinion. If someone had asked Dean at that moment, he might have said the worst sound in the world was the muffled glug-glug of blood in his little brother’s throat as he died on his knees in the mud, or the shaky sigh of expelled air from his deflating lungs, or perhaps the endless hum of silence as Dean looked and looked at Sam and Sam did not look back. If that someone had turned and asked Sam the same question, he might have said the worst sound in the world was the unexpected backfire of a gunshot in a parking lot, or the crackle and hiss of flames licking up a beloved face, or the sad echo of a lonely hotel room. For my money, a phrase which here means “in the author’s humble opinion,” the worst sound in the world is the creak of a coffin lid as it closes for the last time on all that remains of the woman you love.
Whatever their personal opinions, Sam and Dean would have both agreed that one of the very worst sounds in the world was the wheezing, puttering sound of the engine as their faithful old car slowly rolled to a stop.
“What the hell?” Dean said.
Sam pointed to the dashboard. “We’re out of gas.”
“That’s impossible,” Dean said, blinking at the fuel gauge. “I just filled her up this morning.”
“Tell that to the car,” Sam said impatiently. He was right. The Winchesters were faced with an undeniable case of what colleagues of mine used to refer to as Vehicular Fuel Deficiency.
Dean thunked his head down on the steering wheel. “Perfect.”
“We can’t afford to waste time,” Sam said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You take care of the car. I’ll go see this reporter, find out what she knows. We can meet at the Baudelaire mansion in two hours.”
I once had a mentor who was very fond of reminding me of the old saying, “Knowledge is power.” In my experience, I have found this saying to be true. Knowledge can be very powerful, although it is important to keep in mind that the usefulness of a certain piece of knowledge depends upon your situation. Knowledge about the work of English Romantic poets can be a source of power if you are taking an exam, or if you are playing a trivia game, or if you have accidentally killed a large seabird. However, if you are trying to escape a torch-wielding mob, this particular knowledge will not help you at all, whereas knowing the location of a fire extinguisher would be very helpful indeed.
Sam and Dean Winchester knew more than most people about demons and ghosts, guns and spells, Latin conjugation and how it felt to lose someone you loved. But they did not know a few specific things that would have been very helpful to them as they walked in opposite directions down the sidewalk. They did not know, for instance, that a bearded villain had drained the fuel tank of their car while they were searching the Squalors’ penthouse apartment. They did not know that Geraldine Julienne had not been seen since she went to interview Esmé Squalor at the Hotel Denouement. And the Winchester brothers had no way of knowing that when Dean arrived at the charred remains of the Baudelaire mansion in two hours and ten minutes, Sam would be nowhere to be found.
&&&
Sam had little luck with Geraldine Julienne, the reporter he had hoped could provide valuable information about the Baudelaires. He had gone to the Daily Punctilio, the newspaper that had printed her articles, only to be told that she no longer worked there.
“Oh, Geraldine? She hasn’t been here in ages,” said the woman at the front desk. “Ran off a good long while ago, that one. Didn’t even give notice.”
Not only was the reporter gone, but no one else on the staff seemed to have any idea what Sam was talking about - or what they were talking about, for that matter. The news editor said that Veronica, Klyde and Susie Baudelaire had brutally murdered their uncle Omar, while the political cartoonist said that Victoria, Kevin and Sandra Bandylane had gone into hiding with their godfather Al Funcoot. The advice columnist said that the Baudelaire triplets had been kidnapped by giant crows. Several people claimed the children were dead, while the obituary writer swore that they were alive and living on a submarine at the bottom of the ocean.
By the time Sam left the Daily Punctilio, he was more confused than ever. As he stood on the sidewalk outside the office, trying to decide what to do next, a taxi pulled up to the curb in front of him. The driver leaned over and rolled down the passenger’s side window. “Need a lift?” he asked.
Sam needed a lot of things. He needed information about the Baudelaires. He needed answers to his questions. He needed a way to save his brother from a horrific fate, and very soon, he was going to need a flashlight. But he also needed a lift, by which the taxi driver meant “a ride to his next destination.”
Sam slid into the backseat of the taxi and closed the door. “Take me to Mulctuary Money Management, please,” he said. He may as well use the time he had left to talk with the executor of the Baudelaires’ estate, Sam thought.
“Of course.”
Sam slumped in his seat and stared out the window, watching the people on the sidewalk as they flew by. After a while, he sighed heavily and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Have you ever had one of those days where everything goes wrong?”
The taxi driver glanced back at him in the rearview mirror. He wore a tattered-looking hat with a wide brim that shaded his face; Sam could only barely see the glint of his eyes and the melancholy set of his mouth. “I didn’t realize this was a sad occasion,” he said.
“Not sad,” Sam said. “Just really, really frustrating, is all.”
The taxi driver frowned, as if Sam had given him the wrong response. “I see. Well, here we are. Mulctuary Money Management is that large building across the street.”
Sam paid the driver and hurried into the bank, eager to meet with Arthur Poe, the banker who been the executor of the Baudelaires’ estate since the death of their parents. Poe was the man responsible for shepherding the orphans from guardian to guardian; he had even taken them into his own home for a time. Sam was hopeful that talking with him would shed some light on the increasingly complicated tale of the Baudelaire children.
“Mr. Poe?” said the woman at the front desk. “The former Vice President in Charge of Orphan Affairs? Why, nobody has seen him for months.”
&&&
Once, when Dean was a young boy and his brother was still little more than a baby, Sam had disappeared. One minute he was fast asleep, napping in the bed they shared, and the next he was gone. Dean had been terrified. Their father was out and wouldn’t return home for hours, and he had specifically told Dean to be careful and to keep an eye on Sammy. Dean searched the whole cabin on the brink of tears. He called his brother’s name again and again, sick with thoughts of what might have happened to him. He had never been so scared, not even when his father had pushed baby Sammy into his arms and told him to run. Dean wanted to cry, and he wanted to scream, and he wanted to throw up, but most of all, he wanted Sam.
He finally found his brother crawling around in some nearby bushes, happily gnawing on twigs and whatever else he could cram in his mouth. He was perfectly safe. Nothing had hurt him. Dean never told his father what had happened, and twenty-three years later, Sam didn’t even remember the incident.
Dean remembered. He remembered the hammering of his heart in his chest, and the bitter taste of fear and adrenaline. He remembered the way his hands clenched and his throat closed up the second he saw the telltale rustling in the bushes, and the way he had grabbed at Sam’s chubby little body and pulled him close, needing to touch him, needing to know that he was safe. Dean remembered every last detail, because twenty-three years later, he still felt those exact same sensations every single time his little brother was not where he was supposed to be. His heart pounded when Sam was snatched away or disappeared into thin air. His mouth filled with the awful taste of terror whenever he found himself shouting Sam’s name down an echoing hallway or searching through an empty hotel room for clues. His hands clenched and his throat closed up the second he finally caught a glimpse of Sam’s broad shoulders or heard his brother shout his name. And at that moment, standing in the blackened ruins of the Baudelaire mansion, Dean would have given anything in the world to see his brother appear, to grab his elbow or rumple his hair, and to know for certain that Sam - his baby brother, Sammy, the one person in the world he could not live without - was safe.
Dean pulled out his phone and dialed Sam’s number for the tenth time in as many minutes. “Come on, Sammy,” he muttered, holding the phone tight against his ear. “Pick up, pick up, pick up, you asshole.”
Sam did not pick up.
Dean shoved the phone back into his pocket and tried to think about what to do next. He wasn’t a child anymore, and neither was Sam. He had plenty of practice finding his brother, and Sam was perfectly capable of taking care of himself until he did. Sam was a grown man with military-style training and a gun, and Dean was going to find him, just as soon as he could decide on his next move. Sam was probably not dying somewhere with blood in his mouth and eyes like their father’s rolling back in his head.
Dean’s phone rang. He snatched it out of his pocket and answered it without looking at the screen. “Sam?”
“You owe me big-time, Winchester,” said a tinny voice on the other end. “Big-time. Your grandchildren will be paying this off.”
Disappointment clenched hard in Dean’s stomach. “I don’t have time for this, Bela. Sam’s gone. I need to - ”
“You need to hear this,” insisted the tinny voice. “I mean it. Listen to me, Dean. It’s not the sugar bowl that’s important, it’s what’s inside - ”
Our fates are frequently determined by the decisions we make. There are big decisions, of course, like deciding to have a baby or deciding to become a Supreme Court Justice, but every one of us makes lots of smaller decisions that end up shaping our lives and the lives of the people around us. If I had decided not to spend an extra night with my cousin in Wichita, the woman I loved might still be alive. If a certain young man in Sarajevo had decided not to shoot the Archduke of Austria, the whole world might have been saved a lot of trouble. If Dean had stayed on the phone for just thirty seconds more, he might have learned everything he needed to know about the sugar bowl and its contents, about the Baudelaire children and their guardians, about the fires and V.F.D., and even about an old family secret that might have saved his life.
The fact is that, for better or for worse, we all have to live with the consequences of the decisions we make. I did spend an extra night in Wichita, that young man did shoot the Archduke of Austria, and at that moment, just as the tinny voice on the phone was about to reveal the answers to all the Winchesters’ questions, Dean Winchester noticed the hole carved into the ash-strewn floor of the Baudelaire mansion, and made the only decision he could.
“I have to go,” he said, and ended the call.
He hurried over to the hole. Upon closer inspection, it proved to be an open trapdoor, the door itself swinging loose on its hinges. Dean carefully lowered himself down, and immediately saw that he was not standing in a hole at all, but at the end of a tunnel. A narrow, winding passageway stretched out before him, disappearing into the pitch-black darkness beyond the reach of the sunlight shining through the trapdoor.
Dean checked that his gun was loaded and ready. “Sammy, you had better be alive, because I’m going to kick your ass for this,” he said, and set off into the darkness.
&&&
The expression “a shot in the dark” refers to an attempt to guess something about which you have no prior knowledge, or to do something rashly without knowing very much about what it is you’re doing. The Winchesters had often taken literal shots in the dark, firing rock salt or silver bullets toward growling creatures they could not see, and now Dean was taking a figurative shot in the dark by walking alone through the dark, dark tunnel. He had no prior knowledge about the passageway or where it led, or what he might encounter along the way. He guessed that it might lead him to his brother, but he did not know for certain. He could only hope that he would find Sam, alive and well, and after that, the two of them together could deal with whatever might come their way, as they always had.
The ceiling of the passageway was very low, which meant that Dean had to crouch down as he walked. The tunnel twisted and turned, which meant that he had to walk with his free hand skimming the wall, keeping track of the curves and corners. It was very, very dark, which meant that he could see nothing, and had to listen very closely for any unfriendly sounds.
Every so often, he called Sam’s name - quietly, so as not to attract attention from whatever else might be in the tunnel with him, but loud enough that Sam could hear it if he was listening for him. “Sam?” he called. “Sam? Sammy?” His hand felt damp and sweaty around his gun. His heart pounded in his chest.
“Sam?” he called again, and for the first time, he heard the faint shuffle of someone else’s footsteps in the darkness.
His hands clenched. His throat closed up.
“Dean?” called his brother’s voice, not twenty feet away, and Dean shoved his gun into his pocket and ran.
He barreled into Sam like a freight train. Both brothers recoiled from the impact and fell hard on their knees.
“Dean,” Sam said, “Dean, what the hell,” as Dean grabbed his shoulders and shook him and pulled him close, holding on.
“I’m going to kill you,” Dean said. His voice was quiet, muffled in Sam’s jacket and the solid curve of his shoulder. “You fucking idiot. I’m going to kill you. Jesus.”
Sam brought his arm up to wrap around Dean’s back. “Sorry,” he said, and meant it. “Dean, I’m sorry, my phone doesn’t work down here, I didn’t realize - ”
“You didn’t realize,” Dean repeated. He pulled back, glaring at his brother through the darkness as though Sam could see him. His hands stayed on Sam, tangled up in handfuls of fabric. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he demanded, by which he meant something like, “Why have you been acting so strangely lately, and why won’t you talk to me anymore?” He slid a hand up to grip hard at the back of Sam’s neck. “What the fuck’s gotten into you?”
Sam squirmed halfheartedly in Dean’s grip. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit,” Dean said. “This case - hell, the last ten cases. You’re obsessed. You don’t sleep. You don’t think. Jesus, you can’t just - you can’t just wander off down here without a goddamn flashlight, without telling me - ”
“It was important,” Sam said, sounding tired. “This passageway has something to do with the Baudelaires. It could help us solve the case. This could be what we need, Dean.”
Dean leaned forward in the darkness until he and Sam were face-to-face, noses almost touching. “I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t care about the Baudelaires, I don’t care about this tunnel, I don’t care about fucking V.F.D. or the fires or any of it. This isn’t about them. This is about you and me, Sam, and what I need is for you to tell me what the fuck is going on with you.”
“Dean,” Sam said helplessly. He ducked his head, hair brushing against Dean’s cheek. He was quaking under Dean’s hands.
“Come on, Sammy,” Dean said, more gently than before. “Talk to me.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Sam’s voice was low and desperate-sounding. “I can’t watch you die again, Dean. I just…I can’t.” He shook his head, quick, hair flying in his face. “I can’t.”
“Sam,” Dean said, trying to breathe around the sudden ache in his chest. He moved a hand to cup Sam’s face. “Sammy. Come on, don’t.” He rubbed a thumb through the tears rolling down Sam’s cheek. “Don’t.”
Our fates are frequently determined by the decisions we make. My cousin asked me to stay and help take down the Halloween decorations. An angry young man walked out of a delicatessen with a sandwich in one hand and a gun in the other at the same moment that Archduke Ferdinand’s car was turning around after taking a wrong turn. And fifty-three days before the hellhounds came to collect Dean’s soul, deep in the darkness of the passageway that once connected the Baudelaire mansion to the empty elevator shaft of 667 Dark Avenue, Sam Winchester took a shot in the dark and kissed his brother on the mouth.
After one long moment of surprise and hesitation, Dean kissed him back.
“Dean,” Sam said against Dean’s mouth, meaning something along the lines of, “I love you.” “Dean, Dean, Dean.”
Dean kissed his brother’s forehead and his cheek, his shaky damp mouth. “Sammy,” he said in a low voice, which here again means, “We’re going to be okay.”
I would like nothing more than to write that Dean was correct, and that the Winchesters were indeed going to be okay. I would like to write that Sam saved Dean from his fiery doom, and Dean saved Sam from himself, and they both went on to save lots of other people. I would like to write that they finally found the peace and the joy that they so very much deserved, but I cannot.
If I were you, I would close this story without finishing it, and imagine a happier fate for Sam and Dean Winchester. I would imagine that when they finally emerged from the tunnel into the late afternoon sun, they found their friends Bobby and Ellen waiting for them with smiles and helpful information, instead of an irritable blonde demon with bad news about someone named Lilith. I would imagine that their faithful car was waiting for them at the curb, instead of about to be seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I would imagine that the next two months were filled with laughter and pleasant adventures instead of despair and conflict, and I would imagine that when the first hellhound let loose his terrible howl in the distance, Sam looked at his brother with a triumphant smile, instead of a look of such utter agony that Dean could hardly speak.
I wish I could write that all these things were true, but they are not. I am sorry to say that these few minutes, breathing together in the dark, are as close to a happy ending as the Winchester brothers will ever get. The sad truth is that kisses, as wonderful and sometimes illegal as they may be, rarely have the power to change the world, and when Sam and Dean broke apart, all their troubles and misfortunes were still there. They were still on their knees in a dark, dark passageway, with no idea where it led or why it had been constructed. They were still haunted by the fires they had set and the fires they had spent their whole lives trying to put out. They were still orphaned and bone-tired, they were still pursued by unpleasant men and even more unpleasant demons, and, more so now than ever, the brothers were still all alone in the dark, frightening world.
Of course, even the ill-fated Baudelaire orphans had never been truly hopeless or truly alone. They had always been able to depend on each other for love and support, and this love and support was the one thing that had sustained them through the direst of circumstances and the most unfortunate of events. The Winchester brothers were tired and frightened, angry and desperate, lost in the dark, but like the Baudelaires, Sam and Dean still had each other.
For now.
Friends, Romans, countrymen: that is me. I am that idiot.
Title: The Deadly Deal
Author: guns_and_butter
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG13
Word count: 8,910
Spoilers: through Mystery Spot. All available A Series of Unfortunate Events canon is fair game.
Note: Many thanks to my superb editors rejeneration and sirryluv, whose support has been essential in finally bringing the tale of the Winchester brothers to the general public.
Disclaimer: I could not have completed this report without the resources graciously provided to me by Mr Lemony Snicket and Mr Eric Kripke. One of the accompanying photographs was procured from the archives of marishna.
Summary: Dear Reader,
If you are in the mood for a heartwarming tale about the thrilling adventures of two handsome and carefree brothers, I regret to inform you that you have made a most unfortunate miscalculation. This particular story documents the trials and tribulations of Sam and Dean Winchester, the simple fact of which is enough to make it one of the most unpleasant stories in all the world.
The plot, I’m sorry to say, includes such miseries as missed opportunities, lime-green bathtubs, an unfamiliar code, stolen gasoline, a mysterious disappearance, and clowns.
I am compelled by love and executive decree to record the ghastly and ghostly details of the Winchester brothers’ lives, but you are under no such obligation, so I urge you to close your browser at once and go do something productive with your life, or at the very least select another story.
With all due respect,
G. N. Butter
G. N. Butter
THE DEADLY DEAL
by G. N. BUTTER
For Mary.
Our passion burned with the fire of a thousand suns. Then you did.
It is often remarked upon, mostly by people less clever than you and I, that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. This expression can be taken literally or it can be understood figuratively, a word which here means “not literally.” Literally, when a person sees smoke, they might confidently assume the source of that smoke is a fire. For example, if you were to set fire to your computer rather than proceed with this story - as I would strongly suggest that you do - the fire would result in a large cloud of smoke. Upon seeing said smoke leaking from your doors and windows, your neighbors would reasonably infer that there was a fire in your home, and they would alert the fire brigade to come put it out, unless you have particularly nasty neighbors or are one yourself.
Figuratively, however, the expression means that if there is a hint or rumor of trouble, such trouble probably exists, although perhaps not in quite the way you expect.
Dean and Sam Winchester had in their tumultuous lives encountered a great number of fires, both literal and figurative - and now, as they sped down the interstate in their black Chevrolet Impala, they were about to encounter one more.
“You got anything yet?” Dean asked.
Sam shuffled the stack of newspaper articles in his hands, squinting down at the small print and the scribbled notes between columns. “I’m still working on it.”
“I don’t see why we couldn’t just take that case in Florida with the disappearing nannies,” Dean said, drumming his fingers loudly against the steering wheel. “I’m telling you, man, that’s a necromancer circle, no question. Open and shut case. We’re in, we’re out, we shoot some evil sons of bitches, maybe get in some quality time with the local beach bunnies - what’s not to like?” Dean, who at twenty-nine was the oldest surviving Winchester, was generally very much in favor of shooting evil sons of bitches and spending quality time with nice young ladies of a certain persuasion. He loved his brother, his car, and his guns more than anything else in the world, although he only expressed open affection for the car. The guns weren’t concerned about it one way or another, and as for Sam - well. Dean thought Sam probably knew.
“Because, Dean, this is all too weird to just be a coincidence,” Sam said, brushing off his brother’s libido and impatience as he often felt he had been doing for all of his twenty-five years. Sam was the more serious brother, with tousled hair and very long legs that were only occasionally under his premeditated control; combined with a knack for shyly earnest smiles, these traits had the effect of making him look like a very sweet and somewhat dim overlarge puppy.
The younger Winchester loved to read. When he was a boy, he had read every book he could get his hands on. These days he read newspapers and online search engines, looking for articles like the ones he was studying now. “Wherever these kids go, trouble follows," he said. "Deaths, weird accidents, fires - plus, I mean, they’re on the run from the cops.”
“Yeah, I can’t imagine what that’d be like,” Dean said sardonically, a word which here means “rudely and while on the run from the cops.”
“I’m serious. There’s something bigger going on here,” Sam insisted.
Dean sighed, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “What if there’s not?” Sam looked surprised, and Dean pressed on. “We have no proof that there’s anything supernatural involved here. What if they’re just kids, really goddamn unlucky kids, who - ”
“There was a fire,” Sam said quietly.
Dean sent his brother a sharp look. “What?” Often, when people are not sure they have heard something correctly, they will say, “What?” instead of the more polite, “Would you please repeat that, perhaps a little louder?” But Dean did not say, “What?” because he had not heard Sam. When Dean said, “What?” what he meant was, “Please elaborate on that statement, which I sincerely hope does not mean what I think it means, seeing as how I only have fifty-five days left to live and I would much rather spend them shooting necromancers than chasing down the dubious legacy of the demon who killed our parents and possibly made you the Antichrist.”
“A fire,” Sam repeated. “A couple years ago, when the youngest was a baby. Whole house burned to the ground. Both parents died.” He waved the sheaf of articles. “That’s when all this started.”
The car went quiet as both brothers thought back to the nursery fire that had killed their mother, the fire that had made their father sick with grief and set the remaining Winchesters on an endless quest for answers and revenge. The fire that was the first in a long line of misfortunes and tragedies that had brought the brothers to where they were now: orphaned and bone-tired, pursued by unpleasant men and even more unpleasant demons, alone but for each other and the rumble of their faithful old car.
Dean cleared his throat. “So,” he said, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. “Where are we headed?”
&&&
“Schadenfreude” is a German word that, like many German words, is terribly difficult to spell. Also like many German words, it means something rather nasty, in this case “pleasure taken from other people’s misfortune.” Everyone is guilty of this at some time or another. You yourself may laugh when a passing car splashes through a puddle and drenches a man waiting for the bus, or smirk when the class brain receives a B+ on an exam, or entertain yourself by watching reality television programs documenting the misfortunes and humiliations of others. No matter the situation, the warm glow of pleasure in your chest at the sight of someone else’s trouble is an unmistakable symptom of schadenfreude, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Standing outside the first stop on Sam’s list of locations to investigate, the glow in Dean’s chest was warm indeed.
“Oh, come on,” Sam whined.
Dean was delighted. Dean was thrilled. Dean was not at all ashamed of himself. “No, no, this is perfect. Move it or lose it, man. I’m starving.”
“I hate you,” Sam said, following Dean into the restaurant. Almost immediately, his shoulder knocked into a herd of brightly colored balloons, which happily clung to his jacket when he attempted to shake them off. He slumped down at the nearest table, scowling. “I hate you, I hate this case, I hate the Baudelaires, I hate - augh!” By that, Sam probably meant, “I hate being startled by men in clown costumes.” Unfortunately for him, this was precisely what had just occurred.
“I’m Eddie, your waiter,” said Eddie, the waiter in the clown costume. “Welcome to the Anxious Clown restaurant - where everybody has a good time, whether they like it or not. Can I start you off with some Silly Soda Pop? Or maybe you’d like to try the Surprising Chicken Salad? It’s very fresh.”
“Urngh,” Sam said miserably, sinking lower in his chair.
Dean’s grin was nearly as obnoxious as Eddie’s. “We’ll both have the, uh - ” He glanced at the menu. “Friendly Chicken Fingers. Make his extra-friendly.”
“Sure thing,” Eddie agreed, and ambled back to the kitchen, enormous shoes whacking the floor at every step.
Sam shuddered.
“Come on, Sammy, lighten up,” Dean said, still grinning. “This place is great.” Sam looked skeptical, and also as though he were considering punching Dean in the nose, which he was. Dean quickly changed the subject. “So what’s the deal with this town, anyway?”
Sam sat up in his chair and began to sort through his jumble of newspaper articles. “According to this, a woman named Josephine Anwhistle was the Baudelaires’ third guardian after the fire. She lived up on the hill, on a cliff overlooking the lake. Weird old lady, by all accounts. Not that that’s too surprising, I guess. This whole town’s kind of weird.”
“Looks pretty dead to me,” Dean said, looking around the empty restaurant.
“Lake Lachrymose is a resort town, apparently. Fills up during the summer. Lots of city people own houses on the lake.” Sam scratched idly at the back of his neck. “You know they’ve got leeches here? Lachrymose Leeches. They’re fascinating - nothing else like them in the world. Get this: they’re man-eaters. Anything-eaters, really. Six rows of teeth. They say a handful of them can rip the flesh off a human within minutes.” He grinned across the table. “Weird, right?”
“Someday the nerds will rise up and make you their queen,” Dean said. “Until then, can we skip to the part where this has anything to do with the case?”
Sam frowned, feeling a bit put out, a phrase which here means “annoyed by his brother’s lack of interest in Lachrymose Leeches.” He sighed and turned back to the newspaper articles. “A week after the Baudelaires arrived, Josephine Anwhistle disappeared. There was a big hurricane that came through here, Hurricane Herman, and - ”
“A hurricane,” Dean said disbelievingly.
“Yeah.”
“On a lake.”
“Yeah.”
“Dude,” Dean said, “that doesn’t even make sense.”
“Dude,” Sam retorted, “man-eating leeches.”
Dean sighed. “This town is fucked.”
Just then, Eddie returned with two plates of fried, greasy-looking food. “I’ve got two platters of Friendly Chicken Fingers,” he announced in a loud, irritating voice.
“Thanks,” Sam said distractedly, leaning away from where Eddie was sliding the plates onto the table. Dean smirked. “Anyway, supposedly the hurricane knocked her house off the cliff.”
“But the kids survived,” Dean interrupted.
“Yeah. Here’s the thing: there are witnesses who say they saw the Baudelaires in town the day of the hurricane. Like they knew what was going to happen. Some people even said they thought the kids had already killed her, then got out of the house before the storm hit.”
“Maybe it was just luck,” Dean said doubtfully.
“Some luck,” Sam said. “They lost their aunt and their house on the same day, and got shipped off to work at some crappy sawmill.”
“But they survived,” Dean said. “That’s what matters.”
Sam swallowed hard around a lump of emotion and Friendly Chicken Finger. “Yeah. They survived.” Despite Dean’s words, Sam knew all too well that sometimes surviving was not all that mattered. He had recently survived a string of repeating Tuesdays in which he had watched Dean die over and over again, followed by a Wednesday and a Thursday and a Friday and a Saturday and a hundred lonely days more, during which the fact that he had survived the circumstances that had killed his brother was no comfort at all. “At least they had each other,” he said quietly, looking down at his plate to avoid meeting Dean’s eyes.
A famous English Romantic poet of the eighteenth century wrote a long and well-received poem about an ancient mariner, which here means “a sailor who kills an albatross, which is a kind of large seabird.” In the poem, the mariner’s ship is cursed with terrible luck, and his fellow sailors force him to wear the dead bird around his neck as a reminder of what he has done and as a physical representation of the burden of guilt he bears for their misfortunes.
These days, when someone talks about the albatross around their neck, they very rarely mean that they have a bird carcass laid across their shoulders. When someone has an albatross around their neck, it usually means that they are weighed down by an unforgettable problem, often one for which they are carrying the burden of guilt.
Sam’s albatross was heavy indeed. Dean had made his terrible deal to save Sam, and in return he was going to endure unspeakable suffering for all eternity. Rightly or wrongly, Sam carried the burden of guilt for his brother's deal, and he was determined to find a way to save Dean and make things right. He thought about it constantly, from the moment he opened his eyes in the morning until the dark hour when he drifted away into unsettling dreams at night. He had tried everything he could think of to get Dean out of the deal, and as time passed and Dean’s year came to a close, the albatross grew heavier and heavier while Sam became increasingly desperate to find the solution he was looking for.
Dean watched his brother carefully from across the table. He didn’t know exactly what Sam was thinking, but he had a good idea, and he did not like it one bit. Dean could sometimes be accused of being a bit dense, which here means “not about to win any critical-thinking contests,” but he had spent his entire life trying to keep Sam safe and happy, and he could see that his brother was exhausted and afraid, worrying himself sick over the deal. Dean did not want to die, and he especially did not want to leave his younger brother alone in the world, but most of all he did not want to watch Sam waste away in front of him, as if he were the one dying instead of Dean.
Dean shifted his legs under the table and accidentally-on-purpose nudged Sam’s foot with his own. “Sammy,” he said in a low voice, which meant something like, “We’re going to be okay.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, and accidentally-on-purpose nudged him back. “Yeah, I know,” meaning something along the lines of, “I’m not sure I believe you, but I’ll pretend to, because I cannot bear to imagine what happens if you’re wrong.” “Don’t call me that,” he added.
Dean grinned. “Let’s hit the road. We’ve got a long ways to go.”
&&&
The Winchesters did have a long ways to go, and they were exhausted by the time they called it a day, a phrase which here means “pulled into the parking lot of the first hotel they spotted.” They had spent the day investigating an abandoned sawmill, a deeply depressing boarding school, and the charred remains of a hospital, all places where the Baudelaire children had stayed for days or weeks before departing under mysterious circumstances. Dean and Sam had explored the sawmill, eavesdropped on students, and picked through the ashy ruins of the hospital, but they had come no closer to discovering the truth behind the mystery of the Baudelaires, and so it was with heavy hearts that they pulled into the parking lot of the first hotel they spotted.
The hotel was a small, unglamorous place with peeling paint and a flickering VACANCY sign. It did not look very inviting or comfortable, but the brothers had spent many nights in places that were much less inviting and much less comfortable, so Dean gladly paid the tall, skinny manager at the front desk for a room with two beds and plenty of hot water.
“Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to make your stay more enjoyable,” said the manager, handing Dean the key to their room. He was serious-looking and gangly, which here means “nearly as tall as Sam, with long arms and legs sticking out at odd angles, as if he were made of drinking straws instead of flesh and bone.” He smiled politely and said, “Sleep well.” Dean thanked him and went back to the car to help Sam bring in their things.
Despite the manager’s encouragement, the Winchester brothers did not sleep well. Even after tucking his favorite gun beneath his pillow and laying out thick lines of salt along the threshold and windowsills, Dean could not stop listening to the tick of the clock on the bedside table and worrying about the terrible things that seemed to draw ever closer to the brothers as the days passed and his year neared its end. Even after reviewing his research a dozen times and studying his notes until his eyes burned, Sam could not stop thinking about the mystery of the Baudelaire orphans and the strange fires they had left in their wake, and wondering if he would find the miracle he was looking for before it was too late.
By the time sunlight crept through the thin curtains, both Winchesters were more tired than ever. They left the hotel early, drove toward the city, and didn’t speak until hours later, when they stopped for breakfast at a small roadside restaurant, whose cheerful neon sign welcomed the Winchesters to Valerie’s Family Diner.
The door jingled as they walked in, and the waitress behind the counter looked up with a big, friendly smile. “I’ll be right with you,” she mouthed, then turned back to her telephone conversation. “Uh huh. Uh huh. Well, you just tell him I said - yes, that’s just exactly what I said. Isn’t that what I told him? I know. I know. You too. Bye now.” She hung up the telephone and turned to Sam and Dean. “My sister,” she said apologetically. “She and her husband are having trouble at home. You know how it is.”
The Winchesters did not, in fact, know how it was, but they nodded politely anyway.
“I swear,” the waitress continued, bustling around behind the counter, “all day, it’s just ring ring ring. You never know where’s the fire this time. Never mind that. Are you hungry? Look at me talking away and you boys being so polite. My son was like that, too, till he followed that girl to - but you’re not here for me to run my mouth, are you. Eggs and toast? Coffee? Let’s see, now -”
The phone rang.
“I’m sorry, boys, this won’t be but a minute,” she said, and picked up the receiver. “Did you tell him?”
Dean and Sam exchanged a knowing glance and squeezed into one of the tiny booths across from the counter.
“She’s chatty,” Dean noted.
Sam nodded in agreement. “How long till we hit the city?”
“A couple hours, maybe,” Dean said. “What are our leads?”
“I want to try to talk to the woman who wrote these articles, see what she knows,” Sam said. “And we need to go by the Baudelaire mansion and see if we can pick up any readings.”
Dean frowned. “I thought you said it burned down.”
“It did. The lot’s still untouched, though. Who knows what might be hanging around?” Sam shrugged. “It’s worth a shot. Plus, a few of the children’s guardians lived in the city: the executor of their estate, the Squalors, some guy named Olaf or Omar or something - now that is a weird - ”
“Coffee?” asked the waitress with a smile. Sam and Dean both nodded eagerly, still tired from their long, sleepless night, and the subject of the Baudelaire orphans and their many incompetent and villainous guardians was dropped while the Winchester brothers ate breakfast and prepared themselves for another very long day.
&&&
When faced with a very difficult task, it can often be helpful to work through the situation step by step. For instance, if you were to find yourself trapped in a dank prison cell awaiting the arrival of your most nefarious enemy, you might first concentrate on the step of removing your shackles. Your initial instinct may be to agonize over memories of the last time you and your enemy were face-to-face, or to fret about whether she knows it was you who slipped the truth serum into her drink on Christmas Eve three years ago, or to wonder whether she still wears Mary’s locket on a chain around her neck, but the fact is that worrying about these things will do you no good at all if you are still chained to the wall when she arrives. Once you have accomplished the task of removing your shackles, you could then move on to another step, such as acquiring a good digging spoon, or faking your own death, or braining the prison guard with your typewriter. Whatever the predicament - a word which here means “size and physical strength of the prison guard” - it is often the case that very big, frightening problems become much less troublesome if they can be broken down into smaller, more manageable tasks.
The Winchesters were doing their best to solve the mystery of the Baudelaire orphans step by step, but they were finding it to be very slow going indeed.
“Jesus,” Dean said, wheezing. “These steps go on forever.”
Sam shook his head and leaned hard against the banister. “No,” he managed to say between gasps. “Not forever. Sixty…sixty-six floors.”
Sam’s correction was correct. The penthouse apartment formerly owned by Jerome and Esmé Squalor was on the sixty-sixth floor of 667 Dark Avenue, the most trendy and expensive building in the most trendy and expensive neighborhood in the entire city. Unfortunately for Dean and Sam, elevators had not been trendy for a very long time, and so the only way to reach the apartment was to climb the long, long, long, long, long, long spiral staircase, step by step, just as the Baudelaires had done months before.
“Who are these people, anyway?” Dean asked as they rounded another curve in the staircase.
Sam wiped the sweat from his forehead and tried to remember what he had read. “Jerome Squalor was an old friend of the Baudelaires’ mother. They seem to have lost touch after he married Esmé, but the Squalors ended up taking the kids in after they left the boarding school. It didn’t last long. The Baudelaires got moved to another guardian after Esmé ran off with her boyfriend, some foreign auctioneer.” Although Sam did not realize it at the time, "auctioneer" is a word which here means "notorious villain pretending to be a person who sells things at auctions, as part of his plot to get his greedy hands on the Baudelaire fortune.”
“Yikes.”
“Jerome stayed here for a while, but disappeared not long after. No one’s seen either of them since. Luckily for us, their rent’s been paid through the rest of the year, so the apartment has been left alone.”
“Yeah,” Dean said, eyeing the seemingly never-ending staircase ahead of them. “Lucky us.”
Up they went, step by step by step, until at last the brothers arrived on the final landing and collapsed together on the top stair to catch their breath.
“Man, I haven’t had a work-out like that since Dad thought I was getting fat,” Sam panted.
Dean chuckled, remembering their father’s frustration with Sam’s adolescent chubbiness. “Couldn’t blame him. You were getting pretty tubby, kiddo.”
Sam rolled his eyes and knocked his shoulder into Dean’s. “Nice, Dean. I bet you always picked on the fat kid in gym class.”
“Only when he was my kid brother,” Dean said cheerfully, reaching over to ruffle Sam’s hair. “Come on, it’s not like any of us knew you were going to turn into some gigantic freak overnight.”
Sam slapped Dean’s hand away and drew in a long, shaky breath. “I hate these people already,” he said, glaring over his shoulder at the double set of dusty elevator doors.
Dean hauled himself to his feet, clapping Sam heavily on the shoulder as he went. “You’ll feel better when we’ve gone through their stuff. Come on.”
Unsurprisingly, the door to the apartment was locked. Dean took from his pocket two long, thin pieces of metal, and within seconds, the lock tumbled and the doorknob turned, allowing the Winchesters to enter the largest apartment either of them had ever seen.
“How can two people possibly use this much space?” Dean wondered.
Sam groaned under his breath, already feeling tired. “Let’s get started,” he said, and the brothers began working their way through the Squalors’ apartment, step by step.
The penthouse was enormous. The rooms seemed to go on forever, one after another after another. Sam and Dean searched bathrooms and sitting rooms, gymnasiums and kitchens, studies and walk-in closets, but it wasn’t until they got to the eighth bedroom that either of them found anything helpful.
“Check this out,” Sam said, holding up a leather-bound notebook he’d found tucked between the mattress and the frame of the bed. “One Very Fashionable Diary, property of Esmé Squalor.”
“Under the mattress, huh? It never fails,” Dean said. “You girls and your diaries.”
Sam flushed. “I told you, it was a journal. For…research purposes.”
“Right,” Dean agreed. “And I read Playboy for the articles.” He gestured at the book in Sam’s hands. “Better get reading, princess.”
As you know, it is not very polite to read someone else’s diary, even when that someone is the girlfriend of a notorious villain and a wearer of very silly fashions, and besides which is probably dead. Of course, it is also not very polite to rifle through people’s belongings while they’re not at home, or to pretend to be a detective or a clergyman in order to gain someone’s trust, or to shoot someone in the head while they are speaking to you, no matter how desperate you are to save your brother. However, Sam and Dean had done all of these not very polite things for what they thought were very good reasons, and so Sam did not feel too guilty about flipping through Esmé Squalor’s Very Fashionable Diary looking for clues about the Baudelaire orphans.
“Apparently baby carrots, prescription medications, cross-stitching, lime-green bathtubs, and headlamps are ‘in,’” Sam said, skimming a page of Esmé’s small, loopy handwriting. “Whatever that means.”
“I guess that explains the ugly-ass bathrooms,” Dean said, rummaging through a closet filled with dozens of pinstripe suits. “Find anything about the kids?”
“Not yet.” Sam skimmed a few more pages. “AM radio is out. ‘Outie’ belly buttons are in. Jogging is out. Velvet swimsuits are out. Talking on a cell phone while driving is in. God, this diary is insipid,” he sighed, using a word which here means “completely devoid of any useful information about the Baudelaires.” Indeed, aside from an underlined notation that orphans were now “in,” the diary did not contain a single reference to the Baudelaire children.
“What’s that thing on the cover?” Dean asked.
“What thing?”
“The eye thing,” Dean said, pointing to the symbol pressed into the leather of the Very Fashionable Diary’s front cover. “It’s like - I think it’s an eye. I’ve seen that before somewhere.”
“It was embroidered on the towels in the third bathroom,” Sam said, taking a closer look at the symbol. “And etched into the coasters in that room with the bearskin rug.”
“Family crest?” Dean suggested.
“No,” Sam said slowly, as if he were only now realizing something. “No, it’s not. Look, it’s not just an eye - it’s letters. These are initials. I think it says - ”
“V.F.D.,” Dean finished. “So what the hell does that mean?”
Sam didn’t answer. As soon as Dean had spoken the letters aloud, he had begun to flip once more through the Very Fashionable Diary, scanning every page for clues.
As I have already mentioned, one reason to work through things step by step is to make a big problem seem more manageable. Another reason is that if you do not go through things step by step, you risk missing crucial pieces of information. For instance, if I had merely walked through the sooty and abandoned house on that cold autumn morning so many years ago, without bothering to search each room thoroughly, I would have never found the message left for me in the refrigerator by the one person I loved most in the world. Similarly, if Sam had thrown down the Very Fashionable Diary in disgust, having only skimmed the tedious lists of things that had been declared in or out, he would have never noticed the one phrase that was repeated over and over again, in increasingly larger and more frantic handwriting - a phrase that had caused immeasurable trouble for the Baudelaire children, for a notorious villain with one long eyebrow and a tattoo of an eye on his ankle, for the hundreds of noble and wicked people that may or may not have died in the fire at the Hotel Denouement, for a certain taxi driver, and for the author of this story. It was a phrase that - like many things the Winchesters were discovering and many more they never would - shared the initials of a secret organization that had long ago suffered a terrible and destructive schism, which had set into motion a seemingly endless series of unfortunate events for everyone involved. It was a phrase that you or I might have had trouble making sense of, but that Sam worked out immediately, thanks to the youngest Winchester’s familiarity with Latin and the many hours he had spent studying for science tests.
Between the insipid lists of all things in and out, the author of the Very Fashionable Diary had repeatedly scrawled the phrase “Vessel For Disaccharides.”
“My question is,” Sam said, “why was Esmé Squalor so obsessed with a sugar bowl?”
&&&
“You have to call her,” Sam said.
“The hell I do,” Dean snapped, tightening his hands on the steering wheel. “She’s a thief, Sam. She’s a thief and a liar and she stole the Colt, in case you’ve forgotten, and - ”
“And she’s the only person who might be able to tell us what all this is about,” Sam said. “Just call her now and get it over with.”
“God damn it,” Dean grumbled. He fumbled for his cell phone while trying to keep an eye on the road. “I hate you both.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. Dean sighed heavily, swallowed his pride, and dialed an annoyingly familiar number.
There may come a day when you, like Dean, will have to swallow your pride. This does not mean you will physically swallow the sense of your own dignity, although you may have to swallow other things, such as nasty words or the urge to vomit. Swallowing your pride simply means doing something embarrassing or uncomfortable, such as calling a woman you have vehemently sworn to never speak to again, simply because you have no other choice. In this case, Dean would rather have swallowed a thousand Lachrymose Leeches than dialed the number of the woman who was at that very moment smirking at the screen of her expensive cell phone.
The phone rang three and a half times before being interrupted by a beep. A tinny voice on the other end said, thick with scorn and amusement, “Dean Winchester.”
“What do you know about sugar bowls?” Dean asked.
There was no response.
Dean frowned, pressing the phone closer to his ear. “Bela?”
“I’m sorry, I believe I’m suffering some sort of auditory hallucinations. No need for concern; it’s probably only a side effect of these pearls I procured for a client,” said the tinny voice. “Procured” is a word which here means “stole.” “I would have sworn you just asked me about sugar bowls.”
“Hilarious. You should really consider going into comedy if this whole ‘robbing people, leaving them for dead’ thing doesn’t pan out,” Dean said.
“Unlikely,” said the tinny voice. “Why are you calling me, Dean?”
“I told you. I need everything you know or can find out about sugar bowls. Cursed, blessed, any kind of artifact or talisman - anything you’ve got. Oh, and anything having to do with the initials V.F.D.”
The phone was quiet for a long moment. “What’s in it for me?”
“How about another week of me not kicking your ass for stealing the fucking Colt?” Dean growled.
“Oh, Dean, you’re funny,” said the tinny voice with a tinny little laugh. “Tell you what, I’ll consider it. Meanwhile, why don’t you try thinking of something to make this tiresome little task worth my while?”
The line went dead. Dean ground his teeth and deliberately did not throw his phone at Sam’s head.
“I am going to stab her in the eye,” he announced.
Sam opened his mouth to reply, but he was interrupted by a terrible sound that made both Winchesters cringe.
The worst sound in the world - or, indeed, the best - is very much a matter of personal opinion. If someone had asked Dean at that moment, he might have said the worst sound in the world was the muffled glug-glug of blood in his little brother’s throat as he died on his knees in the mud, or the shaky sigh of expelled air from his deflating lungs, or perhaps the endless hum of silence as Dean looked and looked at Sam and Sam did not look back. If that someone had turned and asked Sam the same question, he might have said the worst sound in the world was the unexpected backfire of a gunshot in a parking lot, or the crackle and hiss of flames licking up a beloved face, or the sad echo of a lonely hotel room. For my money, a phrase which here means “in the author’s humble opinion,” the worst sound in the world is the creak of a coffin lid as it closes for the last time on all that remains of the woman you love.
Whatever their personal opinions, Sam and Dean would have both agreed that one of the very worst sounds in the world was the wheezing, puttering sound of the engine as their faithful old car slowly rolled to a stop.
“What the hell?” Dean said.
Sam pointed to the dashboard. “We’re out of gas.”
“That’s impossible,” Dean said, blinking at the fuel gauge. “I just filled her up this morning.”
“Tell that to the car,” Sam said impatiently. He was right. The Winchesters were faced with an undeniable case of what colleagues of mine used to refer to as Vehicular Fuel Deficiency.
Dean thunked his head down on the steering wheel. “Perfect.”
“We can’t afford to waste time,” Sam said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You take care of the car. I’ll go see this reporter, find out what she knows. We can meet at the Baudelaire mansion in two hours.”
I once had a mentor who was very fond of reminding me of the old saying, “Knowledge is power.” In my experience, I have found this saying to be true. Knowledge can be very powerful, although it is important to keep in mind that the usefulness of a certain piece of knowledge depends upon your situation. Knowledge about the work of English Romantic poets can be a source of power if you are taking an exam, or if you are playing a trivia game, or if you have accidentally killed a large seabird. However, if you are trying to escape a torch-wielding mob, this particular knowledge will not help you at all, whereas knowing the location of a fire extinguisher would be very helpful indeed.
Sam and Dean Winchester knew more than most people about demons and ghosts, guns and spells, Latin conjugation and how it felt to lose someone you loved. But they did not know a few specific things that would have been very helpful to them as they walked in opposite directions down the sidewalk. They did not know, for instance, that a bearded villain had drained the fuel tank of their car while they were searching the Squalors’ penthouse apartment. They did not know that Geraldine Julienne had not been seen since she went to interview Esmé Squalor at the Hotel Denouement. And the Winchester brothers had no way of knowing that when Dean arrived at the charred remains of the Baudelaire mansion in two hours and ten minutes, Sam would be nowhere to be found.
&&&
Sam had little luck with Geraldine Julienne, the reporter he had hoped could provide valuable information about the Baudelaires. He had gone to the Daily Punctilio, the newspaper that had printed her articles, only to be told that she no longer worked there.
“Oh, Geraldine? She hasn’t been here in ages,” said the woman at the front desk. “Ran off a good long while ago, that one. Didn’t even give notice.”
Not only was the reporter gone, but no one else on the staff seemed to have any idea what Sam was talking about - or what they were talking about, for that matter. The news editor said that Veronica, Klyde and Susie Baudelaire had brutally murdered their uncle Omar, while the political cartoonist said that Victoria, Kevin and Sandra Bandylane had gone into hiding with their godfather Al Funcoot. The advice columnist said that the Baudelaire triplets had been kidnapped by giant crows. Several people claimed the children were dead, while the obituary writer swore that they were alive and living on a submarine at the bottom of the ocean.
By the time Sam left the Daily Punctilio, he was more confused than ever. As he stood on the sidewalk outside the office, trying to decide what to do next, a taxi pulled up to the curb in front of him. The driver leaned over and rolled down the passenger’s side window. “Need a lift?” he asked.
Sam needed a lot of things. He needed information about the Baudelaires. He needed answers to his questions. He needed a way to save his brother from a horrific fate, and very soon, he was going to need a flashlight. But he also needed a lift, by which the taxi driver meant “a ride to his next destination.”
Sam slid into the backseat of the taxi and closed the door. “Take me to Mulctuary Money Management, please,” he said. He may as well use the time he had left to talk with the executor of the Baudelaires’ estate, Sam thought.
“Of course.”
Sam slumped in his seat and stared out the window, watching the people on the sidewalk as they flew by. After a while, he sighed heavily and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Have you ever had one of those days where everything goes wrong?”
The taxi driver glanced back at him in the rearview mirror. He wore a tattered-looking hat with a wide brim that shaded his face; Sam could only barely see the glint of his eyes and the melancholy set of his mouth. “I didn’t realize this was a sad occasion,” he said.
“Not sad,” Sam said. “Just really, really frustrating, is all.”
The taxi driver frowned, as if Sam had given him the wrong response. “I see. Well, here we are. Mulctuary Money Management is that large building across the street.”
Sam paid the driver and hurried into the bank, eager to meet with Arthur Poe, the banker who been the executor of the Baudelaires’ estate since the death of their parents. Poe was the man responsible for shepherding the orphans from guardian to guardian; he had even taken them into his own home for a time. Sam was hopeful that talking with him would shed some light on the increasingly complicated tale of the Baudelaire children.
“Mr. Poe?” said the woman at the front desk. “The former Vice President in Charge of Orphan Affairs? Why, nobody has seen him for months.”
&&&
Once, when Dean was a young boy and his brother was still little more than a baby, Sam had disappeared. One minute he was fast asleep, napping in the bed they shared, and the next he was gone. Dean had been terrified. Their father was out and wouldn’t return home for hours, and he had specifically told Dean to be careful and to keep an eye on Sammy. Dean searched the whole cabin on the brink of tears. He called his brother’s name again and again, sick with thoughts of what might have happened to him. He had never been so scared, not even when his father had pushed baby Sammy into his arms and told him to run. Dean wanted to cry, and he wanted to scream, and he wanted to throw up, but most of all, he wanted Sam.
He finally found his brother crawling around in some nearby bushes, happily gnawing on twigs and whatever else he could cram in his mouth. He was perfectly safe. Nothing had hurt him. Dean never told his father what had happened, and twenty-three years later, Sam didn’t even remember the incident.
Dean remembered. He remembered the hammering of his heart in his chest, and the bitter taste of fear and adrenaline. He remembered the way his hands clenched and his throat closed up the second he saw the telltale rustling in the bushes, and the way he had grabbed at Sam’s chubby little body and pulled him close, needing to touch him, needing to know that he was safe. Dean remembered every last detail, because twenty-three years later, he still felt those exact same sensations every single time his little brother was not where he was supposed to be. His heart pounded when Sam was snatched away or disappeared into thin air. His mouth filled with the awful taste of terror whenever he found himself shouting Sam’s name down an echoing hallway or searching through an empty hotel room for clues. His hands clenched and his throat closed up the second he finally caught a glimpse of Sam’s broad shoulders or heard his brother shout his name. And at that moment, standing in the blackened ruins of the Baudelaire mansion, Dean would have given anything in the world to see his brother appear, to grab his elbow or rumple his hair, and to know for certain that Sam - his baby brother, Sammy, the one person in the world he could not live without - was safe.
Dean pulled out his phone and dialed Sam’s number for the tenth time in as many minutes. “Come on, Sammy,” he muttered, holding the phone tight against his ear. “Pick up, pick up, pick up, you asshole.”
Sam did not pick up.
Dean shoved the phone back into his pocket and tried to think about what to do next. He wasn’t a child anymore, and neither was Sam. He had plenty of practice finding his brother, and Sam was perfectly capable of taking care of himself until he did. Sam was a grown man with military-style training and a gun, and Dean was going to find him, just as soon as he could decide on his next move. Sam was probably not dying somewhere with blood in his mouth and eyes like their father’s rolling back in his head.
Dean’s phone rang. He snatched it out of his pocket and answered it without looking at the screen. “Sam?”
“You owe me big-time, Winchester,” said a tinny voice on the other end. “Big-time. Your grandchildren will be paying this off.”
Disappointment clenched hard in Dean’s stomach. “I don’t have time for this, Bela. Sam’s gone. I need to - ”
“You need to hear this,” insisted the tinny voice. “I mean it. Listen to me, Dean. It’s not the sugar bowl that’s important, it’s what’s inside - ”
Our fates are frequently determined by the decisions we make. There are big decisions, of course, like deciding to have a baby or deciding to become a Supreme Court Justice, but every one of us makes lots of smaller decisions that end up shaping our lives and the lives of the people around us. If I had decided not to spend an extra night with my cousin in Wichita, the woman I loved might still be alive. If a certain young man in Sarajevo had decided not to shoot the Archduke of Austria, the whole world might have been saved a lot of trouble. If Dean had stayed on the phone for just thirty seconds more, he might have learned everything he needed to know about the sugar bowl and its contents, about the Baudelaire children and their guardians, about the fires and V.F.D., and even about an old family secret that might have saved his life.
The fact is that, for better or for worse, we all have to live with the consequences of the decisions we make. I did spend an extra night in Wichita, that young man did shoot the Archduke of Austria, and at that moment, just as the tinny voice on the phone was about to reveal the answers to all the Winchesters’ questions, Dean Winchester noticed the hole carved into the ash-strewn floor of the Baudelaire mansion, and made the only decision he could.
“I have to go,” he said, and ended the call.
He hurried over to the hole. Upon closer inspection, it proved to be an open trapdoor, the door itself swinging loose on its hinges. Dean carefully lowered himself down, and immediately saw that he was not standing in a hole at all, but at the end of a tunnel. A narrow, winding passageway stretched out before him, disappearing into the pitch-black darkness beyond the reach of the sunlight shining through the trapdoor.
Dean checked that his gun was loaded and ready. “Sammy, you had better be alive, because I’m going to kick your ass for this,” he said, and set off into the darkness.
&&&
The expression “a shot in the dark” refers to an attempt to guess something about which you have no prior knowledge, or to do something rashly without knowing very much about what it is you’re doing. The Winchesters had often taken literal shots in the dark, firing rock salt or silver bullets toward growling creatures they could not see, and now Dean was taking a figurative shot in the dark by walking alone through the dark, dark tunnel. He had no prior knowledge about the passageway or where it led, or what he might encounter along the way. He guessed that it might lead him to his brother, but he did not know for certain. He could only hope that he would find Sam, alive and well, and after that, the two of them together could deal with whatever might come their way, as they always had.
The ceiling of the passageway was very low, which meant that Dean had to crouch down as he walked. The tunnel twisted and turned, which meant that he had to walk with his free hand skimming the wall, keeping track of the curves and corners. It was very, very dark, which meant that he could see nothing, and had to listen very closely for any unfriendly sounds.
Every so often, he called Sam’s name - quietly, so as not to attract attention from whatever else might be in the tunnel with him, but loud enough that Sam could hear it if he was listening for him. “Sam?” he called. “Sam? Sammy?” His hand felt damp and sweaty around his gun. His heart pounded in his chest.
“Sam?” he called again, and for the first time, he heard the faint shuffle of someone else’s footsteps in the darkness.
His hands clenched. His throat closed up.
“Dean?” called his brother’s voice, not twenty feet away, and Dean shoved his gun into his pocket and ran.
He barreled into Sam like a freight train. Both brothers recoiled from the impact and fell hard on their knees.
“Dean,” Sam said, “Dean, what the hell,” as Dean grabbed his shoulders and shook him and pulled him close, holding on.
“I’m going to kill you,” Dean said. His voice was quiet, muffled in Sam’s jacket and the solid curve of his shoulder. “You fucking idiot. I’m going to kill you. Jesus.”
Sam brought his arm up to wrap around Dean’s back. “Sorry,” he said, and meant it. “Dean, I’m sorry, my phone doesn’t work down here, I didn’t realize - ”
“You didn’t realize,” Dean repeated. He pulled back, glaring at his brother through the darkness as though Sam could see him. His hands stayed on Sam, tangled up in handfuls of fabric. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he demanded, by which he meant something like, “Why have you been acting so strangely lately, and why won’t you talk to me anymore?” He slid a hand up to grip hard at the back of Sam’s neck. “What the fuck’s gotten into you?”
Sam squirmed halfheartedly in Dean’s grip. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit,” Dean said. “This case - hell, the last ten cases. You’re obsessed. You don’t sleep. You don’t think. Jesus, you can’t just - you can’t just wander off down here without a goddamn flashlight, without telling me - ”
“It was important,” Sam said, sounding tired. “This passageway has something to do with the Baudelaires. It could help us solve the case. This could be what we need, Dean.”
Dean leaned forward in the darkness until he and Sam were face-to-face, noses almost touching. “I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t care about the Baudelaires, I don’t care about this tunnel, I don’t care about fucking V.F.D. or the fires or any of it. This isn’t about them. This is about you and me, Sam, and what I need is for you to tell me what the fuck is going on with you.”
“Dean,” Sam said helplessly. He ducked his head, hair brushing against Dean’s cheek. He was quaking under Dean’s hands.
“Come on, Sammy,” Dean said, more gently than before. “Talk to me.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Sam’s voice was low and desperate-sounding. “I can’t watch you die again, Dean. I just…I can’t.” He shook his head, quick, hair flying in his face. “I can’t.”
“Sam,” Dean said, trying to breathe around the sudden ache in his chest. He moved a hand to cup Sam’s face. “Sammy. Come on, don’t.” He rubbed a thumb through the tears rolling down Sam’s cheek. “Don’t.”
Our fates are frequently determined by the decisions we make. My cousin asked me to stay and help take down the Halloween decorations. An angry young man walked out of a delicatessen with a sandwich in one hand and a gun in the other at the same moment that Archduke Ferdinand’s car was turning around after taking a wrong turn. And fifty-three days before the hellhounds came to collect Dean’s soul, deep in the darkness of the passageway that once connected the Baudelaire mansion to the empty elevator shaft of 667 Dark Avenue, Sam Winchester took a shot in the dark and kissed his brother on the mouth.
After one long moment of surprise and hesitation, Dean kissed him back.
“Dean,” Sam said against Dean’s mouth, meaning something along the lines of, “I love you.” “Dean, Dean, Dean.”
Dean kissed his brother’s forehead and his cheek, his shaky damp mouth. “Sammy,” he said in a low voice, which here again means, “We’re going to be okay.”
I would like nothing more than to write that Dean was correct, and that the Winchesters were indeed going to be okay. I would like to write that Sam saved Dean from his fiery doom, and Dean saved Sam from himself, and they both went on to save lots of other people. I would like to write that they finally found the peace and the joy that they so very much deserved, but I cannot.
If I were you, I would close this story without finishing it, and imagine a happier fate for Sam and Dean Winchester. I would imagine that when they finally emerged from the tunnel into the late afternoon sun, they found their friends Bobby and Ellen waiting for them with smiles and helpful information, instead of an irritable blonde demon with bad news about someone named Lilith. I would imagine that their faithful car was waiting for them at the curb, instead of about to be seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I would imagine that the next two months were filled with laughter and pleasant adventures instead of despair and conflict, and I would imagine that when the first hellhound let loose his terrible howl in the distance, Sam looked at his brother with a triumphant smile, instead of a look of such utter agony that Dean could hardly speak.
I wish I could write that all these things were true, but they are not. I am sorry to say that these few minutes, breathing together in the dark, are as close to a happy ending as the Winchester brothers will ever get. The sad truth is that kisses, as wonderful and sometimes illegal as they may be, rarely have the power to change the world, and when Sam and Dean broke apart, all their troubles and misfortunes were still there. They were still on their knees in a dark, dark passageway, with no idea where it led or why it had been constructed. They were still haunted by the fires they had set and the fires they had spent their whole lives trying to put out. They were still orphaned and bone-tired, they were still pursued by unpleasant men and even more unpleasant demons, and, more so now than ever, the brothers were still all alone in the dark, frightening world.
Of course, even the ill-fated Baudelaire orphans had never been truly hopeless or truly alone. They had always been able to depend on each other for love and support, and this love and support was the one thing that had sustained them through the direst of circumstances and the most unfortunate of events. The Winchester brothers were tired and frightened, angry and desperate, lost in the dark, but like the Baudelaires, Sam and Dean still had each other.
For now.