Fic: Wish You Were Here, R, Dean, Sam, Gen (1/2)
Title: Wish You Were Here
Author: Pkwench
Rating: R
Genre and/or Pairing: Gen, H/C
Spoilers: Up to and including 5x10
Warnings: Language
Word Count: 18,452
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural. The proof is in the kittens.
Summary: Written for the Dean-focused hurt/comfort fic challenge. Prompt 7 by whisper99: Dean falling into an old well and getting stuck down there. He's hurt bad enough that he can't help get himself out and a frantic Sam has to call in for help. Gen please! Any season :)
Beta-read by the undeniably talented and brilliant ratherastory who has my undying thanks for all of her hard work and for helping me keep Dean Dean. Any remaining mistakes and character flaws are all on me.
Thanks to: hoodietime for putting the challenge on. I enjoy this comm so much.
Author’s Note: All I had to do was drop Dean in a well. It shouldn’t have been hard at all, but this thing just crept up on me and happened. I hope that I stayed somewhat true to the prompt and that I haven’t disappointed the prompter.
Also, the title may seem a bit of a peculiar choice, despite both boys wishing for the other’s presence on more that one occasion. But, if you know the song, the sentiment works well enough for our boys. I’m awful at titles. Really, I suck at them. Since I didn’t loathe this one outright, it got to stay. It’s not especially original, I know.
-
The town of Wisdom was smothered in low-lying fog. It had rolled in with the Winchesters on Tuesday and now, on Friday, it was so dense that Sam could barely see the dirt he dug through. It muffled the sound, killed visibility, and did nothing to brighten his bleak and increasingly guilt-ridden mood. Once he might have said he was suicidal. These days, he knew that a suicide you couldn’t follow through on, for whatever reason, was just a plea for attention - no matter how many scars were gained from trying.
So, he dug while Dean stood over him with a shotgun cocked on his hip and looking more like a prison guard keeping a watchful eye on a work detail than his brother. They said nothing to each other about the loss. They didn’t talk about their failure or hopelessness. They didn’t talk about the fact that Sam woke up in a cold sweat at night feeling like something had tried to sneak in behind his eyes and try him on. Sam didn’t know how to describe what was happening to him, and Dean, dour and quiet since Carthage, surely didn’t want to hear it.
Sam dug and spared no effort doing it. When he hit wood, he tossed out a few more shovelfuls of dirt before dropping to his knees and prying at the old wood with his fingers until it came apart. A long splinter went through his hand. He pulled it out without thought and continued to pry apart the coffin. The smell of long dried bones and earth was an overwhelming and familiar one. Sometimes, like now, he could detect the faint traces of fungus and the long-dead memory of flowers.
Paperwhites, he thought as he climbed out of the grave. He thought that there’d been a lingering hint of paperwhites.
Dean nodded at him, solemnly, but with the curt appraisal of a job well done. He hadn’t offered him a hand, but had already uncapped the salt. He liberally doused the bones that were clothed in the shreds of a bridal gown. Sam found the lighter fluid and squirted it over the salt. Dean had matches this time and he lit the book on fire. He tossed it in. The fire caught as Sam was still dousing the grave with lighter fluid. For a moment, the flame coursed back up the stream as if it was seeking them out. Sam stopped squeezing the can before the fire reached him.
The dense fog was so thick that Sam, a born navigator with an innate sense of direction, still felt lost. He found nothing amusing in the irony. Dean pulled him by his sleeve, giving him a tug just as he’d done since they were children. ‘No, Sammy, this way,‘ the gesture said. He let Dean guide him back to the car and tried not to think about the deeper parallel.
The drive back to South Milburn street was slow and quiet. Dean didn’t turn the radio on, Sam didn’t talk, and the town was shuttered up against the wet, depressing fog. They trotted up the steps to the small cape cod that seemed out of place among the modified ranch houses and split levels that dominated the street.
The door opened before they had a chance to ring the bell and Sam smiled in spite of himself when the dark-eyed blond flung herself at Dean. She held onto him more tightly than was necessary. Dean was still Dean and he gave a little shrug before hugging the girl back, one hand taking the time to drop down and test her ass.
Sam nodded, making a face of approval, and turned down the steps towards the Impala, meaning to give Dean time with the girl. All night, if necessary. He was surprised when Dean passed him on the way down the steps.
“Wha … aren’t you going to stay with Haley for a while?” Sam asked with a backwards jerk of his head towards the house and girl behind him.
“Nah, not really my type,” Dean said as he fished the keys from his pocket.
Sam glanced back at the girl standing on the porch, taking in her tiny waist, generous curves, and low-cut blouse. “Bullshit that’s not your type. She’s practically a centerfold and clearly more than a little grateful that you just saved her from the ghost that’s been tormenting her at the local library.”
“Fine. Then I’m just not in the mood.”
He said nothing as he got in the car and Dean seemed content enough to maintain the trend of silence as they packed up at the motel. Within minutes they were on the road, heading out of Wisdom and pointing in the general direction of Dallas-Fort Worth. Sam, still smelling of sweat and the graveyard, begin to fidget. He couldn’t help but glance at Dean out of the corner of his eye.
“Dude,” Dean warned. “Don’t.”
Sam sighed and shifted so that he was turned towards Dean. “It’s just that…”
“Really, Sam. Don’t.”
“Oh, come on, Dean. Say something. Do something. I know you’ve been thinking it. Hell, I’ve been thinking it. All of this time, all of our friends, all of this misery, and now we can’t even kill the bastard. If I hadn’t … if I’d listened to you …”
“Is everything about you?” Dean asked. “Really? I just lost two of my friends by going up against the devil and losing. Ellen’s been the closest thing we’ve had to a mother in years and Jo. Jo’s … dammit, Sam. Don’t make this all about you. Blah, blah, blah, you and your misery. I get it, man. I do and I feel for you. But right now, I just don’t care. I feel like crap, too, and you might have the decency to let me deal with it for once instead of putting yourself at the center of the god damned universe.”
“Yeah,” Sam replied as he nodded. “Yeah, okay.” He turned back towards the dash and did his level best to keep from shouting. He needed to try to find some way to unburden himself, to divest himself of the weight that seemed to press down on his chest and suffocate him, but Dean was right. It wasn’t fair to drag him along down through it. Sam kept his mouth shut and vowed that he would find a way to deal with it on his own. He owed Dean that much.
He looked out of the window and prayed to a God that he no longer believed in. He prayed for strength. He prayed for forgiveness. And he prayed to be shown the means to fight back because, more than anything, Sam thought that his sanity hinged upon striking back at everything that had pulled him down to such a dark place and left him with such limited options.
‘Our Father,’ he thought to himself, ‘who’s certainly not in heaven, hallowed be thy friggin’ name, you deaf bastard.’
“…the hell?”
Sam's head snapped up as Dean slammed on the breaks. They skidded to a halt a few feet from a figure standing on the side of the road. The thick, unnatural fog swirled around her legs as she stepped forward and gave a jaunty wave. Her blacker than black eyes were visible in the gloom, along with her sardonic expression. Sam thought she still looked like a centerfold model.
“Is that …”
“Yep,” Dean replied.
“Shit,” Sam said. “Haley. That can’t be good.”
“Nope. Ghosts one minute, demons the next. What a coincidence.”
Dean took his foot off of the brake and went for the gas pedal. The tires screamed on the wet blacktop before the car shot forward. For a moment, he was sure that Dean was going to drive the Impala right through her; that he, like Sam himself, had already concluded that some sort of trap had been set for them, that the demon was not out on the back roads of Texas alone, and that Haley had been bait from the start.
They didn’t run her down and Sam caught sight of the demon smiling at him as they sped by. It infuriated him and, more than anything, he wanted to stop the car, get out, and put an end to the demon the hard way just for the audacity of ramming itself down that girl’s throat.
“I want to go back and kick that thing out of her,” Sam said.
“I really don’t think they’re going to give us the time, Sammy,” Dean replied, pointing ahead.
The Impala was picking up speed and racing ever closer to a line of figures just barely visible in the gloom. They stood, side by side, holding hands across the highway, defiantly, as if daring them to drive through them. Sam glanced back at Haley in the side mirror to see her moving to the center of the road behind them, a handful of people following her from the foggy roadside.
‘Here’s where they spring the trap’, he thought. He reached for the gun in the waistband of his jeans and flipped off the safety. He glanced at Dean as he stomped down on the gas once more.
“Red rover?” Sam asked.
“Send the Winchesters right over,” Dean confirmed. “I am so mowing those bastards down. If I smile when they hit, remind me about it later if I get pissed about dents and broken glass.”
Sam’s answering nod proved to be unnecessary. They never did hit and the realization of why that was and what just happened spun through Sam’s mind in a near panic even as he grasped the wheel of the Impala and slid over to the suddenly empty driver’s seat. He was rocketing seventy-eighty miles per hour down a road free of everyone but himself, the car swerving madly as he tried to soothe her over the unexpected loss of her driver. Back and forth, the car went and Sam was sure that he was going to wreck it. He was in the driver’s seat fully now - thank God and whatever years-dead auto designer that had come up with bench seats - and he coaxed Dean’s baby under control as he found the brake with his foot.
Sam slid the Impala to something of an anticlimactic halt and got out, chest heaving with rage and something a little darker roiling underneath.
“Mother fucking angels!” he shouted to the sky as he slammed a fist down on the roof of the car.
***
Dean hated being zapped while sitting. It invariably ended with him stumbling and falling unless the zapper happened to feel like giving the zappee a hand. Such was not the case and Dean went down hard on his ass in snow. Texas one minute, a field of snow the next. God damned angels. Had to be.
“Sam!” he exclaimed as he sorted out all of the implications of what had happened. The Impala had just crested seventy-five when she’d struck the line and the angels had zapped in and out of the car with him in tow. Sam was a Winchester, trained since diapers to think fast, but what if he hadn’t made it over in time? What if he’d wrecked? What if both car and younger brother were somewhere back in Texas dying a slow death?
Dean shot to his feet, swearing a little at the new ache that this last year had put into his knees. Four angels surrounded him. All of them dressed so casually that they might have been plucked from a shopping mall were it not for their unnaturally stern expressions. Dean lunged and grabbed one of the angels by the throat, hands squeezing none-too-gently. He was about ready to demand to be sent back to his brother when another set of angels flashed in. Three of them this time, two of them wearing identical twins. They had Haley with them.
‘No,’ Dean thought, ‘they’ve got the demon possessing Haley with them.’
While no one looked overjoyed at her arrival, no one restrained her or made a move. The angels simply stood, waiting, as Dean knew angels often did. He took note of the demon’s relaxed stance and generally satisfied air and swore softly.
“Switch hitters,” Dean said, letting the angel’s neck go. “You’ve all gone dark side. And Sam?”
“Safe in Texas,” the demon-formerly-known-as-Haley said. “You know he’s the big man’s special boy. Sammy’s in one piece, cussing up a storm, last I saw. The real question, Dean, isn’t how is Sam, but how much longer will he be Sam?”
“How much longer will he be Sam,” Dean mimicked in a high, mocking falsetto. “You guys really need to get a drama coach if you’re going to keep spouting all of that melodramatic, evil crap. So, I take it your boss got tired of us lying low and had you dig up a nice little salt and burn to lure us out. What, you just hung out in the rafters until Sammy and I were done so that you could snatch up that poor girl’s meat and call in these guys?”
The demon just smiled at him, flashing far too many of Haley’s well-cared for teeth. She then waved her hand more than a little imperiously at the angels, clearly enjoying having them at her beck and call. Dean figured her to be a higher up among the demons and wondered which one she was. Wondered, with a barely perceptible shudder, if he’d met her before - up top or down below.
“We don’t take orders from you,” the angel next to Dean said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble.
“You do today, baby,” the demon countered. “You want to join The Devil’s team, you get to mingle with all of us unsavory common folk. Now, play nice, bring Dean-o along, or so help me, I’ll spill his guts in the snow right now and tell the big man that it was the damned, stupid angels who got out of hand with his little insurance policy.”
Shit.
Dean didn’t think, didn’t debate the futility of it or how mixed up and terrible he felt about Sam these days. He just took off across the snowy field. Logic took a nap in the backseat while panic for Sam reared up with all of its unthinking, consuming terror and said ‘get going before they use you to really screw him up.’ Dean obeyed the voice that had gotten him into more trouble than any one person deserved. He ran, knowing that he wasn’t going to get very far with seven angels on his back.
He felt something nail him between the shoulder blades even as something else unseen tripped him up and sent him down so hard that he slid for a few feet on the hard packed snow, scraping his chin. As Dean rolled over, tasting blood and looking up at the angels, two of whom couldn’t look him in the eye, he wondered for a half a second if this was it, his one and only chance to say yes to Michael before something happened to Sam.
One of the twins reached down and yanked him to his feet, ending the thought. Dean was almost thankful to her for it. She’d brought him down from what he thought of as the Sam-Panic and forced him to think rationally. Could he hand himself over to Michael any more now than he could have this morning? No. He wasn’t ready to give up his meat or watch the planet get torched in the name of saving it. Nothing had changed.
Dean stood, blood welling up on his scraped chin, and stared at the angels surrounding him and the one demon who strolled towards them in her borrowed college girl meat. She smiled as she swung Haley’s curvaceous hips a little bit. Knowing that there was a scared girl under there didn't make him want to kick the bitch's teeth in any less.
“So, what now?” Dean asked. “You traitors,” he smiled as two of the seven angels flinched, “plan on dressing me up in a gold bikini and chaining me to the big guy’s lounger until Sam shows up?”
“Believe it or not, Dean,” the Haley-demon said, “most people - and by people I do of course mean demons and our lord Lucifer - really can’t stand having you around. You talk too much, you’re not as cute as you think you are, and unless there’s fun to be had torturing you, you’re really a very dull, very annoying little man. Plus?” she sniffed and crinkled up her nose immediately. “You just stink of that angel you insist on palling around with. That or cheap aftershave. Honestly, it smells the same some days.”
All of the angels glared at her, but said nothing. Dean didn’t take that to mean anything. He’d spent enough time with angels to know that they thought far, far more than they ever said. He watched the two he’d already marked as potentially helpful. One was just a teenager in mittens and stocking cap, still wearing a Wal-Mart smock over his dark blue parka. The other was a woman in her sixties who still smelled of cigarette smoke and looked as though she’d walked right off of the line of whatever factory she worked at. She wore safety goggles around her neck and there was one, bright yellow earplug in her left ear. He filed the faces away and hoped that opportunity would arise for him to take advantage of their discomfort, their barely perceptible hesitation.
Dean turned his gaze back to the demon. “Quit it. You’re breaking my heart.”
The demon took a step closer to him. “You bore me,” she said, breathing into his face.
He waved a hand beneath his nose. “Haley’s not going to appreciate the dental bills if you don’t brush those teeth. Twice a day and don’t forget to floss after meals.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Bring him. Please. Before I’m tempted to kill him myself.”
The angel wearing the Wal-Mart cart boy took him by the arm and pulled him forward after the demon. The other angels took up positions at his sides and at his back as they set off across the frozen field. They stepped over frozen furrows, causing Dean to slip calf deep in snow every other step. Though he made show of complaining about the cold and the wet, he took the time to count and mentally mark trees as they walked past. He noted large rocks, distinctive land features, and the distance from the fence, fixing it all in memory in case he needed a reference later as he escaped. Because, it never occurred to him that he wouldn’t escape or get rescued. He was confident in that belief right up until the moment he saw the well and realized that the demon was leading them towards it.
“Uh-uh,” Dean said, sticking his heels into the snow. “No, no, no. Saw ‘The Ring’, fucking hated it. You are not going to …”
“Yes, we are,” the demon interrupted. She took him by the collar of his jacket and dragged him to the well.
Dean found himself pressed against the frozen stones before he knew it. Unable to help himself, he peered over the lip. Below there was nothing but darkness. No way of knowing if the well still had water or if it was dry.
The demon slid an arm around Dean and reached into his coat. She pulled out his cell phone and stuck it in her own pocket. She smiled at him, breathing her rank, brimstone and sulfurous breath on him again. “Anything you’d like to say before I put you in safekeeping, Dean?”
“Yeah, how about don’t put me in the freaking well!”
Her eyes went black and her smile excessively chipper as she shrugged. “Sorry, kid. The boss said somewhere safe and isolated. Who’s going to find you in the bottom of a well?”
“Safe,” Dean told her. “Your boss said safe and alive.”
“He said safe. He didn’t mention anything about comfortable, warm, well-fed, and pain free, I’m sorry to say.” She turned to the twins. “Drop him.”
The angels grabbed him by the belt at the back of his jeans and lifted him easily into the air. Dean hung over the well for a moment, his midsection spanning the dark opening and, as much as he wanted to shout “please, don’t!” he managed to croak out something more useful.
“Not headfirst!”
Thankfully, they took pity on him and swung him a bit. Dean’s feet were pointing down into the seemingly bottomless pit as they let go, sending him plummeting down into the dark well.
“Son of a bitch,” he breathed as he fell into blackness.
***
Sam leaned against the Impala, resisting the urge to start pacing. Upon Bobby’s advice, he’d driven ahead to the next town and parked the car. He was in a drugstore parking lot, waiting for Castiel to show up or Bobby to call him back. Though it was normal for Bobby to take some time to play out his leads and long list of favors, waiting on Castiel was decidedly unusual. Sam had expected him to flash in as soon as he’d explained the situation. He was growing increasingly uneasy, something that didn’t feel entirely unwarranted when he heard the tell-tale sounds of beating wings and turned to find, not just Castiel, but Zachariah as well in the parking lot.
Sam resisted the urge to respond in rude, sarcastic dismay at the sight of the balding angel who normally regarded him and his brother with unrestrained annoyance and superiority. It took biting his tongue and the realization that Zachariah’s usual cocky arrogance had been replaced by either fear and concern or severe indigestion.
“What’s this?” Sam asked Castiel.
“I needed to know that they didn’t have him. My choice of contacts was unfortunate and my confidence was betrayed. I’m only standing here because no one seems willing to take any chances with Michael’s vessel. I believe he finds me useful at the moment.”
“Like a wrench or a plow. Maybe a toilet brush,” Zachariah said snidely. He turned to Sam. “Castiel says you claim angels took Dean. You’re certain of that?”
“As certain as I am that you two are angels,” Sam replied, resisting the urge to start shouting. Of course he was sure. Demons could move with uncanny speed when they wanted to, but Sam didn’t believe them capable of zapping in and out of the Impala with angelic precision. Besides, demons tended to change eye-color when hard at work and Sam, whose memory didn’t usually fail him, hadn’t seen a single pair of black eyes other than the demon who had been possessing Haley. “Angels. Seven of them and one demon. I take it you’re not employing the opposition?”
“Not hardly,” the angel replied. “If those were angels-”
“They were,” Sam growled.
“Like I said, if … then they were deserters.”
“You mean traitors,” Castiel corrected.
“Fine, fine. Split the hair if you must,” Zachariah replied. “Whatever it takes to make you feel better, Castiel. They were traitors. We’ve lost track of two dozen angels in the last week. Most of them we know to be dead. Seven or eight of them however…”
“Switched sides,” Sam finished. “Perfect. That’s just perfect because we can’t track Dean,” at this Zachariah glared hard at Castiel, “and if angels have him, they won’t have any problem moving him around every day or every hour if they feel like it. How,” he said looking to Castiel, “are we ever going to find him?”
“Track the missing angels,” Castiel replied without hesitation. “Every last one of them.”
“He,” and Sam didn’t need the extra emphasis that Zachariah put upon the word to know which ‘he’ was being referred to, “will either have hidden them from us or put them out in the open to lead us away from Dean, obviously. What I can’t figure out, Sam, is why he didn’t just take you.”
Sam, who had been wondering that very thing for the past hour, looked down at his shoes. He took slow, calming breaths like his father had taught him long ago as a means to control fear, though Sam employed the technique now for his anger. The answer was obvious to him, which meant that it had to be obvious to Zachariah as well. Either Lucifer was going to kill Dean to keep Michael from his vessel - assuming that he could - or was going to keep him as a bargaining chip. He found his deep breathing had deteriorated into shallow, angry gasps and Sam worked to control his anger as he clenched both fists. He wanted to ask Zachariah for help, but wondered how long it would take for the arrogant angel to decide that Sam as well might make an excellent bargaining chip for either Lucifer, Dean, or both. His phone rang before he could find any words other than ‘help me, you arrogant prick.’ Praying that it was Bobby, he flipped it on without looking at the caller i.d.
“Sam. How’s Texas?”
Sam felt his stomach lurch and, for a terrible second, he was sure that he was going to throw up on Cas’s shoes. The phone seemed slippery and it took him a moment to realize that his palms had started sweating almost instantly.
“Sam?”
He took a breath, not liking the way that it wavered and shook on both inhale and exhale. “Lucifer.”
Neither Zachariah nor Castiel seemed surprised by the revelation that the Devil was making phone calls to his chosen vessel. Zachariah, in fact, flipped his fingers imperiously in the universal sign for ‘gimme’. Sam was relieved that Castiel did nothing of the sort, but instead put one hand on his shoulder reassuringly. ‘I’m here’ it said. He was grateful for that.
“Where’s Dean?” Sam asked.
“Oh, tucked away somewhere nice and safe and, well … tsk-tsk. I did promise to never lie to you, didn’t I? He’s safe, Sam. Safe and alone. In the dark. Just waiting on you and I to work out one teeny tiny little deal and then off he goes on his merry way, free as a bird.”
“I told you…”
“Now I’m telling you,” Lucifer replied, his voice low and terrifying. “You’re going to agree to do this for me, Sam. You know you are and so does everyone else. I’ve seen it. We’ve all seen it, even your brother. Now, get your ass in the car and head to Detroit. Or, if you don’t feel like driving, I can arrange for more expedient transportation. Dean’s life, Sam. As of two hours ago, his life was put into your hands. Whether he lives or dies is all up to you and two words. Yes or no.”
“Where,” Sam asked, his voice rising at the thought of Dean trapped in the darkness, “is my brother?”
His cell phone was ripped from his hands before Lucifer could answer. Sam looked at Castiel, terrified, exasperated, and infuriated, as Zachariah started to talk to Lucifer as if he was going to broker a deal.
“Hello, Lucifer. It’s Zachariah. I … no, Zachariah. Yes, that one. I wouldn’t exactly use the phrase 'middle management,' no. Listen, we’d like Dean Winchester back. What can we do to make this happen? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Oh, yes. I see. Yes, that is a problem. We have a similar concern over here with … really. You don’t? You wouldn’t?”
“Cas,” Sam said. “This is bad and getting worse.”
“I agree,” Cas replied. “I do not like where this is going.” Sam noticed that he tightened his grip on his shoulder.
“Yep, will do,” Zachariah continued, as if Lucifer was nothing more than an old business associate. “If you’re sure, we’re sure. Of course, there’s a little matter of trust. I … oh. Oh, I see. Well, then that’s another matter entirely.”
Sam glared at him, appalled when Zachariah laughed into the phone. “It’s my brother and the freaking apocalypse, Cas, and he’s laughing. How can he be laughing?”
“Caring for humanity is a job for him,” Castiel replied. “One set down by my Father, perhaps, but, for many angels, nothing more. I would not have him here, but he presented me with two choices. Being left alive to find Dean was the better one.”
Unaware or unconcerned by Castiel’s pitying condemnation of him, Zachariah tapped Sam’s phone and tossed it back to him. His usual pleased arrogance had returned along with a confident smile. “Lucifer promises to deliver Dean if Sam says yes. I said, of course, he’s the devil! Who can trust him? But, then he pointed out that the apocalypse isn’t about killing humans. Well, not about that entirely, but more to the point about that little spat Lucifer’s got going with Michael. It seems, more than anything, he really wants to fight it out with Michael. And that means, Dean’s safe. Safe as houses because the devil needs Michael’s host alive as much as we do, as much as he needs his own host. Can’t have a grudge match with only one opponent, am I right? So, Sammy boy, here’s the thing, you’re going to agree to his demands. You’re going to say yes.”
“What?” Sam choked. “You’re going to help him? You’re going to help the devil end the world?”
“No, we’re going to make sure Michael’s vessel is safe so that we can save the world, Sam,” Zachariah corrected. “Lucifer’s confident that he can win, but so are we. We’ve done it before. But, without Michael’s sword, it’s a bit problematic. So, like the man said, Dean’s life is in your hands. And I’m going to make sure that you choose to do the right thing.”
Sam started to swear, shocked to his core despite the contempt that he knew Zachariah had for humans, for him especially. He didn’t get much further than “you soulless son of a bitch!” before Castiel chimed in with one, single word: “No.”
The world jumped in a dizzying flash of light and color amid the sound of beating wings. For the moment it took for Sam to travel from part of the world to another, he couldn’t remember how to breathe. He was stuck in an unending second of indrawn breath that could not be completed to its resolution. It was the same every time and, just as he did every time it happened to him, he found himself awed that Dean had gone through it so often.
Bobby’s living room took shape around them, just about the same time that Bobby swore, nearly dropping the two phones that he held, one in each hand. “Jumpin’ Jesus, Sam! What’s lit a fire under Castiel?”
“Bobby…”
“Predictable,” Zachariah said as he jumped in behind Sam and Castiel.
“You will not do this,” Castiel said sternly. “Giving him Sam goes against everything we were taught to believe in.” Before Zachariah could respond, the world lurched again and then four more times.
Sam dropped to his knees as the world stopped spinning. He looked up at Castiel. “We safe for now?”
“I believe so.”
“Good, because I feel like I’m going to pass out.” Sam went down hard on his palms, absently noting the roughhewn wood flooring beneath them as his stomach rebelled and heaved. He swallowed hard and closed his eyes against the black spots that swam across his vision. He knelt on the wood floor, desperately trying to catch his breath, and wondered if it was the rapid-fire angelic travel or the realization that angels were now working with the devil to convince him to say yes, to destroy the world, and damn his soul that upset him so.
“Cas…”
“I know, Sam,” the angel replied as he stood next to him. “Things are not going well for us.”
***
Dean didn’t remember the landing, only the fall. The same had been true with dying. For a long time there had been nothing but the painful, wrenching drag further and further down into the smoky fires of hell. But, he didn’t remember arriving in hell. He’d simply woken up there, chained to the rack and screaming. For a moment, the similarity was so unnerving that he cried out, startled to see nothing but the blood tinged haze that he associated with hell.
“Get a grip, man,” Dean hissed to himself. “It’s nowhere close to hell, so stop peeing your pants.”
He forced himself to unwind from the tight ball he’d instinctively wound himself into and to breathe while he assessed the situation. To begin with, it was quiet. This was the first and most obvious sign that anyone ever needed that that they were not in hell. The sound of torment rose and fell in a crash of waves on the shores of hell. It was never quiet, except for the special few who were best tortured with silence. As for the redness staining his vision, Dean realized that he had his eyes squeezed tightly shut. He relaxed and blinked, waiting for his vision to clear. Sam said he saw comets and stars when he closed his eyes like that. Once, long ago, the same had been true for Dean. But, since hell, everything swam red. It was generally why he tried to avoid squeezing his eyes shut or putting pressure on them. He didn’t need any extra excuses for flashbacks.
As his vision cleared, Dean realized that he was swathed in darkness. ‘Duh,’ he thought to himself. ‘I’m in a well.’
Though the thought was less than comforting, he relaxed nonetheless as his unconscious memories of hell receded. He was lying on his side, legs slightly bent. He was cold and wet, but, for the moment, he attributed that to his fall in the snow, unwilling to consider less happy possibilities. Nothing screamed out in pain and, for the moment, he wondered if he was really lucky enough to have gotten by with nothing more than scrapes and bruises. He took a slow, deep breath, gratified that he could do so without any pain on inhalation. Lungs and ribs were intact. This Dean considered to be a very, very good start. His mouth was full of blood and, after ascertaining that he hadn’t severed his tongue with his teeth, he ignored it. Biting his tongue he could live with.
Not ready to chance sitting up just yet, he tried stretching his legs and his arms as he attempted to gauge the width of the well at the bottom. Though he could almost stretch out entirely, giving him the clue that the bottom of the well was roughly six feet in diameter, the first warning that things were not going to go so easy came from his right knee. It popped when he extended his leg and, immediately following that sensation, he felt a lancing streak of pain. If he’d been lucky he might have just sprained it, but Dean had torn his left ACL on a hunt when he’d been fifteen. The pain in his right leg was the same now. He swore softly. It had taken surgery, a knee brace, and Dad’s makeshift physical therapy for six, almost seven months until Dean had been fit to run, climb, and hunt things again. Right now, trapped in a well with the apocalypse looming, the thought of gimping around from a torn ligament in his knee was just about the last thing he needed.
He felt for it as he sat up gingerly, wavering only slightly. The knee wasn’t swollen yet, but it would be. If he was going to get movement out of it, he would have to do it now. He put his palms flat on the bottom of the well, disheartened to feel a thin layer of frigid mud. Though technically dry, the ground water was still seeping slowly up through the dirt. He might have stayed relatively warm in the well, much the same as dog who dug a hole to huddle in beneath his dog house. But he wouldn’t now, not with the mud.
“Shit,” Dean said. And, liking the sound of it, he said it louder, yelling as he looked up to the sky visible some twenty-five feet above him. No one leaned over the well to look at him and Dean wondered if they were still there; if they were guarding and ignoring him, or if he’d been left alone. While being left alone to rot in a well didn’t strike him as a great way to spend a day, he liked it a lot better than thinking about who or what was minding him topside. Someone had to have been left on guard duty in case he was crazy enough to climb out, which is what Dean was thinking that he was going to have to try to do.
As he pushed off of the mud and got to his feet, he realized that it wasn’t going to be easy. His knee throbbed in response. Dean knew that he was going to have to make the climb without much use of the leg. He hobbled to the interlocked stones of the well’s side and started feeling along with his hands as he looked up in the wan light, trying to find the best place to attempt to make a climb out of the well.
He wished like hell that Sam was with him. With Sam close, Dean wouldn’t have to worry about him. Alone, with Lucifer dangling him as bait, he wasn’t so sure. He didn’t think Sam was weak or, at least, he didn’t want to. Thing was, a future version of Sam had given in, checked out, and turned his meat over to the Devil. He’d never found out why, but Dean hoped that it hadn’t started over something like this.
***
In the Great Smokey Mountains, miles from visitor centers, the national park office, and family friendly lodging, Sam Winchester paced the confines of his prison. It was meant to be nothing of the sort, of course. Somehow in the past several months, Castiel and Bobby had found time to have several conversations that Sam was beginning to wish that he’d been a part of. One of those conversations had centered around the concept of a safe house. Had Bobby found this place or had Cas done it himself? Sam didn’t know.
At any other time, it would have been the exact sort of hiding place that he’d have fallen into gratefully. It was a picturesque cabin built of rough hewn logs. The sort that came with an actual bearskin rug in front of the man sized fireplace. There was food enough to last through the apocalypse and, what would have normally set his toes to curling in delight, books. There was one good sized book case in the living room and the stairs leading up to the loft had a railing with clever little shelves so that books lined the way up. And the loft, an area that should have been dominated by the huge, impossibly soft bed was instead made cozy by the almost intimidating number of tomes that covered the three walls.
It was comfortable, secure, with a good view of the surrounding land, and thoughtful as all hell. Sam hated it. He paced the living room, automatically avoiding the bear’s head as he walked to and fro across the room in front of the blazing fire. No matter how desperately he tried, Sam couldn’t get his imagination to shut up. Dean was in the cold darkness at the mercy of the devil. There was no shortage of dark places that he could imagine - closets, basements, coffins, graves, and, oh fuck, what if Dean was buried alive? What if he was trapped in a box beneath the earth and trying to decide if he should shout for help or save the air? It was enough to drive Sam out of his mind, but it wasn’t the worst of it. Not by half.
His cell phone vibrated, slowly working itself to the edge of the counter in the well stocked kitchen where a can of soup was boiling down to dry and starting to smoke. It was an eerie miracle that Sam could get a signal in the mountains, but not one he took the time to be grateful for. When it rang, the number showed nothing but zeros and ones on the caller ID. It would not go to voice mail. It simply vibrated as the phone rang and rang, waiting for Sam to give in and answer it. The sound of the hard plastic rattling and buzzing against the marble counter had worked its way under his skin. He’d been clenching his jaw so tightly that his head pounded in protest. Fingers were curled so that his hands made fists.
He walked, shaking, palms slick with sweat, and the phone kept ringing. He suspected it would keep ringing until he turned it off, the battery died, or he answered it and agreed to the devil’s demands.
“Damn you, Cas,” Sam muttered as he covered the length of the living room in five of his big, ground eating strides.
The angel’s logic had been sound - Sam was both in danger and a danger to everyone else. Cas had explained, over Sam’s many protests, that it was safer to stay hidden until he found Dean. With the entire heavenly host now seeking to hand him over to the Devil or join in on making him agree to his demands, it was better to stay secreted away. Cas had come a long way; he didn’t let logic entirely dominate his compassion. He had sworn to keep Sam informed and to fetch him as soon as there was a solid lead on Dean. But he wouldn’t put Sam in any undue danger and he wouldn’t be careless with him.
Neither of them had really thought about the phone, though. Cas had left it with him. It was a convenient way for Sam to stay in touch with him and with Bobby. Perhaps the shock of Zachariah’s easy betrayal had caused them both to forget that the devil was making phone calls these days.
Sam hadn’t said anything about it to Cas when he’d called that day to tell him that he was close to one of the angels who had gone missing. He feared losing the phone, losing his only means to stay informed about Dean. It was all that he had, even if it was driving him out of his God damned mind.
Three steps forward and a quick dodge around the bear’s head. Two more steps and he pivoted at the book case, heading back towards the thickly paned window with its heavy drapes that blocked the scenic view of the famed mountain range. The way back set him facing the kitchen and he glanced at his phone, unable to help himself. It was nearly to the edge and it was lit up with a blue glow, demanding his attention. It would fall any moment now if it did not stop ringing and, of course, it wasn’t going to stop. Sam turned at the window and strode back towards the books. He missed avoiding the bear and his feet got tangled up in the thing. He flailed, arms akimbo as he tried to keep from falling. He steadied himself just as he hit that moment where his stomach bottomed out in the certainty that he was going down. Behind him the buzzing continued. Sam turned, wrenching his knee a bit, and devoured the distance to the kitchen.
The phone had come to the edge of the counter and it slid, heading for the hand hewn wooden planks that made up the floor. Sam shot out his hand, reflexes still quick despite his agitation, and caught it.
Unable to help himself, he answered the call.
“Where’s Dean?” he asked and told himself that his voice really did not sound that quiet or desperate.
***
Dean had decided that climbing a well with a bum knee was an activity worthy of being added to the repertoire of any of hell’s torturers. Though he managed to jam his right foot into the tiny, tiny crevices between the stones of the well, his leg simply would not take any of his weight. Twice he’d fallen, thankfully from low heights, as he’d tried to shift over to better handholds. Once he’d accepted that he wasn’t going to get much use from his right leg, he did little more than dig his toes in to stabilize himself as he climbed the slick rock wall of the well. He’d ripped out two of his fingernails clinging for something to hold onto and the muscles in his arms twitched in burning agony.
It was, he figured, a very good thing that he was almost to the top. With a shaking hand, he reached for the next stone he’d decided would do. It was almost out of reach and, though he was able to catch it with his fingers, he had to work to pull himself up. He managed to catch something with his other hand. Dean made a sound that was half groan, half curse as he pulled himself up high enough to find his recently left handhold with his good foot.
He slipped and felt his balls crawl up tight against his body as he started to fall for the third time. In angry desperation, he worked his legs against the well, wet boots scrabbling against stone like a puppy’s claws on a waxed floor. He felt something with his right foot and dug in. His leg took the weight and he didn’t fall. But the pain burned white hot and for several moments he was pretty sure that he was going to puke.
Dean heaved twice, his gorge rising, before he managed to swallow hard and suck in a great breath of the cold, winter air.
“Fuck,” he hissed.
He looked up at the sky and the four remaining feet of stone to climb. He imagined the other side of the well. He could almost see the desolate expanse of frozen farmland - the snow covered the furrows and the scattering of trees with naked branches reaching towards a pale sky. He could see the wooden posts and barbed wire. Dean imagined himself in that vista, told himself that he was practically there, and climbed. He didn’t let himself rest any longer and stopped thinking about safe handholds or the agony shooting out from his right knee. He climbed hand over hand with the assuredness and quick fingers of monkey. Fuck the demon. Fuck the angels. And fuck the well. He was getting out.
Dean stretched out his right hand and there was nothing to grab onto. Stone had become sky. With a triumphant grin, he took hold of the lip of the well and pulled himself up one, last time. He got so far as to scrape his belly over the side, arms reaching for the snowy ground as he went for it head first.
He could hear the flurry of beating wings just seconds before he felt the hand on his back. Dean lunged forward, straining for the ground, but found that he couldn’t move. He hung over the edge of the well like a naughty child bent over his father’s knee - a position he’d been in once or twice as a kid. He looked up over his shoulder. One of the angels, the factory worker with the smoking habit, sat on the lip of the well, legs dangling over the side like a kid.
The angel was smoking. Dean found that strange. Angels rarely ate or drank unless prompted to do so. Dean wasn’t even sure if they bathed, crapped, or ever needed to. To see one smoking was peculiar.
“You smoke?” the angel asked, looking at him for all the world as if they were just two people waiting for a bus.
“The fuck?” Dean replied, feeling as though his brain had skidded to a rough halt and had absolutely given up on thinking. Here he was, dangling over well with his ass to the sky, wanting nothing more than to get his feet on solid ground, and one of the devil’s angels was yammering about smoking?
“Do you smoke?”
“Not for a long time,” he said. “Look, can we …”
“My vessel smokes. A lot. Most of the time they’re sort of asleep or just hanging on for the ride, but Margie. She’s just relentless. She keeps thinking about smoking. I suppose it’s because she’s nervous.”
“She’s not the only one. I don’t want to rush anything here, but I don’t suppose we could get back to me … are you going to let me go?”
The angel took a long drag off of the cigarette and shook her head. She looked out across the field. Her face was troubled. Ordinarily, Dean wouldn’t have given a damn. He’d had very few encounters with the heavenly host that didn’t end badly. Castiel had the notoriety of being the only angel that Dean wouldn’t gladly have kicked off of a cliff. But, Cas wasn’t around and Dean was stuck, held captive for the devil who was probably at this very moment wheedling away at Sam, trying to convince him to save Dean the hard way.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Muriel,” she replied. “I’m usually more of a summer girl. I’m used to warm sun and the eruption of so much life. Flowers and field and tree all unfold under the summer sky. I ride summer thunderstorms and listen to the music made by crickets in the high grass. Little girls make wishes to me when they blow on dandelions. I don’t know how to do this kind of thing,” she said, clamping down on her cigarette with her teeth so that she could wave the hand that wasn’t holding him down. “I’m not exactly cut out for this shit.”
Dean set to struggling again as the angel Muriel waxed poetic about the highlights of summer. He stretched, reaching for the ground. He came back with a fistful of the weed that surrounded the well.
“Dammit,” he complained. “Look, let me go. You don’t sound happy about doing all of this? Well, don’t do it,” Dean said. “Let me go and buzz off. Hibernate until it’s summer and then do your hippy thing in peace.”
“Do you know what they’re doing up there?” she asked him. “Do you know what they say about my Father? I can’t … I can’t sit and listen to it any more.”
“Yeah, joining Lucifer is probably not going to be the best alternative,” Dean told her. “Last I heard, he didn’t have much good to say about pops either and, let me tell you something, lady, he could give a shit about little girls wishing on dandelions.”
“He promised me …”
“He lied,” Dean insisted. “He’s the devil. Lying’s just what he does and you know it.”
“Shut up.”
“Muriel, upstairs or down. It’s fucked up. I know it. Angels are dicks just about everywhere you go, but you don’t have to do this. Let me go. Come with me. Castiel …”
“No,” she said, clearly sounded shocked or affronted as if he’d just suggested something especially lewd. “I’m sorry, but no.” She flicked her cigarette out into the snow and took him by the belt, pulling him backwards.
“God dammit, Muriel! Why can’t you fucking think for yourself? Don’t do this!”
She gave him a good yank. Dean lost a third fingernail trying desperately to keep from going back down. He couldn’t hold on. The angel was too strong. He was falling back down into the darkness. He heard her say “I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to do,” as he fell.
Dean clipped the sides of the well twice on the way down, breaking his fall somewhat. He didn’t pass out when he’d hit, but the pain that exploded from his leg made him wish that he could. He couldn’t keep from vomiting this time and he did so several times. When there was nothing left, when he could gasp for air, he looked up to see Muriel staring down at him. Though her face was high above him and half in shadow, he could see the despair on her tired, borrowed features. She was in torment. Something pulled in his chest and, somewhat in spite of himself, he felt sorry for her. Even if he swore that he’d wring her fucking neck first chance that he got.
“This is a bad idea!” Dean shouted up at her as he did his best to ignore the fiery throb in his knee. “Lucifer wants me alive and I don’t know how long I’m going to last down here without food, water, and porn!”
“I’m so sorry, Dean,” Muriel replied, her voice just barely audible. “But Lucifer only needs you to be somewhere safe. It doesn’t matter if you die. He can just bring you back - same as he did with Sam.”
Dean’s stomach heaved again and the only reason he didn’t vomit was that he needed clarification.
“What do you mean?”
“Sam’s tested his boundaries and Lucifer’s conviction to have him serve as his vessel several times now. You were brought back from the dead by an angel. Do you think that Lucifer isn’t capable of the same thing?”
“Sam tried to kill himself,” Dean said quietly and, just like that the weight on his soul settled down hard and the quiet, hateful voice that whispered life would be better if Sam had never been born was finally silent. Sam had tried to kill himself to stop the devil. He’d likely done it to try to keep more of their friends and extended family from dying. What had Dean done to try to keep it from happening?
It was a sobering thought.
***
Sam sat on the bearskin rug and watched the broken pieces of his cell phone start to melt in the fireplace. It stank as it burned and what smoke didn’t go up and out of the chimney made his eyes water. He watched it burn as he nursed his bandaged hand. The same one that had suffered the splinter four days ago now sported fresh cuts. He’d destroyed the phone, had slammed it repeatedly onto the kitchen countertop until he could no longer hear the devil’s voice, could no longer be tempted by the devil’s offer.
It had all come down to this: in order to live up to whatever tenuous faith that Dean had in him, Sam had to refuse to bargain on his behalf. Save his brother or shame him, disappoint him. They were terrible choices, but they were the only ones that he had. He couldn’t live with himself, no matter what he did. He knew whatever he decided would follow him, would worry him with sharp teeth, but he chose.
With Lucifer on the phone, nattering, cajoling, commiserating, and, God help him, shushing him when all but wept for his brother, Sam chose to say no. And the devil, as he was wont to do, explained to him in careful, vivid detail how Dean might suffer and how he might die. He put the image in Sam’s head and let him mull over it before calling back. For three days they courted each other on the phone, each one of them dancing around each other and what they wanted, what they really wanted. Sam wanted Dean. He wanted him safe, sound, and alive. And he wanted to be free. Of all of it, the fear, the shame, the misery, and the guilt. Lucifer could give him that. In fact, he swore that he was the only one now who could. Once Sam said yes, once he turned his body over to the devil, his soul would burn out. It might take a day, maybe a month, but he would burn his way out of his body and then? It would be done for him. He could rest. He could leave the apocalypse and everything else behind him.
Though he still shook with the foolish, childish need to exact his revenge on the devil for all of the pointless suffering and misery, it was the thought of Dean that kept Sam grounded. He would imagine the disappointment on his face and somehow, much as it killed him, he continued to say no.
But, the devil was nothing if not persistent. He called every hour, seemingly unaffected by Sam turning off the phone or taking the battery out. He could make it ring no matter what. Somehow he timed it, waiting for the moment just before Sam had fallen asleep. Waiting just until he managed to relax. And then, there it would go again, vibrating or ringing. There was nowhere that Sam could go in the cabin that he hadn’t been able to hear it.
Finally, when he was shaking and nauseated from lack of sleep and agitation, he’d broken it. As much as he needed it, as much as it was his lifeline to Bobby, Cas, and any information about the hope of finding Dean, Sam destroyed his phone.
“Don’t you love your brother, Sam?” the devil had asked him. “Don’t you want to see that he’s safe and taken care of for the rest of his life? Don’t you owe him that for all that he’s suffered for you?”
Sam did. He knew that he did and he’d been so close to saying “yes, of course I’ll take care of Dean” without thinking of the further implications that he’d yanked the phone from his ear and had slammed it down on the kitchen counter again and again, ignorant of the shards of plastic that dug into his hand.
Now he was trapped. Free of the incessant wheedling by the devil, but truly isolated and ignorant of how the search for Dean was going. He wished that Cas had risked taking him back to Bobby’s. More than anything, he didn’t want to be alone.
***
Part 2
Author: Pkwench
Rating: R
Genre and/or Pairing: Gen, H/C
Spoilers: Up to and including 5x10
Warnings: Language
Word Count: 18,452
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural. The proof is in the kittens.
Summary: Written for the Dean-focused hurt/comfort fic challenge. Prompt 7 by whisper99: Dean falling into an old well and getting stuck down there. He's hurt bad enough that he can't help get himself out and a frantic Sam has to call in for help. Gen please! Any season :)
Beta-read by the undeniably talented and brilliant ratherastory who has my undying thanks for all of her hard work and for helping me keep Dean Dean. Any remaining mistakes and character flaws are all on me.
Thanks to: hoodietime for putting the challenge on. I enjoy this comm so much.
Author’s Note: All I had to do was drop Dean in a well. It shouldn’t have been hard at all, but this thing just crept up on me and happened. I hope that I stayed somewhat true to the prompt and that I haven’t disappointed the prompter.
Also, the title may seem a bit of a peculiar choice, despite both boys wishing for the other’s presence on more that one occasion. But, if you know the song, the sentiment works well enough for our boys. I’m awful at titles. Really, I suck at them. Since I didn’t loathe this one outright, it got to stay. It’s not especially original, I know.
-
The town of Wisdom was smothered in low-lying fog. It had rolled in with the Winchesters on Tuesday and now, on Friday, it was so dense that Sam could barely see the dirt he dug through. It muffled the sound, killed visibility, and did nothing to brighten his bleak and increasingly guilt-ridden mood. Once he might have said he was suicidal. These days, he knew that a suicide you couldn’t follow through on, for whatever reason, was just a plea for attention - no matter how many scars were gained from trying.
So, he dug while Dean stood over him with a shotgun cocked on his hip and looking more like a prison guard keeping a watchful eye on a work detail than his brother. They said nothing to each other about the loss. They didn’t talk about their failure or hopelessness. They didn’t talk about the fact that Sam woke up in a cold sweat at night feeling like something had tried to sneak in behind his eyes and try him on. Sam didn’t know how to describe what was happening to him, and Dean, dour and quiet since Carthage, surely didn’t want to hear it.
Sam dug and spared no effort doing it. When he hit wood, he tossed out a few more shovelfuls of dirt before dropping to his knees and prying at the old wood with his fingers until it came apart. A long splinter went through his hand. He pulled it out without thought and continued to pry apart the coffin. The smell of long dried bones and earth was an overwhelming and familiar one. Sometimes, like now, he could detect the faint traces of fungus and the long-dead memory of flowers.
Paperwhites, he thought as he climbed out of the grave. He thought that there’d been a lingering hint of paperwhites.
Dean nodded at him, solemnly, but with the curt appraisal of a job well done. He hadn’t offered him a hand, but had already uncapped the salt. He liberally doused the bones that were clothed in the shreds of a bridal gown. Sam found the lighter fluid and squirted it over the salt. Dean had matches this time and he lit the book on fire. He tossed it in. The fire caught as Sam was still dousing the grave with lighter fluid. For a moment, the flame coursed back up the stream as if it was seeking them out. Sam stopped squeezing the can before the fire reached him.
The dense fog was so thick that Sam, a born navigator with an innate sense of direction, still felt lost. He found nothing amusing in the irony. Dean pulled him by his sleeve, giving him a tug just as he’d done since they were children. ‘No, Sammy, this way,‘ the gesture said. He let Dean guide him back to the car and tried not to think about the deeper parallel.
The drive back to South Milburn street was slow and quiet. Dean didn’t turn the radio on, Sam didn’t talk, and the town was shuttered up against the wet, depressing fog. They trotted up the steps to the small cape cod that seemed out of place among the modified ranch houses and split levels that dominated the street.
The door opened before they had a chance to ring the bell and Sam smiled in spite of himself when the dark-eyed blond flung herself at Dean. She held onto him more tightly than was necessary. Dean was still Dean and he gave a little shrug before hugging the girl back, one hand taking the time to drop down and test her ass.
Sam nodded, making a face of approval, and turned down the steps towards the Impala, meaning to give Dean time with the girl. All night, if necessary. He was surprised when Dean passed him on the way down the steps.
“Wha … aren’t you going to stay with Haley for a while?” Sam asked with a backwards jerk of his head towards the house and girl behind him.
“Nah, not really my type,” Dean said as he fished the keys from his pocket.
Sam glanced back at the girl standing on the porch, taking in her tiny waist, generous curves, and low-cut blouse. “Bullshit that’s not your type. She’s practically a centerfold and clearly more than a little grateful that you just saved her from the ghost that’s been tormenting her at the local library.”
“Fine. Then I’m just not in the mood.”
He said nothing as he got in the car and Dean seemed content enough to maintain the trend of silence as they packed up at the motel. Within minutes they were on the road, heading out of Wisdom and pointing in the general direction of Dallas-Fort Worth. Sam, still smelling of sweat and the graveyard, begin to fidget. He couldn’t help but glance at Dean out of the corner of his eye.
“Dude,” Dean warned. “Don’t.”
Sam sighed and shifted so that he was turned towards Dean. “It’s just that…”
“Really, Sam. Don’t.”
“Oh, come on, Dean. Say something. Do something. I know you’ve been thinking it. Hell, I’ve been thinking it. All of this time, all of our friends, all of this misery, and now we can’t even kill the bastard. If I hadn’t … if I’d listened to you …”
“Is everything about you?” Dean asked. “Really? I just lost two of my friends by going up against the devil and losing. Ellen’s been the closest thing we’ve had to a mother in years and Jo. Jo’s … dammit, Sam. Don’t make this all about you. Blah, blah, blah, you and your misery. I get it, man. I do and I feel for you. But right now, I just don’t care. I feel like crap, too, and you might have the decency to let me deal with it for once instead of putting yourself at the center of the god damned universe.”
“Yeah,” Sam replied as he nodded. “Yeah, okay.” He turned back towards the dash and did his level best to keep from shouting. He needed to try to find some way to unburden himself, to divest himself of the weight that seemed to press down on his chest and suffocate him, but Dean was right. It wasn’t fair to drag him along down through it. Sam kept his mouth shut and vowed that he would find a way to deal with it on his own. He owed Dean that much.
He looked out of the window and prayed to a God that he no longer believed in. He prayed for strength. He prayed for forgiveness. And he prayed to be shown the means to fight back because, more than anything, Sam thought that his sanity hinged upon striking back at everything that had pulled him down to such a dark place and left him with such limited options.
‘Our Father,’ he thought to himself, ‘who’s certainly not in heaven, hallowed be thy friggin’ name, you deaf bastard.’
“…the hell?”
Sam's head snapped up as Dean slammed on the breaks. They skidded to a halt a few feet from a figure standing on the side of the road. The thick, unnatural fog swirled around her legs as she stepped forward and gave a jaunty wave. Her blacker than black eyes were visible in the gloom, along with her sardonic expression. Sam thought she still looked like a centerfold model.
“Is that …”
“Yep,” Dean replied.
“Shit,” Sam said. “Haley. That can’t be good.”
“Nope. Ghosts one minute, demons the next. What a coincidence.”
Dean took his foot off of the brake and went for the gas pedal. The tires screamed on the wet blacktop before the car shot forward. For a moment, he was sure that Dean was going to drive the Impala right through her; that he, like Sam himself, had already concluded that some sort of trap had been set for them, that the demon was not out on the back roads of Texas alone, and that Haley had been bait from the start.
They didn’t run her down and Sam caught sight of the demon smiling at him as they sped by. It infuriated him and, more than anything, he wanted to stop the car, get out, and put an end to the demon the hard way just for the audacity of ramming itself down that girl’s throat.
“I want to go back and kick that thing out of her,” Sam said.
“I really don’t think they’re going to give us the time, Sammy,” Dean replied, pointing ahead.
The Impala was picking up speed and racing ever closer to a line of figures just barely visible in the gloom. They stood, side by side, holding hands across the highway, defiantly, as if daring them to drive through them. Sam glanced back at Haley in the side mirror to see her moving to the center of the road behind them, a handful of people following her from the foggy roadside.
‘Here’s where they spring the trap’, he thought. He reached for the gun in the waistband of his jeans and flipped off the safety. He glanced at Dean as he stomped down on the gas once more.
“Red rover?” Sam asked.
“Send the Winchesters right over,” Dean confirmed. “I am so mowing those bastards down. If I smile when they hit, remind me about it later if I get pissed about dents and broken glass.”
Sam’s answering nod proved to be unnecessary. They never did hit and the realization of why that was and what just happened spun through Sam’s mind in a near panic even as he grasped the wheel of the Impala and slid over to the suddenly empty driver’s seat. He was rocketing seventy-eighty miles per hour down a road free of everyone but himself, the car swerving madly as he tried to soothe her over the unexpected loss of her driver. Back and forth, the car went and Sam was sure that he was going to wreck it. He was in the driver’s seat fully now - thank God and whatever years-dead auto designer that had come up with bench seats - and he coaxed Dean’s baby under control as he found the brake with his foot.
Sam slid the Impala to something of an anticlimactic halt and got out, chest heaving with rage and something a little darker roiling underneath.
“Mother fucking angels!” he shouted to the sky as he slammed a fist down on the roof of the car.
***
Dean hated being zapped while sitting. It invariably ended with him stumbling and falling unless the zapper happened to feel like giving the zappee a hand. Such was not the case and Dean went down hard on his ass in snow. Texas one minute, a field of snow the next. God damned angels. Had to be.
“Sam!” he exclaimed as he sorted out all of the implications of what had happened. The Impala had just crested seventy-five when she’d struck the line and the angels had zapped in and out of the car with him in tow. Sam was a Winchester, trained since diapers to think fast, but what if he hadn’t made it over in time? What if he’d wrecked? What if both car and younger brother were somewhere back in Texas dying a slow death?
Dean shot to his feet, swearing a little at the new ache that this last year had put into his knees. Four angels surrounded him. All of them dressed so casually that they might have been plucked from a shopping mall were it not for their unnaturally stern expressions. Dean lunged and grabbed one of the angels by the throat, hands squeezing none-too-gently. He was about ready to demand to be sent back to his brother when another set of angels flashed in. Three of them this time, two of them wearing identical twins. They had Haley with them.
‘No,’ Dean thought, ‘they’ve got the demon possessing Haley with them.’
While no one looked overjoyed at her arrival, no one restrained her or made a move. The angels simply stood, waiting, as Dean knew angels often did. He took note of the demon’s relaxed stance and generally satisfied air and swore softly.
“Switch hitters,” Dean said, letting the angel’s neck go. “You’ve all gone dark side. And Sam?”
“Safe in Texas,” the demon-formerly-known-as-Haley said. “You know he’s the big man’s special boy. Sammy’s in one piece, cussing up a storm, last I saw. The real question, Dean, isn’t how is Sam, but how much longer will he be Sam?”
“How much longer will he be Sam,” Dean mimicked in a high, mocking falsetto. “You guys really need to get a drama coach if you’re going to keep spouting all of that melodramatic, evil crap. So, I take it your boss got tired of us lying low and had you dig up a nice little salt and burn to lure us out. What, you just hung out in the rafters until Sammy and I were done so that you could snatch up that poor girl’s meat and call in these guys?”
The demon just smiled at him, flashing far too many of Haley’s well-cared for teeth. She then waved her hand more than a little imperiously at the angels, clearly enjoying having them at her beck and call. Dean figured her to be a higher up among the demons and wondered which one she was. Wondered, with a barely perceptible shudder, if he’d met her before - up top or down below.
“We don’t take orders from you,” the angel next to Dean said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble.
“You do today, baby,” the demon countered. “You want to join The Devil’s team, you get to mingle with all of us unsavory common folk. Now, play nice, bring Dean-o along, or so help me, I’ll spill his guts in the snow right now and tell the big man that it was the damned, stupid angels who got out of hand with his little insurance policy.”
Shit.
Dean didn’t think, didn’t debate the futility of it or how mixed up and terrible he felt about Sam these days. He just took off across the snowy field. Logic took a nap in the backseat while panic for Sam reared up with all of its unthinking, consuming terror and said ‘get going before they use you to really screw him up.’ Dean obeyed the voice that had gotten him into more trouble than any one person deserved. He ran, knowing that he wasn’t going to get very far with seven angels on his back.
He felt something nail him between the shoulder blades even as something else unseen tripped him up and sent him down so hard that he slid for a few feet on the hard packed snow, scraping his chin. As Dean rolled over, tasting blood and looking up at the angels, two of whom couldn’t look him in the eye, he wondered for a half a second if this was it, his one and only chance to say yes to Michael before something happened to Sam.
One of the twins reached down and yanked him to his feet, ending the thought. Dean was almost thankful to her for it. She’d brought him down from what he thought of as the Sam-Panic and forced him to think rationally. Could he hand himself over to Michael any more now than he could have this morning? No. He wasn’t ready to give up his meat or watch the planet get torched in the name of saving it. Nothing had changed.
Dean stood, blood welling up on his scraped chin, and stared at the angels surrounding him and the one demon who strolled towards them in her borrowed college girl meat. She smiled as she swung Haley’s curvaceous hips a little bit. Knowing that there was a scared girl under there didn't make him want to kick the bitch's teeth in any less.
“So, what now?” Dean asked. “You traitors,” he smiled as two of the seven angels flinched, “plan on dressing me up in a gold bikini and chaining me to the big guy’s lounger until Sam shows up?”
“Believe it or not, Dean,” the Haley-demon said, “most people - and by people I do of course mean demons and our lord Lucifer - really can’t stand having you around. You talk too much, you’re not as cute as you think you are, and unless there’s fun to be had torturing you, you’re really a very dull, very annoying little man. Plus?” she sniffed and crinkled up her nose immediately. “You just stink of that angel you insist on palling around with. That or cheap aftershave. Honestly, it smells the same some days.”
All of the angels glared at her, but said nothing. Dean didn’t take that to mean anything. He’d spent enough time with angels to know that they thought far, far more than they ever said. He watched the two he’d already marked as potentially helpful. One was just a teenager in mittens and stocking cap, still wearing a Wal-Mart smock over his dark blue parka. The other was a woman in her sixties who still smelled of cigarette smoke and looked as though she’d walked right off of the line of whatever factory she worked at. She wore safety goggles around her neck and there was one, bright yellow earplug in her left ear. He filed the faces away and hoped that opportunity would arise for him to take advantage of their discomfort, their barely perceptible hesitation.
Dean turned his gaze back to the demon. “Quit it. You’re breaking my heart.”
The demon took a step closer to him. “You bore me,” she said, breathing into his face.
He waved a hand beneath his nose. “Haley’s not going to appreciate the dental bills if you don’t brush those teeth. Twice a day and don’t forget to floss after meals.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Bring him. Please. Before I’m tempted to kill him myself.”
The angel wearing the Wal-Mart cart boy took him by the arm and pulled him forward after the demon. The other angels took up positions at his sides and at his back as they set off across the frozen field. They stepped over frozen furrows, causing Dean to slip calf deep in snow every other step. Though he made show of complaining about the cold and the wet, he took the time to count and mentally mark trees as they walked past. He noted large rocks, distinctive land features, and the distance from the fence, fixing it all in memory in case he needed a reference later as he escaped. Because, it never occurred to him that he wouldn’t escape or get rescued. He was confident in that belief right up until the moment he saw the well and realized that the demon was leading them towards it.
“Uh-uh,” Dean said, sticking his heels into the snow. “No, no, no. Saw ‘The Ring’, fucking hated it. You are not going to …”
“Yes, we are,” the demon interrupted. She took him by the collar of his jacket and dragged him to the well.
Dean found himself pressed against the frozen stones before he knew it. Unable to help himself, he peered over the lip. Below there was nothing but darkness. No way of knowing if the well still had water or if it was dry.
The demon slid an arm around Dean and reached into his coat. She pulled out his cell phone and stuck it in her own pocket. She smiled at him, breathing her rank, brimstone and sulfurous breath on him again. “Anything you’d like to say before I put you in safekeeping, Dean?”
“Yeah, how about don’t put me in the freaking well!”
Her eyes went black and her smile excessively chipper as she shrugged. “Sorry, kid. The boss said somewhere safe and isolated. Who’s going to find you in the bottom of a well?”
“Safe,” Dean told her. “Your boss said safe and alive.”
“He said safe. He didn’t mention anything about comfortable, warm, well-fed, and pain free, I’m sorry to say.” She turned to the twins. “Drop him.”
The angels grabbed him by the belt at the back of his jeans and lifted him easily into the air. Dean hung over the well for a moment, his midsection spanning the dark opening and, as much as he wanted to shout “please, don’t!” he managed to croak out something more useful.
“Not headfirst!”
Thankfully, they took pity on him and swung him a bit. Dean’s feet were pointing down into the seemingly bottomless pit as they let go, sending him plummeting down into the dark well.
“Son of a bitch,” he breathed as he fell into blackness.
***
Sam leaned against the Impala, resisting the urge to start pacing. Upon Bobby’s advice, he’d driven ahead to the next town and parked the car. He was in a drugstore parking lot, waiting for Castiel to show up or Bobby to call him back. Though it was normal for Bobby to take some time to play out his leads and long list of favors, waiting on Castiel was decidedly unusual. Sam had expected him to flash in as soon as he’d explained the situation. He was growing increasingly uneasy, something that didn’t feel entirely unwarranted when he heard the tell-tale sounds of beating wings and turned to find, not just Castiel, but Zachariah as well in the parking lot.
Sam resisted the urge to respond in rude, sarcastic dismay at the sight of the balding angel who normally regarded him and his brother with unrestrained annoyance and superiority. It took biting his tongue and the realization that Zachariah’s usual cocky arrogance had been replaced by either fear and concern or severe indigestion.
“What’s this?” Sam asked Castiel.
“I needed to know that they didn’t have him. My choice of contacts was unfortunate and my confidence was betrayed. I’m only standing here because no one seems willing to take any chances with Michael’s vessel. I believe he finds me useful at the moment.”
“Like a wrench or a plow. Maybe a toilet brush,” Zachariah said snidely. He turned to Sam. “Castiel says you claim angels took Dean. You’re certain of that?”
“As certain as I am that you two are angels,” Sam replied, resisting the urge to start shouting. Of course he was sure. Demons could move with uncanny speed when they wanted to, but Sam didn’t believe them capable of zapping in and out of the Impala with angelic precision. Besides, demons tended to change eye-color when hard at work and Sam, whose memory didn’t usually fail him, hadn’t seen a single pair of black eyes other than the demon who had been possessing Haley. “Angels. Seven of them and one demon. I take it you’re not employing the opposition?”
“Not hardly,” the angel replied. “If those were angels-”
“They were,” Sam growled.
“Like I said, if … then they were deserters.”
“You mean traitors,” Castiel corrected.
“Fine, fine. Split the hair if you must,” Zachariah replied. “Whatever it takes to make you feel better, Castiel. They were traitors. We’ve lost track of two dozen angels in the last week. Most of them we know to be dead. Seven or eight of them however…”
“Switched sides,” Sam finished. “Perfect. That’s just perfect because we can’t track Dean,” at this Zachariah glared hard at Castiel, “and if angels have him, they won’t have any problem moving him around every day or every hour if they feel like it. How,” he said looking to Castiel, “are we ever going to find him?”
“Track the missing angels,” Castiel replied without hesitation. “Every last one of them.”
“He,” and Sam didn’t need the extra emphasis that Zachariah put upon the word to know which ‘he’ was being referred to, “will either have hidden them from us or put them out in the open to lead us away from Dean, obviously. What I can’t figure out, Sam, is why he didn’t just take you.”
Sam, who had been wondering that very thing for the past hour, looked down at his shoes. He took slow, calming breaths like his father had taught him long ago as a means to control fear, though Sam employed the technique now for his anger. The answer was obvious to him, which meant that it had to be obvious to Zachariah as well. Either Lucifer was going to kill Dean to keep Michael from his vessel - assuming that he could - or was going to keep him as a bargaining chip. He found his deep breathing had deteriorated into shallow, angry gasps and Sam worked to control his anger as he clenched both fists. He wanted to ask Zachariah for help, but wondered how long it would take for the arrogant angel to decide that Sam as well might make an excellent bargaining chip for either Lucifer, Dean, or both. His phone rang before he could find any words other than ‘help me, you arrogant prick.’ Praying that it was Bobby, he flipped it on without looking at the caller i.d.
“Sam. How’s Texas?”
Sam felt his stomach lurch and, for a terrible second, he was sure that he was going to throw up on Cas’s shoes. The phone seemed slippery and it took him a moment to realize that his palms had started sweating almost instantly.
“Sam?”
He took a breath, not liking the way that it wavered and shook on both inhale and exhale. “Lucifer.”
Neither Zachariah nor Castiel seemed surprised by the revelation that the Devil was making phone calls to his chosen vessel. Zachariah, in fact, flipped his fingers imperiously in the universal sign for ‘gimme’. Sam was relieved that Castiel did nothing of the sort, but instead put one hand on his shoulder reassuringly. ‘I’m here’ it said. He was grateful for that.
“Where’s Dean?” Sam asked.
“Oh, tucked away somewhere nice and safe and, well … tsk-tsk. I did promise to never lie to you, didn’t I? He’s safe, Sam. Safe and alone. In the dark. Just waiting on you and I to work out one teeny tiny little deal and then off he goes on his merry way, free as a bird.”
“I told you…”
“Now I’m telling you,” Lucifer replied, his voice low and terrifying. “You’re going to agree to do this for me, Sam. You know you are and so does everyone else. I’ve seen it. We’ve all seen it, even your brother. Now, get your ass in the car and head to Detroit. Or, if you don’t feel like driving, I can arrange for more expedient transportation. Dean’s life, Sam. As of two hours ago, his life was put into your hands. Whether he lives or dies is all up to you and two words. Yes or no.”
“Where,” Sam asked, his voice rising at the thought of Dean trapped in the darkness, “is my brother?”
His cell phone was ripped from his hands before Lucifer could answer. Sam looked at Castiel, terrified, exasperated, and infuriated, as Zachariah started to talk to Lucifer as if he was going to broker a deal.
“Hello, Lucifer. It’s Zachariah. I … no, Zachariah. Yes, that one. I wouldn’t exactly use the phrase 'middle management,' no. Listen, we’d like Dean Winchester back. What can we do to make this happen? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Oh, yes. I see. Yes, that is a problem. We have a similar concern over here with … really. You don’t? You wouldn’t?”
“Cas,” Sam said. “This is bad and getting worse.”
“I agree,” Cas replied. “I do not like where this is going.” Sam noticed that he tightened his grip on his shoulder.
“Yep, will do,” Zachariah continued, as if Lucifer was nothing more than an old business associate. “If you’re sure, we’re sure. Of course, there’s a little matter of trust. I … oh. Oh, I see. Well, then that’s another matter entirely.”
Sam glared at him, appalled when Zachariah laughed into the phone. “It’s my brother and the freaking apocalypse, Cas, and he’s laughing. How can he be laughing?”
“Caring for humanity is a job for him,” Castiel replied. “One set down by my Father, perhaps, but, for many angels, nothing more. I would not have him here, but he presented me with two choices. Being left alive to find Dean was the better one.”
Unaware or unconcerned by Castiel’s pitying condemnation of him, Zachariah tapped Sam’s phone and tossed it back to him. His usual pleased arrogance had returned along with a confident smile. “Lucifer promises to deliver Dean if Sam says yes. I said, of course, he’s the devil! Who can trust him? But, then he pointed out that the apocalypse isn’t about killing humans. Well, not about that entirely, but more to the point about that little spat Lucifer’s got going with Michael. It seems, more than anything, he really wants to fight it out with Michael. And that means, Dean’s safe. Safe as houses because the devil needs Michael’s host alive as much as we do, as much as he needs his own host. Can’t have a grudge match with only one opponent, am I right? So, Sammy boy, here’s the thing, you’re going to agree to his demands. You’re going to say yes.”
“What?” Sam choked. “You’re going to help him? You’re going to help the devil end the world?”
“No, we’re going to make sure Michael’s vessel is safe so that we can save the world, Sam,” Zachariah corrected. “Lucifer’s confident that he can win, but so are we. We’ve done it before. But, without Michael’s sword, it’s a bit problematic. So, like the man said, Dean’s life is in your hands. And I’m going to make sure that you choose to do the right thing.”
Sam started to swear, shocked to his core despite the contempt that he knew Zachariah had for humans, for him especially. He didn’t get much further than “you soulless son of a bitch!” before Castiel chimed in with one, single word: “No.”
The world jumped in a dizzying flash of light and color amid the sound of beating wings. For the moment it took for Sam to travel from part of the world to another, he couldn’t remember how to breathe. He was stuck in an unending second of indrawn breath that could not be completed to its resolution. It was the same every time and, just as he did every time it happened to him, he found himself awed that Dean had gone through it so often.
Bobby’s living room took shape around them, just about the same time that Bobby swore, nearly dropping the two phones that he held, one in each hand. “Jumpin’ Jesus, Sam! What’s lit a fire under Castiel?”
“Bobby…”
“Predictable,” Zachariah said as he jumped in behind Sam and Castiel.
“You will not do this,” Castiel said sternly. “Giving him Sam goes against everything we were taught to believe in.” Before Zachariah could respond, the world lurched again and then four more times.
Sam dropped to his knees as the world stopped spinning. He looked up at Castiel. “We safe for now?”
“I believe so.”
“Good, because I feel like I’m going to pass out.” Sam went down hard on his palms, absently noting the roughhewn wood flooring beneath them as his stomach rebelled and heaved. He swallowed hard and closed his eyes against the black spots that swam across his vision. He knelt on the wood floor, desperately trying to catch his breath, and wondered if it was the rapid-fire angelic travel or the realization that angels were now working with the devil to convince him to say yes, to destroy the world, and damn his soul that upset him so.
“Cas…”
“I know, Sam,” the angel replied as he stood next to him. “Things are not going well for us.”
***
Dean didn’t remember the landing, only the fall. The same had been true with dying. For a long time there had been nothing but the painful, wrenching drag further and further down into the smoky fires of hell. But, he didn’t remember arriving in hell. He’d simply woken up there, chained to the rack and screaming. For a moment, the similarity was so unnerving that he cried out, startled to see nothing but the blood tinged haze that he associated with hell.
“Get a grip, man,” Dean hissed to himself. “It’s nowhere close to hell, so stop peeing your pants.”
He forced himself to unwind from the tight ball he’d instinctively wound himself into and to breathe while he assessed the situation. To begin with, it was quiet. This was the first and most obvious sign that anyone ever needed that that they were not in hell. The sound of torment rose and fell in a crash of waves on the shores of hell. It was never quiet, except for the special few who were best tortured with silence. As for the redness staining his vision, Dean realized that he had his eyes squeezed tightly shut. He relaxed and blinked, waiting for his vision to clear. Sam said he saw comets and stars when he closed his eyes like that. Once, long ago, the same had been true for Dean. But, since hell, everything swam red. It was generally why he tried to avoid squeezing his eyes shut or putting pressure on them. He didn’t need any extra excuses for flashbacks.
As his vision cleared, Dean realized that he was swathed in darkness. ‘Duh,’ he thought to himself. ‘I’m in a well.’
Though the thought was less than comforting, he relaxed nonetheless as his unconscious memories of hell receded. He was lying on his side, legs slightly bent. He was cold and wet, but, for the moment, he attributed that to his fall in the snow, unwilling to consider less happy possibilities. Nothing screamed out in pain and, for the moment, he wondered if he was really lucky enough to have gotten by with nothing more than scrapes and bruises. He took a slow, deep breath, gratified that he could do so without any pain on inhalation. Lungs and ribs were intact. This Dean considered to be a very, very good start. His mouth was full of blood and, after ascertaining that he hadn’t severed his tongue with his teeth, he ignored it. Biting his tongue he could live with.
Not ready to chance sitting up just yet, he tried stretching his legs and his arms as he attempted to gauge the width of the well at the bottom. Though he could almost stretch out entirely, giving him the clue that the bottom of the well was roughly six feet in diameter, the first warning that things were not going to go so easy came from his right knee. It popped when he extended his leg and, immediately following that sensation, he felt a lancing streak of pain. If he’d been lucky he might have just sprained it, but Dean had torn his left ACL on a hunt when he’d been fifteen. The pain in his right leg was the same now. He swore softly. It had taken surgery, a knee brace, and Dad’s makeshift physical therapy for six, almost seven months until Dean had been fit to run, climb, and hunt things again. Right now, trapped in a well with the apocalypse looming, the thought of gimping around from a torn ligament in his knee was just about the last thing he needed.
He felt for it as he sat up gingerly, wavering only slightly. The knee wasn’t swollen yet, but it would be. If he was going to get movement out of it, he would have to do it now. He put his palms flat on the bottom of the well, disheartened to feel a thin layer of frigid mud. Though technically dry, the ground water was still seeping slowly up through the dirt. He might have stayed relatively warm in the well, much the same as dog who dug a hole to huddle in beneath his dog house. But he wouldn’t now, not with the mud.
“Shit,” Dean said. And, liking the sound of it, he said it louder, yelling as he looked up to the sky visible some twenty-five feet above him. No one leaned over the well to look at him and Dean wondered if they were still there; if they were guarding and ignoring him, or if he’d been left alone. While being left alone to rot in a well didn’t strike him as a great way to spend a day, he liked it a lot better than thinking about who or what was minding him topside. Someone had to have been left on guard duty in case he was crazy enough to climb out, which is what Dean was thinking that he was going to have to try to do.
As he pushed off of the mud and got to his feet, he realized that it wasn’t going to be easy. His knee throbbed in response. Dean knew that he was going to have to make the climb without much use of the leg. He hobbled to the interlocked stones of the well’s side and started feeling along with his hands as he looked up in the wan light, trying to find the best place to attempt to make a climb out of the well.
He wished like hell that Sam was with him. With Sam close, Dean wouldn’t have to worry about him. Alone, with Lucifer dangling him as bait, he wasn’t so sure. He didn’t think Sam was weak or, at least, he didn’t want to. Thing was, a future version of Sam had given in, checked out, and turned his meat over to the Devil. He’d never found out why, but Dean hoped that it hadn’t started over something like this.
***
In the Great Smokey Mountains, miles from visitor centers, the national park office, and family friendly lodging, Sam Winchester paced the confines of his prison. It was meant to be nothing of the sort, of course. Somehow in the past several months, Castiel and Bobby had found time to have several conversations that Sam was beginning to wish that he’d been a part of. One of those conversations had centered around the concept of a safe house. Had Bobby found this place or had Cas done it himself? Sam didn’t know.
At any other time, it would have been the exact sort of hiding place that he’d have fallen into gratefully. It was a picturesque cabin built of rough hewn logs. The sort that came with an actual bearskin rug in front of the man sized fireplace. There was food enough to last through the apocalypse and, what would have normally set his toes to curling in delight, books. There was one good sized book case in the living room and the stairs leading up to the loft had a railing with clever little shelves so that books lined the way up. And the loft, an area that should have been dominated by the huge, impossibly soft bed was instead made cozy by the almost intimidating number of tomes that covered the three walls.
It was comfortable, secure, with a good view of the surrounding land, and thoughtful as all hell. Sam hated it. He paced the living room, automatically avoiding the bear’s head as he walked to and fro across the room in front of the blazing fire. No matter how desperately he tried, Sam couldn’t get his imagination to shut up. Dean was in the cold darkness at the mercy of the devil. There was no shortage of dark places that he could imagine - closets, basements, coffins, graves, and, oh fuck, what if Dean was buried alive? What if he was trapped in a box beneath the earth and trying to decide if he should shout for help or save the air? It was enough to drive Sam out of his mind, but it wasn’t the worst of it. Not by half.
His cell phone vibrated, slowly working itself to the edge of the counter in the well stocked kitchen where a can of soup was boiling down to dry and starting to smoke. It was an eerie miracle that Sam could get a signal in the mountains, but not one he took the time to be grateful for. When it rang, the number showed nothing but zeros and ones on the caller ID. It would not go to voice mail. It simply vibrated as the phone rang and rang, waiting for Sam to give in and answer it. The sound of the hard plastic rattling and buzzing against the marble counter had worked its way under his skin. He’d been clenching his jaw so tightly that his head pounded in protest. Fingers were curled so that his hands made fists.
He walked, shaking, palms slick with sweat, and the phone kept ringing. He suspected it would keep ringing until he turned it off, the battery died, or he answered it and agreed to the devil’s demands.
“Damn you, Cas,” Sam muttered as he covered the length of the living room in five of his big, ground eating strides.
The angel’s logic had been sound - Sam was both in danger and a danger to everyone else. Cas had explained, over Sam’s many protests, that it was safer to stay hidden until he found Dean. With the entire heavenly host now seeking to hand him over to the Devil or join in on making him agree to his demands, it was better to stay secreted away. Cas had come a long way; he didn’t let logic entirely dominate his compassion. He had sworn to keep Sam informed and to fetch him as soon as there was a solid lead on Dean. But he wouldn’t put Sam in any undue danger and he wouldn’t be careless with him.
Neither of them had really thought about the phone, though. Cas had left it with him. It was a convenient way for Sam to stay in touch with him and with Bobby. Perhaps the shock of Zachariah’s easy betrayal had caused them both to forget that the devil was making phone calls these days.
Sam hadn’t said anything about it to Cas when he’d called that day to tell him that he was close to one of the angels who had gone missing. He feared losing the phone, losing his only means to stay informed about Dean. It was all that he had, even if it was driving him out of his God damned mind.
Three steps forward and a quick dodge around the bear’s head. Two more steps and he pivoted at the book case, heading back towards the thickly paned window with its heavy drapes that blocked the scenic view of the famed mountain range. The way back set him facing the kitchen and he glanced at his phone, unable to help himself. It was nearly to the edge and it was lit up with a blue glow, demanding his attention. It would fall any moment now if it did not stop ringing and, of course, it wasn’t going to stop. Sam turned at the window and strode back towards the books. He missed avoiding the bear and his feet got tangled up in the thing. He flailed, arms akimbo as he tried to keep from falling. He steadied himself just as he hit that moment where his stomach bottomed out in the certainty that he was going down. Behind him the buzzing continued. Sam turned, wrenching his knee a bit, and devoured the distance to the kitchen.
The phone had come to the edge of the counter and it slid, heading for the hand hewn wooden planks that made up the floor. Sam shot out his hand, reflexes still quick despite his agitation, and caught it.
Unable to help himself, he answered the call.
“Where’s Dean?” he asked and told himself that his voice really did not sound that quiet or desperate.
***
Dean had decided that climbing a well with a bum knee was an activity worthy of being added to the repertoire of any of hell’s torturers. Though he managed to jam his right foot into the tiny, tiny crevices between the stones of the well, his leg simply would not take any of his weight. Twice he’d fallen, thankfully from low heights, as he’d tried to shift over to better handholds. Once he’d accepted that he wasn’t going to get much use from his right leg, he did little more than dig his toes in to stabilize himself as he climbed the slick rock wall of the well. He’d ripped out two of his fingernails clinging for something to hold onto and the muscles in his arms twitched in burning agony.
It was, he figured, a very good thing that he was almost to the top. With a shaking hand, he reached for the next stone he’d decided would do. It was almost out of reach and, though he was able to catch it with his fingers, he had to work to pull himself up. He managed to catch something with his other hand. Dean made a sound that was half groan, half curse as he pulled himself up high enough to find his recently left handhold with his good foot.
He slipped and felt his balls crawl up tight against his body as he started to fall for the third time. In angry desperation, he worked his legs against the well, wet boots scrabbling against stone like a puppy’s claws on a waxed floor. He felt something with his right foot and dug in. His leg took the weight and he didn’t fall. But the pain burned white hot and for several moments he was pretty sure that he was going to puke.
Dean heaved twice, his gorge rising, before he managed to swallow hard and suck in a great breath of the cold, winter air.
“Fuck,” he hissed.
He looked up at the sky and the four remaining feet of stone to climb. He imagined the other side of the well. He could almost see the desolate expanse of frozen farmland - the snow covered the furrows and the scattering of trees with naked branches reaching towards a pale sky. He could see the wooden posts and barbed wire. Dean imagined himself in that vista, told himself that he was practically there, and climbed. He didn’t let himself rest any longer and stopped thinking about safe handholds or the agony shooting out from his right knee. He climbed hand over hand with the assuredness and quick fingers of monkey. Fuck the demon. Fuck the angels. And fuck the well. He was getting out.
Dean stretched out his right hand and there was nothing to grab onto. Stone had become sky. With a triumphant grin, he took hold of the lip of the well and pulled himself up one, last time. He got so far as to scrape his belly over the side, arms reaching for the snowy ground as he went for it head first.
He could hear the flurry of beating wings just seconds before he felt the hand on his back. Dean lunged forward, straining for the ground, but found that he couldn’t move. He hung over the edge of the well like a naughty child bent over his father’s knee - a position he’d been in once or twice as a kid. He looked up over his shoulder. One of the angels, the factory worker with the smoking habit, sat on the lip of the well, legs dangling over the side like a kid.
The angel was smoking. Dean found that strange. Angels rarely ate or drank unless prompted to do so. Dean wasn’t even sure if they bathed, crapped, or ever needed to. To see one smoking was peculiar.
“You smoke?” the angel asked, looking at him for all the world as if they were just two people waiting for a bus.
“The fuck?” Dean replied, feeling as though his brain had skidded to a rough halt and had absolutely given up on thinking. Here he was, dangling over well with his ass to the sky, wanting nothing more than to get his feet on solid ground, and one of the devil’s angels was yammering about smoking?
“Do you smoke?”
“Not for a long time,” he said. “Look, can we …”
“My vessel smokes. A lot. Most of the time they’re sort of asleep or just hanging on for the ride, but Margie. She’s just relentless. She keeps thinking about smoking. I suppose it’s because she’s nervous.”
“She’s not the only one. I don’t want to rush anything here, but I don’t suppose we could get back to me … are you going to let me go?”
The angel took a long drag off of the cigarette and shook her head. She looked out across the field. Her face was troubled. Ordinarily, Dean wouldn’t have given a damn. He’d had very few encounters with the heavenly host that didn’t end badly. Castiel had the notoriety of being the only angel that Dean wouldn’t gladly have kicked off of a cliff. But, Cas wasn’t around and Dean was stuck, held captive for the devil who was probably at this very moment wheedling away at Sam, trying to convince him to save Dean the hard way.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Muriel,” she replied. “I’m usually more of a summer girl. I’m used to warm sun and the eruption of so much life. Flowers and field and tree all unfold under the summer sky. I ride summer thunderstorms and listen to the music made by crickets in the high grass. Little girls make wishes to me when they blow on dandelions. I don’t know how to do this kind of thing,” she said, clamping down on her cigarette with her teeth so that she could wave the hand that wasn’t holding him down. “I’m not exactly cut out for this shit.”
Dean set to struggling again as the angel Muriel waxed poetic about the highlights of summer. He stretched, reaching for the ground. He came back with a fistful of the weed that surrounded the well.
“Dammit,” he complained. “Look, let me go. You don’t sound happy about doing all of this? Well, don’t do it,” Dean said. “Let me go and buzz off. Hibernate until it’s summer and then do your hippy thing in peace.”
“Do you know what they’re doing up there?” she asked him. “Do you know what they say about my Father? I can’t … I can’t sit and listen to it any more.”
“Yeah, joining Lucifer is probably not going to be the best alternative,” Dean told her. “Last I heard, he didn’t have much good to say about pops either and, let me tell you something, lady, he could give a shit about little girls wishing on dandelions.”
“He promised me …”
“He lied,” Dean insisted. “He’s the devil. Lying’s just what he does and you know it.”
“Shut up.”
“Muriel, upstairs or down. It’s fucked up. I know it. Angels are dicks just about everywhere you go, but you don’t have to do this. Let me go. Come with me. Castiel …”
“No,” she said, clearly sounded shocked or affronted as if he’d just suggested something especially lewd. “I’m sorry, but no.” She flicked her cigarette out into the snow and took him by the belt, pulling him backwards.
“God dammit, Muriel! Why can’t you fucking think for yourself? Don’t do this!”
She gave him a good yank. Dean lost a third fingernail trying desperately to keep from going back down. He couldn’t hold on. The angel was too strong. He was falling back down into the darkness. He heard her say “I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to do,” as he fell.
Dean clipped the sides of the well twice on the way down, breaking his fall somewhat. He didn’t pass out when he’d hit, but the pain that exploded from his leg made him wish that he could. He couldn’t keep from vomiting this time and he did so several times. When there was nothing left, when he could gasp for air, he looked up to see Muriel staring down at him. Though her face was high above him and half in shadow, he could see the despair on her tired, borrowed features. She was in torment. Something pulled in his chest and, somewhat in spite of himself, he felt sorry for her. Even if he swore that he’d wring her fucking neck first chance that he got.
“This is a bad idea!” Dean shouted up at her as he did his best to ignore the fiery throb in his knee. “Lucifer wants me alive and I don’t know how long I’m going to last down here without food, water, and porn!”
“I’m so sorry, Dean,” Muriel replied, her voice just barely audible. “But Lucifer only needs you to be somewhere safe. It doesn’t matter if you die. He can just bring you back - same as he did with Sam.”
Dean’s stomach heaved again and the only reason he didn’t vomit was that he needed clarification.
“What do you mean?”
“Sam’s tested his boundaries and Lucifer’s conviction to have him serve as his vessel several times now. You were brought back from the dead by an angel. Do you think that Lucifer isn’t capable of the same thing?”
“Sam tried to kill himself,” Dean said quietly and, just like that the weight on his soul settled down hard and the quiet, hateful voice that whispered life would be better if Sam had never been born was finally silent. Sam had tried to kill himself to stop the devil. He’d likely done it to try to keep more of their friends and extended family from dying. What had Dean done to try to keep it from happening?
It was a sobering thought.
***
Sam sat on the bearskin rug and watched the broken pieces of his cell phone start to melt in the fireplace. It stank as it burned and what smoke didn’t go up and out of the chimney made his eyes water. He watched it burn as he nursed his bandaged hand. The same one that had suffered the splinter four days ago now sported fresh cuts. He’d destroyed the phone, had slammed it repeatedly onto the kitchen countertop until he could no longer hear the devil’s voice, could no longer be tempted by the devil’s offer.
It had all come down to this: in order to live up to whatever tenuous faith that Dean had in him, Sam had to refuse to bargain on his behalf. Save his brother or shame him, disappoint him. They were terrible choices, but they were the only ones that he had. He couldn’t live with himself, no matter what he did. He knew whatever he decided would follow him, would worry him with sharp teeth, but he chose.
With Lucifer on the phone, nattering, cajoling, commiserating, and, God help him, shushing him when all but wept for his brother, Sam chose to say no. And the devil, as he was wont to do, explained to him in careful, vivid detail how Dean might suffer and how he might die. He put the image in Sam’s head and let him mull over it before calling back. For three days they courted each other on the phone, each one of them dancing around each other and what they wanted, what they really wanted. Sam wanted Dean. He wanted him safe, sound, and alive. And he wanted to be free. Of all of it, the fear, the shame, the misery, and the guilt. Lucifer could give him that. In fact, he swore that he was the only one now who could. Once Sam said yes, once he turned his body over to the devil, his soul would burn out. It might take a day, maybe a month, but he would burn his way out of his body and then? It would be done for him. He could rest. He could leave the apocalypse and everything else behind him.
Though he still shook with the foolish, childish need to exact his revenge on the devil for all of the pointless suffering and misery, it was the thought of Dean that kept Sam grounded. He would imagine the disappointment on his face and somehow, much as it killed him, he continued to say no.
But, the devil was nothing if not persistent. He called every hour, seemingly unaffected by Sam turning off the phone or taking the battery out. He could make it ring no matter what. Somehow he timed it, waiting for the moment just before Sam had fallen asleep. Waiting just until he managed to relax. And then, there it would go again, vibrating or ringing. There was nowhere that Sam could go in the cabin that he hadn’t been able to hear it.
Finally, when he was shaking and nauseated from lack of sleep and agitation, he’d broken it. As much as he needed it, as much as it was his lifeline to Bobby, Cas, and any information about the hope of finding Dean, Sam destroyed his phone.
“Don’t you love your brother, Sam?” the devil had asked him. “Don’t you want to see that he’s safe and taken care of for the rest of his life? Don’t you owe him that for all that he’s suffered for you?”
Sam did. He knew that he did and he’d been so close to saying “yes, of course I’ll take care of Dean” without thinking of the further implications that he’d yanked the phone from his ear and had slammed it down on the kitchen counter again and again, ignorant of the shards of plastic that dug into his hand.
Now he was trapped. Free of the incessant wheedling by the devil, but truly isolated and ignorant of how the search for Dean was going. He wished that Cas had risked taking him back to Bobby’s. More than anything, he didn’t want to be alone.
***
Part 2