bells pond | the beginning; part two.
the beginning; part two.
A room with no windows. Sterile and bland, the same thing in every direction. Sam's dreaming, fuzzy disconnect between his mind and body.
"I'm a little confused, Sam."
No need to turn around; Lucifer materializes right in front of him.
"I'm confused because nobody's dropped your name in a week and I was starting to get worried. Usually it's all 'Sam' this and 'true vessel' that."
"You," Sam stammers. "What the hell have you done?"
"A lot of things. Do you want specifics?" Lucifer slouches against the whitewash. "Are we talking recently?"
"This." Sam backs away.
"Your head is fair game." The Devil taps his own forehead. "We'll call it a practice run."
Sam is spun in circles from the combination of the room and Lucifer. "Stay out of my head."
"Is that a request?" Lucifer paces around him. "I like it in here. With a little rearranging, it won't be so bad."
Nothing Sam does can yank him out of the dream.
"Stop pinching yourself. That never works, you know. You want out? Just ask, but I'm not sure being here is worse than whatever's waiting for you when you wake up."
Sam stalks towards the Devil, Lucifer's eyes playing at amusement. "I knew you had something to do with this. Whatever you've done, I'm gonna get out and then-"
Lucifer's laugh surrounds him. "A real go-getter, I like that. Go ahead, get out, and while you're doing that, I'll be out here with your brother all to myself."
"You son of a bitch-"
The Devil shrugs. "I need something to do when you're not around as a distraction, and finding Dean is going to be numero uno on my list." He holds up a finger and grins. "I've got a lot of demons working on it, eager to do a little ass-kissing by bringing me your brother's bloody corpse. So, you just sit tight, Sammy."
"I swear, I'm going to-"
"Oh, I think I've had about enough of this." Lucifer snaps-
-Sam shoots up, blanket tangled around his calves. The backs of his knees are sweat-damp and a streak of sunlight burns across his cheek from where there's a gap in the kinked blinds. He blinks, stomach growling as soon as he's wide awake, lethargy gradually fading until he can get up and shake off-
The dream.
Dean! Sam jumps, spins around the living room but there's not so much as a dust bunny out of place. Quiet and empty, the room is nothing compared to the ruckus in Sam's head, Lucifer's sharp words needling from the inside out.
Your brother's bloody corpse.
The threats are impossible to shake. Sam weaves from window to window, double-checks his sigils and traps. Outside, the landscape of his own horror story is unchanged-dead fields listless in the calm air, no phantoms passing on the road. As the sun crosses from horizon to horizon, Sam stays put, vigilant against the devil-knows-what. Not even the revelation-confirmation, really-that Lucifer is pulling the strings with Sam's incarceration centers him. Dean's in danger and Sam is powerless to get the fuck out of this town. He's not going to stop even if it means he has to shatter the boundary that's holding him in.
The porch light is little help when the sun goes down, darkness encroaching on the house, already thick in Sam's mind. Nothing to see in the pitch dark and Sam finally settles for the night. No need for the Devil to interfere tonight as the only sleep Sam finds is fitful and laced with horrors of his own imagination.
Sam eats the last of the cereal on Day Eight. When he goes to look for breakfast on Day Nine, there's another box sitting in the cupboard. His protections are undisturbed, new salt lines remain in place. It happens again with the milk, gone one night and replaced by the time Sam wakes up.
The stocked shelves aren't a fluke, Sam considers, which makes sense if Gus and Riley have survived for so long. He understands the Devil not wanting him to starve, but the other residents are a mystery. What use could Lucifer have for them?
I don't like where this is headed.
Dean's voice again, filling the empty hours. More reluctant to go outside since his dream, Sam is trapped by four walls and fear. He barely strays from the living room where he's afforded the best view of the road.
Used to the emptiness, Sam nearly misses the figure. Making no attempt to obscure himself, the man stands in the middle of the road, closer to Sam than he'd been in town. Wearing the same black trench coat, the man's gaze is fixed on Sam's house as if he senses Sam watching.
Neither Riley or Gus had mentioned anything about a coated man. The twinge in Sam's gut tells him that this man is more than just another stranger pulled into the puzzle of Bells Pond. Something is off in the atmosphere, a heaviness not unlike humidity. Rigid and stoic, the man remains in the road while Sam debates his options. He could be a messenger, a demon-someone sent to prevent Sam from leaving.
Short on answers, frustration blunting his sense, Sam picks up his gun and slips to the front door. As if he'd been a trick of Sam's imagination all along, the man is gone when Sam steps outside. Whatever current had electrified the air has fizzled and burnt out, leaving nothing but the slow drift of clouds overhead and a pervasive silence.
The room hasn't changed, the sterility clogging his perception. Physically, Sam is alone, no sign of the Devil when he turns around. A sudden rush of foreign emotion strikes, rising through Sam. Starting at his knees and expanding through his chest, the anger consumes until his entire body alights in a white-hot blaze.
The rage is not his own but he cannot force it away. A flash of a dark room, so different from the one he's standing in, with rust scattered along pipes and machinery like an ochre dust. Like his visions of years ago, the cutting pain and blinding storm stuffs itself inside Sam's skull, threatening to tear him apart. The fury casts about for a way out, battering violently against Sam's bones. Begging to be unleashed, the anger searches for something to destroy. A target-
In a heartbeat he's back to white walls and loneliness, a familiar laugh echoing around the room. The rage is trampled in an instant, and not by Sam's doing, to be replaced with unadulterated glee. Triumph, threading from Lucifer's mind to Sam's, is a heavier weight to bear than the anger, pushing and smothering until Sam's forced onto his knees-
Sam finds himself drawn to the crossroads in the middle of the night.
Dawn will bring his Thirteenth Day in Bells Pond, but the dream had driven Sam out of the house and onto the dark roads hours before the sun would make its appearance. He finds his way by moonlight, loaded gun tucked at his back.
There's not even a whisper of a breeze from any direction. Summoning a demon is not his intention. Sam's brought nothing to bury and he doubts anything from the Pit would come to bargain. He has nothing to offer beyond his body and there's only one creature who would come to collect-
"This is the last place I expected to find you, Sam."
He turns, the unfamiliar voice shattering the night. Walking towards him is the man in the black coat. Sam straightens immediately, judging the shrinking distance between them. When the stranger is less than twenty feet away, Sam draws his gun and clicks the safety off, arm steady and level in front of him.
"I would think a place like this holds too many unfortunate memories." He takes no notice of the firearm. "If it's a deal you're seeking, you will fail."
"Who the hell are you?"
The question must be unexpected; the stranger's expression turns quizzical. "Perhaps it's better if you don't know."
"It doesn't matter," Sam growls, his steady aim placing the cross-hairs between the man's eyes. "I want answers."
"I imagine you must." The stranger takes another step closer. He's the sort of man Sam would have passed on any street and forgotten a second later. Short black trench coat swinging at his thighs with his stride, plain white shirtfront and dark pressed slacks. Even his face is unmemorable, nothing remarkable about his short black hair and pedestrian features. If he weren't standing here at the crossroads, Sam might mistake him for a Fed-stuffy and bland, features meant to blend with a crowd. "I would have come to you sooner, but certain measures made that impossible."
"Measures?" Sam blinks and the realization dawns. Christo comes on his very next breath. The stranger doesn't flinch. If not the trap, then- "The sigils," Sam mutters, lowering the gun a fraction. "You-are you an angel?"
He doesn't confirm that either. "I believe Gus began calling me the Wanderer after I gave him no other name."
His name-given or otherwise-hardly matters. "If you know who I am, why won't you tell me what's going on?" Sam asks. Angels are higher than demons on his list of creatures to be wary of. At least the demons want him alive. "I can't stay here. I've got to be out there, fighting and-"
"Your fight is done, Sam." The Wanderer interrupts.
"What? No-no, you have to let me out of here. You know what's going on out there, right?"
"Very much so."
Sam's whole body tenses. "Then you realize-"
"I'm sorry, but I can't let you go. It's beyond my power. This-" he turns and indicates the barren world around the crossroads, "is where you must remain."
"Bullshit," Sam snaps despite overwhelming evidence that the Wanderer is right. "This place, it can't be real."
"It's very real, as are the people in it," the Wanderer says as if anticipating Sam's follow-up statement.
"Then what happened here?"
The Wanderer isn't bothered by Sam's tone. "Demons. Or rather, a pestilence sent by demons for amusement more than twenty years ago. Understandably, those who survived the resulting destruction left soon after."
"And then what? Someone-you?-put the town on ice until now? Just sitting here, ready for something evil to come back?"
"This land's been wiped clean," he explains with more patience than Sam wants to tolerate. "No bones, no spirits, there's nothing left to lead evil here again. I don't know why this is so hard for you to accept."
"Who's protecting this place?" A more horrifying thought occurs to Sam and he brings the gun back up, pointing straight between the Wanderer's dispassionate eyes. "Or is the protection a lie? There's nothing to stop Lucifer from just walking in here, is there? It's a trap."
"Not a trap," the Wanderer says, though it's a hollow assurance. "You're going to have to trust me, Sam."
Despite himself, Sam laughs harshly. The Wanderer remains unaffronted, as cool and unflappable as those Vulcans Sam grew up idolizing when Dean let him watch Star Trek after school. "That's not going to happen."
"Perhaps it doesn't need to," the Wanderer considers casually, as if he and Sam were deciding what to pack for a long weekend. Absolutely ridiculous.
"Look, if you're not going to help me get out-"
"I'm not."
"-then there's no reason for you to just stick around and talk."
"If that's what you want."
Sam blinks and the Wanderer is gone. The loneliness crowds around Sam like a dense fog, trailing along behind him as he walks the empty road back to the house.
Regret is easy and inevitable. In the stretch of time between getting back to the house and sunrise, Sam regrets not pressing the Wanderer for more information. His frustration had barely registered with the cryptic man-angel, if Sam's gut was right-as if the conversation was nothing out of the ordinary.
He could have asked about Riley and the others, the part they play. The boundary and what created it. As for Sam's dreams-what would the Wanderer have to say about those?
Sam wastes a day on regrets and hypotheticals, waiting for the Wanderer to reappear. He does not.
The orange juice runs out for the second time on Day Fifteen. Sam throws the empty carton in the trash-which he's noticed conveniently empties itself overnight when it's full.
"How about cranberry juice next time?" Sam asks the fridge door, but it ignores him.
Way to start the day, Sammy. Talking to the appliances.
Before he starts complaining to the old, clunky blender about Dean's shitty, unhelpful comments, Sam steps out of the kitchen. His notes are spread on the table, exactly where they've been for the last week, as useless now as they'd been before Sam met the Wanderer.
He scuffs over the Devil's Trap carved into his floor, wonders if it's useless.
Nothing left to lead evil here.
Everything Sam had been told, every whispered insinuation, placed him at the center of the Apocalypse in a pivotal role. The Wanderer implied that Sam Winchester meant little in his scheme; his disappointment is unexpected and jarring. It's horrifying for Sam to think his suffering was for nothing, or that his great losses can't be tempered by the role he was sure he needed to play.
Soft thumping reaches Sam's ear. It takes a minute to place the sound: light steps up onto his porch followed by a cautious knock. A round face peers through the window, Riley giving Sam a small wave.
"I wasn't really expecting anyone," Sam says after he lets her in.
"I know, but I felt like I needed to get out today." Her fingers twist together in front of her stomach. "Nice weather and all."
It's overcast, biting when the wind picks up. Sam can't help smiling and Riley shares the joke.
"Gus came by a few days ago to fix some funky wiring. He mentioned where you were living and I wanted to see you."
Sam objects to her use of the word living. "Yeah, he was around more than a week ago." Feels twice as long. "Nice guy."
"Helpful, too," Riley adds. "But he's pretty quiet unless you get him started on something. You know, he reminds me of the super in my building when I was in college. I could never track him down, but he showed up to fix things when I least expected him. I guess that's a little creepy," she says with a strange fondness. She shuffles over the carving Sam has been contemplating but never acknowledges the markings.
Sam can't remember how to play host, but he invites Riley into the kitchen since it's less of a disaster than the rest of the house.
"You have a computer?"
Sam's silver laptop peeks out from beneath his notes. He quickly gathers the notes and slides them underneath the computer. "It came with me, but I can't connect to anything." He'd tried daily for nearly two weeks. "I can charge it, listen to some music." He doesn't even do that much, too many reminders in the lyrics. Not all of his songs are the right songs, either. Quirky guitar and piano rhythms where he wants heavy riffs and a blaze of drums. "It's more frustrating than anything else."
When he offers food, Riley jumps at the suggestion. He would have made simple turkey-on-wheat, but she picks through his cupboards and eventually presents two stacked sandwiches sliced into triangles, thicker than Sam's wrists.
"Did I have all of that?"
Riley smiles. "I've learned to use what we get."
They eat lunch over smaller-than-small talk. Riley comments on his house and Sam side-steps anything too personal until Riley waves off his evasiveness and skips back to a subject she'd hinted at when they first met.
"I'm not dumb, Sam." She fiddles with pulls in the chair's cushion. "I know that this-here-is wrong. I'm not sure what happened to me before I got here, but I know I left things behind."
"I don't think anyone chooses to come here," Sam offers bitterly. The voice of the brother he left behind is silent in his head.
"I guess not." Another awkward silence stretches between them until Riley sighs. "What was it like, out there..."
Her voice, already shaky, trails to nothing. Sam has been dreading the question, unsure he can articulate what the world was like for him. So unsettled, tumultuous-he and Dean in a world unto themselves while everyone else had only a vague notion of the impending upheaval.
"If you don't remember-"
"I remember," he says. "But I don't think it's anything you want to hear."
"Figured there was a reason I couldn't remember a whole lot," Riley sighs. "Gus told me not to ask you." Sam holds onto that piece of information as she continues. "You seem a little different from anyone else I've met here. Granted, that's only, like, three other people. I thought if anyone would be willing to talk, it would be you."
Her sympathetic maneuvering leaves little room for Sam. "I don't know that I'm different," he says honestly. "I don't belong here, and I never asked to be ripped away from my life. There were things I needed to do-"
"Have you tried to get out?"
His shoulders slump. "Lots of times, but I've never made it."
"I'm sorry."
"Why?" Sam looks up at her. "We're all stuck in the same situation, aren't we?"
Riley thinks, her eyes tracking along a water stain on Sam's ceiling. "I've never heard Gus talk about getting out. He tells me that I can't leave, but I don't know if he's ever tried. Maybe you haven't been around him long enough, but he seems happy here, you know? The others, well, some of them are the same way. Skittish, and they barely leave their houses. I was scared for a long time, though, because this isn't exactly a get-away I'd have planned for myself." She looks at Sam to see if he's grinning but he can't quite fake it. "You, though. I don't know your story, but you're not like the rest of us."
Sam can't think of a response to satisfy either of them and their conversation lags into sparse words and long silences. Riley's not overly concerned but she eventually stands and thanks Sam for lunch.
"You did most of the work," he says.
"Still, thanks. This was nice."
Nice isn't the appropriate word, but Sam's world feels less empty than when he woke up. For a moment he considers asking Riley if she knows anything about the Wanderer, but the mysterious man's familiarity with Sam has him keeping those cards close to his chest. And, he suspects, Gus will have much more to say about the cryptic angel.
Riley leaves with a smile after she elicits Sam's promise to visit. There's not enough daylight left for Sam to make anything out of the rest of the afternoon and, for the third night in a row, Sam doesn't leave the house. Later, his spine creaks and protests when he tries to lie down on the couch; Sam's long legs have had enough of the short, lumpy sofa. For the first time since he woke up here, Sam falls asleep in the sparse bedroom, piled deep underneath his stockpile of blankets.
When he wakes up on Day Sixteen, there's cranberry juice sitting innocently in his fridge.
Sam slams the refrigerator door so hard it rocks back on its feet, top edge butting into the drywall.
Sitting up in bed, Sam rubs his achingly dry eyes. Lucifer had no hand in the nightmare that woke him; Sam's mind was blisteringly efficient at creating its own desolate, awful landscapes for his dreams to play out on.
If he still believed in prayer, he'd hope to the heavens that it was his subconscious providing such bleak images, rather than true glimpses of the world outside of Sam's snow-globe. In the three weeks he's been in Bells Pond, there's no telling what kind of atrocities have ravaged the rest of the world.
Yesterday, Sam had resumed his walks after his latest attempt to beat the old Ford into shape, literally, had failed. He'd kicked up dust for hours, half expecting to find the Wanderer tailing him, and pushed against those invisible walls that circled the town. No angel dropped out of the clear sky to mock his lack of progress; Sam's only company had been the buzzing of tiny insects ready for Spring and birds hopping through the new grass shoots.
He follows a different road today and is never disturbed. Each time Sam comes to the last step preceding the boundary, he imagines what he would see if he were able to set his foot down on the other side. If the soles of his shoes would touch down on dusty gravel, cracked and pebbled, or on charbroiled earth, blackened and brittle. Useless to think about; Sam can never take that final, liberating step.
He slumps all the way back, somehow not surprised to find Gus rounding the corner of his house.
"Came back to see if I could get a fix on that old water heater of yours," the old man says before Sam opens his mouth. "I tinkered with it a bit 'n hopefully you'll be able to get more than a few minutes of hot water."
After a blunt acknowledgment, Sam walks silently to his porch and sits on the second step. He doesn't look up when Gus follows.
"Looks like you've had a rough time of it, Sam."
Sam's laugh comes out as a cough through his parched throat. "You think?"
"I know it can't be easy." His sympathetic tone is perfectly delivered. It slaps Sam in the face.
"I don't care what you think you know," Sam snaps. Between the dreams, the Wanderer's lingering taunts, and his own impotence, Sam's fed up. "You know nothing about me! I'm not like you," he accuses Gus. "Being here isn't some dream and keeping me trapped in your precious little world is probably going to get us all killed!"
"It's not me keepin' you here-"
"Right," Sam seethes. "I heard it from your angel buddy. The Wanderer, or whatever you call him. Loud and clear, I'm stuck in this fuckin'-"
Gus holds out one gnarled hand, the gesture bringing Sam to silence though his anger remains unabated. Unlike the angel, Gus sticks around to bear Sam's rage. How human of the carpenter, staying to fix things.
"I knew there was something different 'bout you, Sam," Gus echoes Riley's words. "I ain't in league with the Wanderer, if that's what you're thinking. That angel brought me here, same as everybody else."
"But no one else knows who he is, right?" He'd never actually asked Riley, but Sam had begun to suspect. "Have they even seen him?"
"Don't imagine so. He's a might unpredictable, catches me off guard when he decides to drop in and tell me we got another one coming."
The late afternoon breeze kicks up. There's a hint of warmth on the wind these days. Gus tilts his face towards the West and catches the sun on its descent. The hardwood is uncomfortable for Sam's back but he sits, watches Gus merge so easily with the land and sky.
"You're not gonna believe a word I say," Gus says. "This place ain't a punishment, but you can't see that. I don't quite know why you're here-the Wanderer ain't the kind to share information like that-but there's a reason. Me?" He sighs, the answer itself a weight. "I'm here 'cause I've got nothing else." Gus gestures towards the wide, illuminated fields surrounding them. "It doesn't seem so bad when you've got nothing left out there, no one to fight your way back to."
"I left someone out there," Sam struggles to say. "Maybe you're not being punished, but I am. And I have to fight."
Gus eases his cap off, rubs his forehead on his shirtsleeve. "I'm sympathetic Sam, I really am. If you've gotta fight, then I ain't gonna stop you, but I'm telling you that the others? None of 'em have a lick of an idea why they're here, and I think it's best that it stays that way." Sam nods at Gus's heavy pause. "Just remember, we're not the ones you need to be fightin'. Rage all you like to me, and I'll listen, but let the others find their peace."
"Peace?" Sam scoffs. Gus levels him with his eyes. "Fine, got it," he adds petulantly.
They've used up enough words for one day. Gus takes Sam's silence as dismissal and he walks away, rag flapping in his back pocket as he lumbers off. Nothing Sam heard gave him hope, left now with a sinking heart and unfortunate memories. For weeks, he's tried to push thoughts of Dean to the back of his mind where they'd be safe in case Bells Pond drove Sam crazy. But after admitting to Gus what he'd left behind, Sam's mind inevitably drifts to Dean, to the three weeks and unknown number of miles separating them.
Sam fights. From sun-up to sun-down, he fights against Bells Pond but he crawls into the same bed every night.
For every day that passes, Sam loses a piece of himself to the empty fields and open sky. He loses much more in his dreams where Lucifer taunts him with an alarming regularity.
See you soon, Sam. I'll be sure to tell Dean 'hello' for you.
His sightings of the Wanderer disintegrate into tricks-of-the-light, flares in his vision that are gone when he turns around. The angel wisely keeps his distance. Occasionally, Sam visits Riley when he needs human contact. Her floodgates are open; she talks to Sam about her old dogs, the farm she'd visited every summer growing up. Riley's eyes start to shine more and more after she's spilled memories to Sam. He hears two out of every ten words Riley says, but she never calls him on it. Reluctantly, Sam starts to like her.
Gus makes himself available, loitering around Sam's property with a long list of things to meddle with and fix. Sam suspects he's just making good on his offer to listen-yeah, right-but they rarely speak beyond false pleasantries.
Sam walks until his feet have touched every mile of road between his house and Gus's. He's walked hundreds of miles, covered every inch of his strange world and felt where the boundary rises up to block him. He gives up before his soles are worn through and turns his mind to a different kind of fight. He pours himself into what little research he can manage with skeletal information, picking up theories at breakfast and abandoning them before lunch.
On Day Thirty-three, it hits Sam.
Tepid water rushes over his palms, his entire body frozen at the kitchen sink. The hiss of the faucet blends with the roar between Sam's ears.
It's been nearly five weeks and Sam hasn't gotten anywhere. He sleeps on the left side of the bed and knows exactly how long he needs to run the bathroom sink before the water is hot enough to wash his face.
He's not going anywhere.
The faucet keeps running, water pouring over the stack of dishes piled in the sink. Sam collapses against the cupboard, drawing his knees up to his chest, and he can barely hear himself crying over the sound of the water.
He's not going anywhere.
year one
master post