Fic: Place In This World
Fic: Place In This World
Author: LMX
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Pairing: Sam/Ruby
Spoilers: Up to the end of season four (see AN below for more details)
Warnings: Language, convoluted storyline
Notes: This fic sticks to canon all the way up to *just* before the end of season 4, at which point it diverges entirely to become the great big battle that we had expected at the time, with Demonblood!Sam + Dean, Cas, Bobby and Ruby (yes, I fell for her *hard*) and a hoard of angels against Lilith and the demon side.
Notes Mk2: This fic has been a work in progress for so long that the original notes for finishing it have been entirely lost. (I hate losing notes) I still don't know if it works the way I want it to, but hey... you'll be able to tell me. ;)
- -
Dean Winchester had fallen apart on the battle field - empty vessels staring at him with terrified eyes; the recently possessed mostly dead on the ground; the ones who were still alive, bloody and dying; Bobby bleeding out under his hands; and Ruby knelt over his brother's body, screaming at Sam to get up with tears streaming down her face.
Sam wouldn't be getting up, Dean knew. He was the one who had shot his brother in the head.
When the ambulances and police and fire engines - for the burning cathedral on the hill - started showing up, Dean hadn't been able to pull himself together to explain the carnage, and Ruby had just kept on screaming. They had all been carted to the hospital - ambulances full to the point where they called in a bus for non-critical cases. Then the vessels had taken over covering their asses - Jimmy right up there at the front; exhausted and bloody, but alive.
Jimmy had been the one to tell Dean that Bobby hadn't made it. Jimmy had been the one to tell him that Sam was on life support - still breathing, still alive. To tell him that Sam's mojo had acted at the last minute to shift the path of the bullet.
Dean hadn't been injured. They'd treated him for shock and exhaustion like most of the vessels. He'd left without telling anyone. He'd left without Sam.
- -
James Hetfield had woken up John Doe in a hospital bed with the distinct feeling that everything was wrong, and that whatever else he was going to do, he had to get out of that hospital. His fear of the place seemed almost physical and the reaction that first white coat got out of him was definitely physical. Despite the fact that he could not remember being in a hospital before in his life, he knew it was where bad things happened. He had stared at the tag around his wrist that said 'John Doe' and wondered why that didn't sound right to him. It wasn't as if he could remember what it should be.
- -
Dean took a sharp breath and disconnected his phone just as it clicked onto Bobby's answering machine. He'd forgotten, again. He threw his phone into the foot-well and listened to it clatter as it fell apart. Thing hadn't been the same since the almost-apocalypse. He laughed - strained, broken - to himself at the thought. Not much had.
Whereas once he might have sat at Sam's bedside, clung to every iota of hope left available to him, now he wanted to put as much distance between him and the body lying there as possible. His brother had become a monster, leaving him lashing out indiscriminately. Killing without focus. Dean hadn't been able to save his brother from the power that had turned him. The pollution in his blood. So when the time came, he'd put a bullet in him just as his father had ordered.
Not before Sam had killed Lilith.
And not before Sam had killed Bobby.
- -
He hummed in the shower.
He didn't know his name, where he came from or if he had any family that might be looking for him, but he knew all the words to Metallica's full discography - even the more obscure stuff - and he could hum Blue Oyster Cult's Agents of Fortune even if he couldn't remember the words. There were half a dozen other classic rock bands in his head that he couldn't possibly have heard after what was generally referred to as 'his accident'. Even if no one knew whether it was an accident or not.
Twenty five years - at the doctor's nearest guess - of his life missing. But he knew Metallica lyrics. They named him James Hetfield and reassured him that this wasn't taking away his real identity, and that as soon as they found a missing person fitting his description they'd be able to make an attempt to reunite him with his life.
When nothing came through after he had been awake for two weeks - after they'd cleared his head injury and got him back up to weight on solid food - they released him into a church funded halfway house and made him up some papers with his not-name on them to get him into a job.
- -
Dean had never been more of a machine. With Bobby gone his only contact with anyone in the real world - the world outside the supernatural things he hunted - was Ellen. She left messages on his machine and let him do the same thing without complaint. If she answered he hung up, and when he tried moments later she would let it go to the machine for him. She made sure he was still alive. That was all he needed, someone to know he was still alive.
Jimmy left messages every so often. He told him he was back with his family, that some of the hunters - ones who'd survived the apocalypse more or less unscathed, who'd stood shoulder-to-shoulder with angelkind - were helping him make sure they were safe. Every time he started to mention Sam, or the hospital, Dean would delete the message. He snuck it into the middle of a sentence about how his daughter was doing at school, once - 'it's not your fault, you know' - and before Dean had a chance to react, to turn it off, he was back to talking about his daughter's soccer team. Dean never phoned Jimmy back.
- -
James got taken on at a small farm, just out of the city. He was strong now that he was back on his feet and eating again, and he was beginning to think he might have done physical work in his last life. He spent hours every day working in the fields, learning how to drive the industrial sized tractors and work all the equipment. The sun leant his skin a more natural tan and after a couple of months of work he filled his good-will clothes better. He was healthy, and enjoying himself, and Mr. Decon and the others he worked for were kind, and loved the land they lived off. Mrs. Decon was sickly, and rarely seen about the farm, but they loved her like a mother, and whether it was a pie baked for a birthday, or a shirt taken in to the farmhouse to mend a tear, she looked after them.
He took a spare room in the local village, paying for it with his meagre wage, and when he wasn't working he was almost always sleeping. He was settled and happy. He got the occasional headache, but he knew he'd escaped a much more serious fate. His past remained a mystery, and he laughed about it with the other farm hands and the landlord at the local village's only bar as they made up ever more ridiculous stories about the person he had been.
- -
Dean hated tracking demons, but it had become part of his life, more now than ghosts or shifters. He read the news and followed the patterns, picking up on the aftershocks of the almost-apocalypse that had been. The disturbances in the real plane had left cracks and fissures all over the supernatural world, letting in the ones small enough to get through the gaps. Often they laid low - they weren't powerful demons, just small fry. They didn't want death and destruction, just to be out of hell.
He couldn't blame them, not really. When he could see that the host body was damaged beyond repair, he used the knife to put the demon to rest instead of exorcising it.
He knew the Latin by heart now. Didn't stumble over the words. He didn't think about Sam's fluency, his panicked intonation, or black smoke curling around his big fist. He threw himself back into his work to scrape any stray thoughts of his brother from his mind, and then drank himself into unconsciousness laying in a salt circle on a motel floor.
When he found the next job, he didn't hesitate any more. He got in the car and drove.
- -
James had been working for the same couple on their farm for four months when it happened.
After the strange weather events of the last year, anyone who was still making their own food did well. Crop failures before the harvest had meant a lot of subsistence farmers had been in trouble, but their farm had managed to escape the worst of it. Mr. Decon said it was all down to faith and prayer.
James was amused, but not sure that he understood the concept of God. He didn't know anyone, but he knew about the world, knew the words for everything he could see. He would have thought the concept of God would be something that would just stay with a person. An understanding that went deeper than memory, like the name of a tree or the colour of the sky. Or the lyrics to Metallica's Fade to Black.
He watched Mr. Decon add a cup of blessed water to the irrigation system once a month, and wondered if he had been an atheist. When Mrs. Decon died four weeks into James' time there, leaving behind a daughter and a son, Mr. Decon stopped adding the holy water, rescinding his faith as he grieved.
He didn't visit them for morning meeting any more, but they knew what needed to be done, so they kept on doing their jobs. The utilities were paid for, and their pay cheques, so they left him to grieve in private.
They thought something might have changed when they saw him come out of the house, after four months, and stroll around the circumference of his land - not talking, nor acknowledging a single person. But when he had finished the three mile round trek around field and forestry, he went back inside without a word to anyone.
The crops started dying the next day.
- -
Dean pulled up to see the farmhouse burning, and he could hear the screaming coming from inside. He ran towards the house, throwing himself at the front door, but the building was old and the wood hardened to the years. It didn't budge. He stared into the windows, trying not to hear the screaming, trying to stay calm as he cracked a window and the smoke poured out. The screaming was getting quieter. The windows were small, holding in the heat of the house. Too small to squeeze through.
He cursed as the flames jumped up at the window. He shouldn't have broken it, he was just feeding the fire. He ran around to the back of the house - his attention caught as he saw someone walking across the fields to the huge barn where he could hear machinery running, and a radio playing, far enough away and loud enough that they wouldn't know anything was wrong until they started to smell the smoke.
The person walking though. That person should be able to see it, should be able to hear it. He paused long enough to scream 'Christo' across the field. The figure span, flinching, shaking, and then ran into the barn. Dean turned his back on him. He had to hope whoever was in the barn could hold his own, because the screaming had all but stopped, and he could hear it more clearly now - the back door open and pouring smoke - he could hear that they were children.
- -
"Hey, you!" The voice was deep and rough, as if it had been damaged or misused, but it was human. Human. James lifted his head, tears streaming down his face and hazing his vision. Heavy footsteps and then there were a pair of sturdy boots by his head. "Hey..." This time the voice was much softer and a pair of knees dropped right in front of him as though the man had just collapsed forwards. He smelt of smoke, of burning. "Hey." A hand on his cheek smudging the tears. James shuddered and cringed away. "It's all right, I got him, he's gone now. You're safe." The man's voice broke on that last word.
James pulled himself up onto his knees, keeping himself all tucked in and pulled his clasped, praying hands closer into his chest.
"Leave me alone," he whispered. "I've not done anything wrong. Just leave me alone."
"I..." The stranger hesitated and James glanced up, afraid he'd angered the man who he could see now was carrying two guns. "Look, you're the last man standing here. All these bodies... the authorities are going to look for someone to blame and you're just sitting there."
Slowly, James turned to look around himself, small pained noises escaping at every new body he saw. "I... I..." He moaned softly, wrapping his arms more tightly around himself. "I didn't do this."
"I know. I know that." The man had a hand on his shoulder, clenching it almost painfully tight. "Come with me, I'll get you somewhere safe."
"With you?" James asked.
The other man startled as sirens started up in the distance. "Okay, we're out of time for the soft and gentle bullshit," he grumbled, his voice sounding even more painful as it dropped into anger. He grabbed James' arm, pulling him up from his knees, and with the other hand pulled the gun from the back of his jeans. "Get up, now, and follow me," he demanded. Not pointing the gun, just... holding it.
James scrambled up to his feet, dizzy as he stood and feeling his heart couldn't race any faster or it was going to explode. He scrambled out of the barn at the end of the stranger's gun, only to have it jam in his back when he froze in the doorway.
"Oh god," he whispered as he watched the farmhouse burn. "Oh god."
"No time for that now," the stranger said, more softly this time, the gun no longer in his back. "Into the car now."
The car was old, a different shape to what he had seen in the city, and it distracted him from the burning building as he tried to learn its lines. Tried to make sense of them without seeing the reflected flames. He watched numbly as the stranger opened the trunk to show off an arsenal of weapons, throwing the shotgun and the handgun inside carelessly. James climbed into the leather bench seat, looked carefully at the searchlight attached in front of the mirror. Didn't listen to the sound of roof beams collapsing.
"Maybe they got out alive," he whispered to himself, pressing his hands against the dash board as if it could brace him against this chain of events.
"They didn't," the stranger replied softly, settling into the driver's seat beside him. "Sit back, now. Be quiet."
- -
They drove for longer than James was aware of, drifting in his own thoughts and only really registering that time and miles were passing them by when the landscape presented something other than fields, for however briefly. They passed through maybe half a dozen small clusters of buildings in amongst the arable land, no towns. Nothing even like a city.
Maybe they'd been alive. Maybe this was going to turn out to be a bad dream. Maybe he was dead, or still in a coma. Maybe the hit to his head had broken something and he had killed all those people.
"Calm down." The rough voice made him jump sharply, and he met the other man's eyes - bright in the low sunlight - for the first time. "Seriously, you're hyperventilating."
"Who are you?" he started, feeling the rush of questions building up in him. "Where are you taking me? What happened back there? Was it me? I didn't mean to..."
"Don't you know what happened?" he asked, interrupting the flow, as if the answer should be obvious to James. As if stuff like this happened all the time. Then he shook his head sharply in a way that made James question his sanity. "I'm Dean. I hunt things like that demon back there that killed your friends. I'm going to get you out of state, out of the heat. What you do then is your own decision."
"I don't have my papers," James said blankly. Thinking about 'Dean' - a new name to add to his list. He'd never met a Dean before.
"You can live without them," Dean replied curtly.
James felt like saying 'no I can't' - thought about how to explain quite what those papers meant to him. What they made true. "They're the only proof I've got that I'm me," James said, voice wavering.
"Being you is dangerous right now. The cops will think you killed those people," Dean frowned, and then shook his head. "Until they check ballistics and find the only one not shot with the farmer's gun is the farmer," he conceded, as if to himself.
"Mr. Decon wouldn't kill everyone. He was like a father to us." James sniffed, welling up at the thought of all those people. All those bodies.
"It wasn't Mr. Decon pulling the trigger. He was possessed."
James looked up at him, startled. "Did you shoot Frank?" he asked slowly, realisation setting in.
"He was possessed," Dean replied, enunciating carefully as if James had missed it the first few times. "I shot him to knock him into a devil's trap and then exorcised the demon." He shook his head sharply. "God, what IS your name?"
"James Hetfield," James replied, yelping as Dean nearly drove them off the road, pulling the old car back at the last minute. There were a couple of beats of tense silence.
"You chose a rock alias?" Dean asked, voice barely audible, and there was something terrifying in his eyes, fixed on the road.
"I have amnesia," James wondered why that was so hard to say out loud. He took a couple of deep breaths to fortify himself. "I don't remember my real name, or where I come from or whether I have a family who misses me. But I remember Metallica lyrics - lots of them. So they gave me a name they thought fitted."
"They named you James Hetfield?" Dean reiterated, voice settling just a little.
"Would it make you feel better if you thought my parents just loved classic rock?"
"James Hetfield. James, your farmer was possessed by a demon. That demon waited for his kids to come home and then tied them to a table in their kitchen and set fire to their house. Then he came for you and for everyone else working today. You must have been knocked out, or he missed you or something. I got there too late and your friends were already dead. I shot the demon in your farmer's body and trapped him so that I could send the demon back to hell. He didn't make it, I'm sorry."
"A demon possessed my boss," James repeated a little hysterically.
"Yes." Dean sighed internally, waiting for the disbelief. For the ranting and accusations that he was insane. None of that would have been unexpected, but the other man just took a deep sigh.
"It wasn't hurting anyone until you turned up."
- -
James hadn't realised he was even close to falling asleep, but apparently at some point exhaustion had taken over because he woke up with his head awkwardly propped on the back of the seat and his knees jammed into the glove box. He sat up and stretched, uncomfortably, turning so he could look into the back seat and peering curiously at the blanket-covered library.
Dean didn't greet him, or say anything - his eyes still on the road and unwavering even though it looked like dawn was just breaking on the horizon, the first scattering of houses to suggest a town passing them by.
James had been having morning meeting when Mr. Decon had come in, morning meeting with the others. They were dead now. Dean must have been driving for nearly twenty four hours. He had to have stopped for gas while James was sleeping. No car was that efficient and this one didn't look or sound very efficient at all. He felt numbed, but couldn't help remembering the faces of each of his friends in turn. The sound of the rafters in the farmhouse giving way.
He twitched the blanket aside to take a look at one of the books underneath. It looked old, some unknown language on the cover. The one just underneath is was on 'Wyrm Magiks', and the one under that was an old Bible. Maybe Dean sold books. When he wasn't... killing possessed people.
He turned back in his seat, twitchy. "Where are we going, Dean?"
"Somewhere safe. We're going somewhere safe," Dean answered after a beat.
"Are you going to tell me where?"
"Not if I can help it," a growled reply.
"Dean... You turned up and all my colleagues, all my friends died. Then you take me away from the only place I know, saying I'm 'not safe'. You have a trunk full of guns and books on all sorts of weird shit in the back and God do you ever sleep? I'm feeling pretty fucking unsafe right now." James took a deep breath, and then slumped down in his seat as if that rant had been all that had been keeping him upright and now that it was out in the open he was exhausted again.
Dean pulled across the road so sharply that it felt like the wheels on the passenger side lifted off the blacktop, and James grabbed the door handle as tightly as he could and shut his eyes. They had turned into a seedy looking motel when he opened his eyes again, and he couldn't help but wonder if anyone inside would lift a finger if this man shot him in their parking lot.
"Stay here," Dean snapped. James breathed a sigh of relief at the reprieve. It hadn't taken long for him to realise that the car was the most important thing in Dean's life. It wasn't going to get the upholstery dirty with James' blood. He still jumped when Dean opened the driver's side door again a couple of minutes later, and leaned in to dig a crumpled day bag from under the makeshift library. "Come on, let's go," he said when James showed no sign of moving.
"Go where?" James asked warily as Dean went to the boot of the car to pull out a second bag that clunked threateningly. Dean moved to stand by his door and leant down to look him in the eye.
"Dude. We're at a motel. You're going to sleep in the car?"
James chuckled breathlessly, "No, I guess not," and let himself out, trying not to stumble as his legs protested.
He followed Dean inside the tiny room, not commenting on the horrific décor because Dean didn't even flinch, just sitting cautiously on the bed furthest from the door when Dean claimed the first with his bags. He realised a little belatedly that not only had he left his papers behind, he'd left all his clothes and belongings too. He had worked so hard to have some things that were his after he left hospital. Now he was back where he'd started.
Dean pulled a canister of something out of his bag - moving to the front door and pouring a line along the ground. James was beginning to think he couldn't take any more excitement as his mind flashed through various accelerants, only to see the white grains that fell from the nozzle.
"Is that sugar?" he asked, wondering if it was some kind of extreme pest control.
"Salt," Dean contradicted. "Keeps out ghosts and demons." He moved to the windowsill and drew a line along that too, and then disappeared into the tiny bathroom with the salt.
"Are you expecting ghosts or demons?" James asked, watching Dean as he wandered back in, put away the salt and pulled out a shotgun and a viciously curved blade. The shotgun went down by the side of his bed and the blade went under his pillow.
"I'm expecting to sleep. You don't sleep until you're protected." Dean said that last as if it were some kind of written rule that he was reciting.
"Sure," James replied, lying down with his back to the door and Dean, so that he couldn't see as he laid out his arsenal around the room. He was trying really hard to feel protected.
- -
The last thing James remembered was listening to Dean brush his teeth in the tiny bathroom off their motel room with its twin beds and brand new salt lines around the windows and doors. He woke up to the sound of a man in pain and the first thought he had was that the demons and ghosts had gotten in past the salt.
He opened his eyes and rolled off the bed at the same time, trying to quieten the air that whooshed out of his body at the rough landing. He lay flat on the ground and tried to work out how to get to any of Dean's weapons. He stared under the bed and debated whether ghosts had feet because he couldn't see anything under the beds or across the room.
Dean was making sounds like someone was choking him, and his desperate, strangled voice was just repeating, "No, Sammy, no," like a litany.
James lifted himself just enough to see over the top of the bed, over the crumpled sheets on top, and stared at Dean. The other man was on the bed with all his limbs splayed out, still fully dressed except for his boots and his belt. He thrashed wildly, nearly throwing himself out of the bed and keening mournfully.
Nightmare, James acknowledged. He was having a nightmare the kind of which James couldn't even conceive, but there was no threat here. Not to James anyway.
"Dean," he hissed, not moving from his spot beside the bed and feeling embarrassed and horrified in equal measure. "It's okay, Dean. It's okay."
"No, Sammy. Bobby's dead!" Dean was half shouting, rolling onto his side away from James. What could he say to that? James wondered.
"Dean, please wake up," he appealed.
"God, NO." Dean sat up sharply, wildly - hair in disarray from thrashing on the bed and face a picture of horror. He started right at James for a beat and then throw himself out of the bed towards the bathroom, collapsing on the floor and retching bile.
James jumped forwards, grabbing a glass from the sideboard and filling it with water before stumbling into the bathroom. He sat the glass of water down at Dean's feet, hovering for a second while he debated if there was anything he could do. Eventually he turned his back on Dean's shivering, retching form and went to bury his face in the blankets on his bed.
His new companion might have just had a nightmare bad enough to make him throw up, but James didn't think that make him any less dangerous, or any more likely to take comfort.
James got up from the bed when it became apparent that Dean was done being sick, the sound of him drinking the water covering up his breathlessness. He wandered over to the window and listened to Dean refilling the glass as he peered out into morning light, careful not to disturb the salt line on the 'sill.
Dean's car caught the light in the tree-shaded corner where they'd left it. There was a dusting of pollen on the roof, and the windows were grimy.
"What make is your car?" James asked, aware of Dean still sitting on the bathroom floor, breathing like he'd run a marathon.
"'67 Chevy Impala," Dean replied without needing to think about it, shadow of something proud in his voice.
James glanced over his shoulder and looked away again when he found Dean staring emptily at the equally-empty glass.
"Is the year important?" he asked, trying to make his words light, amused.
There was a shallow gasp, and James flinched as he waited for Den to be sick again. He wasn't.
"My Dad bought her the year it all started," he said instead, voice cracking and even rougher than usual. "She's been through a lot."
"She's looking good for her age," James commented, picking up on the pronoun and wondering if the car was as much of a travelling companion to Dean as he was right now.
"She's in need of some work. Been a hard couple of months. She's not been to Bobby's in nearly a year."
James heard his voice break on that name ("No, Sammy. Bobby's dead!") and decided the subject needed changing.
"Is it the salt that wards off the ghouls of the night, or the fact that it's an unbroken line?" he asked, truly curious.
"Salt doesn't affect ghouls," Dean replied flatly, leaning against the bathroom door frame.
James looked up at him sharply, wondering if Dean had actually had a psychotic break the night before. He looked back at the salt along the windowsill to make sure it wasn't something he had imagined. "I thought you said..."
"Ghosts, demons - for ghouls you have to take the head."
"O...kay." Well, better generally nuts than a sudden psychosis, James guessed. And whether he really was dangerous or not, he couldn't stand to see anyone hurting as much as Dean looked like he was right now.
"And it's the line that they can't cross. Ghosts don't like salt - it purifies them - so you can shoot them with it or throw it at them to make them disappear. For demons though, it has to be a solid unbroken line." Dean turned his back and moved to brush his teeth. "Check them, will you?" he asked, brush halfway to his mouth.
James nodded at Dean's back and carefully checked the line by the window he'd been standing by, and then got on his hands and knees to check the wide arc around the door. He nudged a couple of grains into the crack between the skirting board and the carpet before standing up.
"Do you want me to check in there as well?" he asked as Dean wandered out, looking somehow *more* washed out than he had before they'd slept.
"I've done it." He wandered past his duffle bag and rifled around in there for a minute before bringing out a bottle of whiskey. Bringing it with him, he slumped to the ground at the foot of the bed. He pulled his shotgun to him, laying it out at his feet. He looked at it like he might have hugged it if James wasn't watching.
"Dude. You look like a zombie," James said, searching for something - anything - to lighten the mood. "Hey, have you ever fought a zombie? How do you kill one of those?" James almost crowed at the slight twist to Dean's lips, watching as he took a slug of drink straight from the bottle. Looked like he wasn't planning to share.
"You have to stake them into their graves," he answered, sounding about as amused as James had heard him.
"Oh, what about werewolves?" James pressed excitedly, taking a seat in front of Dean.
"Dude... you're getting creepy." It was a real smile this time, or smirk at least, as Dean's eyes slid shut and he leant his head back against the mattress edge.
"You're my only source for all things spooky, Dean. You've gotta teach me everything you know."
"Werewolves are allergic to silver. Silver bullets are best."
Dean's smirk stayed in place as he worked his way into the bottle, and James questioned his way through his limited knowledge of the supernatural - wondering where his concepts of these things came from; like dogs and cats he knew what a werewolf or vampire was, even though he could never remember being introduced to the concept. Dean had added a couple more that he should know, and told him the difference between a werewolf, a black dog and a hell hound and half a dozen other things by the time James' eyes were shuttering closed. The bottle was almost half gone, and James felt like maybe he should be interfering.
Something like passion had crept into Dean's gaze, though, and James couldn't help but think he must have been a long time without anyone to teach like this, because Dean was a natural at teaching but he looked so uncertain of himself. It felt like there was something missing in this man's life and he was just temporarily filling that gap. James wondered if the missing person was Bobby - missing from this place and missing from the stories Dean told about hunting, where it was obvious there was another person present even if they were never mentioned. He could certainly see this being the kind of job people didn't walk away from their mistakes in.
"Seriously?" James asked, startled out of his tired thoughts by Dean's statement. "You had to let it bite you, so that you could poison it with your own blood?" James felt like an awed child being told horror stories - it was just too much. "Dude, you're fucked in the head."
"Says the fucking amnesiac," Dean snapped back, lightly, the edge of a slur starting to creep into his voice.
"Zombie," James retorted, feeling like it was even more deserved given the black bags only darkening under Dean's eyes.
"Bitch." Dean smiled in a way that was so completely unexpected - face open and unweighted just for a moment - that James swallowed his next retort, baffled. Dean leant forwards, his hand out-stretched, and James froze.
He held very still as Dean leant forwards and placed his thumb over the raised scar on his forehead. James gulped, trying not to breathe. This was possibly the most dangerous person he'd ever met, and he had his thumb on the most vulnerable part of his skull. If Dean pushed hard enough on the point where James' skull was still healing, he could probably kill him in an instant. His very own off-switch.
James was shaking when Dean pulled away with a tilt of his head. There was a look in his eyes that James was starting to recognise as Dean remembering something from back when he was still mostly human.
"You should grow your hair back. That'd hide it," he murmured.
James drew in a sharp breath, adrenaline spiralling to new heights. "Back?" he blurted out. "I mean... Dean... did you know me before?" His heart was racing, something thick taking over his throat. At last this would mean something, not be some aimless kidnapping by a psycho killer. "Dean, do you know me?"
Dean's eyes focused, cleared, and he drew back.
"No," he replied sharply. "No," softer this time. "You do this thing with your head - like you're moving hair out of your eyes. I don't think you've even noticed, but it's there. You run your hands through it like it's longer too. Your body remembers long hair."
Something cold slid into James' gut and settled there. "Oh," was all he could manage to say.
"Sorry," Dean murmured flatly, and then shoved unsteadily up from the floor, storming into the bathroom.
- -
James slept most of that day and into the night, waking into a bright dawn to find Dean already up and putting things into a bag. James rolled out of bed, wondering if Dean had slept at all. He looked brighter, less pale. The shadows around his eyes had softened slightly. He looked in control. He looked better.
As they walked back to the car, Dean's hand trailed the length of the bonnet and then across the roof, and there was something loving and apologetic in that touch. He threw his bag into the boot carelessly and scowled at something on the edge of the boot lid.
He was still scowling when he got into the car, and James sat quiet, trying not to worsen what had already riled the man.
"Damn idiot," Dean was muttering under his breath, obviously not meant for James to hear. "She lives though the freaking apocalypse and you treat her like dirt." He stroked lines along the dashboard before pulling out of the lot. He glanced over at James briefly as they joined the road. "Hey," he said, gesturing across to the foot well. "Pass that box up here."
James pulled the shoe box out of the foot well and onto his lap. He lifted the lid carefully, expecting something to jump out at him, or at least for it to be filled with weapons or something strange and supernatural. It was just filled with cassette tapes.
He pulled the first tape that his hand came to and tried not to react in a way that might draw Dean's attention. It was Ride the Lightening, Metallica. He pulled out an AC/DC album next, Fly on the Wall, and Blue Öyster Cult's Agents of Fortune. He could name the track listings without even looking at the back of the tatty tape inserts. This was beyond weird.
"Put Metallica on, dude," Dean asked, making him jump. "The first one you come to. Just thinking of your name makes me want to listen."
James fumbled with the tape for a minute, but eventually got it into the player. He had a dazed buzzing in the back of his head that was like nothing he'd ever felt before. Dean leaned over as the first track started, and turned the music up. James let it wash over him, the beat driving through the car chassis and into his chest.
- -
"Ellen." Dean greeted flatly. James was awake, but only just. He was aware of the voices outside the car door, but still too out of it to make any effort to get out and join them. He blinked blearily and looked up from under the cap Dean had thrust at him so that he could sleep despite the sun.
A woman with wide eyes was staring at the hunter, eyes glancing off his car and to James dozing in the shotgun seat with his cheek pressed up against the glass and a cap hiding his face from sight.
"Dean, is that..." James heard her start, her eyes flashing from Dean's face to him. James forced himself to sit up so that she could see his face.
"That's James," Dean replied firmly, in a way that suggested Ellen might have made another assumption, making her meet his eyes. "James needs a place to stay a while. He was set up for a fall by a demon. Cops have his description and he's got no ID."
"Nothing?"
"He's amnesiac," Dean explained. James watched as Ellen's eyes shifted to Dean forcefully and wondered distantly if it had actually hurt. She looked like the kind of lady who could knock a guy back with a stare. "Only had what ID the state gave him when he left the hospital, and he had to leave those behind when I got him out of there."
"Well bring him in," she said in a softer voice, low enough that James had to work to hear her. "Let's not leave him thinking like he's been kidnapped, like he surely is if I know your ways."
"Have you heard from Jo?" Dean asked in that same flat tone as he wandered back towards the car, stopping beside the passenger side window. James couldn't see the look on his face when he stopped, but he looked over when Ellen didn't answer for a beat.
Her face twisted into a scowl before she replied. "You've not asked about Jo since I've known you. You didn't ask after..." She hesitated a beat. "After your brother tried to kill her. You didn't even tell me you'd seen her. You got no right to ask after her now."
James could see Ellen fight to pull her rage back, and wondered what Dean meant to this woman that she'd feel that way about him and not just throw him off her property. Dean turned his back on her and knocked on the window. James jumped sharply and wound the window down. He stared out beyond the two people at the scaffold enclosed building in amongst the scrubland for the first time.
"Where are we?" he asked as Dean leant over the window. Ellen took half a dozen steps forwards and then froze again. James watched her carefully, trying to analyse the emotion on her face. She glanced over at Dean and James followed her gaze. Dean was looking blankly at the back seat of the car, his face proclaiming 'lost in thought'.
"James?"
He jumped as the woman called his name, and looked back over. He couldn't open the car door without knocking Dean, so he stayed where he was and leant out of the window.
"Hi, I mean... that's me. And you are?"
"I'm Ellen," she answered simply, reaching out a hand, which he took.
"Can he stay?" Dean asked, not looking up from the back seat, or focusing on either of them.
"Dean, this isn't the time. I can't take anyone on right now that might..." Ellen's eyes flickered to James. "That might bring something down on this house."
Dean looked up slowly. "The demon that found him's gone, Ellen. I exorcised it myself. It's only the cops that want to talk to him, and if he's not got his ID and he's out of the state, they're not going to track him down."
"Honey, you know I want to..."
Dean frowned as Ellen went quiet, but it wasn't until a beat later that he heard the building scream coming from inside the house. Ellen was in motion before either of the boys had identified the sound, but Dean was running after her as James hauled himself out of the car to follow.
- -
James nearly ran into Dean's back when he stopped sharply in the doorway to the small room at the back of what was on its way to becoming a bar. He apologised, but Dean didn't turn to look at him or give him any sign that he'd heard. Looking over Dean's shoulder, James found Ellen sitting on the side of a bed holding on to a tiny blond girl. She was maybe twenty at the most and thinner than was healthy, twisting and thrashing against Ellen's hands with a sharp keening noise that sounded like pain vocalised. A drip was hanging from a narrow shelf over the bed and as they watched, Ellen pulled away from the bed and dug a vial of colourless liquid from the drawer beside the bed. She pulled a syringe out of a medical bag that lay open on the table, wrenched the lid off the needle with her teeth and drew the contents of the vial into it, introducing the solution into the IV line in a manner that suggested long practice. She sat back down at the girl's side, pushing sweat-dampened hair away from her face as the pain killers took hold and she settled to soft murmurs that sounded like nothing in the sudden absence of screaming.
"Ellen?" Dean's voice sounded broken, harsh, but Ellen didn't look up at him. "What...?"
"She got herself a fist full of claws, few weeks back. Werewolf tore her up real good," Ellen replied.
"She's been like this for weeks?" Dean demanded, angry.
"Stupid girl finished the damn hunt, stitched herself up and moved on. I got a call when she wound up in hospital on the other side of the damn country. She's not been conscious since I got to her."
"Why's she not still in hospital?" James asked over Dean's shoulder.
"She's safer with me," Ellen replied in a tone that allowed no rebutal. "She was always safer with me."
- -
James wandered through the piecemeal bar, looking over the work being done and trying not to think of the girl in the unfinished house at the back who'd done her own stitches on a wound that looked like something had tried to cut her in half. He jumped when someone stepped up behind him out of no where and he span around to find Dean closer than was comfortable.
"I was just... I could do some work, while I was here," Jamses offered, scrabbling for an explanation for why he was wandering around a house that wasn't his, but that felt so welcoming even half finished. "I've not done anything like this before, but I know how. I mean..."
"Anything you can do for Ellen, you don't have to ask. Just do it," Dean replied slowly.
"Sure," James acknowledged with a sigh of relief. He watched Dean for a moment, realising he could smell booze, and that the other man was swaying unsteadily, balanced only by his hip up against the doorway. "Do you need..." he started to offer, only to be interrupted.
"What I need, is for this whole thing to be over. I was supposed to be the one to die, Sammy. Supposed to just... You were supposed to kill *me*."
James watched Dean sway wildly, talking to the air. His eyes slid to Ellen, standing in the doorway looking desperately tired. She met his eyes sympathetically, and then caught hold of Dean's shoulders and pulled him back down the hall. Seemed like she was playing everyone's mother tonight.
James took a seat at her bar - looking sad with tapless pipes sticking out of the ground and the wood unfinished. Ellen reappeared moments later, two bottles of coke in her hands, looking grimly amused. She took a seat at the bar beside him, sliding one bottle over to him.
"Go on then, ask your questions." Ellen waved away James' look of surprise. "I know Dean's been holding out on you, and a guy in your situation must have lots of questions."
"Who's Sammy?" James asked after a beat. She looked at him sharply.
"Don't hang around, do you. Going straight for the big guns." She sighed, running a hand through her greying hair and looking anywhere but at James' intense gaze. "Sam was Dean's brother. They travelled together a long time, closer than any two men I've ever seen. Sam took himself off the rails to kill something that was threatening everyone. Dean couldn't get him back after. Had to stop him."
"Stop him? Like... stop him, stop him?"
Ellen's eyes wandered to the scar on James' forehead. He felt her eyes there like a physical thing. "He shot him in the head, James," she answered flatly.
"His brother?" James asked, horrified.
"He didn't want Sammy to become something he would be ashamed of," Ellen said softly. "A monster. A danger to those around him. Knew that was the last thing Sammy wanted. All that kid wanted was a normal life. Guess that never was going to work out for them."
"Ellen.... why did Dean bring me here?"
Ellen met his eyes and sighed. "Dean always has needed someone to look after, someone who needed him. It's been a year now he's been without his brother. Looks like he's found someone he thinks needs looking after."
- -
James worked it out - the thing that had been niggling at him since Dean walked into his life - when Jo woke up for the first time. She looked up at the ceiling for the longest time, calm even though her eyes were clouded with pain. When Dean greeted her quietly, let her meet his eyes, she smiled like she expected him to be there. And then her eyes slid past him, into the shadows over his right shoulder. James stepped forwards and Jo's smile widened.
"Sam," she had mumbled. "Good, you're here. Dean will be better now." And she passed out again. James had fixed his gaze to the back of Dean's head, thoughts moving at a million miles an hour.
He'd thought about everything he'd heard, everything Dean had done for him. Thought about the look on Ellen's face when she stared at the scar on his forehead, about Dean when he'd laid his hand over it. About the tapes that Dean carried in his car, that Sam must have listened to so many times that they would be ingrained on his consciousness, far more than simple memory. It was so obvious now that Jo had explained it to him.
He was Sam. And now he was here, and he wasn't a monster any more, Dean would be fine again. Would be all right with his brother by his side. He could get better.
He could get better, and not be pale, tired and sleepless. Not be tormented. Not be alone.
James... no... Sam. Sam grabbed hold of Dean's arm and pulled him away from where Jo was sleeping - more comfortably now than before, even without the drugs she had been living on. He took Dean's arm and pulled him out into the yard. Pulled him up alongside the Impala and held him there, back against the passenger side door, staring up at him as if he could drag his missing memories out of his brother's eyes.
He was breathing heavily, as if he'd run a mile - five miles - but Dean was watching him with calm eyes. It wasn't until he stepped back slightly that James realised that Dean had a gun in his hand, half hidden by his thigh. Sam fixed his eyes on it, shocked. Of course - Dean had shot his brother, shot him to kill, because he'd been damaged. Because he'd been evil.
Sam gulped. Dean put the gun into the back of his jeans, slowly, bringing his hands back out in front of him open - as if to prove they were empty. Sam still couldn't meet his eyes.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked softly. His eyes felt hot, but no tears fell. Dean had *shot* him. His own brother.
"Tell you what?" The look on Dean's face as truly curious. As if he had no idea what Sam was asking. He was an actor, a con-man. Sam wasn't convinced.
"Fuck Dean. 'Sorry for shooting you in the head' might have been a good start. I know, okay? I know who you are. I know what you've been hiding from me. What, did you think I would go evil again, is that it?"
"James... what do you remember?" Dean asked slowly, gently, as if talking to a madman. Maybe it wasn't far off. Maybe this was how he'd always talked to his brother.
"I don't fucking remember. I worked it out, alright?"
"What did you...?"
"I'm Sam," he declared easily. "I'm Sam and you didn't expect me to wake up, so you just left me in that god-forsaken hospital like I meant nothing to you. And when I woke up, when you found me again - even then you can't talk to me like another human being. Hell, I'm supposed to be a monster, right? You didn't even tell me..."
Dean's eyes were clouded and distant. Hunter's eyes, as he pushed Sam out of the way and headed towards the New Roadhouse. "Get in the car," he spat back over his shoulder, without looking. "I'll be back."
Sam shuddered at the sharp tone, leaning back against the car door as his hands shook violently. Dean disappeared inside and Sam slid into the passenger seat of the Impala, pressing his hands between his knees to keep them from shaking.
He jumped when Dean got in to the driver's side, dropping his gun onto the seat between them.
"Where are we going?" he asked as Dean pulled out onto the dirt track back to the main road. Dean didn't reply, only put the music on loud enough to shake the car chassis.
They drove all day, non-stop. Dean didn't even glance in his direction, and Sam wondered if he was being taken somewhere to be shot again. Whether Dean would dump him out in the desert and drive away.
They stopped at a motel and Dean booked two single rooms, not a twin, throwing the second key at him without looking or checking that he'd caught it before disappearing into the other room. Sam considered running, not for the first time, but things were more resolved now that he knew who he was. He took the key and collapsed into the bed in the other room. Two sleepless hours later, he got back up and picked up the salt shaker on the sideboard, laying salt lines along the windowsill and door frame. He felt vulnerable without Dean beside him, armed. Eventually, he slept.
The next morning Sam woke before dawn, full of a gripping fear that there was someone missing, that he'd left someone behind. He felt empty inside. Cold and alone. The motel room was deadly quiet, no sound of breathing but his own. The air was sharp in the parking lot outside the motel, but he sat by the Impala's front wheel and watched the sky change colour.
Dean was all harsh lines when he came out of the room, pale skin and dark shadowed eyes. He glanced up at the car and then looked again when he spotted Sam sat there waiting. His jaw clenched - Sam could see the muscle tick in the bright early morning light. He walked up to the car and threw his bag into the back, the jangle of weaponry the only sound between them. Then he got in and gunned the engine, waiting only as long as it took for Sam to get in and close the door before pulling out of the carpark.
- -
They were walking down the corridors of a hospital, Sam wasn't entirely sure where. Dean had made him wait while he spoke to the receptionist, so he still didn't know what they were doing here. But he was scared. He'd never been more scared of Dean than he was right now.
Sam wondered if that was true. Wondered if he'd been afraid when his brother had turned a gun on him. Whether he'd seen it coming. Whether he'd felt betrayed.
They turned in to a ward and then Dean hesitated outside of a room. There were two dark marks - like scorch-marks - up the paint in the ward's reception area, and the area smelt distantly of rotten eggs, masked by excessive amounts of cleaning product.
Sam watched Dean steel himself, shoulders stiff and a brush of fingers over the concealed gun in the back of his jeans. He stepped into the room like he was going into battle, and Sam gave him a minute before following him in.
"You're still here?" Dean sounded strangled, shocked. Sam stepped further inside so that he could see around Dean to the other occupants of the room. There was a girl sat by the hospital bed. She had dark hair and skin so pale it looked almost translucent. When she looked up from the man laid out on the bed and her eyes met Dean's, they were filled with a kind of hatred that James had never seen before. The man on the bed was still, covered with monitors and tubes. On his forehead there was a puckered scar.
"Yes, Dean. I'm still here," the girl nearly spat back. "You were the one that ran off." She met James' eyes and her words stumbled to a stop. "You were the one who went to pick up a new puppy. One you hadn't broken yet," she snarled.
"Dean?" he asked, his voice shaking, world spinning around him. It felt like reality was breaking. He'd been *so sure*.
"James, go wait outside," Dean growled, not taking his eyes off the girl.
"Dean, is that Sam?" he pushed, needing to know.
"Yes, James," the girl replied for Dean, curling James' name into something unpleasant. "This is Dean's little brother, who he hasn't even *looked at* since he shot him in the head. This it the man you're replacing. This is your future."
"Ruby," Dean snapped.
"What? Are you saying it isn't true?" she asked in return.
James watched Dean's hands fist reflexively. "You were the reason Sam ended up here," he nearly retorted. "You."
"I was the reason Sam was strong enough to kill Lilith before she brought about the apocalypse." Ruby was nearly shouting, ignoring the attention they were calling to themselves. "It wasn't as if you were strong enough to do it."
"He was losing control, Ruby. He killed Bobby," Dean insisted.
Ruby made a strangled sound that might have been a laugh, but that made James wince, take a step back. "You're an idiot, you know that Dean? Bobby tried to grab Sam before he'd finished. He was getting rid of the power, purging it, cleaning himself out. When your unkempt friend grabbed him the power blew through him. I warned him. I *told* him, but hunters can't accept help from anyone, least of all me."
James, standing behind Dean, caught him automatically as his knees buckled, let them both sink to the ground. Ruby was knelt in front of them before he'd seen her move and for a minute James thought she might attack them, but instead she put a hand to Dean's forehead. The hunter flinched back so physically he knocked James into the hall, sprawling them both across the floor.
"When did you sleep last?" Ruby asked in a flat tone of voice, pulling James up and letting Dean find his own feet.
"He doesn't sleep," James answered for him. "Not for more than an hour at a time."
"I'm surrounded by idiots," Ruby muttered to herself, letting James pull away when he was stable on his own two feet. "What's your name, kid?" she asked as Dean moved to the wall, as far away from Sam as he could be in the same room.
"They called me James Hetfield," James replied, feeling hollow again as he remembered that the history he'd tried to claim as his own belonged to the guy in the bed in front of him.
Ruby gave him a long look, which he missed completely.
"He doesn't know his own name," Dean offered. "He doesn't remember anything. He thought he was Sam when Ellen told him..."
"You don't know who you are?" Ruby asked him, interrupting Dean.
"I know who I am, I just don't know who I was," James replied defensively, everything moving just a bit too quickly today to keep up. Ruby grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him forwards to stare at the scar on his forehead. James struggled to stay on his feet. Both of them froze when Dean's gun appeared under Ruby's chin.
"I'm looking at his head, dickwad. I know you're white night for all your adopted puppies, but this is embarrassing, even for you." Dean dropped the barrel of the gun to the bottom of her throat before pushing her away from James.
"You get the fuck away from him." Dean growled.
"Dean, go sleep somewhere," Ruby said, hands away from her sides and open to show that they were empty. "Sam's alive, still, and he's not some kind of psycho killer. James is safe, and he knows who he's not, now. He can go find his own family and get the hell away from your family curse."
"We're not cursed." Dean sighed, letting his gun drop to point at the ground. "Only Sammy thought that."
"Cursed or not, bad things happen around you two. Dean, ten different demons have attacked here in the last eight months, and I'm not counting the weak little shits that are trying to get famous. Sam can't defend himself, but he's still powerful. He still scares them. They worry he's going to wake up. You haven't been here to defend him."
"I've had things to do," Dean replied, almost petulant.
"Sam was the whining, emotional drunk, Dean. I didn't expect it from you."
"Fuck you, Ruby."
"Oh Dean, you know I only let Sammy do that," she replied with cotton-candy sweetness. She stepped around him carefully as Dean trained his gun on her again.
"Demon bitch," Dean hissed, but didn't look any more likely to shoot than he had a minute ago.
Wary, James muttered: "Dean, we're in a hospital. Put the gun away."
Dean's eyes flickered to Sam, then to James, and he walked out. Ruby caught hold of James' shirt again as he made to follow him out, and he resisted the urge to pull away. Ruby was staring at his forehead again, frowning slightly.
"What?" he demanded eventually.
"Where did you wake up?" she asked, voice more gentle now that Dean was gone. But still with that sharp edge of stress. He figured she probably wasn't sleeping much more easily than Dean, given her appearance. She'd said demons had been attacking the hospital. Trying to get to Sam. Why hadn't Dean been here?
James shook his head, trying to stop his thoughts spiralling out into a mess. He still didn't know who he was, and that brief glimpse of how it had felt to belong...
"Independence, Kansas," he managed eventually. "I worked on a farm there, but there was a demon..." Dean had said... He'd said 'demon bitch'. James met Ruby's eyes. "What are you, Ruby?"
"Independence isn't far from here, or from the First Site," Ruby mused. "You could still have come from there. There's something about you... it's like if I don't look directly at you I can't see you."
"What are you?" James pressed.
"I'm a demon, James. According to Dean, I'm the one who made Sam into a 'monster'." Ruby gave that same almost-painful chuckle. "I might have saved the world from the apocalypse, but I'm never going to get thanked for it. Because I'm a demon."
"What's the First Site?"
"It's where Lilith tried to bring Lucifer over from the other side. And Sam stopped her. There were angels and demons all in human vessels, and once it was all over all the angels and all the demons were gone. Some of the vessels survived. Lots of them didn't. There were too many hurt for just one hospital, so people got scattered all over the state. Sam ended up here." Ruby breathed for a minute, collected herself. "So did Dean, but he didn't wait around to make sure Sam was alright."
"Ruby... why didn't that demon kill me?"
"The mark on your forehead isn't a bullet scar, James. It's a thumbprint."
- -
James knocked on the door to the non-descript house and waited. It felt odd to be so independent, leaving Dean behind and Sam and Ellen and Jo and Ruby. He felt alone. Remembering that cold-emptiness, the void inside of him. But he needed answers.
The door opened and the guy inside looked entirely normal, friendly, smiling, sparing a curious glance to the scar on his forehead but no more.
"Hey there," he greeted, like they knew each other. "How's it going?" Maybe they had known each other. Maybe he was just a friendly guy. There was a teenager playing computer games with a boy on the sofa, and smells of dinner wafting through the house. The guy was wearing an apron. This felt too wrong.
"Hey..." the guy said again, as James was thinking about turning around and getting back in his rental car. "Are you alright?"
"I was looking for Jimmy," James managed. "Ruby sent me."
Jimmy tensed at Ruby's name. "Is Sam alright? I can gather the troops if there's trouble..."
James shook his head. "I just wanted to know..." he stalled, uncertain. "I don't remember. Anything. I don't..."
Jimmy smiled, friendly again. "Come inside. We'll talk."
- -
On the field of battle, they were moments from victory, and the angels could feel the tug upwards, even as those remaining demons felt the pull down.
"I can't stay," Nicolau told his vessel, whispered into his own ears. "I'm weakening."
"I was going to introduce you to AC/DC next." There was a hint of laughter in the voice that replied inside his own head. "Your education in classic rock is only in its infancy."
"I want to keep you safe," Nicolau exclaimed. "I don't want to leave you here alone."
The tug wa harder this time. Nicolau could hear his brothers singing with it. He turned with the last of his energy, separated from his vessel and watching him fall to the ground. He brushed his thumb across the vessel's forehead hurriedly, imprinting his protection there, into the very bone, even as he was dragged away.
He will never feel whole again.
Author: LMX
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Pairing: Sam/Ruby
Spoilers: Up to the end of season four (see AN below for more details)
Warnings: Language, convoluted storyline
Notes: This fic sticks to canon all the way up to *just* before the end of season 4, at which point it diverges entirely to become the great big battle that we had expected at the time, with Demonblood!Sam + Dean, Cas, Bobby and Ruby (yes, I fell for her *hard*) and a hoard of angels against Lilith and the demon side.
Notes Mk2: This fic has been a work in progress for so long that the original notes for finishing it have been entirely lost. (I hate losing notes) I still don't know if it works the way I want it to, but hey... you'll be able to tell me. ;)
- -
Dean Winchester had fallen apart on the battle field - empty vessels staring at him with terrified eyes; the recently possessed mostly dead on the ground; the ones who were still alive, bloody and dying; Bobby bleeding out under his hands; and Ruby knelt over his brother's body, screaming at Sam to get up with tears streaming down her face.
Sam wouldn't be getting up, Dean knew. He was the one who had shot his brother in the head.
When the ambulances and police and fire engines - for the burning cathedral on the hill - started showing up, Dean hadn't been able to pull himself together to explain the carnage, and Ruby had just kept on screaming. They had all been carted to the hospital - ambulances full to the point where they called in a bus for non-critical cases. Then the vessels had taken over covering their asses - Jimmy right up there at the front; exhausted and bloody, but alive.
Jimmy had been the one to tell Dean that Bobby hadn't made it. Jimmy had been the one to tell him that Sam was on life support - still breathing, still alive. To tell him that Sam's mojo had acted at the last minute to shift the path of the bullet.
Dean hadn't been injured. They'd treated him for shock and exhaustion like most of the vessels. He'd left without telling anyone. He'd left without Sam.
- -
James Hetfield had woken up John Doe in a hospital bed with the distinct feeling that everything was wrong, and that whatever else he was going to do, he had to get out of that hospital. His fear of the place seemed almost physical and the reaction that first white coat got out of him was definitely physical. Despite the fact that he could not remember being in a hospital before in his life, he knew it was where bad things happened. He had stared at the tag around his wrist that said 'John Doe' and wondered why that didn't sound right to him. It wasn't as if he could remember what it should be.
- -
Dean took a sharp breath and disconnected his phone just as it clicked onto Bobby's answering machine. He'd forgotten, again. He threw his phone into the foot-well and listened to it clatter as it fell apart. Thing hadn't been the same since the almost-apocalypse. He laughed - strained, broken - to himself at the thought. Not much had.
Whereas once he might have sat at Sam's bedside, clung to every iota of hope left available to him, now he wanted to put as much distance between him and the body lying there as possible. His brother had become a monster, leaving him lashing out indiscriminately. Killing without focus. Dean hadn't been able to save his brother from the power that had turned him. The pollution in his blood. So when the time came, he'd put a bullet in him just as his father had ordered.
Not before Sam had killed Lilith.
And not before Sam had killed Bobby.
- -
He hummed in the shower.
He didn't know his name, where he came from or if he had any family that might be looking for him, but he knew all the words to Metallica's full discography - even the more obscure stuff - and he could hum Blue Oyster Cult's Agents of Fortune even if he couldn't remember the words. There were half a dozen other classic rock bands in his head that he couldn't possibly have heard after what was generally referred to as 'his accident'. Even if no one knew whether it was an accident or not.
Twenty five years - at the doctor's nearest guess - of his life missing. But he knew Metallica lyrics. They named him James Hetfield and reassured him that this wasn't taking away his real identity, and that as soon as they found a missing person fitting his description they'd be able to make an attempt to reunite him with his life.
When nothing came through after he had been awake for two weeks - after they'd cleared his head injury and got him back up to weight on solid food - they released him into a church funded halfway house and made him up some papers with his not-name on them to get him into a job.
- -
Dean had never been more of a machine. With Bobby gone his only contact with anyone in the real world - the world outside the supernatural things he hunted - was Ellen. She left messages on his machine and let him do the same thing without complaint. If she answered he hung up, and when he tried moments later she would let it go to the machine for him. She made sure he was still alive. That was all he needed, someone to know he was still alive.
Jimmy left messages every so often. He told him he was back with his family, that some of the hunters - ones who'd survived the apocalypse more or less unscathed, who'd stood shoulder-to-shoulder with angelkind - were helping him make sure they were safe. Every time he started to mention Sam, or the hospital, Dean would delete the message. He snuck it into the middle of a sentence about how his daughter was doing at school, once - 'it's not your fault, you know' - and before Dean had a chance to react, to turn it off, he was back to talking about his daughter's soccer team. Dean never phoned Jimmy back.
- -
James got taken on at a small farm, just out of the city. He was strong now that he was back on his feet and eating again, and he was beginning to think he might have done physical work in his last life. He spent hours every day working in the fields, learning how to drive the industrial sized tractors and work all the equipment. The sun leant his skin a more natural tan and after a couple of months of work he filled his good-will clothes better. He was healthy, and enjoying himself, and Mr. Decon and the others he worked for were kind, and loved the land they lived off. Mrs. Decon was sickly, and rarely seen about the farm, but they loved her like a mother, and whether it was a pie baked for a birthday, or a shirt taken in to the farmhouse to mend a tear, she looked after them.
He took a spare room in the local village, paying for it with his meagre wage, and when he wasn't working he was almost always sleeping. He was settled and happy. He got the occasional headache, but he knew he'd escaped a much more serious fate. His past remained a mystery, and he laughed about it with the other farm hands and the landlord at the local village's only bar as they made up ever more ridiculous stories about the person he had been.
- -
Dean hated tracking demons, but it had become part of his life, more now than ghosts or shifters. He read the news and followed the patterns, picking up on the aftershocks of the almost-apocalypse that had been. The disturbances in the real plane had left cracks and fissures all over the supernatural world, letting in the ones small enough to get through the gaps. Often they laid low - they weren't powerful demons, just small fry. They didn't want death and destruction, just to be out of hell.
He couldn't blame them, not really. When he could see that the host body was damaged beyond repair, he used the knife to put the demon to rest instead of exorcising it.
He knew the Latin by heart now. Didn't stumble over the words. He didn't think about Sam's fluency, his panicked intonation, or black smoke curling around his big fist. He threw himself back into his work to scrape any stray thoughts of his brother from his mind, and then drank himself into unconsciousness laying in a salt circle on a motel floor.
When he found the next job, he didn't hesitate any more. He got in the car and drove.
- -
James had been working for the same couple on their farm for four months when it happened.
After the strange weather events of the last year, anyone who was still making their own food did well. Crop failures before the harvest had meant a lot of subsistence farmers had been in trouble, but their farm had managed to escape the worst of it. Mr. Decon said it was all down to faith and prayer.
James was amused, but not sure that he understood the concept of God. He didn't know anyone, but he knew about the world, knew the words for everything he could see. He would have thought the concept of God would be something that would just stay with a person. An understanding that went deeper than memory, like the name of a tree or the colour of the sky. Or the lyrics to Metallica's Fade to Black.
He watched Mr. Decon add a cup of blessed water to the irrigation system once a month, and wondered if he had been an atheist. When Mrs. Decon died four weeks into James' time there, leaving behind a daughter and a son, Mr. Decon stopped adding the holy water, rescinding his faith as he grieved.
He didn't visit them for morning meeting any more, but they knew what needed to be done, so they kept on doing their jobs. The utilities were paid for, and their pay cheques, so they left him to grieve in private.
They thought something might have changed when they saw him come out of the house, after four months, and stroll around the circumference of his land - not talking, nor acknowledging a single person. But when he had finished the three mile round trek around field and forestry, he went back inside without a word to anyone.
The crops started dying the next day.
- -
Dean pulled up to see the farmhouse burning, and he could hear the screaming coming from inside. He ran towards the house, throwing himself at the front door, but the building was old and the wood hardened to the years. It didn't budge. He stared into the windows, trying not to hear the screaming, trying to stay calm as he cracked a window and the smoke poured out. The screaming was getting quieter. The windows were small, holding in the heat of the house. Too small to squeeze through.
He cursed as the flames jumped up at the window. He shouldn't have broken it, he was just feeding the fire. He ran around to the back of the house - his attention caught as he saw someone walking across the fields to the huge barn where he could hear machinery running, and a radio playing, far enough away and loud enough that they wouldn't know anything was wrong until they started to smell the smoke.
The person walking though. That person should be able to see it, should be able to hear it. He paused long enough to scream 'Christo' across the field. The figure span, flinching, shaking, and then ran into the barn. Dean turned his back on him. He had to hope whoever was in the barn could hold his own, because the screaming had all but stopped, and he could hear it more clearly now - the back door open and pouring smoke - he could hear that they were children.
- -
"Hey, you!" The voice was deep and rough, as if it had been damaged or misused, but it was human. Human. James lifted his head, tears streaming down his face and hazing his vision. Heavy footsteps and then there were a pair of sturdy boots by his head. "Hey..." This time the voice was much softer and a pair of knees dropped right in front of him as though the man had just collapsed forwards. He smelt of smoke, of burning. "Hey." A hand on his cheek smudging the tears. James shuddered and cringed away. "It's all right, I got him, he's gone now. You're safe." The man's voice broke on that last word.
James pulled himself up onto his knees, keeping himself all tucked in and pulled his clasped, praying hands closer into his chest.
"Leave me alone," he whispered. "I've not done anything wrong. Just leave me alone."
"I..." The stranger hesitated and James glanced up, afraid he'd angered the man who he could see now was carrying two guns. "Look, you're the last man standing here. All these bodies... the authorities are going to look for someone to blame and you're just sitting there."
Slowly, James turned to look around himself, small pained noises escaping at every new body he saw. "I... I..." He moaned softly, wrapping his arms more tightly around himself. "I didn't do this."
"I know. I know that." The man had a hand on his shoulder, clenching it almost painfully tight. "Come with me, I'll get you somewhere safe."
"With you?" James asked.
The other man startled as sirens started up in the distance. "Okay, we're out of time for the soft and gentle bullshit," he grumbled, his voice sounding even more painful as it dropped into anger. He grabbed James' arm, pulling him up from his knees, and with the other hand pulled the gun from the back of his jeans. "Get up, now, and follow me," he demanded. Not pointing the gun, just... holding it.
James scrambled up to his feet, dizzy as he stood and feeling his heart couldn't race any faster or it was going to explode. He scrambled out of the barn at the end of the stranger's gun, only to have it jam in his back when he froze in the doorway.
"Oh god," he whispered as he watched the farmhouse burn. "Oh god."
"No time for that now," the stranger said, more softly this time, the gun no longer in his back. "Into the car now."
The car was old, a different shape to what he had seen in the city, and it distracted him from the burning building as he tried to learn its lines. Tried to make sense of them without seeing the reflected flames. He watched numbly as the stranger opened the trunk to show off an arsenal of weapons, throwing the shotgun and the handgun inside carelessly. James climbed into the leather bench seat, looked carefully at the searchlight attached in front of the mirror. Didn't listen to the sound of roof beams collapsing.
"Maybe they got out alive," he whispered to himself, pressing his hands against the dash board as if it could brace him against this chain of events.
"They didn't," the stranger replied softly, settling into the driver's seat beside him. "Sit back, now. Be quiet."
- -
They drove for longer than James was aware of, drifting in his own thoughts and only really registering that time and miles were passing them by when the landscape presented something other than fields, for however briefly. They passed through maybe half a dozen small clusters of buildings in amongst the arable land, no towns. Nothing even like a city.
Maybe they'd been alive. Maybe this was going to turn out to be a bad dream. Maybe he was dead, or still in a coma. Maybe the hit to his head had broken something and he had killed all those people.
"Calm down." The rough voice made him jump sharply, and he met the other man's eyes - bright in the low sunlight - for the first time. "Seriously, you're hyperventilating."
"Who are you?" he started, feeling the rush of questions building up in him. "Where are you taking me? What happened back there? Was it me? I didn't mean to..."
"Don't you know what happened?" he asked, interrupting the flow, as if the answer should be obvious to James. As if stuff like this happened all the time. Then he shook his head sharply in a way that made James question his sanity. "I'm Dean. I hunt things like that demon back there that killed your friends. I'm going to get you out of state, out of the heat. What you do then is your own decision."
"I don't have my papers," James said blankly. Thinking about 'Dean' - a new name to add to his list. He'd never met a Dean before.
"You can live without them," Dean replied curtly.
James felt like saying 'no I can't' - thought about how to explain quite what those papers meant to him. What they made true. "They're the only proof I've got that I'm me," James said, voice wavering.
"Being you is dangerous right now. The cops will think you killed those people," Dean frowned, and then shook his head. "Until they check ballistics and find the only one not shot with the farmer's gun is the farmer," he conceded, as if to himself.
"Mr. Decon wouldn't kill everyone. He was like a father to us." James sniffed, welling up at the thought of all those people. All those bodies.
"It wasn't Mr. Decon pulling the trigger. He was possessed."
James looked up at him, startled. "Did you shoot Frank?" he asked slowly, realisation setting in.
"He was possessed," Dean replied, enunciating carefully as if James had missed it the first few times. "I shot him to knock him into a devil's trap and then exorcised the demon." He shook his head sharply. "God, what IS your name?"
"James Hetfield," James replied, yelping as Dean nearly drove them off the road, pulling the old car back at the last minute. There were a couple of beats of tense silence.
"You chose a rock alias?" Dean asked, voice barely audible, and there was something terrifying in his eyes, fixed on the road.
"I have amnesia," James wondered why that was so hard to say out loud. He took a couple of deep breaths to fortify himself. "I don't remember my real name, or where I come from or whether I have a family who misses me. But I remember Metallica lyrics - lots of them. So they gave me a name they thought fitted."
"They named you James Hetfield?" Dean reiterated, voice settling just a little.
"Would it make you feel better if you thought my parents just loved classic rock?"
"James Hetfield. James, your farmer was possessed by a demon. That demon waited for his kids to come home and then tied them to a table in their kitchen and set fire to their house. Then he came for you and for everyone else working today. You must have been knocked out, or he missed you or something. I got there too late and your friends were already dead. I shot the demon in your farmer's body and trapped him so that I could send the demon back to hell. He didn't make it, I'm sorry."
"A demon possessed my boss," James repeated a little hysterically.
"Yes." Dean sighed internally, waiting for the disbelief. For the ranting and accusations that he was insane. None of that would have been unexpected, but the other man just took a deep sigh.
"It wasn't hurting anyone until you turned up."
- -
James hadn't realised he was even close to falling asleep, but apparently at some point exhaustion had taken over because he woke up with his head awkwardly propped on the back of the seat and his knees jammed into the glove box. He sat up and stretched, uncomfortably, turning so he could look into the back seat and peering curiously at the blanket-covered library.
Dean didn't greet him, or say anything - his eyes still on the road and unwavering even though it looked like dawn was just breaking on the horizon, the first scattering of houses to suggest a town passing them by.
James had been having morning meeting when Mr. Decon had come in, morning meeting with the others. They were dead now. Dean must have been driving for nearly twenty four hours. He had to have stopped for gas while James was sleeping. No car was that efficient and this one didn't look or sound very efficient at all. He felt numbed, but couldn't help remembering the faces of each of his friends in turn. The sound of the rafters in the farmhouse giving way.
He twitched the blanket aside to take a look at one of the books underneath. It looked old, some unknown language on the cover. The one just underneath is was on 'Wyrm Magiks', and the one under that was an old Bible. Maybe Dean sold books. When he wasn't... killing possessed people.
He turned back in his seat, twitchy. "Where are we going, Dean?"
"Somewhere safe. We're going somewhere safe," Dean answered after a beat.
"Are you going to tell me where?"
"Not if I can help it," a growled reply.
"Dean... You turned up and all my colleagues, all my friends died. Then you take me away from the only place I know, saying I'm 'not safe'. You have a trunk full of guns and books on all sorts of weird shit in the back and God do you ever sleep? I'm feeling pretty fucking unsafe right now." James took a deep breath, and then slumped down in his seat as if that rant had been all that had been keeping him upright and now that it was out in the open he was exhausted again.
Dean pulled across the road so sharply that it felt like the wheels on the passenger side lifted off the blacktop, and James grabbed the door handle as tightly as he could and shut his eyes. They had turned into a seedy looking motel when he opened his eyes again, and he couldn't help but wonder if anyone inside would lift a finger if this man shot him in their parking lot.
"Stay here," Dean snapped. James breathed a sigh of relief at the reprieve. It hadn't taken long for him to realise that the car was the most important thing in Dean's life. It wasn't going to get the upholstery dirty with James' blood. He still jumped when Dean opened the driver's side door again a couple of minutes later, and leaned in to dig a crumpled day bag from under the makeshift library. "Come on, let's go," he said when James showed no sign of moving.
"Go where?" James asked warily as Dean went to the boot of the car to pull out a second bag that clunked threateningly. Dean moved to stand by his door and leant down to look him in the eye.
"Dude. We're at a motel. You're going to sleep in the car?"
James chuckled breathlessly, "No, I guess not," and let himself out, trying not to stumble as his legs protested.
He followed Dean inside the tiny room, not commenting on the horrific décor because Dean didn't even flinch, just sitting cautiously on the bed furthest from the door when Dean claimed the first with his bags. He realised a little belatedly that not only had he left his papers behind, he'd left all his clothes and belongings too. He had worked so hard to have some things that were his after he left hospital. Now he was back where he'd started.
Dean pulled a canister of something out of his bag - moving to the front door and pouring a line along the ground. James was beginning to think he couldn't take any more excitement as his mind flashed through various accelerants, only to see the white grains that fell from the nozzle.
"Is that sugar?" he asked, wondering if it was some kind of extreme pest control.
"Salt," Dean contradicted. "Keeps out ghosts and demons." He moved to the windowsill and drew a line along that too, and then disappeared into the tiny bathroom with the salt.
"Are you expecting ghosts or demons?" James asked, watching Dean as he wandered back in, put away the salt and pulled out a shotgun and a viciously curved blade. The shotgun went down by the side of his bed and the blade went under his pillow.
"I'm expecting to sleep. You don't sleep until you're protected." Dean said that last as if it were some kind of written rule that he was reciting.
"Sure," James replied, lying down with his back to the door and Dean, so that he couldn't see as he laid out his arsenal around the room. He was trying really hard to feel protected.
- -
The last thing James remembered was listening to Dean brush his teeth in the tiny bathroom off their motel room with its twin beds and brand new salt lines around the windows and doors. He woke up to the sound of a man in pain and the first thought he had was that the demons and ghosts had gotten in past the salt.
He opened his eyes and rolled off the bed at the same time, trying to quieten the air that whooshed out of his body at the rough landing. He lay flat on the ground and tried to work out how to get to any of Dean's weapons. He stared under the bed and debated whether ghosts had feet because he couldn't see anything under the beds or across the room.
Dean was making sounds like someone was choking him, and his desperate, strangled voice was just repeating, "No, Sammy, no," like a litany.
James lifted himself just enough to see over the top of the bed, over the crumpled sheets on top, and stared at Dean. The other man was on the bed with all his limbs splayed out, still fully dressed except for his boots and his belt. He thrashed wildly, nearly throwing himself out of the bed and keening mournfully.
Nightmare, James acknowledged. He was having a nightmare the kind of which James couldn't even conceive, but there was no threat here. Not to James anyway.
"Dean," he hissed, not moving from his spot beside the bed and feeling embarrassed and horrified in equal measure. "It's okay, Dean. It's okay."
"No, Sammy. Bobby's dead!" Dean was half shouting, rolling onto his side away from James. What could he say to that? James wondered.
"Dean, please wake up," he appealed.
"God, NO." Dean sat up sharply, wildly - hair in disarray from thrashing on the bed and face a picture of horror. He started right at James for a beat and then throw himself out of the bed towards the bathroom, collapsing on the floor and retching bile.
James jumped forwards, grabbing a glass from the sideboard and filling it with water before stumbling into the bathroom. He sat the glass of water down at Dean's feet, hovering for a second while he debated if there was anything he could do. Eventually he turned his back on Dean's shivering, retching form and went to bury his face in the blankets on his bed.
His new companion might have just had a nightmare bad enough to make him throw up, but James didn't think that make him any less dangerous, or any more likely to take comfort.
James got up from the bed when it became apparent that Dean was done being sick, the sound of him drinking the water covering up his breathlessness. He wandered over to the window and listened to Dean refilling the glass as he peered out into morning light, careful not to disturb the salt line on the 'sill.
Dean's car caught the light in the tree-shaded corner where they'd left it. There was a dusting of pollen on the roof, and the windows were grimy.
"What make is your car?" James asked, aware of Dean still sitting on the bathroom floor, breathing like he'd run a marathon.
"'67 Chevy Impala," Dean replied without needing to think about it, shadow of something proud in his voice.
James glanced over his shoulder and looked away again when he found Dean staring emptily at the equally-empty glass.
"Is the year important?" he asked, trying to make his words light, amused.
There was a shallow gasp, and James flinched as he waited for Den to be sick again. He wasn't.
"My Dad bought her the year it all started," he said instead, voice cracking and even rougher than usual. "She's been through a lot."
"She's looking good for her age," James commented, picking up on the pronoun and wondering if the car was as much of a travelling companion to Dean as he was right now.
"She's in need of some work. Been a hard couple of months. She's not been to Bobby's in nearly a year."
James heard his voice break on that name ("No, Sammy. Bobby's dead!") and decided the subject needed changing.
"Is it the salt that wards off the ghouls of the night, or the fact that it's an unbroken line?" he asked, truly curious.
"Salt doesn't affect ghouls," Dean replied flatly, leaning against the bathroom door frame.
James looked up at him sharply, wondering if Dean had actually had a psychotic break the night before. He looked back at the salt along the windowsill to make sure it wasn't something he had imagined. "I thought you said..."
"Ghosts, demons - for ghouls you have to take the head."
"O...kay." Well, better generally nuts than a sudden psychosis, James guessed. And whether he really was dangerous or not, he couldn't stand to see anyone hurting as much as Dean looked like he was right now.
"And it's the line that they can't cross. Ghosts don't like salt - it purifies them - so you can shoot them with it or throw it at them to make them disappear. For demons though, it has to be a solid unbroken line." Dean turned his back and moved to brush his teeth. "Check them, will you?" he asked, brush halfway to his mouth.
James nodded at Dean's back and carefully checked the line by the window he'd been standing by, and then got on his hands and knees to check the wide arc around the door. He nudged a couple of grains into the crack between the skirting board and the carpet before standing up.
"Do you want me to check in there as well?" he asked as Dean wandered out, looking somehow *more* washed out than he had before they'd slept.
"I've done it." He wandered past his duffle bag and rifled around in there for a minute before bringing out a bottle of whiskey. Bringing it with him, he slumped to the ground at the foot of the bed. He pulled his shotgun to him, laying it out at his feet. He looked at it like he might have hugged it if James wasn't watching.
"Dude. You look like a zombie," James said, searching for something - anything - to lighten the mood. "Hey, have you ever fought a zombie? How do you kill one of those?" James almost crowed at the slight twist to Dean's lips, watching as he took a slug of drink straight from the bottle. Looked like he wasn't planning to share.
"You have to stake them into their graves," he answered, sounding about as amused as James had heard him.
"Oh, what about werewolves?" James pressed excitedly, taking a seat in front of Dean.
"Dude... you're getting creepy." It was a real smile this time, or smirk at least, as Dean's eyes slid shut and he leant his head back against the mattress edge.
"You're my only source for all things spooky, Dean. You've gotta teach me everything you know."
"Werewolves are allergic to silver. Silver bullets are best."
Dean's smirk stayed in place as he worked his way into the bottle, and James questioned his way through his limited knowledge of the supernatural - wondering where his concepts of these things came from; like dogs and cats he knew what a werewolf or vampire was, even though he could never remember being introduced to the concept. Dean had added a couple more that he should know, and told him the difference between a werewolf, a black dog and a hell hound and half a dozen other things by the time James' eyes were shuttering closed. The bottle was almost half gone, and James felt like maybe he should be interfering.
Something like passion had crept into Dean's gaze, though, and James couldn't help but think he must have been a long time without anyone to teach like this, because Dean was a natural at teaching but he looked so uncertain of himself. It felt like there was something missing in this man's life and he was just temporarily filling that gap. James wondered if the missing person was Bobby - missing from this place and missing from the stories Dean told about hunting, where it was obvious there was another person present even if they were never mentioned. He could certainly see this being the kind of job people didn't walk away from their mistakes in.
"Seriously?" James asked, startled out of his tired thoughts by Dean's statement. "You had to let it bite you, so that you could poison it with your own blood?" James felt like an awed child being told horror stories - it was just too much. "Dude, you're fucked in the head."
"Says the fucking amnesiac," Dean snapped back, lightly, the edge of a slur starting to creep into his voice.
"Zombie," James retorted, feeling like it was even more deserved given the black bags only darkening under Dean's eyes.
"Bitch." Dean smiled in a way that was so completely unexpected - face open and unweighted just for a moment - that James swallowed his next retort, baffled. Dean leant forwards, his hand out-stretched, and James froze.
He held very still as Dean leant forwards and placed his thumb over the raised scar on his forehead. James gulped, trying not to breathe. This was possibly the most dangerous person he'd ever met, and he had his thumb on the most vulnerable part of his skull. If Dean pushed hard enough on the point where James' skull was still healing, he could probably kill him in an instant. His very own off-switch.
James was shaking when Dean pulled away with a tilt of his head. There was a look in his eyes that James was starting to recognise as Dean remembering something from back when he was still mostly human.
"You should grow your hair back. That'd hide it," he murmured.
James drew in a sharp breath, adrenaline spiralling to new heights. "Back?" he blurted out. "I mean... Dean... did you know me before?" His heart was racing, something thick taking over his throat. At last this would mean something, not be some aimless kidnapping by a psycho killer. "Dean, do you know me?"
Dean's eyes focused, cleared, and he drew back.
"No," he replied sharply. "No," softer this time. "You do this thing with your head - like you're moving hair out of your eyes. I don't think you've even noticed, but it's there. You run your hands through it like it's longer too. Your body remembers long hair."
Something cold slid into James' gut and settled there. "Oh," was all he could manage to say.
"Sorry," Dean murmured flatly, and then shoved unsteadily up from the floor, storming into the bathroom.
- -
James slept most of that day and into the night, waking into a bright dawn to find Dean already up and putting things into a bag. James rolled out of bed, wondering if Dean had slept at all. He looked brighter, less pale. The shadows around his eyes had softened slightly. He looked in control. He looked better.
As they walked back to the car, Dean's hand trailed the length of the bonnet and then across the roof, and there was something loving and apologetic in that touch. He threw his bag into the boot carelessly and scowled at something on the edge of the boot lid.
He was still scowling when he got into the car, and James sat quiet, trying not to worsen what had already riled the man.
"Damn idiot," Dean was muttering under his breath, obviously not meant for James to hear. "She lives though the freaking apocalypse and you treat her like dirt." He stroked lines along the dashboard before pulling out of the lot. He glanced over at James briefly as they joined the road. "Hey," he said, gesturing across to the foot well. "Pass that box up here."
James pulled the shoe box out of the foot well and onto his lap. He lifted the lid carefully, expecting something to jump out at him, or at least for it to be filled with weapons or something strange and supernatural. It was just filled with cassette tapes.
He pulled the first tape that his hand came to and tried not to react in a way that might draw Dean's attention. It was Ride the Lightening, Metallica. He pulled out an AC/DC album next, Fly on the Wall, and Blue Öyster Cult's Agents of Fortune. He could name the track listings without even looking at the back of the tatty tape inserts. This was beyond weird.
"Put Metallica on, dude," Dean asked, making him jump. "The first one you come to. Just thinking of your name makes me want to listen."
James fumbled with the tape for a minute, but eventually got it into the player. He had a dazed buzzing in the back of his head that was like nothing he'd ever felt before. Dean leaned over as the first track started, and turned the music up. James let it wash over him, the beat driving through the car chassis and into his chest.
- -
"Ellen." Dean greeted flatly. James was awake, but only just. He was aware of the voices outside the car door, but still too out of it to make any effort to get out and join them. He blinked blearily and looked up from under the cap Dean had thrust at him so that he could sleep despite the sun.
A woman with wide eyes was staring at the hunter, eyes glancing off his car and to James dozing in the shotgun seat with his cheek pressed up against the glass and a cap hiding his face from sight.
"Dean, is that..." James heard her start, her eyes flashing from Dean's face to him. James forced himself to sit up so that she could see his face.
"That's James," Dean replied firmly, in a way that suggested Ellen might have made another assumption, making her meet his eyes. "James needs a place to stay a while. He was set up for a fall by a demon. Cops have his description and he's got no ID."
"Nothing?"
"He's amnesiac," Dean explained. James watched as Ellen's eyes shifted to Dean forcefully and wondered distantly if it had actually hurt. She looked like the kind of lady who could knock a guy back with a stare. "Only had what ID the state gave him when he left the hospital, and he had to leave those behind when I got him out of there."
"Well bring him in," she said in a softer voice, low enough that James had to work to hear her. "Let's not leave him thinking like he's been kidnapped, like he surely is if I know your ways."
"Have you heard from Jo?" Dean asked in that same flat tone as he wandered back towards the car, stopping beside the passenger side window. James couldn't see the look on his face when he stopped, but he looked over when Ellen didn't answer for a beat.
Her face twisted into a scowl before she replied. "You've not asked about Jo since I've known you. You didn't ask after..." She hesitated a beat. "After your brother tried to kill her. You didn't even tell me you'd seen her. You got no right to ask after her now."
James could see Ellen fight to pull her rage back, and wondered what Dean meant to this woman that she'd feel that way about him and not just throw him off her property. Dean turned his back on her and knocked on the window. James jumped sharply and wound the window down. He stared out beyond the two people at the scaffold enclosed building in amongst the scrubland for the first time.
"Where are we?" he asked as Dean leant over the window. Ellen took half a dozen steps forwards and then froze again. James watched her carefully, trying to analyse the emotion on her face. She glanced over at Dean and James followed her gaze. Dean was looking blankly at the back seat of the car, his face proclaiming 'lost in thought'.
"James?"
He jumped as the woman called his name, and looked back over. He couldn't open the car door without knocking Dean, so he stayed where he was and leant out of the window.
"Hi, I mean... that's me. And you are?"
"I'm Ellen," she answered simply, reaching out a hand, which he took.
"Can he stay?" Dean asked, not looking up from the back seat, or focusing on either of them.
"Dean, this isn't the time. I can't take anyone on right now that might..." Ellen's eyes flickered to James. "That might bring something down on this house."
Dean looked up slowly. "The demon that found him's gone, Ellen. I exorcised it myself. It's only the cops that want to talk to him, and if he's not got his ID and he's out of the state, they're not going to track him down."
"Honey, you know I want to..."
Dean frowned as Ellen went quiet, but it wasn't until a beat later that he heard the building scream coming from inside the house. Ellen was in motion before either of the boys had identified the sound, but Dean was running after her as James hauled himself out of the car to follow.
- -
James nearly ran into Dean's back when he stopped sharply in the doorway to the small room at the back of what was on its way to becoming a bar. He apologised, but Dean didn't turn to look at him or give him any sign that he'd heard. Looking over Dean's shoulder, James found Ellen sitting on the side of a bed holding on to a tiny blond girl. She was maybe twenty at the most and thinner than was healthy, twisting and thrashing against Ellen's hands with a sharp keening noise that sounded like pain vocalised. A drip was hanging from a narrow shelf over the bed and as they watched, Ellen pulled away from the bed and dug a vial of colourless liquid from the drawer beside the bed. She pulled a syringe out of a medical bag that lay open on the table, wrenched the lid off the needle with her teeth and drew the contents of the vial into it, introducing the solution into the IV line in a manner that suggested long practice. She sat back down at the girl's side, pushing sweat-dampened hair away from her face as the pain killers took hold and she settled to soft murmurs that sounded like nothing in the sudden absence of screaming.
"Ellen?" Dean's voice sounded broken, harsh, but Ellen didn't look up at him. "What...?"
"She got herself a fist full of claws, few weeks back. Werewolf tore her up real good," Ellen replied.
"She's been like this for weeks?" Dean demanded, angry.
"Stupid girl finished the damn hunt, stitched herself up and moved on. I got a call when she wound up in hospital on the other side of the damn country. She's not been conscious since I got to her."
"Why's she not still in hospital?" James asked over Dean's shoulder.
"She's safer with me," Ellen replied in a tone that allowed no rebutal. "She was always safer with me."
- -
James wandered through the piecemeal bar, looking over the work being done and trying not to think of the girl in the unfinished house at the back who'd done her own stitches on a wound that looked like something had tried to cut her in half. He jumped when someone stepped up behind him out of no where and he span around to find Dean closer than was comfortable.
"I was just... I could do some work, while I was here," Jamses offered, scrabbling for an explanation for why he was wandering around a house that wasn't his, but that felt so welcoming even half finished. "I've not done anything like this before, but I know how. I mean..."
"Anything you can do for Ellen, you don't have to ask. Just do it," Dean replied slowly.
"Sure," James acknowledged with a sigh of relief. He watched Dean for a moment, realising he could smell booze, and that the other man was swaying unsteadily, balanced only by his hip up against the doorway. "Do you need..." he started to offer, only to be interrupted.
"What I need, is for this whole thing to be over. I was supposed to be the one to die, Sammy. Supposed to just... You were supposed to kill *me*."
James watched Dean sway wildly, talking to the air. His eyes slid to Ellen, standing in the doorway looking desperately tired. She met his eyes sympathetically, and then caught hold of Dean's shoulders and pulled him back down the hall. Seemed like she was playing everyone's mother tonight.
James took a seat at her bar - looking sad with tapless pipes sticking out of the ground and the wood unfinished. Ellen reappeared moments later, two bottles of coke in her hands, looking grimly amused. She took a seat at the bar beside him, sliding one bottle over to him.
"Go on then, ask your questions." Ellen waved away James' look of surprise. "I know Dean's been holding out on you, and a guy in your situation must have lots of questions."
"Who's Sammy?" James asked after a beat. She looked at him sharply.
"Don't hang around, do you. Going straight for the big guns." She sighed, running a hand through her greying hair and looking anywhere but at James' intense gaze. "Sam was Dean's brother. They travelled together a long time, closer than any two men I've ever seen. Sam took himself off the rails to kill something that was threatening everyone. Dean couldn't get him back after. Had to stop him."
"Stop him? Like... stop him, stop him?"
Ellen's eyes wandered to the scar on James' forehead. He felt her eyes there like a physical thing. "He shot him in the head, James," she answered flatly.
"His brother?" James asked, horrified.
"He didn't want Sammy to become something he would be ashamed of," Ellen said softly. "A monster. A danger to those around him. Knew that was the last thing Sammy wanted. All that kid wanted was a normal life. Guess that never was going to work out for them."
"Ellen.... why did Dean bring me here?"
Ellen met his eyes and sighed. "Dean always has needed someone to look after, someone who needed him. It's been a year now he's been without his brother. Looks like he's found someone he thinks needs looking after."
- -
James worked it out - the thing that had been niggling at him since Dean walked into his life - when Jo woke up for the first time. She looked up at the ceiling for the longest time, calm even though her eyes were clouded with pain. When Dean greeted her quietly, let her meet his eyes, she smiled like she expected him to be there. And then her eyes slid past him, into the shadows over his right shoulder. James stepped forwards and Jo's smile widened.
"Sam," she had mumbled. "Good, you're here. Dean will be better now." And she passed out again. James had fixed his gaze to the back of Dean's head, thoughts moving at a million miles an hour.
He'd thought about everything he'd heard, everything Dean had done for him. Thought about the look on Ellen's face when she stared at the scar on his forehead, about Dean when he'd laid his hand over it. About the tapes that Dean carried in his car, that Sam must have listened to so many times that they would be ingrained on his consciousness, far more than simple memory. It was so obvious now that Jo had explained it to him.
He was Sam. And now he was here, and he wasn't a monster any more, Dean would be fine again. Would be all right with his brother by his side. He could get better.
He could get better, and not be pale, tired and sleepless. Not be tormented. Not be alone.
James... no... Sam. Sam grabbed hold of Dean's arm and pulled him away from where Jo was sleeping - more comfortably now than before, even without the drugs she had been living on. He took Dean's arm and pulled him out into the yard. Pulled him up alongside the Impala and held him there, back against the passenger side door, staring up at him as if he could drag his missing memories out of his brother's eyes.
He was breathing heavily, as if he'd run a mile - five miles - but Dean was watching him with calm eyes. It wasn't until he stepped back slightly that James realised that Dean had a gun in his hand, half hidden by his thigh. Sam fixed his eyes on it, shocked. Of course - Dean had shot his brother, shot him to kill, because he'd been damaged. Because he'd been evil.
Sam gulped. Dean put the gun into the back of his jeans, slowly, bringing his hands back out in front of him open - as if to prove they were empty. Sam still couldn't meet his eyes.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked softly. His eyes felt hot, but no tears fell. Dean had *shot* him. His own brother.
"Tell you what?" The look on Dean's face as truly curious. As if he had no idea what Sam was asking. He was an actor, a con-man. Sam wasn't convinced.
"Fuck Dean. 'Sorry for shooting you in the head' might have been a good start. I know, okay? I know who you are. I know what you've been hiding from me. What, did you think I would go evil again, is that it?"
"James... what do you remember?" Dean asked slowly, gently, as if talking to a madman. Maybe it wasn't far off. Maybe this was how he'd always talked to his brother.
"I don't fucking remember. I worked it out, alright?"
"What did you...?"
"I'm Sam," he declared easily. "I'm Sam and you didn't expect me to wake up, so you just left me in that god-forsaken hospital like I meant nothing to you. And when I woke up, when you found me again - even then you can't talk to me like another human being. Hell, I'm supposed to be a monster, right? You didn't even tell me..."
Dean's eyes were clouded and distant. Hunter's eyes, as he pushed Sam out of the way and headed towards the New Roadhouse. "Get in the car," he spat back over his shoulder, without looking. "I'll be back."
Sam shuddered at the sharp tone, leaning back against the car door as his hands shook violently. Dean disappeared inside and Sam slid into the passenger seat of the Impala, pressing his hands between his knees to keep them from shaking.
He jumped when Dean got in to the driver's side, dropping his gun onto the seat between them.
"Where are we going?" he asked as Dean pulled out onto the dirt track back to the main road. Dean didn't reply, only put the music on loud enough to shake the car chassis.
They drove all day, non-stop. Dean didn't even glance in his direction, and Sam wondered if he was being taken somewhere to be shot again. Whether Dean would dump him out in the desert and drive away.
They stopped at a motel and Dean booked two single rooms, not a twin, throwing the second key at him without looking or checking that he'd caught it before disappearing into the other room. Sam considered running, not for the first time, but things were more resolved now that he knew who he was. He took the key and collapsed into the bed in the other room. Two sleepless hours later, he got back up and picked up the salt shaker on the sideboard, laying salt lines along the windowsill and door frame. He felt vulnerable without Dean beside him, armed. Eventually, he slept.
The next morning Sam woke before dawn, full of a gripping fear that there was someone missing, that he'd left someone behind. He felt empty inside. Cold and alone. The motel room was deadly quiet, no sound of breathing but his own. The air was sharp in the parking lot outside the motel, but he sat by the Impala's front wheel and watched the sky change colour.
Dean was all harsh lines when he came out of the room, pale skin and dark shadowed eyes. He glanced up at the car and then looked again when he spotted Sam sat there waiting. His jaw clenched - Sam could see the muscle tick in the bright early morning light. He walked up to the car and threw his bag into the back, the jangle of weaponry the only sound between them. Then he got in and gunned the engine, waiting only as long as it took for Sam to get in and close the door before pulling out of the carpark.
- -
They were walking down the corridors of a hospital, Sam wasn't entirely sure where. Dean had made him wait while he spoke to the receptionist, so he still didn't know what they were doing here. But he was scared. He'd never been more scared of Dean than he was right now.
Sam wondered if that was true. Wondered if he'd been afraid when his brother had turned a gun on him. Whether he'd seen it coming. Whether he'd felt betrayed.
They turned in to a ward and then Dean hesitated outside of a room. There were two dark marks - like scorch-marks - up the paint in the ward's reception area, and the area smelt distantly of rotten eggs, masked by excessive amounts of cleaning product.
Sam watched Dean steel himself, shoulders stiff and a brush of fingers over the concealed gun in the back of his jeans. He stepped into the room like he was going into battle, and Sam gave him a minute before following him in.
"You're still here?" Dean sounded strangled, shocked. Sam stepped further inside so that he could see around Dean to the other occupants of the room. There was a girl sat by the hospital bed. She had dark hair and skin so pale it looked almost translucent. When she looked up from the man laid out on the bed and her eyes met Dean's, they were filled with a kind of hatred that James had never seen before. The man on the bed was still, covered with monitors and tubes. On his forehead there was a puckered scar.
"Yes, Dean. I'm still here," the girl nearly spat back. "You were the one that ran off." She met James' eyes and her words stumbled to a stop. "You were the one who went to pick up a new puppy. One you hadn't broken yet," she snarled.
"Dean?" he asked, his voice shaking, world spinning around him. It felt like reality was breaking. He'd been *so sure*.
"James, go wait outside," Dean growled, not taking his eyes off the girl.
"Dean, is that Sam?" he pushed, needing to know.
"Yes, James," the girl replied for Dean, curling James' name into something unpleasant. "This is Dean's little brother, who he hasn't even *looked at* since he shot him in the head. This it the man you're replacing. This is your future."
"Ruby," Dean snapped.
"What? Are you saying it isn't true?" she asked in return.
James watched Dean's hands fist reflexively. "You were the reason Sam ended up here," he nearly retorted. "You."
"I was the reason Sam was strong enough to kill Lilith before she brought about the apocalypse." Ruby was nearly shouting, ignoring the attention they were calling to themselves. "It wasn't as if you were strong enough to do it."
"He was losing control, Ruby. He killed Bobby," Dean insisted.
Ruby made a strangled sound that might have been a laugh, but that made James wince, take a step back. "You're an idiot, you know that Dean? Bobby tried to grab Sam before he'd finished. He was getting rid of the power, purging it, cleaning himself out. When your unkempt friend grabbed him the power blew through him. I warned him. I *told* him, but hunters can't accept help from anyone, least of all me."
James, standing behind Dean, caught him automatically as his knees buckled, let them both sink to the ground. Ruby was knelt in front of them before he'd seen her move and for a minute James thought she might attack them, but instead she put a hand to Dean's forehead. The hunter flinched back so physically he knocked James into the hall, sprawling them both across the floor.
"When did you sleep last?" Ruby asked in a flat tone of voice, pulling James up and letting Dean find his own feet.
"He doesn't sleep," James answered for him. "Not for more than an hour at a time."
"I'm surrounded by idiots," Ruby muttered to herself, letting James pull away when he was stable on his own two feet. "What's your name, kid?" she asked as Dean moved to the wall, as far away from Sam as he could be in the same room.
"They called me James Hetfield," James replied, feeling hollow again as he remembered that the history he'd tried to claim as his own belonged to the guy in the bed in front of him.
Ruby gave him a long look, which he missed completely.
"He doesn't know his own name," Dean offered. "He doesn't remember anything. He thought he was Sam when Ellen told him..."
"You don't know who you are?" Ruby asked him, interrupting Dean.
"I know who I am, I just don't know who I was," James replied defensively, everything moving just a bit too quickly today to keep up. Ruby grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him forwards to stare at the scar on his forehead. James struggled to stay on his feet. Both of them froze when Dean's gun appeared under Ruby's chin.
"I'm looking at his head, dickwad. I know you're white night for all your adopted puppies, but this is embarrassing, even for you." Dean dropped the barrel of the gun to the bottom of her throat before pushing her away from James.
"You get the fuck away from him." Dean growled.
"Dean, go sleep somewhere," Ruby said, hands away from her sides and open to show that they were empty. "Sam's alive, still, and he's not some kind of psycho killer. James is safe, and he knows who he's not, now. He can go find his own family and get the hell away from your family curse."
"We're not cursed." Dean sighed, letting his gun drop to point at the ground. "Only Sammy thought that."
"Cursed or not, bad things happen around you two. Dean, ten different demons have attacked here in the last eight months, and I'm not counting the weak little shits that are trying to get famous. Sam can't defend himself, but he's still powerful. He still scares them. They worry he's going to wake up. You haven't been here to defend him."
"I've had things to do," Dean replied, almost petulant.
"Sam was the whining, emotional drunk, Dean. I didn't expect it from you."
"Fuck you, Ruby."
"Oh Dean, you know I only let Sammy do that," she replied with cotton-candy sweetness. She stepped around him carefully as Dean trained his gun on her again.
"Demon bitch," Dean hissed, but didn't look any more likely to shoot than he had a minute ago.
Wary, James muttered: "Dean, we're in a hospital. Put the gun away."
Dean's eyes flickered to Sam, then to James, and he walked out. Ruby caught hold of James' shirt again as he made to follow him out, and he resisted the urge to pull away. Ruby was staring at his forehead again, frowning slightly.
"What?" he demanded eventually.
"Where did you wake up?" she asked, voice more gentle now that Dean was gone. But still with that sharp edge of stress. He figured she probably wasn't sleeping much more easily than Dean, given her appearance. She'd said demons had been attacking the hospital. Trying to get to Sam. Why hadn't Dean been here?
James shook his head, trying to stop his thoughts spiralling out into a mess. He still didn't know who he was, and that brief glimpse of how it had felt to belong...
"Independence, Kansas," he managed eventually. "I worked on a farm there, but there was a demon..." Dean had said... He'd said 'demon bitch'. James met Ruby's eyes. "What are you, Ruby?"
"Independence isn't far from here, or from the First Site," Ruby mused. "You could still have come from there. There's something about you... it's like if I don't look directly at you I can't see you."
"What are you?" James pressed.
"I'm a demon, James. According to Dean, I'm the one who made Sam into a 'monster'." Ruby gave that same almost-painful chuckle. "I might have saved the world from the apocalypse, but I'm never going to get thanked for it. Because I'm a demon."
"What's the First Site?"
"It's where Lilith tried to bring Lucifer over from the other side. And Sam stopped her. There were angels and demons all in human vessels, and once it was all over all the angels and all the demons were gone. Some of the vessels survived. Lots of them didn't. There were too many hurt for just one hospital, so people got scattered all over the state. Sam ended up here." Ruby breathed for a minute, collected herself. "So did Dean, but he didn't wait around to make sure Sam was alright."
"Ruby... why didn't that demon kill me?"
"The mark on your forehead isn't a bullet scar, James. It's a thumbprint."
- -
James knocked on the door to the non-descript house and waited. It felt odd to be so independent, leaving Dean behind and Sam and Ellen and Jo and Ruby. He felt alone. Remembering that cold-emptiness, the void inside of him. But he needed answers.
The door opened and the guy inside looked entirely normal, friendly, smiling, sparing a curious glance to the scar on his forehead but no more.
"Hey there," he greeted, like they knew each other. "How's it going?" Maybe they had known each other. Maybe he was just a friendly guy. There was a teenager playing computer games with a boy on the sofa, and smells of dinner wafting through the house. The guy was wearing an apron. This felt too wrong.
"Hey..." the guy said again, as James was thinking about turning around and getting back in his rental car. "Are you alright?"
"I was looking for Jimmy," James managed. "Ruby sent me."
Jimmy tensed at Ruby's name. "Is Sam alright? I can gather the troops if there's trouble..."
James shook his head. "I just wanted to know..." he stalled, uncertain. "I don't remember. Anything. I don't..."
Jimmy smiled, friendly again. "Come inside. We'll talk."
- -
On the field of battle, they were moments from victory, and the angels could feel the tug upwards, even as those remaining demons felt the pull down.
"I can't stay," Nicolau told his vessel, whispered into his own ears. "I'm weakening."
"I was going to introduce you to AC/DC next." There was a hint of laughter in the voice that replied inside his own head. "Your education in classic rock is only in its infancy."
"I want to keep you safe," Nicolau exclaimed. "I don't want to leave you here alone."
The tug wa harder this time. Nicolau could hear his brothers singing with it. He turned with the last of his energy, separated from his vessel and watching him fall to the ground. He brushed his thumb across the vessel's forehead hurriedly, imprinting his protection there, into the very bone, even as he was dragged away.
He will never feel whole again.