Supernatural fic: there's a devil in a looking-glass
Title: there's a devil in a looking-glass
Author: Signe
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 21,190
Spoilers: For all of season 2 - this immediately follows All Hell Breaks Loose part 2.
Notes: The notes and credits got so long I've put them at the end. This is for tvm, with much love. The stunning cover art is by the very talented newkidfan - you can leave her feedback here.
part 2
prologue
She kneels beside her bed. "Lord, forgive me this weakness," she prays.
She's almost calm now, decision made.
Esther knows what it would be like. She saw her grandmother go crazy. Little things at first, eccentricities they thought. Joked about it even, grandmamma's funny ways. She drank nothing but boiled tap water for days - nothing else was safe. She made vulgar phone calls to friends and family and then denied all knowledge of them.
Then it wasn't funny anymore, not when grandmamma claimed her son was trying to kill her. She wouldn't let him in her house, even though he adored her. She made her husband promise that he'd greased the drainpipe so no one could climb in the bedroom window in the night. She'd go to sleep whimpering, begging him not to leave her even for a minute. She outlived her husband and her eldest son, and died scared of everyone, sad lonely shell of a woman.
Now Esther sees the same happening to herself; worse, sane one day and crazy the next.
So very fast, and who knows how long she has before she can't make decisions for herself, before she's a burden to Sony and SueLyn. They'd care for her, she knows, no matter what, and her choice is going to devastate them. She knows she's being selfish even, but once in her life every woman - even a wife, even a mother - has to do what's best for herself.
She tips a handful of pills into her palm, small innocuous white shapes, pours herself a glass of water, and forces herself to look up. She doesn't want to look - she wants to close her eyes, and she can feel the tears running down her face now, bites her lip to stop them. Blinks them back and looks firmly, fair and square at herself, at the image in the mirror.
In the mirror she's not crying. In the mirror, she's smiling, and her eyes don't meet her reflection, no matter how hard she looks. When she opens her mouth, her reflection's mouth doesn't. Everything looks wrong, the color not quite normal, shadows flickering when they shouldn't, lines and curves that make her eyes ache. Like those distorted mirrors at the circus that SueLyn used to love when she was little, the ones that make you looked twisted or fat or twice as tall. Like that, but less obvious, so she can't quite pin down what's wrong.
And then her reflection talks to her. Hello, Esther, it says, she'd swear to that on God's holy name. Her voice, but as wrong as the colors and the shadows.
It's enough to steel her. There's no sane explanation for what she's seeing. She tips some of the pills into her mouth and takes a gulp of water. Swallows, and she can feel them traveling down her esophagus, little hard lumps. Takes another mouthful, pills and water, and swallows again. What are you doing? the face in the mirror asks, and Esther could almost believe it sounds concerned. She ignores it and takes more pills, again and again until her hand is empty and there's no more water.
What have you done? asks the face, and she can't bear it. She throws the glass at the mirror. The glass smashes and the mirror cracks, the face fractured but still visible, so she wraps a towel around her hand and hits the mirror, over and over, until she can't see the face in it, or hear the voice.
Silence now, no voice in the mirror or in her head, or wherever it might be. She feels dizzy, but she knows that's in her head too. There hasn't been time for any of the pills to take effect. There's enough time for her to check the letters she's written her family, half truths, no mention of her madness - she can't bear the idea of SueLyn thinking this might be her future. There's enough time for her to lay down and look peaceful.
She's going to sleep now.
there's a devil in a looking-glass
Sam clings. And Dean-any other night, Dean would've elbowed him away by now. But Dean's holding on just as tight, as if he can't let go. Dean's nose is cold in the crook of Sam's neck and-
"Are you sniffing me?" Sam asks, and Dean says, "Fuck, no."
"You are too." Sam laughs, and then Dean says small voiced, "You smell alive," and the laugh dies right down in Sam's throat. He thinks about how he felt (how he didn't let himself feel) when he thought Dean might be dead, and he thinks about a year, and how long a year can be, and how short when it's the only one. He clutches the back of Dean's tee-shirt, balling it in his hands and holds on tight. Tighter. There's a catch in Dean's breath that they both pretend not to hear.
"Shoulda showered, man," Dean says. "You're rank," he says. Sam would throw back a joke about rotting and corpses, but everything dies on his lips. Thing is, near misses aren't so bad. Make your heart flip and your stomach flop, but everything's back in the right place afterwards. These weren't near misses. They've gone too far, tipped over the edge, and Sam's struggling to process that they're both living on deal time.
He scritches the soft skin above Dean's elbow, idly. Something to do with his fingers. He needs to trim his nails - hasn't been time, lately. All that ordinary stuff has either slipped their minds or gotten pushed way down the list of things they need to do. There's a patch of dried dirt on Dean's skin, and Sam picks at it, scrapes it off. Rubs it with his thumb afterwards till it's smooth again.
The bed's not half bad, firm but not too hard, no lumps or springs poking where springs shouldn't poke. Big enough, even with the two of them in it, and Sam can't remember the last time they shared a bed. Back when it was just the three of them and one motel room, and Dean always complained about Sam's elbows, Sam's cold feet and Sam's bony knees, until half the time one of them ended up sleeping on the floor. Now Sam stretches his legs out experimentally. His feet reach the edge, but don't hang over. It's a win.
"Quit wriggling," Dean says, and Sam flops around some more until Dean mutters, "Pain in the ass," and now it's definitely a win.
There are four pillows even, and not tiny hard ones, but generous soft ones, old fashioned feather-filled. Sam has three of them, and Dean hasn't complained or tried to steal them back. But then he's basically using Sam as a pillow, so maybe he hasn't even noticed.
Sam's shoulder aches. His back hurts too, though he's not sure if that's a real hurt or just his brain telling him it hurts because his spinal cord got severed and it's plain wrong that it wouldn't hurt. "Could've gotten that demon to fix my shoulder while she was at it," he says, and Dean grunts.
"Ungrateful little fucker," he says, and winces as he moves.
"Demon slammed you down pretty hard in that graveyard," Sam says. Dean shrugs his shoulders, but it's a slow careful shrug. "Need me to take a look?" Sam asks and Dean just humphs with annoyance.
"I'm fine," he says. He never does like being fussed over, always has to be the one doing the fussing. Another thing Sam's going to have to change, and he might as well start now, so he sits up a little, Dean still on his shoulder, and pulls up Dean's tee-shirt. "Sammy. Don't."
His back's a mess - purple the size of Canada. Makes Sam's scar look pretty mild.
"Seen worse," he says, habit winning out.
"Told you it was nothing."
"Shut up and go to sleep," Sam says, and rolls the tee-shirt down gently. Leaves his hands on Dean's waist, though, like he used to sleep with Jess sometimes, when she had cramps and wanted the comfort of him close. Dean doesn't push him away.
Sam goes out for food in the morning. Comes back to Dean pacing the room, wheeling on him as he comes in the door. "Couldn't even leave a note," he says, and he's got that look in his eyes, the one Sam always used to think was anger, but now he knows it means Dean's scared.
"On the mirror," Sam says, and Dean pokes his head into the tiny bathroom. Sam wrote a message in soap - couldn't find anything else to use - gone for coffee it says, and he's even signed it and all, Sam, in big loopy swirls at the bottom of the mirror. Dean barks a laugh and shakes his head and Sam knows he's forgiven.
"What you got in the bag?" Dean wants to know, and they eat until they can barely move. They eat an entire frigging pie that Sam bought for dinner, but he reckons they've missed enough meals it doesn't really matter what they call this one. Then they fall asleep, sprawled on their backs on the bed, and by the time they wake it's night and it doesn't seem worthwhile planning anything until the morning.
They're so tired, they make hazy suggestions of going out, but neither moves, and soon enough Dean's snoring. Sam gives him a shove (gentle) onto his side, and Dean grumbles but doesn't wake up, and the snoring dies down to an occasional muffled snort.
Sam thinks he ought to be able to fall asleep just as fast, but somehow it doesn't seem to matter that his eyes will barely stay open and his body's so exhausted he feels like he's sunk into the bed. Instead he goes over and over everything, the last year, trying to work out where they might have done something different. Stupid and pointless, and he curses himself for it, and it's not like he wants to find a moment to point to and say if only I'd gone left instead of right, or done this instead of that.
He gets up eventually, goes into the tiny bathroom and splashes cold water on his face. Looks up, and-For a moment, he thinks-He turns around to see if Dean's behind him, if he caught a glimpse of him moving in the mirror, if that's what it was.
No, it's just a trick of the light, him overtired and seeing things.
He shakes his head at himself, and goes back to bed, and this time sleep comes quickly enough.
By the time Dean wakes up, Sam's been out for coffee (four cups, one for Dean, three for him - he reckons Jeremy Bladcott's credit card can take it, even if it is over-priced crap), drunk his own three, and is eyeing up the last one. Snoozers losers, after all.
He lets himself get distracted by a local website though, www.mysteriouswyoming.org, and when he reaches out for the final cup without looking, Dean's hand bats him away.
"Sleeping ugly awakes then," Sam says, still scrolling down the page. It's the usual mess of myths and urban legends, the same sort of site he's seen over and over before. Hints of truth among superstition and old wives tales, but no differentiation between them. He can even guess the sort of chatter there'll be on the message boards, the user names and all. He doesn't want to take it even the least bit seriously, but. There's a breaking story, headlining the top of the page - Ghost in the mirror, it says.
Dean ignores him, and slurps coffee loudly. "Anything from Ash?" he asks.
Sam sighs. "No." He looks across at Dean. Doesn't tell him that the first thing he did when he got on line was check to see if there was an email from Ash, any sign whatsoever that he might have survived somehow, that the charred watch they found might have been someone else's.
"Guess he's really dead then." Dean takes another gulp of coffee, end of that conversation. No time to be sentimental.
Sam wonders if he should say anything about the ghost in the mirror story, but Dean jumps in first. "Seen anything on the new demons? We'd better make a start on getting them back to their nice, cozy little hell home."
"Give it time - probably won't be anything we can pinpoint as one of them for another day or two."
"In that case, Sammy boy, you'd better find some other demons for us to hunt. No way I'm hanging around here another day. I want me some action."
"Yeah, it's been a quiet week. You must be bored."
"Bored and hungry." Dean ignores the sarcasm. "What kind of person just gets coffee and nothing to soak it up with?"
"The kind of person who's up hours before his brother, who's damn well lucky there was any coffee left for him." Sam turns back to the website, seeing if anything about the new story might be more than just a hoax, or bored teenagers on their summer break.
"Scully would have brought Mulder donuts."
"Whatever, Dean." Sam's too distracted to pay much attention, and barely notices when Dean huffs, pulls on jeans and a shirt, and heads out.
Half an hour later, and the promising lead turns out to be nothing. It's like that most of the time, hoaxes and kids playing and things that turn out to be natural, not supernatural, but Sam feels the same frustration whenever he hits a dead end, even when he didn't want it to be anything real.
He stretches, pops his spine, stiff from a poor night's sleep and hunching over the laptop. He debates going out for a run, giving himself a buzz of energy, but Dean'll be back soon, hopefully with food, and the prospect of carbs wins out over fresh air.
Sam has a short list of options. Nothing desperately urgent, nothing very exciting, but right now that suits him. Dean might be raring to go, but Sam's all for a relatively quiet life, at least for a while.
He lists the options in approximate order of importance and then reorders them based on appeal to Dean. None of them are more than one state away, none of them look like they'll take them too long to handle, so Sam has no preference. Except he'd really rather not check out the one with the eyes.
"What you got?" Dean asks when his mouth's finally almost empty enough to talk. A spat out piece of dough lands on Sam's sweatpants leg anyway, and he flicks it away.
"A haunting in a high school, a possible tazel worm sighting, something that's stealing animal's eyes," - Dean perks up at the sound of that - "and spontaneous human combustion. Take your pick."
"Are the eyes just being taken, or eaten?"
"Do you have to sound like next thing you're going to be asking for is a recipe?"
"Just because you're a wuss. They're just eyeballs."
"Least I'm not afraid of flying." Sam sulks silently to himself. He might have known Dean'd go for that case. And it's not like Sam's got a good reason for not going with it. It's just. Eyes. "Says here no one knows what's going on, just that farmers keep finding cattle with their eyes removed. They've even been keeping guard at night, but it's still happening."
There are rites that involve fresh eyes, but if it were humans, chances are they wouldn't be able to keep sneaking in undetected. So, something supernatural. A ghostly eye-muncher. Lovely.
His phone vibrates against his thigh, a welcome distraction. He doesn't recognize the number, answers with a wary, "Hello?"
"Sam. You busy?"
It's Ellen, he mouths to Dean. "No, not in particular," he answers, for once hopeful that she's got something for him. Something that doesn't involve missing eyeballs.
"You boys haven't traveled far yet, have you? You're still near the devil's gate?" Ellen sounds eager for the answer to be yes.
"Yeah, sure, we were going to head off today, but we're still in Rock Springs."
"You seen the news today?"
"No. Why, what's up?"
"The newscasters are calling it an epidemic. Officials are playing it down of course. But a whole lot of people are going crazy, and it's all right around where you boys are."
"Crazy?" Sam asks.
"Seeing things that shouldn't be there. Some are checking themselves in, some are smashing up their homes and getting brought in. Some have killed themselves. We're checking out something that's been causing rockslides up north from Cedar Rapids, blocking roads and burying people, a group of Coblynau Bobby thinks, or we'd be on it."
"And you think the craziness has got something to do with the demons we let loose." Not a question.
He can practically hear the shrug at the other end of the phone. She doesn't need to answer. It's obvious.
"And, Sam-"
"Yeah?"
"One of them's an old friend, Esther Atkins. She and her husband used to live near Bill and me."
"And she's-?" Sam doesn't like to finish the sentence.
"She killed herself last night."
"Ellen, I'm sorry."
"She's got a daughter, 'bout Jo's age, a little older. And there's her husband - he'll be lost without her. I'll email you their address and number, so you can get in contact. Just." She sighs, sounds old for a moment, old and tired. "Just find whatever it is."
"We will. I promise."
"Hold on a minute," she says. "Bobby wants a word."
The sound of the phone being passed over. "Dean there?" Bobby asks, his usual lack of greeting.
"Sure."
Sam hands the phone over. "It's Bobby, for you."
"Hi, Bobby, what can we do you for?" Dean says, and then the flippant drains out of his face. He listens for a while, then hangs up, throwing the phone back to Sam.
"Everything okay?" Sam saves Ellen's new number, watching Dean as he does it.
"Peachy. So, we gonna take this case of Ellen's, or we gonna hunt down some eyeball crunching critter?"
"We'll save the eyeball thief for another day. We should check out the crazy people while we're here. It's personal. For Ellen."
"S'long as they don't peg you for one of them," Dean says, but Sam can tell his heart's not in it. He wants to ask what Bobby said, but he guesses that's on the list of things Dean's not going to be ready to tell for a while. And it's not like he's not keeping his own secrets.
Maybe one day they'll trade secrets. And maybe one day they'll sit and paint each other's toenails pink and listen to The Pipettes.
He takes his time in the shower, letting hot water pulse into his scalp, wash away all the buzz and commotion in his head.
He's half-hard, but he looks down at himself reluctantly, doesn't touch. His balls ache, but he needs something more than his own hand, some touch that can surprise him. Full body touch. He thinks of Jess, and he thinks of Madison, but he can't imagine their touch any more, can't even get their images clear in his head. He only has one photo of Jess (her father gave it to him at the funeral - she's laughing in it) and none of Madison (they didn't want to risk being caught with any trace of her), and they're both fading away. He's trying to hold on, closes his eyes and tries to picture either of them, Jess waving at him across the library, Madison tipping her basket of underwear on the table in front of him, Jess on her knees swallowing him down, Madison arching underneath him. But none of it feels real any more. Feels less real than his nightmares.
When he tries to feel the weight of either of them in his arms, all he can remember is Dean tucked up against him.
He turns the water to cold after a while, and stands without flinching. Until he's shivering and miserable.
Sam's searching through papers on John Dickenson's desk. Bills, memos to himself, a shopping list, scribbled phone numbers, the ordinary minutiae of an ordinary life. Nothing to explain what happened to him.
"A hand here, Sammy, if you've got nothing better to do," Dean grunts, loud enough for Sam to hear from the study. His tone's more urgent than the words. Sam knows what that means.
He runs full pelt back into the front room to find Dean laid out on his back, a burly man holding a six inch knife perilously close to Dean's face. Not the owner of the house they're checking out - he's about a foot shorter, easily a hundred pounds lighter, and currently checked into Ivinson Memorial Hospital over in Laramie.
They'd come here hoping to find some evidence of whatever it was that had sent John Dickenson fleeing to the safety of a psychiatric ward. He'd sounded like a typical case, and he was single, lived alone, so they'd let their guard down searching the house. Hadn't even locked the door after themselves. Rookie error.
Sam curses.
"You're not real," the guy says, "so if I kill you, it ain't gonna matter." He shakes his head, looks nervous, but his grip is strong and steady and Dean's clearly beginning to lose the fight. Sam swallows, thinking quickly.
"It'll matter to me," Dean says. He's straining to keep the knife from getting any closer, but he's at a disadvantage, weight and gravity against him.
"Nothing matters. Nothing's real." The man's practically wailing, eyes big with fear, forehead sweaty with it. The worst kind of enemy to deal with is a scared one - Sam learned that long ago.
"We can help you," Sam says softly.
"No, no, no." The man is screaming now, and if they're not careful neighbors are going to be showing up soon. Or, worse, a sheriff who reads the FBI's most wanted list.
"Sammy," Dean says, warning, and Sam understands. There's no reasoning here; the guy's too far gone into crazy land.
Sam circles around. He doesn't want to grab the guy from behind - too much chance one of them will slip, and Dean's only an inch (and falling) away from having his face sliced wide open.
The guy doesn't even seem to notice Sam now, even though he's standing right in front of him - Sam's not sure if that's good or bad. He drops to his knees behind Dean and grabs the man above meaty wrists, twisting and yanking the knife hand away. There's a snapping sound, bone breaking, a sound Sam knows far too well, and the knife drops out of his hand with a clatter on the stone floor. The man continues oblivious to Sam, even when he shoves him away.
Dean jumps to his feet. There's a knick on the back of his hand - the knife must have caught him a glancing blow - and it's dripping red on the floor. Sam makes a mental note to clean it up before they leave. They've left the FBI enough DNA to have their own evidence shelf - no need to go giving them any more.
The man's muttering now, curled in on himself on the floor. He looks half his size, his bulk pitiful. Sam bends over him, tries to catch what he's saying.
"You're not real. You're not real. You're not real."
"Why don't you think we're real?" Sam tries. "Have you seen something? You can tell us, we'll believe you," he says, but the guy won't look up at him, just hunches over, shaking his head and repeating his chant. All the fight's gone out of him.
"What're we going to do with him?"
"Guy tries to kill me, and you're worried about him. You really are a fricking bleeding heart, Sam." There's no malice in Dean's words though, and Sam knows he's concerned too.
"Yeah, well, we can't just leave him here."
"We can, and we will." Sam glares at Dean, who shrugs. "Okay. We'll phone 911 when we're out of the way - he'll be fine until the paramedics get here."
Interviewing crazy people isn't going well, and Sam desperately wishes they'd managed to get a hold of Esther's daughter this morning, instead. No one else has tried to kill them again though, so at least it's not going that badly, but they're not getting any answers either. Some people won't talk, eyes blank and dim like headlights running on a dead battery, minds lost. Others won't stop talking, words like an ugly Dali landscape that makes Sam's head ache. Sam's been making notes, trying to see if he can piece together any sense at all out of the jumble they've been hearing, but he's not finding a pattern yet. There's no discernable pattern in those affected - they're from all around the area, young and old, men and women, all backgrounds, races, colors.
They're going to have to leave soon - the nurse at the central station is throwing suspicious glances their way, and their hastily mocked up id cards (Dr. Derringer and Dr. Travers, with CRMC behavioral health services) won't stand up to close scrutiny. Sam reckons they've got fifteen minutes tops, before she starts asking questions they won't be able to answer, and security get called.
As if he can read Sam's mind, Dean says, "Just one more. There's a girl in room 215, a school teacher. Came in this morning, according to reception."
"Let me guess. She's pretty. And you want to work the suit and glasses look with her."
Dean looks offended. Tries to, anyway, just doesn't carry it off very well.
"How would I know, I haven't seen her yet. And it's entirely irrelevant. Besides," he says, "I don't date crazy chicks." He pauses. "Not after that last time."
"What last time?" It's the first Sam's heard of this. Even though hearing Dean's dating stories makes him oddly uncomfortable, he has to ask. And if it's a bad story-at least those he always likes and stores up for future use.
"No time now, we're on the job." Dean smirks, the look he gives when he knows he's getting away with a particularly pathetic excuse. Sam bites his tongue, no time to react now. And he's promised himself that he won't let Dean rile him, won't argue so much, however hard it gets. He argued with Dad, accused him, and-He shakes his head and gets himself back on track.
"You go chat with her, see what you can get out of her. I'm gonna go see that patient out in the garden again."
"What, the one who was hitting on you? Guess he had quite a nice ass, if you go for the tall lean type."
"Nice shoulders, too, bet he works out a lot," Sam says as he walks away. He hears Dean splutter, and feels ridiculously pleased with himself.
It's obvious once he gets it. Once he works out that the common factor isn't so much that they're seeing things, but that they're seeing things behind them, which means they were looking in a mirror, something that no one actually mentioned.
He's about to tell Dean, when Dean drum rolls on the steering wheel and announces, "Mirrors. That's what it is." He's beaming wider than the grand canyon, genuinely happy, and Sam can't help but nod and smile and give him the credit on this one, because seeing Dean happy, well, it kind of makes Sam happy, too, ridiculous as it sounds.
It's only one step, though. "What do you think they're seeing?"
"Something scary, that's for sure, if it's sending them insane."
"Can't be anything like Bloody Mary, not on this sort of scale and range. And not affecting such a wide variety of people."
"What about things like her?"
"Such as?"
"I dunno. You're the research guy, you tell me."
"There are lots of urban legends about mirrors, but none that seem to fit this case. Thing is, the location, it has to be related to the demons escaping from the devil's trap, right?"
"Yeah. I don't believe in coincidence."
"So." Sam stops and thinks, adds up what he has, tries to make two and two equal four. "So, what if some sort of mirror demons came through? And they've gotten into mirrors around here, and that's what people are seeing."
"There are mirror demons?"
"Gotta be, right. I mean, there's a demon for just about everything."
"Well, it's weak, but it's something. You got a mirror on you, Bonnie?"
"Yeah, sure, because I'm the chick here." Sam glares. "No, Dean, I don't have a mirror. Look in the rear view if you want to check yourself out."
"Huh," Dean says.
"You hadn't even thought of the car mirrors, had you?" Sam laughs.
Dean lifts his hand up to the rear view mirror.
"Idiot," Sam says, and puts his arm up to block Dean. "At least pull over first - if you're going to go psycho, I'd rather you weren't driving."
"I was going to twist it around for you to look in. But then I guess the difference might not be so obvious," Dean counters, but pulls over onto the grass verge.
He twists up in the seat and peers into the mirror. Makes faces, talks to the mirror, and seems totally unconcerned that he looks like a complete moron.
"So, feeling crazy yet?"
"Nope. You want a go?"
"I'll pass, thanks. But-" Sam pauses, remembering. Not sure if it's something worth mentioning or not.
"But what?" Dean's all business now. "Spit it out."
"Last night. I went to the bathroom, and, well, it's not like I was sure I'd even seen anything, let alone what I'd seen. But, it was weird."
"What was weird?" Dean interrupts.
"I thought I saw something, someone maybe, moving in the mirror. I looked up, and thought it must be you behind me, but when I turned around there was no one there, and when I looked back at the mirror, there was only me there. I thought it was just a trick of the light, or me being tired or something. But maybe it was related."
"Doesn't exactly sound enough to send someone mad, even someone as delicate and girly as you."
"But what if that was just the start? And once, you can brush something like that off. But if it keeps happening, if you keep seeing something that isn't there-"
Dean turns the engine on again. "Better get back and check out that mirror again."
Sam leans back as they speed up, stretches out a kink in his back, and tries to remember as much as he can about mirror lore.
They look at themselves in the bathroom mirror for far too long. Nothing happens. Sam memorizes the pattern of crackles in the glass, and Dean makes faces, as ugly as he can. It's a skill he has, learned from long hours entertaining themselves in the back seat of the car.
"You'll scare any demon away, looking like that," Sam says.
Dean flips him the bird, and tries another twisted face. Pursed lips and eyebrows raised, duck face.
They try being alone in the room, each of them in turn. They try turning the bathroom light off, and then the bedroom light, so all they can see by is the dull amber light coming from outside the bedroom window.
They sit on the floor with their back to the mirror, Dean impatiently tapping his thigh while Sam holds out his hand in a waiting gesture. Dean glares at Sam, silently, and Sam shakes his head. Not yet, give it time. Then he counts down, three fingers, two, one. And they turn around.
Still nothing.
"This isn't gonna work, and my ass is numb." Dean stands up and wriggles his ass in Sam's face. "I vote we give up for tonight."
"We can hit the library in the morning - I'll check out where the nearest decent one is." Sam stretches too, easing the kinks out of his back.
"You can. I'll try and hit something more interesting. Like this daughter of Ellen's friend." Dean raises his eyebrows suggestively, and Sam sighs. Still, research usually goes more quickly without Dean's special brand of help. Besides, he wants to research more than just potential mirror demons, and though he's not going to keep that secret from Dean, exactly, he's not going to announce it all the time either, not until he has something good to tell.
Sam slips out of the motel later that evening. "I'm getting ice," he tells Dean, but barely gets a reaction. Dean's concentration is one hundred percent fixed on the TV screen, a Law and Order marathon. Watching how the opposition works.
He has Bobby on speed dial two now (Dean's number one, of course, always has been, even while he was at Stanford and never used it). It goes straight to voicemail, same with Ellen, and Sam clenches his fist in frustration. He doesn't leave a message, doesn't want either of them phoning back when he's with Dean. Instead he leans against the wall, closes his eyes and just takes a moment. He has 362 days to save Dean, and he's got nothing yet, hasn't even had a chance to start working it out. Doesn't matter how many demons are out there or how much Dean wants to focus on them, Sam's got to find time to sort this out. He failed Jess. He couldn't save his dad. He's damn well going to save Dean no matter what it costs.
"Machine empty?" Dean asks as he walks in the room, even though he hasn't looked up. Sometimes Sam forgets how observant he is, even when he doesn't seem it.
"Yeah," Sam lies, and flops down on the bed. Closes his eyes, and hopes that's enough to stop Dean asking anything else. He falls asleep to the familiar voice of Jack McCoy.
Dean's bags are packed in the morning, the room cleared of anything that might be useful, as long as it'll fit in a duffle.
"Don't want to stay in the same place too long," Dean says, but he drops his eyes as he says it, and Sam knows he's lying. Just can't pinpoint why.
Doesn't get it when they're traveling east along Interstate 80, steady just under the speed limit. They pause at Rawlins, but Dean comes back without a key. "Daylight robbery," he claims, "Bet there were roaches in the beds," and drives onto the next decent sized town. They pull off at exit 310, pull up outside a stark new Super 8 and Sam offers to get the room. "I'll go," Dean says, and he's out of the car before Sam can even begin to argue that it's best if Dean stays out of sight when possible.
Doesn't get it until they're in the room, and Dean throws his bag down on the nearest bed, claiming it. Two beds here, and Sam realizes that Dean's been keeping his distance the last couple of days. Ever since they fell asleep lying closer than they had since they were children and sleeping like puppies huddling for warmth was normal. Nothing too obvious, just more space between them, and Sam feels his stomach clench. Feels a tinge of something like disappointment that he doesn't understand.
He unpacks his bag, sets up his laptop, and doesn't say anything while he searches for local libraries.
The library's on the corner of Eighth and Grand, crammed into a newish building that must have been too small from the start, a hodge-podge of rooms and alterations, old furnishings mingling with new. Sam loves libraries like this: forgotten books that never get checked out aren't sold, they just gather dust waiting for him. He hits pay dirt with an entire section on the supernatural, a row of old books on the top shelf. There are old favorites, which he ignores for now, familiar with their contents, and then there are some he's never seen before. He pulls out A Book of Travellers' Tales - there's an inscription on the inside. A gift to the town of Laramie, 1837. The year after the Battle of the Alamo, the time Samuel Colt must have been planning his trap, and Sam exclaims in delight. There's no name on the inscription, but he wouldn't be surprised if Colt, or a colleague, hadn't had something to do with the collection.
He runs his fingers along the titles: Universal Cosmography, Knowle's Bestiary, Mirrors, Ghosts and Man. Pulls out that last one, along with a couple of others, and sits down at a desk crammed in a little alcove. The sun streams down on him from an open window above the desk, catching the dust as he settles the books in a pile in front of him.
He loses track of time, and jumps when there's a hand on his shoulder.
"You hungry, yet, research boy?"
Sam's about to answer no, but his stomach answers for him, loudly. He has to show Dean the notes he's made so far, though.
"It says here that barriers between different hells-"
Dean interrupts. "There's more than one hell?"
"Yeah, every world has its own hell, its own heaven, everything really."
"Huh. Nice thought."
"Yeah, well, thing is, the barriers between hells are weaker than the barriers between worlds - there's so much supernatural activity there, so much power I guess. So while it's very rare that people can travel from one world to another, creatures do sometimes travel from one hell to another, sometimes intentionally, sometimes by accident." Dean yawns, pointedly, so Sam skips the details. "So demons that don't belong in our hell or our world could have entered through the Devil's Gate. Like mirror demons, which belong in the mirror world."
"What?" Dean interrupts. "There's an actual mirror world? You mean Roddenberry got it right? Mmm, bare midriffs," and Dean sighs in appreciation at the image.
"I doubt all the women in the mirror world are half dressed, Dean."
"Shame. Uhura looked damn good in Mirror, Mirror."
Sam rolls his eyes. "It talks about the mirror world right here," and Sam points to a bookmarked page. "A world like ours, but a mirror image. Not some evil version like Star Trek's. It's a bit hazy on some of the most relevant details though - we need to know more."
"And, what, they'd try to get back into their own world? That'd be why they're showing up and appearing to people in mirrors? It's just them getting back into their own world?" Dean's pacing up and down behind Sam, boots squeaking loudly on the wooden floor.
"If that's what's happening." Sam shrugs. "Could be that they don't like being in this world, if they're not meant to be here. Like being an oxygen breather on a methane world. So it'd make sense that they'd head straight for mirrors to get back into their own world."
"There are a lot of people going crazy, though," Dean says doubtfully. "I mean, how many demons are we talking here? We didn't let that many out. You said it was a hundred. Two hundred, tops," he says, as though it's Sam's fault. "They can't all be mirror demons."
"It was a guess, Dean," Sam snaps. "It's not like I'm the only one to blame for all this."
"Okay, don't get your panties in a twist. I'm not blaming you," Dean says, though Sam rather thinks he is. "It's just the whole thing doesn't fit."
Sam grimaces. "Yeah, it's not a perfect theory. I might give Bobby a call later, see if he's got anything to add."
"Maybe they can appear in multiple mirrors at one time?"
"No, that's not possible. Said something about it in this book here." Sam twists around and holds the book up for Dean to take, but he squints at it for a second then waves it away.
"Give me the short version," he says.
"You need glasses, don't you?"
"Hell, no." Dean looks horrified at the very idea. "I just don't see the point in reading ten pages of rambling, when I have you to do that."
"Okay, it says they only have one body, one image, in the mirror world, so they can only show up in one place. They might be visible in several mirrors in the same room, just like us, but they can't be seen in mirrors in different locations. The world is different, but a lot of the rules are the same. Just a bit-skewed."
Sam picks up the piles of books, Mirrors, Ghosts and Man on the top. He debates with himself for a moment, then looks around. There's no one in sight, so he slips it into his backpack. Puts the others neatly back in their place on the shelf, and silently thanks whoever donated them all.
"Well, goody two shoes Sammy's stealing books from a public library. Shocking," Dean says.
"Yeah, because that's gonna move me up a notch on the FBI's most wanted list." He sees a spark of guilt on Dean's face and bites down on his irritation. "Food, now," he says.
He leaves a message on Bobby's phone, succinct as possible, summarizing what they think is happening, and asking for more information. Dean's on the phone to SueLyn when Sam hangs up, looking awkward as he offers condolences.
"If it's all right. In an hour then? Good." Dean clicks his phone shut, and opens the car door. "SueLyn wants us to come around. Think she'll give us lunch?"
"Dean." Admonishes.
"Okay, just, you know, she might have had a stack of casseroles from the neighbors to use up. Be glad to get rid of one."
"We're going there to help her, not for free food."
"You've still got a lot to learn. But Iron Skillet it is."
SueLyn's padding barefoot around her small front yard when they pull up, dust up her brown legs and around the hem of her skirt. She comes and leans over the gate, two dogs snuffling around beside her. Warm face, sad eyes - Sam likes her instantly, feels for her.
He offers his hand, but she stands on tip-toe and pulls him into an easy hug, then Dean. They follow her into the house, and Dean looks across at Sam.
Dude, he mouths. Sam smiles, but shakes his head, warning.
She curls up on the sofa, feet under her, and waves them to sit down. "Sorry Dad's not here - he runs a pharmacy and he couldn't really close up two days running. It's the only pharmacy in town," she adds.
"We were really sorry to hear about your mother," Sam says.
SueLyn nods, tight curls falling out of wooden clips. "Mom was a strong woman. I know she wouldn't just have killed herself, especially when things were going so well. She'd gotten through breast cancer, and even when she was at her weakest she didn't give up, never gave any sign that she'd give up. And she's been in remission for over a year now, doing well. So no way would she suddenly kill herself, not for any normal reason." SueLyn pauses, looks as though she's trying to find the right words. "I don't know much about what Ellen and Bill were involved in. I was only a kid back then, but Jo dropped hints of some odd stuff sometimes - I used to think she was making things up. But now, well, there's enough weird stuff going on in town that suddenly it didn't seem so unbelievable."
"That's why you phoned Ellen?"
"Yeah. I mean, I wanted to let her know about Mom anyway. They kept in touch, even when we moved away, Christmas cards, and I knew Ellen would want to know. But when I got talking to her, she started asking questions, and-" SueLyn shrugs. "She told me you two were friends of hers and you might be able to find out what happened. And, I know this is going to sound cowardly, but I'm scared it might happen to Dad, or to me, whatever it is."
Dean leans across, puts his hand on hers. "We're not going to let anything happen to you."
Sam just hopes they can keep that promise.
Bobby phones back later that day, and Sam puts him on speaker so Dean can listen in and drive at the same time.
"You want the good news or the bad," Bobby asks gruffly.
"Bad," says Sam.
"Good," says Dean, simultaneously.
They look at each other and shrug.
"Just give it to us, Bobby," Sam says.
"It's quite likely that there's just the one mirror demon gotten through. There's no reason to think there would be more, anyway."
"But there are dozens of people affected that we know of, and there must be more we don't know of yet. You're saying one demon caused all that?"
"No, I'm saying the demon might not have caused any of it."
Sam's feeling lost now, and judging by Dean's expression, he is too. "Care to explain?"
"What do you know about the Yellow Emperor?"
"He's yellow? And an emperor?" Dean offers.
"I'll take that as nothing." Bobby pauses, and they can hear muffled coughing.
"You okay, man?"
"Yeah, it's nothing, just a night in the woods ain't agreeing with my chest. So, the Yellow Emperor. It's all legend, but that's been true often enough, so don't knock it yet. And the Yellow Emperor existed all right, it's no once upon a time wishy washy stuff. Story has it, before his time, our world and the mirror world weren't cut off - people could go from one to the other. Then the mirror people invaded our world, and it took some darn powerful magic to send them back and imprison them in their mirror world. The Yellow Emperor's spell took it one step further: he didn't just imprison them in their world, he made them repeat all our actions. Made them slaves, close enough."
"You're saying our reflections-?"
"Are mirror people."
"But-"
"I know, Sam. Science explains it differently. But you've seen enough to know science ain't always the truth."
"It's just hard to take in, that's all," Sam says.
"But what's this Yellow Emperor's spell got to do with anything?" Dean asks, and then, "Idiot," he shouts, and gives the finger to a driver who's just pulled out in front of him.
"Ignore him," Sam says. "He just doesn't approve of other drivers coming within fifty feet of his baby."
Bobby carries on. "If a mirror demon's gotten back into his own world, chances are the spell'd have no affect. So, think like a demon - what're you gonna do? You're gonna wake people up, cause trouble, that's what. 'Course, it'd take time, and they'd be slow for a while, because no creature is just going to snap out of a spell like that, one that's lasted thousands of years."
"So people would be seeing themselves," Sam interrupts, "their mirror selves, breaking free from the spell and not mirroring their actions any more."
Sam tries to imagine it, the shock it would cause. Enough to send people mad, if they had no idea what was happening. Which, of course, they wouldn't.
"Exactly."
"Crap. So we've got to stop this mirror demon waking anyone else up."
"No shit, Sherlock."
Dean glares at him. Sam knows he's being snappy today, just can't seem to help it.
Bobby interrupts. "It's a bit more than that, boys."
"How?" Dean asks.
"For one thing, you're going to have to bring it back into our world to destroy it, far as I can see. Trying to affect it while it's in the mirror world'd be near impossible for anyone from this world."
"I'm taking it we can't just reach in and grab it back?" Dean says.
"We'll need to condense it into solid form and bring it back through a mirror," Sam tells him.
"Yeah, that's right. How'd you know?"
"Found an old book, all about mirror lore and stuff," Sam says, and wonders again about the donor, how much he knew, how much he might have anticipated.
"And that's the easy part."
"The easy part?" Dean splutters. "And the hard part is what exactly?"
"Even after the demon's dealt with, there are going to be mirror people still awake, and that's going to cause chaos." Bobby coughs again, an angry sound like wasps swarming, but carries on regardless. "We're going to have to reapply the Yellow Emperor's spell."
"But won't that just be a case of casting a spell?" Sam asks hopefully, even though his gut is telling him no.
"Sure. But I haven't been able to find any details of the spell yet. I'll keep looking, but it's old, not been used for at least three and a half thousand years, and-"
Bobby peters out, and lets them fill in the gap. Not many records survive that long, and what few do are rare, hard to decipher, and patchy at best. Finding hints about the spell might be possible, but finding it in its entirety is going to be one of the hardest tasks they've ever set themselves.
"I'll be heading your way tomorrow," Bobby says. "Ellen wants to go up and see Jo, and I reckon three heads would be better than two on this one."
Sam agrees, tells Bobby where they're staying, and hangs up.
He looks at Dean.
"No rest for the wicked, huh," Dean says.
It's six days since he learned secrets about himself that he doesn't want to believe, five days since he died, four since he came back to life and Dean basically gave up his. Three nights since they held each other like they couldn't let go. And now every waking moment is spent dealing with the case, researching and interviewing. There's been no spare moment for dealing.
Sam thinks they need to deal. Dean, he's gonna guess, doesn't.
Sam's gotten better at lying. Both of them have these last few months. Least ways, Sam thinks Dean's gotten better. It's hard to tell. Dean looks him in the eyes and says things, strings together words and sentences that Sam knows are lies, knows must be lies, but there's no hesitation, no ducking his head or even a twitch of his eye. None of the old tells are there when it comes to the important things, and Sam used to know every last one of them.
Sometimes pushing works. Like finding out about the deal. Other times Dean'll just push back, physically if he's in that kind of mood, and Sam won't learn a thing.
It's not like Sam wants an evening of touchy-feely sharing - he's got balls too, no matter what Dean might imply at times. It's not that at all. It's just. And here Sam comes to a halt, because if he doesn't want that, what does he want? It's either one thing or the other, no middle ground that he can see. Either they talk, and they tell the truth, or they don't. Simple. Black and white. Not much else in their life as simple as that set of options, come to think of it.
He's got a headache. They're out of Tylenol (he's checked) but Dean bought a six pack earlier. Not the smartest alternative to painkillers, but at least they'd help him sleep. It'd shut up this maddening dialogue in his head until tomorrow, and who knows, maybe everything will look different in the morning.
That'd be the easy way, and fuck it all, sometimes all Sam wants is easy. Why he's sitting on the narrow bed opposite Dean and looking him in the eye and opening his mouth to say something, anything, he has no idea. Sometimes he thinks he's actually really dumb under all the smart.
"What're you really thinking, Dean?" Yeah, Sam thinks. Really, really dumb.
It's almost worth it for the look of total astonishment on Dean's face, the way his jaw drops. Doesn't last long, though - a wary, irritated look replaces it in a second, and the question's thrown back at Sam.
"What do you mean?"
"We never talk these days."
"We talk all the time. You hardly ever shut up."
"Not about the stuff that really matters. Not about you signing your life away for me."
"Nothing to talk about. Done deal, and I'm not gonna regret it."
Sam wants to prod, wants to find some way of getting under Dean's skin, something sharp enough to crack him open, and it horrifies him that he wants that, wants Dean raw and open, but he can't seem to help it. So he keeps going, even if it's the stupidest thing he's done in his life, because he needs to make Dean angry and hurt. And open.
"So, what, you're cool about having, how many days is it left now? I make it three hundred and sixty. You're perfectly happy to leave me behind?"
"Is that what you think, huh, Sammy?" There's a brittle tone in Dean's voice, spring ice breaking. Sam just needs to keep going.
"What else am I supposed to think?"
"That maybe I didn't have a choice. That you're my baby brother, Sam. This is how it goes, and no matter how big you get, you're always going to be my baby brother. It's the law, and you can't go against that. And, besides, there's the good side. Once I'm gone, the feds won't be such a problem, and-"
"Dean, are you really that stupid? You really think I'm going to sit here and listen to you tell me all the plus points of you dying?" Sam's clenching his fists, barely able to stay sitting down. He wants to grab Dean by the shoulders and shake him, make him see sense, hold him until he sees how much Sam can't do without him. How much Sam loves him.
And there's the rub. Because Sam's beginning to get an idea that maybe he can't tell Dean how much he loves him. That it's too much. More than Sam can even make sense of.
He doesn't realize he's crying until he feels a splash on the back of his hand and Dean puts a hand awkwardly on his shoulder, holds him. He closes his eyes, tries to hold it in, but his throat is burning and he's been bottling up the hurt and now it's spilling out whether he wants it to or not.
"I'm not cool about it, Sam. It's just, I can't regret it either. And I'm not giving up, because I know you, and I know you're a tenacious bugger, and if there's any loophole, you're gonna find it, and I'll be around to plague your sorry ass a whole lot longer."
Sam smiles, sniffs back the tears, and nods and says, "You bet.".
They phone SueLyn later and suggest she covers up the mirrors in her house.
"You know what's going on, then?" she asks, bright and hopeful, voice shining with relief.
"Pretty much," Sam says, and hopes he'll be forgiven the half truth.
"And covering the mirrors will keep us safe?"
"Should do, yes," Sam says. For now, at least, but he doesn't say that out loud.
Sam's no sooner hung up than his phone is ringing, Bobby's ID on the screen.
"Change of plans," he says. "I'm gonna head home first, see if there's anything there can help us find this spell. Should be with you in a couple of days."
"Okay, I'll tell Dean," Sam says, but Bobby's already hung up.
"Tell me what?"
"Bobby's gonna see if any of his books or buddies back home will help us with this spell, so we won't see him for a day or two."
Dean doesn't say anything, just looks relieved.
Sam starts awake. He's alert in an instant, eyes open, but there's nothing he can see or hear to explain why he's woken up. He thinks he was dreaming, but he doesn't remember anything, just a vague sense of lingering relief.
It seems strange to feel relief. They're tracking a demon they've still not seen and that doesn't even belong in their world, they need a spell that's going to be hard, at best, to find, and Dean's going to die in less than a year if Sam doesn't do something about it. On that thought, the relief grows stronger, and he manages to take hold of a fragment of his dream. A crossroads demon, making a deal. A mirror crossroads demon, a different deal. Sam dealing. This time with the upper hand.
And that's it. Sam has an idea, and it's tenuous at best, depending on far too many ifs and maybes, but it might just save Dean.
He raises himself quietly up on one elbow and looks across at Dean. He's sleeping, his back to Sam, slightly hunched up under the bedclothes and not sprawled out like he usually sleeps. For a second Sam considers crawling in behind him, then shakes his head in disbelief at himself. None of the craziness in Sam's head is important. If he can just save Dean, that's all that matters.
"I wonder when our reflections are going to start waking up?" Dean's cleaning his teeth, talking through a mouthful of toothpaste. "It'll make shaving tricky." He spits loudly and gargles.
"Grow a beard," Sam suggests from the other room.
"Hmm, might do that. Think it'd suit me?"
"It'd hide your face, so yeah."
"And chicks dig beards, the mature look. It's freaky, though, anyway, this whole our reflections not being our reflections thing. I mean, what are they, like, watching us all the time? But not us?"
"They must be us in most ways, though, mirror images of us."
"So if I fuck a chick in front of a mirror, they get to do the same. Huh. Your mirror image must be pretty pissed off at never getting any, unless he's as much of a monk as you."
Sam gets a sudden image of him fucking Dean in front of a mirror, his tan fingers pressed into pale hipbones, Dean wild and panting in front of him, and starts, shocked. Sits down on the bed, thankful that Dean's in the other room. Presses shaking fingers into his closed eyes, trying to black out the image, but it's there now, and he's getting hard from it, hard from the thought of fucking his own brother.
Just when Sam thinks their lives can't get any more fucked up.
part 2
Author: Signe
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 21,190
Spoilers: For all of season 2 - this immediately follows All Hell Breaks Loose part 2.
Notes: The notes and credits got so long I've put them at the end. This is for tvm, with much love. The stunning cover art is by the very talented newkidfan - you can leave her feedback here.
part 2
prologue
She kneels beside her bed. "Lord, forgive me this weakness," she prays.
She's almost calm now, decision made.
Esther knows what it would be like. She saw her grandmother go crazy. Little things at first, eccentricities they thought. Joked about it even, grandmamma's funny ways. She drank nothing but boiled tap water for days - nothing else was safe. She made vulgar phone calls to friends and family and then denied all knowledge of them.
Then it wasn't funny anymore, not when grandmamma claimed her son was trying to kill her. She wouldn't let him in her house, even though he adored her. She made her husband promise that he'd greased the drainpipe so no one could climb in the bedroom window in the night. She'd go to sleep whimpering, begging him not to leave her even for a minute. She outlived her husband and her eldest son, and died scared of everyone, sad lonely shell of a woman.
Now Esther sees the same happening to herself; worse, sane one day and crazy the next.
So very fast, and who knows how long she has before she can't make decisions for herself, before she's a burden to Sony and SueLyn. They'd care for her, she knows, no matter what, and her choice is going to devastate them. She knows she's being selfish even, but once in her life every woman - even a wife, even a mother - has to do what's best for herself.
She tips a handful of pills into her palm, small innocuous white shapes, pours herself a glass of water, and forces herself to look up. She doesn't want to look - she wants to close her eyes, and she can feel the tears running down her face now, bites her lip to stop them. Blinks them back and looks firmly, fair and square at herself, at the image in the mirror.
In the mirror she's not crying. In the mirror, she's smiling, and her eyes don't meet her reflection, no matter how hard she looks. When she opens her mouth, her reflection's mouth doesn't. Everything looks wrong, the color not quite normal, shadows flickering when they shouldn't, lines and curves that make her eyes ache. Like those distorted mirrors at the circus that SueLyn used to love when she was little, the ones that make you looked twisted or fat or twice as tall. Like that, but less obvious, so she can't quite pin down what's wrong.
And then her reflection talks to her. Hello, Esther, it says, she'd swear to that on God's holy name. Her voice, but as wrong as the colors and the shadows.
It's enough to steel her. There's no sane explanation for what she's seeing. She tips some of the pills into her mouth and takes a gulp of water. Swallows, and she can feel them traveling down her esophagus, little hard lumps. Takes another mouthful, pills and water, and swallows again. What are you doing? the face in the mirror asks, and Esther could almost believe it sounds concerned. She ignores it and takes more pills, again and again until her hand is empty and there's no more water.
What have you done? asks the face, and she can't bear it. She throws the glass at the mirror. The glass smashes and the mirror cracks, the face fractured but still visible, so she wraps a towel around her hand and hits the mirror, over and over, until she can't see the face in it, or hear the voice.
Silence now, no voice in the mirror or in her head, or wherever it might be. She feels dizzy, but she knows that's in her head too. There hasn't been time for any of the pills to take effect. There's enough time for her to check the letters she's written her family, half truths, no mention of her madness - she can't bear the idea of SueLyn thinking this might be her future. There's enough time for her to lay down and look peaceful.
She's going to sleep now.
there's a devil in a looking-glass
Sam clings. And Dean-any other night, Dean would've elbowed him away by now. But Dean's holding on just as tight, as if he can't let go. Dean's nose is cold in the crook of Sam's neck and-
"Are you sniffing me?" Sam asks, and Dean says, "Fuck, no."
"You are too." Sam laughs, and then Dean says small voiced, "You smell alive," and the laugh dies right down in Sam's throat. He thinks about how he felt (how he didn't let himself feel) when he thought Dean might be dead, and he thinks about a year, and how long a year can be, and how short when it's the only one. He clutches the back of Dean's tee-shirt, balling it in his hands and holds on tight. Tighter. There's a catch in Dean's breath that they both pretend not to hear.
"Shoulda showered, man," Dean says. "You're rank," he says. Sam would throw back a joke about rotting and corpses, but everything dies on his lips. Thing is, near misses aren't so bad. Make your heart flip and your stomach flop, but everything's back in the right place afterwards. These weren't near misses. They've gone too far, tipped over the edge, and Sam's struggling to process that they're both living on deal time.
He scritches the soft skin above Dean's elbow, idly. Something to do with his fingers. He needs to trim his nails - hasn't been time, lately. All that ordinary stuff has either slipped their minds or gotten pushed way down the list of things they need to do. There's a patch of dried dirt on Dean's skin, and Sam picks at it, scrapes it off. Rubs it with his thumb afterwards till it's smooth again.
The bed's not half bad, firm but not too hard, no lumps or springs poking where springs shouldn't poke. Big enough, even with the two of them in it, and Sam can't remember the last time they shared a bed. Back when it was just the three of them and one motel room, and Dean always complained about Sam's elbows, Sam's cold feet and Sam's bony knees, until half the time one of them ended up sleeping on the floor. Now Sam stretches his legs out experimentally. His feet reach the edge, but don't hang over. It's a win.
"Quit wriggling," Dean says, and Sam flops around some more until Dean mutters, "Pain in the ass," and now it's definitely a win.
There are four pillows even, and not tiny hard ones, but generous soft ones, old fashioned feather-filled. Sam has three of them, and Dean hasn't complained or tried to steal them back. But then he's basically using Sam as a pillow, so maybe he hasn't even noticed.
Sam's shoulder aches. His back hurts too, though he's not sure if that's a real hurt or just his brain telling him it hurts because his spinal cord got severed and it's plain wrong that it wouldn't hurt. "Could've gotten that demon to fix my shoulder while she was at it," he says, and Dean grunts.
"Ungrateful little fucker," he says, and winces as he moves.
"Demon slammed you down pretty hard in that graveyard," Sam says. Dean shrugs his shoulders, but it's a slow careful shrug. "Need me to take a look?" Sam asks and Dean just humphs with annoyance.
"I'm fine," he says. He never does like being fussed over, always has to be the one doing the fussing. Another thing Sam's going to have to change, and he might as well start now, so he sits up a little, Dean still on his shoulder, and pulls up Dean's tee-shirt. "Sammy. Don't."
His back's a mess - purple the size of Canada. Makes Sam's scar look pretty mild.
"Seen worse," he says, habit winning out.
"Told you it was nothing."
"Shut up and go to sleep," Sam says, and rolls the tee-shirt down gently. Leaves his hands on Dean's waist, though, like he used to sleep with Jess sometimes, when she had cramps and wanted the comfort of him close. Dean doesn't push him away.
Sam goes out for food in the morning. Comes back to Dean pacing the room, wheeling on him as he comes in the door. "Couldn't even leave a note," he says, and he's got that look in his eyes, the one Sam always used to think was anger, but now he knows it means Dean's scared.
"On the mirror," Sam says, and Dean pokes his head into the tiny bathroom. Sam wrote a message in soap - couldn't find anything else to use - gone for coffee it says, and he's even signed it and all, Sam, in big loopy swirls at the bottom of the mirror. Dean barks a laugh and shakes his head and Sam knows he's forgiven.
"What you got in the bag?" Dean wants to know, and they eat until they can barely move. They eat an entire frigging pie that Sam bought for dinner, but he reckons they've missed enough meals it doesn't really matter what they call this one. Then they fall asleep, sprawled on their backs on the bed, and by the time they wake it's night and it doesn't seem worthwhile planning anything until the morning.
They're so tired, they make hazy suggestions of going out, but neither moves, and soon enough Dean's snoring. Sam gives him a shove (gentle) onto his side, and Dean grumbles but doesn't wake up, and the snoring dies down to an occasional muffled snort.
Sam thinks he ought to be able to fall asleep just as fast, but somehow it doesn't seem to matter that his eyes will barely stay open and his body's so exhausted he feels like he's sunk into the bed. Instead he goes over and over everything, the last year, trying to work out where they might have done something different. Stupid and pointless, and he curses himself for it, and it's not like he wants to find a moment to point to and say if only I'd gone left instead of right, or done this instead of that.
He gets up eventually, goes into the tiny bathroom and splashes cold water on his face. Looks up, and-For a moment, he thinks-He turns around to see if Dean's behind him, if he caught a glimpse of him moving in the mirror, if that's what it was.
No, it's just a trick of the light, him overtired and seeing things.
He shakes his head at himself, and goes back to bed, and this time sleep comes quickly enough.
By the time Dean wakes up, Sam's been out for coffee (four cups, one for Dean, three for him - he reckons Jeremy Bladcott's credit card can take it, even if it is over-priced crap), drunk his own three, and is eyeing up the last one. Snoozers losers, after all.
He lets himself get distracted by a local website though, www.mysteriouswyoming.org, and when he reaches out for the final cup without looking, Dean's hand bats him away.
"Sleeping ugly awakes then," Sam says, still scrolling down the page. It's the usual mess of myths and urban legends, the same sort of site he's seen over and over before. Hints of truth among superstition and old wives tales, but no differentiation between them. He can even guess the sort of chatter there'll be on the message boards, the user names and all. He doesn't want to take it even the least bit seriously, but. There's a breaking story, headlining the top of the page - Ghost in the mirror, it says.
Dean ignores him, and slurps coffee loudly. "Anything from Ash?" he asks.
Sam sighs. "No." He looks across at Dean. Doesn't tell him that the first thing he did when he got on line was check to see if there was an email from Ash, any sign whatsoever that he might have survived somehow, that the charred watch they found might have been someone else's.
"Guess he's really dead then." Dean takes another gulp of coffee, end of that conversation. No time to be sentimental.
Sam wonders if he should say anything about the ghost in the mirror story, but Dean jumps in first. "Seen anything on the new demons? We'd better make a start on getting them back to their nice, cozy little hell home."
"Give it time - probably won't be anything we can pinpoint as one of them for another day or two."
"In that case, Sammy boy, you'd better find some other demons for us to hunt. No way I'm hanging around here another day. I want me some action."
"Yeah, it's been a quiet week. You must be bored."
"Bored and hungry." Dean ignores the sarcasm. "What kind of person just gets coffee and nothing to soak it up with?"
"The kind of person who's up hours before his brother, who's damn well lucky there was any coffee left for him." Sam turns back to the website, seeing if anything about the new story might be more than just a hoax, or bored teenagers on their summer break.
"Scully would have brought Mulder donuts."
"Whatever, Dean." Sam's too distracted to pay much attention, and barely notices when Dean huffs, pulls on jeans and a shirt, and heads out.
Half an hour later, and the promising lead turns out to be nothing. It's like that most of the time, hoaxes and kids playing and things that turn out to be natural, not supernatural, but Sam feels the same frustration whenever he hits a dead end, even when he didn't want it to be anything real.
He stretches, pops his spine, stiff from a poor night's sleep and hunching over the laptop. He debates going out for a run, giving himself a buzz of energy, but Dean'll be back soon, hopefully with food, and the prospect of carbs wins out over fresh air.
Sam has a short list of options. Nothing desperately urgent, nothing very exciting, but right now that suits him. Dean might be raring to go, but Sam's all for a relatively quiet life, at least for a while.
He lists the options in approximate order of importance and then reorders them based on appeal to Dean. None of them are more than one state away, none of them look like they'll take them too long to handle, so Sam has no preference. Except he'd really rather not check out the one with the eyes.
"What you got?" Dean asks when his mouth's finally almost empty enough to talk. A spat out piece of dough lands on Sam's sweatpants leg anyway, and he flicks it away.
"A haunting in a high school, a possible tazel worm sighting, something that's stealing animal's eyes," - Dean perks up at the sound of that - "and spontaneous human combustion. Take your pick."
"Are the eyes just being taken, or eaten?"
"Do you have to sound like next thing you're going to be asking for is a recipe?"
"Just because you're a wuss. They're just eyeballs."
"Least I'm not afraid of flying." Sam sulks silently to himself. He might have known Dean'd go for that case. And it's not like Sam's got a good reason for not going with it. It's just. Eyes. "Says here no one knows what's going on, just that farmers keep finding cattle with their eyes removed. They've even been keeping guard at night, but it's still happening."
There are rites that involve fresh eyes, but if it were humans, chances are they wouldn't be able to keep sneaking in undetected. So, something supernatural. A ghostly eye-muncher. Lovely.
His phone vibrates against his thigh, a welcome distraction. He doesn't recognize the number, answers with a wary, "Hello?"
"Sam. You busy?"
It's Ellen, he mouths to Dean. "No, not in particular," he answers, for once hopeful that she's got something for him. Something that doesn't involve missing eyeballs.
"You boys haven't traveled far yet, have you? You're still near the devil's gate?" Ellen sounds eager for the answer to be yes.
"Yeah, sure, we were going to head off today, but we're still in Rock Springs."
"You seen the news today?"
"No. Why, what's up?"
"The newscasters are calling it an epidemic. Officials are playing it down of course. But a whole lot of people are going crazy, and it's all right around where you boys are."
"Crazy?" Sam asks.
"Seeing things that shouldn't be there. Some are checking themselves in, some are smashing up their homes and getting brought in. Some have killed themselves. We're checking out something that's been causing rockslides up north from Cedar Rapids, blocking roads and burying people, a group of Coblynau Bobby thinks, or we'd be on it."
"And you think the craziness has got something to do with the demons we let loose." Not a question.
He can practically hear the shrug at the other end of the phone. She doesn't need to answer. It's obvious.
"And, Sam-"
"Yeah?"
"One of them's an old friend, Esther Atkins. She and her husband used to live near Bill and me."
"And she's-?" Sam doesn't like to finish the sentence.
"She killed herself last night."
"Ellen, I'm sorry."
"She's got a daughter, 'bout Jo's age, a little older. And there's her husband - he'll be lost without her. I'll email you their address and number, so you can get in contact. Just." She sighs, sounds old for a moment, old and tired. "Just find whatever it is."
"We will. I promise."
"Hold on a minute," she says. "Bobby wants a word."
The sound of the phone being passed over. "Dean there?" Bobby asks, his usual lack of greeting.
"Sure."
Sam hands the phone over. "It's Bobby, for you."
"Hi, Bobby, what can we do you for?" Dean says, and then the flippant drains out of his face. He listens for a while, then hangs up, throwing the phone back to Sam.
"Everything okay?" Sam saves Ellen's new number, watching Dean as he does it.
"Peachy. So, we gonna take this case of Ellen's, or we gonna hunt down some eyeball crunching critter?"
"We'll save the eyeball thief for another day. We should check out the crazy people while we're here. It's personal. For Ellen."
"S'long as they don't peg you for one of them," Dean says, but Sam can tell his heart's not in it. He wants to ask what Bobby said, but he guesses that's on the list of things Dean's not going to be ready to tell for a while. And it's not like he's not keeping his own secrets.
Maybe one day they'll trade secrets. And maybe one day they'll sit and paint each other's toenails pink and listen to The Pipettes.
He takes his time in the shower, letting hot water pulse into his scalp, wash away all the buzz and commotion in his head.
He's half-hard, but he looks down at himself reluctantly, doesn't touch. His balls ache, but he needs something more than his own hand, some touch that can surprise him. Full body touch. He thinks of Jess, and he thinks of Madison, but he can't imagine their touch any more, can't even get their images clear in his head. He only has one photo of Jess (her father gave it to him at the funeral - she's laughing in it) and none of Madison (they didn't want to risk being caught with any trace of her), and they're both fading away. He's trying to hold on, closes his eyes and tries to picture either of them, Jess waving at him across the library, Madison tipping her basket of underwear on the table in front of him, Jess on her knees swallowing him down, Madison arching underneath him. But none of it feels real any more. Feels less real than his nightmares.
When he tries to feel the weight of either of them in his arms, all he can remember is Dean tucked up against him.
He turns the water to cold after a while, and stands without flinching. Until he's shivering and miserable.
Sam's searching through papers on John Dickenson's desk. Bills, memos to himself, a shopping list, scribbled phone numbers, the ordinary minutiae of an ordinary life. Nothing to explain what happened to him.
"A hand here, Sammy, if you've got nothing better to do," Dean grunts, loud enough for Sam to hear from the study. His tone's more urgent than the words. Sam knows what that means.
He runs full pelt back into the front room to find Dean laid out on his back, a burly man holding a six inch knife perilously close to Dean's face. Not the owner of the house they're checking out - he's about a foot shorter, easily a hundred pounds lighter, and currently checked into Ivinson Memorial Hospital over in Laramie.
They'd come here hoping to find some evidence of whatever it was that had sent John Dickenson fleeing to the safety of a psychiatric ward. He'd sounded like a typical case, and he was single, lived alone, so they'd let their guard down searching the house. Hadn't even locked the door after themselves. Rookie error.
Sam curses.
"You're not real," the guy says, "so if I kill you, it ain't gonna matter." He shakes his head, looks nervous, but his grip is strong and steady and Dean's clearly beginning to lose the fight. Sam swallows, thinking quickly.
"It'll matter to me," Dean says. He's straining to keep the knife from getting any closer, but he's at a disadvantage, weight and gravity against him.
"Nothing matters. Nothing's real." The man's practically wailing, eyes big with fear, forehead sweaty with it. The worst kind of enemy to deal with is a scared one - Sam learned that long ago.
"We can help you," Sam says softly.
"No, no, no." The man is screaming now, and if they're not careful neighbors are going to be showing up soon. Or, worse, a sheriff who reads the FBI's most wanted list.
"Sammy," Dean says, warning, and Sam understands. There's no reasoning here; the guy's too far gone into crazy land.
Sam circles around. He doesn't want to grab the guy from behind - too much chance one of them will slip, and Dean's only an inch (and falling) away from having his face sliced wide open.
The guy doesn't even seem to notice Sam now, even though he's standing right in front of him - Sam's not sure if that's good or bad. He drops to his knees behind Dean and grabs the man above meaty wrists, twisting and yanking the knife hand away. There's a snapping sound, bone breaking, a sound Sam knows far too well, and the knife drops out of his hand with a clatter on the stone floor. The man continues oblivious to Sam, even when he shoves him away.
Dean jumps to his feet. There's a knick on the back of his hand - the knife must have caught him a glancing blow - and it's dripping red on the floor. Sam makes a mental note to clean it up before they leave. They've left the FBI enough DNA to have their own evidence shelf - no need to go giving them any more.
The man's muttering now, curled in on himself on the floor. He looks half his size, his bulk pitiful. Sam bends over him, tries to catch what he's saying.
"You're not real. You're not real. You're not real."
"Why don't you think we're real?" Sam tries. "Have you seen something? You can tell us, we'll believe you," he says, but the guy won't look up at him, just hunches over, shaking his head and repeating his chant. All the fight's gone out of him.
"What're we going to do with him?"
"Guy tries to kill me, and you're worried about him. You really are a fricking bleeding heart, Sam." There's no malice in Dean's words though, and Sam knows he's concerned too.
"Yeah, well, we can't just leave him here."
"We can, and we will." Sam glares at Dean, who shrugs. "Okay. We'll phone 911 when we're out of the way - he'll be fine until the paramedics get here."
Interviewing crazy people isn't going well, and Sam desperately wishes they'd managed to get a hold of Esther's daughter this morning, instead. No one else has tried to kill them again though, so at least it's not going that badly, but they're not getting any answers either. Some people won't talk, eyes blank and dim like headlights running on a dead battery, minds lost. Others won't stop talking, words like an ugly Dali landscape that makes Sam's head ache. Sam's been making notes, trying to see if he can piece together any sense at all out of the jumble they've been hearing, but he's not finding a pattern yet. There's no discernable pattern in those affected - they're from all around the area, young and old, men and women, all backgrounds, races, colors.
They're going to have to leave soon - the nurse at the central station is throwing suspicious glances their way, and their hastily mocked up id cards (Dr. Derringer and Dr. Travers, with CRMC behavioral health services) won't stand up to close scrutiny. Sam reckons they've got fifteen minutes tops, before she starts asking questions they won't be able to answer, and security get called.
As if he can read Sam's mind, Dean says, "Just one more. There's a girl in room 215, a school teacher. Came in this morning, according to reception."
"Let me guess. She's pretty. And you want to work the suit and glasses look with her."
Dean looks offended. Tries to, anyway, just doesn't carry it off very well.
"How would I know, I haven't seen her yet. And it's entirely irrelevant. Besides," he says, "I don't date crazy chicks." He pauses. "Not after that last time."
"What last time?" It's the first Sam's heard of this. Even though hearing Dean's dating stories makes him oddly uncomfortable, he has to ask. And if it's a bad story-at least those he always likes and stores up for future use.
"No time now, we're on the job." Dean smirks, the look he gives when he knows he's getting away with a particularly pathetic excuse. Sam bites his tongue, no time to react now. And he's promised himself that he won't let Dean rile him, won't argue so much, however hard it gets. He argued with Dad, accused him, and-He shakes his head and gets himself back on track.
"You go chat with her, see what you can get out of her. I'm gonna go see that patient out in the garden again."
"What, the one who was hitting on you? Guess he had quite a nice ass, if you go for the tall lean type."
"Nice shoulders, too, bet he works out a lot," Sam says as he walks away. He hears Dean splutter, and feels ridiculously pleased with himself.
It's obvious once he gets it. Once he works out that the common factor isn't so much that they're seeing things, but that they're seeing things behind them, which means they were looking in a mirror, something that no one actually mentioned.
He's about to tell Dean, when Dean drum rolls on the steering wheel and announces, "Mirrors. That's what it is." He's beaming wider than the grand canyon, genuinely happy, and Sam can't help but nod and smile and give him the credit on this one, because seeing Dean happy, well, it kind of makes Sam happy, too, ridiculous as it sounds.
It's only one step, though. "What do you think they're seeing?"
"Something scary, that's for sure, if it's sending them insane."
"Can't be anything like Bloody Mary, not on this sort of scale and range. And not affecting such a wide variety of people."
"What about things like her?"
"Such as?"
"I dunno. You're the research guy, you tell me."
"There are lots of urban legends about mirrors, but none that seem to fit this case. Thing is, the location, it has to be related to the demons escaping from the devil's trap, right?"
"Yeah. I don't believe in coincidence."
"So." Sam stops and thinks, adds up what he has, tries to make two and two equal four. "So, what if some sort of mirror demons came through? And they've gotten into mirrors around here, and that's what people are seeing."
"There are mirror demons?"
"Gotta be, right. I mean, there's a demon for just about everything."
"Well, it's weak, but it's something. You got a mirror on you, Bonnie?"
"Yeah, sure, because I'm the chick here." Sam glares. "No, Dean, I don't have a mirror. Look in the rear view if you want to check yourself out."
"Huh," Dean says.
"You hadn't even thought of the car mirrors, had you?" Sam laughs.
Dean lifts his hand up to the rear view mirror.
"Idiot," Sam says, and puts his arm up to block Dean. "At least pull over first - if you're going to go psycho, I'd rather you weren't driving."
"I was going to twist it around for you to look in. But then I guess the difference might not be so obvious," Dean counters, but pulls over onto the grass verge.
He twists up in the seat and peers into the mirror. Makes faces, talks to the mirror, and seems totally unconcerned that he looks like a complete moron.
"So, feeling crazy yet?"
"Nope. You want a go?"
"I'll pass, thanks. But-" Sam pauses, remembering. Not sure if it's something worth mentioning or not.
"But what?" Dean's all business now. "Spit it out."
"Last night. I went to the bathroom, and, well, it's not like I was sure I'd even seen anything, let alone what I'd seen. But, it was weird."
"What was weird?" Dean interrupts.
"I thought I saw something, someone maybe, moving in the mirror. I looked up, and thought it must be you behind me, but when I turned around there was no one there, and when I looked back at the mirror, there was only me there. I thought it was just a trick of the light, or me being tired or something. But maybe it was related."
"Doesn't exactly sound enough to send someone mad, even someone as delicate and girly as you."
"But what if that was just the start? And once, you can brush something like that off. But if it keeps happening, if you keep seeing something that isn't there-"
Dean turns the engine on again. "Better get back and check out that mirror again."
Sam leans back as they speed up, stretches out a kink in his back, and tries to remember as much as he can about mirror lore.
They look at themselves in the bathroom mirror for far too long. Nothing happens. Sam memorizes the pattern of crackles in the glass, and Dean makes faces, as ugly as he can. It's a skill he has, learned from long hours entertaining themselves in the back seat of the car.
"You'll scare any demon away, looking like that," Sam says.
Dean flips him the bird, and tries another twisted face. Pursed lips and eyebrows raised, duck face.
They try being alone in the room, each of them in turn. They try turning the bathroom light off, and then the bedroom light, so all they can see by is the dull amber light coming from outside the bedroom window.
They sit on the floor with their back to the mirror, Dean impatiently tapping his thigh while Sam holds out his hand in a waiting gesture. Dean glares at Sam, silently, and Sam shakes his head. Not yet, give it time. Then he counts down, three fingers, two, one. And they turn around.
Still nothing.
"This isn't gonna work, and my ass is numb." Dean stands up and wriggles his ass in Sam's face. "I vote we give up for tonight."
"We can hit the library in the morning - I'll check out where the nearest decent one is." Sam stretches too, easing the kinks out of his back.
"You can. I'll try and hit something more interesting. Like this daughter of Ellen's friend." Dean raises his eyebrows suggestively, and Sam sighs. Still, research usually goes more quickly without Dean's special brand of help. Besides, he wants to research more than just potential mirror demons, and though he's not going to keep that secret from Dean, exactly, he's not going to announce it all the time either, not until he has something good to tell.
Sam slips out of the motel later that evening. "I'm getting ice," he tells Dean, but barely gets a reaction. Dean's concentration is one hundred percent fixed on the TV screen, a Law and Order marathon. Watching how the opposition works.
He has Bobby on speed dial two now (Dean's number one, of course, always has been, even while he was at Stanford and never used it). It goes straight to voicemail, same with Ellen, and Sam clenches his fist in frustration. He doesn't leave a message, doesn't want either of them phoning back when he's with Dean. Instead he leans against the wall, closes his eyes and just takes a moment. He has 362 days to save Dean, and he's got nothing yet, hasn't even had a chance to start working it out. Doesn't matter how many demons are out there or how much Dean wants to focus on them, Sam's got to find time to sort this out. He failed Jess. He couldn't save his dad. He's damn well going to save Dean no matter what it costs.
"Machine empty?" Dean asks as he walks in the room, even though he hasn't looked up. Sometimes Sam forgets how observant he is, even when he doesn't seem it.
"Yeah," Sam lies, and flops down on the bed. Closes his eyes, and hopes that's enough to stop Dean asking anything else. He falls asleep to the familiar voice of Jack McCoy.
Dean's bags are packed in the morning, the room cleared of anything that might be useful, as long as it'll fit in a duffle.
"Don't want to stay in the same place too long," Dean says, but he drops his eyes as he says it, and Sam knows he's lying. Just can't pinpoint why.
Doesn't get it when they're traveling east along Interstate 80, steady just under the speed limit. They pause at Rawlins, but Dean comes back without a key. "Daylight robbery," he claims, "Bet there were roaches in the beds," and drives onto the next decent sized town. They pull off at exit 310, pull up outside a stark new Super 8 and Sam offers to get the room. "I'll go," Dean says, and he's out of the car before Sam can even begin to argue that it's best if Dean stays out of sight when possible.
Doesn't get it until they're in the room, and Dean throws his bag down on the nearest bed, claiming it. Two beds here, and Sam realizes that Dean's been keeping his distance the last couple of days. Ever since they fell asleep lying closer than they had since they were children and sleeping like puppies huddling for warmth was normal. Nothing too obvious, just more space between them, and Sam feels his stomach clench. Feels a tinge of something like disappointment that he doesn't understand.
He unpacks his bag, sets up his laptop, and doesn't say anything while he searches for local libraries.
The library's on the corner of Eighth and Grand, crammed into a newish building that must have been too small from the start, a hodge-podge of rooms and alterations, old furnishings mingling with new. Sam loves libraries like this: forgotten books that never get checked out aren't sold, they just gather dust waiting for him. He hits pay dirt with an entire section on the supernatural, a row of old books on the top shelf. There are old favorites, which he ignores for now, familiar with their contents, and then there are some he's never seen before. He pulls out A Book of Travellers' Tales - there's an inscription on the inside. A gift to the town of Laramie, 1837. The year after the Battle of the Alamo, the time Samuel Colt must have been planning his trap, and Sam exclaims in delight. There's no name on the inscription, but he wouldn't be surprised if Colt, or a colleague, hadn't had something to do with the collection.
He runs his fingers along the titles: Universal Cosmography, Knowle's Bestiary, Mirrors, Ghosts and Man. Pulls out that last one, along with a couple of others, and sits down at a desk crammed in a little alcove. The sun streams down on him from an open window above the desk, catching the dust as he settles the books in a pile in front of him.
He loses track of time, and jumps when there's a hand on his shoulder.
"You hungry, yet, research boy?"
Sam's about to answer no, but his stomach answers for him, loudly. He has to show Dean the notes he's made so far, though.
"It says here that barriers between different hells-"
Dean interrupts. "There's more than one hell?"
"Yeah, every world has its own hell, its own heaven, everything really."
"Huh. Nice thought."
"Yeah, well, thing is, the barriers between hells are weaker than the barriers between worlds - there's so much supernatural activity there, so much power I guess. So while it's very rare that people can travel from one world to another, creatures do sometimes travel from one hell to another, sometimes intentionally, sometimes by accident." Dean yawns, pointedly, so Sam skips the details. "So demons that don't belong in our hell or our world could have entered through the Devil's Gate. Like mirror demons, which belong in the mirror world."
"What?" Dean interrupts. "There's an actual mirror world? You mean Roddenberry got it right? Mmm, bare midriffs," and Dean sighs in appreciation at the image.
"I doubt all the women in the mirror world are half dressed, Dean."
"Shame. Uhura looked damn good in Mirror, Mirror."
Sam rolls his eyes. "It talks about the mirror world right here," and Sam points to a bookmarked page. "A world like ours, but a mirror image. Not some evil version like Star Trek's. It's a bit hazy on some of the most relevant details though - we need to know more."
"And, what, they'd try to get back into their own world? That'd be why they're showing up and appearing to people in mirrors? It's just them getting back into their own world?" Dean's pacing up and down behind Sam, boots squeaking loudly on the wooden floor.
"If that's what's happening." Sam shrugs. "Could be that they don't like being in this world, if they're not meant to be here. Like being an oxygen breather on a methane world. So it'd make sense that they'd head straight for mirrors to get back into their own world."
"There are a lot of people going crazy, though," Dean says doubtfully. "I mean, how many demons are we talking here? We didn't let that many out. You said it was a hundred. Two hundred, tops," he says, as though it's Sam's fault. "They can't all be mirror demons."
"It was a guess, Dean," Sam snaps. "It's not like I'm the only one to blame for all this."
"Okay, don't get your panties in a twist. I'm not blaming you," Dean says, though Sam rather thinks he is. "It's just the whole thing doesn't fit."
Sam grimaces. "Yeah, it's not a perfect theory. I might give Bobby a call later, see if he's got anything to add."
"Maybe they can appear in multiple mirrors at one time?"
"No, that's not possible. Said something about it in this book here." Sam twists around and holds the book up for Dean to take, but he squints at it for a second then waves it away.
"Give me the short version," he says.
"You need glasses, don't you?"
"Hell, no." Dean looks horrified at the very idea. "I just don't see the point in reading ten pages of rambling, when I have you to do that."
"Okay, it says they only have one body, one image, in the mirror world, so they can only show up in one place. They might be visible in several mirrors in the same room, just like us, but they can't be seen in mirrors in different locations. The world is different, but a lot of the rules are the same. Just a bit-skewed."
Sam picks up the piles of books, Mirrors, Ghosts and Man on the top. He debates with himself for a moment, then looks around. There's no one in sight, so he slips it into his backpack. Puts the others neatly back in their place on the shelf, and silently thanks whoever donated them all.
"Well, goody two shoes Sammy's stealing books from a public library. Shocking," Dean says.
"Yeah, because that's gonna move me up a notch on the FBI's most wanted list." He sees a spark of guilt on Dean's face and bites down on his irritation. "Food, now," he says.
He leaves a message on Bobby's phone, succinct as possible, summarizing what they think is happening, and asking for more information. Dean's on the phone to SueLyn when Sam hangs up, looking awkward as he offers condolences.
"If it's all right. In an hour then? Good." Dean clicks his phone shut, and opens the car door. "SueLyn wants us to come around. Think she'll give us lunch?"
"Dean." Admonishes.
"Okay, just, you know, she might have had a stack of casseroles from the neighbors to use up. Be glad to get rid of one."
"We're going there to help her, not for free food."
"You've still got a lot to learn. But Iron Skillet it is."
SueLyn's padding barefoot around her small front yard when they pull up, dust up her brown legs and around the hem of her skirt. She comes and leans over the gate, two dogs snuffling around beside her. Warm face, sad eyes - Sam likes her instantly, feels for her.
He offers his hand, but she stands on tip-toe and pulls him into an easy hug, then Dean. They follow her into the house, and Dean looks across at Sam.
Dude, he mouths. Sam smiles, but shakes his head, warning.
She curls up on the sofa, feet under her, and waves them to sit down. "Sorry Dad's not here - he runs a pharmacy and he couldn't really close up two days running. It's the only pharmacy in town," she adds.
"We were really sorry to hear about your mother," Sam says.
SueLyn nods, tight curls falling out of wooden clips. "Mom was a strong woman. I know she wouldn't just have killed herself, especially when things were going so well. She'd gotten through breast cancer, and even when she was at her weakest she didn't give up, never gave any sign that she'd give up. And she's been in remission for over a year now, doing well. So no way would she suddenly kill herself, not for any normal reason." SueLyn pauses, looks as though she's trying to find the right words. "I don't know much about what Ellen and Bill were involved in. I was only a kid back then, but Jo dropped hints of some odd stuff sometimes - I used to think she was making things up. But now, well, there's enough weird stuff going on in town that suddenly it didn't seem so unbelievable."
"That's why you phoned Ellen?"
"Yeah. I mean, I wanted to let her know about Mom anyway. They kept in touch, even when we moved away, Christmas cards, and I knew Ellen would want to know. But when I got talking to her, she started asking questions, and-" SueLyn shrugs. "She told me you two were friends of hers and you might be able to find out what happened. And, I know this is going to sound cowardly, but I'm scared it might happen to Dad, or to me, whatever it is."
Dean leans across, puts his hand on hers. "We're not going to let anything happen to you."
Sam just hopes they can keep that promise.
Bobby phones back later that day, and Sam puts him on speaker so Dean can listen in and drive at the same time.
"You want the good news or the bad," Bobby asks gruffly.
"Bad," says Sam.
"Good," says Dean, simultaneously.
They look at each other and shrug.
"Just give it to us, Bobby," Sam says.
"It's quite likely that there's just the one mirror demon gotten through. There's no reason to think there would be more, anyway."
"But there are dozens of people affected that we know of, and there must be more we don't know of yet. You're saying one demon caused all that?"
"No, I'm saying the demon might not have caused any of it."
Sam's feeling lost now, and judging by Dean's expression, he is too. "Care to explain?"
"What do you know about the Yellow Emperor?"
"He's yellow? And an emperor?" Dean offers.
"I'll take that as nothing." Bobby pauses, and they can hear muffled coughing.
"You okay, man?"
"Yeah, it's nothing, just a night in the woods ain't agreeing with my chest. So, the Yellow Emperor. It's all legend, but that's been true often enough, so don't knock it yet. And the Yellow Emperor existed all right, it's no once upon a time wishy washy stuff. Story has it, before his time, our world and the mirror world weren't cut off - people could go from one to the other. Then the mirror people invaded our world, and it took some darn powerful magic to send them back and imprison them in their mirror world. The Yellow Emperor's spell took it one step further: he didn't just imprison them in their world, he made them repeat all our actions. Made them slaves, close enough."
"You're saying our reflections-?"
"Are mirror people."
"But-"
"I know, Sam. Science explains it differently. But you've seen enough to know science ain't always the truth."
"It's just hard to take in, that's all," Sam says.
"But what's this Yellow Emperor's spell got to do with anything?" Dean asks, and then, "Idiot," he shouts, and gives the finger to a driver who's just pulled out in front of him.
"Ignore him," Sam says. "He just doesn't approve of other drivers coming within fifty feet of his baby."
Bobby carries on. "If a mirror demon's gotten back into his own world, chances are the spell'd have no affect. So, think like a demon - what're you gonna do? You're gonna wake people up, cause trouble, that's what. 'Course, it'd take time, and they'd be slow for a while, because no creature is just going to snap out of a spell like that, one that's lasted thousands of years."
"So people would be seeing themselves," Sam interrupts, "their mirror selves, breaking free from the spell and not mirroring their actions any more."
Sam tries to imagine it, the shock it would cause. Enough to send people mad, if they had no idea what was happening. Which, of course, they wouldn't.
"Exactly."
"Crap. So we've got to stop this mirror demon waking anyone else up."
"No shit, Sherlock."
Dean glares at him. Sam knows he's being snappy today, just can't seem to help it.
Bobby interrupts. "It's a bit more than that, boys."
"How?" Dean asks.
"For one thing, you're going to have to bring it back into our world to destroy it, far as I can see. Trying to affect it while it's in the mirror world'd be near impossible for anyone from this world."
"I'm taking it we can't just reach in and grab it back?" Dean says.
"We'll need to condense it into solid form and bring it back through a mirror," Sam tells him.
"Yeah, that's right. How'd you know?"
"Found an old book, all about mirror lore and stuff," Sam says, and wonders again about the donor, how much he knew, how much he might have anticipated.
"And that's the easy part."
"The easy part?" Dean splutters. "And the hard part is what exactly?"
"Even after the demon's dealt with, there are going to be mirror people still awake, and that's going to cause chaos." Bobby coughs again, an angry sound like wasps swarming, but carries on regardless. "We're going to have to reapply the Yellow Emperor's spell."
"But won't that just be a case of casting a spell?" Sam asks hopefully, even though his gut is telling him no.
"Sure. But I haven't been able to find any details of the spell yet. I'll keep looking, but it's old, not been used for at least three and a half thousand years, and-"
Bobby peters out, and lets them fill in the gap. Not many records survive that long, and what few do are rare, hard to decipher, and patchy at best. Finding hints about the spell might be possible, but finding it in its entirety is going to be one of the hardest tasks they've ever set themselves.
"I'll be heading your way tomorrow," Bobby says. "Ellen wants to go up and see Jo, and I reckon three heads would be better than two on this one."
Sam agrees, tells Bobby where they're staying, and hangs up.
He looks at Dean.
"No rest for the wicked, huh," Dean says.
It's six days since he learned secrets about himself that he doesn't want to believe, five days since he died, four since he came back to life and Dean basically gave up his. Three nights since they held each other like they couldn't let go. And now every waking moment is spent dealing with the case, researching and interviewing. There's been no spare moment for dealing.
Sam thinks they need to deal. Dean, he's gonna guess, doesn't.
Sam's gotten better at lying. Both of them have these last few months. Least ways, Sam thinks Dean's gotten better. It's hard to tell. Dean looks him in the eyes and says things, strings together words and sentences that Sam knows are lies, knows must be lies, but there's no hesitation, no ducking his head or even a twitch of his eye. None of the old tells are there when it comes to the important things, and Sam used to know every last one of them.
Sometimes pushing works. Like finding out about the deal. Other times Dean'll just push back, physically if he's in that kind of mood, and Sam won't learn a thing.
It's not like Sam wants an evening of touchy-feely sharing - he's got balls too, no matter what Dean might imply at times. It's not that at all. It's just. And here Sam comes to a halt, because if he doesn't want that, what does he want? It's either one thing or the other, no middle ground that he can see. Either they talk, and they tell the truth, or they don't. Simple. Black and white. Not much else in their life as simple as that set of options, come to think of it.
He's got a headache. They're out of Tylenol (he's checked) but Dean bought a six pack earlier. Not the smartest alternative to painkillers, but at least they'd help him sleep. It'd shut up this maddening dialogue in his head until tomorrow, and who knows, maybe everything will look different in the morning.
That'd be the easy way, and fuck it all, sometimes all Sam wants is easy. Why he's sitting on the narrow bed opposite Dean and looking him in the eye and opening his mouth to say something, anything, he has no idea. Sometimes he thinks he's actually really dumb under all the smart.
"What're you really thinking, Dean?" Yeah, Sam thinks. Really, really dumb.
It's almost worth it for the look of total astonishment on Dean's face, the way his jaw drops. Doesn't last long, though - a wary, irritated look replaces it in a second, and the question's thrown back at Sam.
"What do you mean?"
"We never talk these days."
"We talk all the time. You hardly ever shut up."
"Not about the stuff that really matters. Not about you signing your life away for me."
"Nothing to talk about. Done deal, and I'm not gonna regret it."
Sam wants to prod, wants to find some way of getting under Dean's skin, something sharp enough to crack him open, and it horrifies him that he wants that, wants Dean raw and open, but he can't seem to help it. So he keeps going, even if it's the stupidest thing he's done in his life, because he needs to make Dean angry and hurt. And open.
"So, what, you're cool about having, how many days is it left now? I make it three hundred and sixty. You're perfectly happy to leave me behind?"
"Is that what you think, huh, Sammy?" There's a brittle tone in Dean's voice, spring ice breaking. Sam just needs to keep going.
"What else am I supposed to think?"
"That maybe I didn't have a choice. That you're my baby brother, Sam. This is how it goes, and no matter how big you get, you're always going to be my baby brother. It's the law, and you can't go against that. And, besides, there's the good side. Once I'm gone, the feds won't be such a problem, and-"
"Dean, are you really that stupid? You really think I'm going to sit here and listen to you tell me all the plus points of you dying?" Sam's clenching his fists, barely able to stay sitting down. He wants to grab Dean by the shoulders and shake him, make him see sense, hold him until he sees how much Sam can't do without him. How much Sam loves him.
And there's the rub. Because Sam's beginning to get an idea that maybe he can't tell Dean how much he loves him. That it's too much. More than Sam can even make sense of.
He doesn't realize he's crying until he feels a splash on the back of his hand and Dean puts a hand awkwardly on his shoulder, holds him. He closes his eyes, tries to hold it in, but his throat is burning and he's been bottling up the hurt and now it's spilling out whether he wants it to or not.
"I'm not cool about it, Sam. It's just, I can't regret it either. And I'm not giving up, because I know you, and I know you're a tenacious bugger, and if there's any loophole, you're gonna find it, and I'll be around to plague your sorry ass a whole lot longer."
Sam smiles, sniffs back the tears, and nods and says, "You bet.".
They phone SueLyn later and suggest she covers up the mirrors in her house.
"You know what's going on, then?" she asks, bright and hopeful, voice shining with relief.
"Pretty much," Sam says, and hopes he'll be forgiven the half truth.
"And covering the mirrors will keep us safe?"
"Should do, yes," Sam says. For now, at least, but he doesn't say that out loud.
Sam's no sooner hung up than his phone is ringing, Bobby's ID on the screen.
"Change of plans," he says. "I'm gonna head home first, see if there's anything there can help us find this spell. Should be with you in a couple of days."
"Okay, I'll tell Dean," Sam says, but Bobby's already hung up.
"Tell me what?"
"Bobby's gonna see if any of his books or buddies back home will help us with this spell, so we won't see him for a day or two."
Dean doesn't say anything, just looks relieved.
Sam starts awake. He's alert in an instant, eyes open, but there's nothing he can see or hear to explain why he's woken up. He thinks he was dreaming, but he doesn't remember anything, just a vague sense of lingering relief.
It seems strange to feel relief. They're tracking a demon they've still not seen and that doesn't even belong in their world, they need a spell that's going to be hard, at best, to find, and Dean's going to die in less than a year if Sam doesn't do something about it. On that thought, the relief grows stronger, and he manages to take hold of a fragment of his dream. A crossroads demon, making a deal. A mirror crossroads demon, a different deal. Sam dealing. This time with the upper hand.
And that's it. Sam has an idea, and it's tenuous at best, depending on far too many ifs and maybes, but it might just save Dean.
He raises himself quietly up on one elbow and looks across at Dean. He's sleeping, his back to Sam, slightly hunched up under the bedclothes and not sprawled out like he usually sleeps. For a second Sam considers crawling in behind him, then shakes his head in disbelief at himself. None of the craziness in Sam's head is important. If he can just save Dean, that's all that matters.
"I wonder when our reflections are going to start waking up?" Dean's cleaning his teeth, talking through a mouthful of toothpaste. "It'll make shaving tricky." He spits loudly and gargles.
"Grow a beard," Sam suggests from the other room.
"Hmm, might do that. Think it'd suit me?"
"It'd hide your face, so yeah."
"And chicks dig beards, the mature look. It's freaky, though, anyway, this whole our reflections not being our reflections thing. I mean, what are they, like, watching us all the time? But not us?"
"They must be us in most ways, though, mirror images of us."
"So if I fuck a chick in front of a mirror, they get to do the same. Huh. Your mirror image must be pretty pissed off at never getting any, unless he's as much of a monk as you."
Sam gets a sudden image of him fucking Dean in front of a mirror, his tan fingers pressed into pale hipbones, Dean wild and panting in front of him, and starts, shocked. Sits down on the bed, thankful that Dean's in the other room. Presses shaking fingers into his closed eyes, trying to black out the image, but it's there now, and he's getting hard from it, hard from the thought of fucking his own brother.
Just when Sam thinks their lives can't get any more fucked up.
part 2