Fic: Headtrip (5/7)
Spoiler warning: I came up for the idea for this fic long before there were spoiler warnings that Supernatural was going to be doing something similar this season. Just in case, though: If you don't want to be spoiled for a future episode, don't read.
Fic: Headtrip (5/7)
Series: Special Projects
Summary: On their way to Metropolis for Christmas, Dean, Sam and Chloe take a detour though Colorado Springs to investigate a series of mysterious deaths, but Dean is still broken, Chloe looks ready to run and Sam is just worried about holding things togeather.
Author: pen37
Beta: Clarksmuse
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean
Pairing:Chloe/Dean
Rating: Pg-13.
This is a part of the Special Projects series. You can find the rest of the series here.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #40 Sight. The table is here.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
“Sam!” Dean rushed forward, but he was only really in time to catch Sam before he fell. The damage had been done. If he could have gotten there even a minute earlier, he wouldn't be kneeling in the mud of some ghost town, loosing the most important person in the world to him.
“I wonder why you keep doing this to yourself?” The Powaqa said as he observed from a distance, arms crossed and head tilted in a clinical way.
Dean ignored his unwelcome visitor in favor of crushing Sam to him. It wasn't real. He knew it was a dream. But at the same time, he couldn't stop himself from dreaming it. It was like picking at an old wound.
“You know what I think? I think you do this to punish yourself.” It said. “Because of all those thoughts you don't want to think.” It moved to kneel next to him where he clutched his brother to himself. “You want to hurt yourself, when you think about how this is really Sammy's fault. How he should have known better than to turn his back like that.”
Dean glared at the Powaqa.
“They're your thoughts, Dean. I'm just pointing them out.”
Dean turned his head away and shut his eyes. He didn't want to acknowledge that the creature might be right.
** *
The ritual called for several ingredients that weren't in Sam's standard kit: sagebrush, and Peyote. The sagebrush wasn't a problem. The peyote: not so much. Sam placed a call to Bobby, and in under an hour, an old dark skinned, brown-eyed man with long, iron-grey hair plaited in a braid down the middle of his back knocked on their hotel room.
When Sam opened the door, the man took a single look around the room, shook his head, and handed Sam a small paper bag. Then he backed away, as if afraid of what was inside the room.
Sam shut the door, then looked in the bag. A smaller, plastic bag contained maybe three or four nickel sized disks.
“Is that the mescaline?” Chloe asked. Sam turned to see that she had lit the sagebrush, and put it in a brazier.
“Yep,” Sam held it up to show her.
Chloe looked at it curiously, and then looked back at Sam. “You know that's not going to have any affect on me, right? It's just like the alcohol: my immune system is just too active.”
Sam nodded. “I'm hoping that once the ritual gives me the boost I need, you can piggy-back me right into Dean's head.” He paused as he mentally went over that phrase in his head. “And that's the weirdest thing I've ever said.”
Chloe grinned at him. “I would have thought that surreal would have gone right out the window long ago.”
“It did,” Sam nodded. “It's just that every now and then it comes back with a vengeance.”
“So how does this work?” Chloe asked as she lifted the brazier and carried it toward where Dean rested. They'd drawn a simple equilateral triangle on the floor for reference, and put Dean inside of it. His head lay near the middle, and his feet rested in one corner.
“Put the brazier in the middle,” Sam said. “Just above Dean's head. Then you and I will lay down just like that with out feet pointing toward the other two corners.”
“Okay,” Chloe sat the brazier down and took her place. “Now what?”
“Now I chew the peyote buttons, and . . . hope for the best.” Sam stuck the buttons in his mouth and started chewing. He winced at the taste. “This taste like shit.”
“I don't think that taste is why it’s popular,” Chloe said.
“That's all you have to say?” Sam answered back - more to distract himself from the foulness in his mouth than anything.
“I'm out of snappy comeback lines,” Chloe whispered to him. She sounded - scared.
Sam would have responded - except suddenly nausea rolled through him with the force of an oncoming freight train. He rolled to his side and clutched at his stomach.
“Breathe through your mouth,” Chloe said.
He wanted to respond, but keeping the contents of his stomach down took all of his concentration.
Chloe jumped to her feet, and ran for the bathroom. She returned with a plastic wastebasket. Then she helped him to sit, and held his hair back while he emptied the contents of his stomach into the basket.
“You know, I always thought it would be your brother I would help do this for.” Chloe said tenderly.
“Dean doesn’t get that wasted,” Sam spit out bile, and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. “Hasn’t since he was sixteen.”
“So you guys were hiding more than just playboys under that loose board,” Chloe said.
“Yeah,” Sam said vaguely and blinked at Chloe. Then he giggled. Suddenly everything seemed so connected.
“Looks like the mescaline is kicking in,” Chloe rolled her eyes.
Sam though about it for a while then he shrugged slowly. “I think you might be right.”
Chloe gently pushed him back into place. Then she moved the bucket, and lay back in her own spot. “Well, before you get too far out, why don’t you think about getting into Dean’s head?”
Sam giggled again. “Headtrip!”
“Head case is more like it,” Chloe sounded exasperated.
“No,” Sam snorted, then giggled. “Like . . . roadtrip, only to Dean’s head. So headtrip. Get it?”
“Sam,” Chloe said gently. “You’re supposed to be dreamwalking your brother. Remember?”
“Oh, right.” Sam said. “Hey Chloe?”
She sighed. “What, Sam?”
“We totally should have packed munchies.”
He wasn’t sure what Chloe was going to say, because suddenly, he could make out the dream paths.
It reminded him of a silver ribbon, cutting its way through the darkness: glimmering, and just wide enough for a spirit to cross. With little conscious effort on his part, he stepped from his body, reached back, and pulled Chloe from hers. Once he was outside his body, his head seemed clearer. As if the narcotic effect of the drug couldn't touch him here.
“Woah,” Chloe said in quiet awe. She looked over her hands, and then down at her feet. “It’s like we’re ghosts.”
“Can you see it?”
“See what?” Chloe said. “I’m just a little awestruck that I’m watching myself lying on the ground over there.”
“The dream path,” Sam pointed it out.
Chloe squinted in the direction he was pointing, but shook her head. “Nothing.”
“I guess we know what the peyote is for,” Sam muttered. He took Chloe’s hand, and guided it to his shoulder. “Hang on to me, Chloe. I’ll have to guide you.” Sam led her the way one might lead a blind person along the dream paths.
“One thing I don’t get,” Chloe said. “We’re walking away from Dean.”
“This is metaphorical,” Sam waved around them. “Dean is about as much back there as we are. The journey is symbolic of leaving the natural world and entering a dream state. We just have to find Dean in the dream state.”
Before Chloe could respond, Sam felt something tug on him. “Chloe, hold on!” He said suddenly. “I think we’re under attack.” With a final, hard tugging sensation, he was ripped from Chloe and flung from the dream path. Sam remembered reaching back to try and pull himself back onto the path, but his hands encountered nothing. He turned and realized that he was too far off the path. He’d lost it, and now he was lost somewhere in the dream state.
***
“Sam?” Chloe turned circles, but she was afraid to step in any direction. Right now, she knew that she was on the dream path. But she couldn’t see it. If she moved in any direction, she might step off of it, and never find her way back.
“Sam?” she called again. When she got no response, she sat cross-legged on the ground, and buried her face in her hands. “Now what do I do?”
Hours seemed to pass as Chloe sat there, quietly despairing. At long last, the sound of footsteps caused her to lift her head. She looked around as twin feelings of dread and anticipation shot through her. Dread, because she knew that the Powaqa was somewhere - possibly close by, and possibly behind Sam’s sudden disappearance. But also anticipation - because Sam and Dean were also here somewhere. So realistically, she had a better-than fifty-fifty shot at it being help.
She wasn’t expecting to see Shelby, Clark’s dog come from the darkness beyond her limit of sight. It padded right up to her, and stopped to look at her.
“Shelby?” she scratched at the Golden Retriever’s ears. “I thought you passed away years ago, boy.”
Shelby sat down, and scratched behind his ears. “You look lost,” he said.
She blinked, and then looked at it again.
“Yes,” the dog sighed. “It talks. Considering that this is your dream walk, you’re lucky you didn’t get a giant caterpillar, instead of a talking dog.”
Chloe shrugged, and then nodded in agreement. “Okay, Shel. You got me there. I think I’m on the path, but I can’t see it.”
“Now that’s one of them metaphor doo-hickeys,” Shelby nodded sagely. “You’re on the right path, but you’re still lost. But that’s okay, kid. That’s what the dream walk is for. It’s a journey of discovery.”
“Shel,” Chloe sighed. “I just want to find Sam and Dean and get out of here. But I don’t know how when I can’t even see my way.”
“Kid,” Shelby pinned her with a serious look. “Sometimes you’ve got to lose your way to find yourself.” The dog nodded once more, and turned to leave.
“Hey, wait!” Chloe called out. She got to her feet, and began to trot after the golden.
“It’s not my job to steer you out, kid.” Shelby called back over his tail. “You have to find your own way.” Then, the dog put on a burst of speed as if chasing a rabbit back on the Kent farm. He quickly outpaced Chloe, and was lost to the gloom.
Chloe slowed to a walk, and then abruptly stopped. She turned around, and realized that she had wandered into the classroom where the nuns had tried to teach her catechism at Our Lady of St. Rose. Just being back here made her knuckles ache with the phantom pain of the ruler. She looked down, and realized that she was wearing her old school uniform. Which meant that she probably looked like she was a kid again.
“Great,” she said quietly.