Sick Days - Chapter 11
Title: Sick Days
Summary: Dean's obsession with apparently random medical deaths mirrored from his past lands him and Sam in the middle of a deadly epidemic.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Spoilers: Up to and including 'Born Under a Bad Sign'
Word Count: 4,007 for this part
Author's Note: Takes place in 2007 post 'Born Under a Bad Sign' with flashbacks to 1987. Many thanks to Amberdreams for the wonderful editing assistance. Master post can be found here.
~~~
Continued from Chapter 10
To say Ellen was worried didn’t begin to touch it. She knew full well why Sam had been reluctant to leave. It’s not as if she would have been able to leave Jo if their roles were reversed. Hell, she didn’t like sending her daughter off as a perfectly healthy, competent young woman. She’d tracked Jo half way across the country just to stop her from getting involved in this but now they didn’t have a choice. John’s eldest was out of time.
She’d skipped the typically mandatory speech about how Sam better bring her daughter home safe because there was no other option. He would be as careful as he could and if Jo had any sense about her she’d do the same. It wasn’t as if it was the Winchester boy’s fault Jo was here and he had enough weighing on his mind without being burdened further.
It scared the hell out of her, but looking at his frail form, she honestly couldn’t say whether or not Sam’s older brother would live. Yet even if his brother died here, this was no way for Sam to remember a strong young man like Dean. After his father and now seeing Dean like this, Sam couldn’t likely be feeling anymore helpless. If it was going to happen, she couldn’t help but think for Sam’s sake that it would be better if he wasn’t here for it.
Not that she had any intention of letting it happen. She wasn’t under any delusion that if she buried one of them she wasn’t burying them both and she sure as hell hadn’t come here to bury either of the Winchester boys. That’s why she needed to get a read on what Dean’s current condition was as swiftly as possible.
She started with a quick survey of the darkened room. The foul smell in the air was the first thing she had noticed walking in. The stained carpet and piles of dirtied towels and bed sheets explained that quick enough. Little wonder this room smelled of death with all this blood lying around. She didn’t even want to think about the fact that it had all come from the boy that lay motionless in front of her.
As she looked down she noticed that the ice bucket at her feet was partially filled with blood and other fluids. If that was what Sam had been using the ice bucket for she was sure that Sam wasn’t understating just how dehydrated Dean was. God these boys needed a mother.
Half the times she’d seen Dean come through the Roadhouse he had looked incapable of sitting still like he had more energy coursing through his blood than he knew what to do with. A young man like that should never be so still. Her hand set gently on Dean’s feverish forehead. She felt his brow move ever so slightly at the touch. He wasn’t fully out.
“Hey there, sweetie.”
His eyes didn’t open but his brow creased further as he obviously tried to process where she had come from. Judging by the mixed expressions that flashed over his still face, if the poor thing even recognized who she was he probably thought he was hallucinating.
“Ellen?” he asked hoarsely.
She couldn’t help but smile gently at the sound of his voice even if it was barely there. He recognized her. That at least was a good sign. “In the flesh,” she confirmed.
“I didn’t want this,” he mumbled softly.
“Oh, I know you didn’t, baby.”
Ellen ran her hand through his matted hair to let him know that she was really there and that she didn’t give a damn about any of what he was fretting about. She didn’t know the full story here and she really didn’t need to. Bobby had told her enough for her to know that Dean wasn’t at fault here. It wouldn’t matter if he were.
His eyes opened ever so slightly. Just enough for her to see the hurt in them. From the distance in his gaze it looked as if he was somewhere else and didn’t even see the room around him.
“I can’t save them.”
She wasn’t all that certain what he was talking about now, but again she didn’t care. All she wanted was to be able to take all this weight off his shoulders no matter what the cause. It should never have been there to begin with.
“That’s all okay, but Dean, you listen up. I need you to drink something for me.”
The usually sturdy boy looked as if he was so fragile that he could shatter. He barely had the energy to shake his head in protest to her.
“Oh no,” she warned him. “It wasn’t a question.”
The boy wasn’t in any position to be calling the shots and he was going to drink. She’d brought an arsenal in that grocery bag of hers. Ginger ale, frozen fruit pops, chicken broth and plenty else he’d like less. Dean might think he’d sworn off liquids for good, but she’d get him hydrated one way or another.
~~~
“Are we okay?” Sam asked Jo.
He was so far from wanting to have this conversation right now, but he needed to know where they stood before they got started. There wouldn’t be time for anything personal to slow them down and he honestly needed to know if she was even comfortable being around him. As he finished buttoning the police uniform he turned around to look at her.
“If you try to tie me up again I’ll gut you like a fish. Otherwise we’re great,” she replied with a grin. “But just so we’re clear, I’m doing this for Dean. And I’m driving.”
“No you’re not.”
“Hey, I stole this thing fair and square…” At his look she caved. “Okay my mom did, but same diff. I helped and no offense, but you look hell. I’m not letting you drive me anywhere.”
At least they agreed that Dean was the top priority even if they couldn’t agree on much else. The smugness left Jo’s face as the gravity of the situation seemed to sink in. Sam realized he probably had it written all too clearly across his face.
“How’s Dean really doing, Sam?”
He couldn’t bring himself to say the truth about Dean’s condition because the truth was that his brother was dying. That wasn’t something he could admit even to himself and Jo seemed to read as much from his face.
“We’re gonna save him,” she promised. With that she hopped into the drivers seat and looked back up at him. “So where do we start?”
“The library, I guess.” He climbed into the passenger seat beside her. “We need to translate these symbols and...hold on.”
Sam dug through his jacket pocket as his cell phone began to ring. “It’s Sam.”
“If you ever hang up on me like that again, I’m going to string you up, you hear me, boy?” Bobby ranted on the other end of the phone.
Sam held the mouthpiece against his shoulder as he looked to Jo. “Go ahead and drive,” he mouthed to her. “Yeah, I got that, Bobby. Sorry,” Sam continued into the phone. “Dean was having some trouble.”
“Is he okay?”
“He’s not too much worse,” Sam replied after a moment. “Jo and I are on our way to the library. What were you saying about the jump in the number of sacrifices?”
“Your idiot brother. Do you know he’s been to Green Bay before?”
“Dean said he'd been here with Dad, but I checked Dad’s journal. Dad wasn’t here in ’97.”
“Neither was your brother. Wrong decade, you idget.”
“This thing takes sacrifices every ten years, right?”
“And what’s ten plus ten?”
“Twenty years ago? All this stuff Dean’s talking about happened in 1987? He was eight.”
“Just barely and you were barely out of diapers.”
“That’s why I didn’t remember,” Sam said mostly to himself.
“What does your brother remember?”
“I don’t know. It’s Dean. He’s not exactly Mr. Care and Share. He kept remembering things, but said there was a gap. Now he’s saying he did this.”
“I’m sure he thinks he did,” Bobby replied. “Your dad loved you boys more than anything, but he didn’t always have his head on straight when it came to you kids.”
~~~
Singer Salvage Yard - South Dakota - 1987
John Winchester burst through Bobby’s front door like his hair was on fire. If the man wasn’t careful, Bobby might see to just that. Yet despite his better judgment, Bobby eased his grip on the trigger of the shotgun in his hand. Given that the man's children were outside he’d have to settle for just beating John over the head with it.
“Just come on in, John. Don’t mind the fact I was about to shoot you a new one,” he grumbled with a defiant splash of holy water to John’s sour face.
John’s scowl deepened as he wiped the moisture from his face, but he kept his eyes locked on Bobby’s. “There’s something wrong with Dean.”
“Why didn’t you just say so?” Bobby replied as he set the shotgun aside.
“I can’t deal with him right now.”
The sympathetic understanding in Bobby’s face vanished as he got a good look at the expression John was wearing. John was all pissed to hell about something and Bobby was sure it didn’t really have a damn thing to do with either one of those little boys sitting out in the back seat of that car parked out front.
“Is that so?” Bobby asked suspiciously. “So what? You’re dumping him here? What’s that kid gone and done that’s so damn awful you can’t look at him anymore?”
“The thing in Green Bay - he made a deal with it, Bobby.”
“Uh huh,” he replied with clear skepticism. Bobby nodded his head out the window towards the sullen older boy that was staring off at nothing. “That kid went out and made a deal with a devil...for kicks? Do I really look that stupid? He did it to save you didn’t he? Didn’t he, John?”
He didn’t need a verbal answer. “That rotten little brat,” Bobby mocked. “What are you waiting for? Go beat the crap out of the kid on account that his father is a stupid ass! What the hell were you thinking going after that thing with those boys, Winchester? I told you to leave it alone!”
“It doesn’t matter why he did it. Now we’re screwed.”
“No. Your son is screwed and not because of anything he did or didn’t do. That much I know.”
“I’m the one that has to clean this up.”
“Well boohoo. I’m feeling real damn sorry for ya. Just rub some dirt in it. I swear, if I hear you whining about that kid one more time...you’ve got no idea how easy you’ve got it with him.”
There was no point in even trying. It wasn’t as if Bobby was even that interested in convincing the man to keep his sons with him when he was on that much of a tear. Either John or the boy would say something and things would get out of hand.
John might not realize it, but he was practically a god to Dean and it wouldn’t take much for John to unintentionally crush the boy. Better to try to pick up the pieces before it got any uglier.
“Go do what you have to. Your sons will be here when you’re done pouting.”
Bobby stormed away from him and let the door slam behind him as he headed out to the Impala, but he was all smiles by the time he reached the boys. As soon as little Sammy saw him the boy bounded from the back of the car and ran over to hug Bobby’s leg.
“Unky Bobby!”
“Look how big you’re getting,” Bobby said with a smile down at the little boy. He ruffled Sammy’s hair before looking to Dean who was still sitting in the back seat.
A big pout came to Sammy’s lip and he pulled at the bottom of Bobby’s shirt. “Make Dean talk.”
“He ain’t talking?” Sammy shook his head. “Don’t worry, kid. I’ll take care of your brother. Go on inside.”
“Okay.”
With that Sammy was off to find his Dad. This was no place for kids, but Sammy had been around these parts before. Usually it was Dean that kept him out of trouble but John was inside and the man could bother himself to deal with his own son for two minutes longer. With Sammy scampering off Bobby leaned into the car to look at Dean who still wouldn’t look at him. The kid was practically catatonic.
“What’s happened to you boy?”
When Dean still didn’t acknowledge him, Bobby walked around to the side of the car Dean was sitting on. He opened the door and reached in to unbuckle him. Carefully he pulled the silent child into his arms. The kid was getting heavy, but considering that he had turned eight a couple months back he ought to weigh more. What the boy needed was a hearty meal.
It took far too long but finally Bobby felt two small arms wrap tentatively around his neck. He hugged the boy tighter. “I did something really bad, Uncle Bobby,” the boy in his arms confessed quietly into his ear. “Now Dad hates me.”
~~~
“But Dean didn’t even know what he’d done,” Bobby explained to Sam. “He honest to god couldn’t remember. Some kind of hypnosis stunt your dad had found someone to pull. He couldn’t find a way to stop this thing so he thought he’d found a way to keep Dean away from it. Screwed your brother up for a while, but he was always a strong kid. He got over it.”
Sam wasn’t so sure he had. Dean wasn’t as strong as everyone thought he was and he definitely wasn’t okay. Right now Sam wasn’t either.
“Sam?”
He looked to Jo as she spoke and followed her eyes to his hand. His grip on the phone was bordering on tight enough to break it. He forced himself to ease up and steady his breath but it didn’t help what he was feeling. All along he had been assuming that his soul eater or whatever it was had screwed with Dean’s memory, but it had been Dad.
“I don’t think Dean needs to know that,” Sam told Bobby.
“No reason he does,” Bobby agreed.
“But if his memory was wiped clean, why did Dean still latch onto this case?”
“Because it wasn’t wiped. Just covered up and this thing is one smart broad. She found a way to call your brother in regardless of what he remembered. Your dad was there to keep Dean out in '97, but he wasn’t here this time around. I’m sorry, kid.”
Right now Sam was so mad at Dad it was hard for him to think straight, but even with as mad as he was he knew one thing. Even if he hadn’t been able to show it and even if he’d used the hell out Dean, Dad had loved them and he’d done the best he could. In the end he’d given his life for Dean. Dad wouldn’t have gone screwing around in Dean’s head if he’d seen any other option.
“Bobby, if Dad couldn’t stop this - how are we going to?"
“I’m working on that part. Call me when you got something. I’ll do the same.”
“Okay, Bobby. Thanks.”
Sam sighed as he hung up the phone. For a minute he’d forgotten that he wasn’t alone. He glanced towards Jo’s expectant face as she pulled into the library’s empty lot.
“Well?” she finally asked.
“Bobby’s working on it.”
He was thankful when Jo reluctantly let it go at that. She walked by his side to the back door before giving him a look as he worked the lock.
“You know we’ve gotta be the only people in the world to break into a library.”
Sam barely heard her as he ushered her inside. At least this was a small town and the library directors seemed to share Jo’s thought. There was no security alarm. Of course if this was any other town there would probably be rioting in the streets. Here everyone had just gone home. It made the town look as if it was already dead.
From what he’d seen of the news this thing was so focused on this town alone that the news people were covering it as a biological terrorist attack - probably why everyone was hiding in their houses. Unfortunately for those people, there was no way to lock this thing out of their homes.
“We’re looking for anything on Hausa,” he told Jo. While she hit the foreign language section he headed for the reference only area.
“This stuff wasn’t online?” Jo called to Sam. “Don’t they have those online translators or something?”
“Yeah, they do, but after Bobby identified the language I looked it up. It’s widely spoken for an African language, but the language changed its alphabet over fifty years ago. This is the old script we’re looking for.”
A minute later Jo was back at his side holding a book out to him. “No script and it’s got some other languages mixed in, but it’s got basic Hausa grammar.”
“It’ll help. I don’t get the impression that the grammar changed much.” He thumbed through an ancient looking dictionary he’d pulled off the back reference shelf. “This one’s got the script and it's a match.”
Sam led Jo to the nearest table and pulled out the sketch he'd made from Dean’s back. “Go ahead and start on this one. I’ll work on the ritual circle.”
“On it and no pressure, right? We got a whole five minutes to figure this language out.”
With the dictionary open in front of him Sam looked back up at Jo and realized that timing was the issue that kept tugging at the back of his mind. The timing in all of this just didn’t add up. Dean had been sick since just after arriving in Oregon two days ago. No one else that they knew of had lived that long after being infected.
~~~
Dean was in a haze. At some point Sam had turned into Ellen, which somehow wasn’t as disturbing as it sounded. Distantly he could feel his body. It was barely his anymore. Just a useless lead weight. When he focused on it he was trapped inside it. Paralyzed and lingering in what he just wanted to end.
When he focused on not being in it he was still in the dark but the physical pain was gone. Mentally it all hurt like hell anyway he played it so this was easier. He’d been here before and this time when the reaper came he wasn’t going to hesitate. This time he would make the right call before anyone had the chance to sacrifice themselves for him. He was ready.
“You returned, child.”
His soul went cold as the hotel fazed out and he was standing staring at a bunch of boxes. This was where he’d found Dad and that was no reaper speaking to him. It seemed as if time had gone away and it was that night. He was that boy. Suddenly he didn’t hate that he’d done what he had. He only hated that he would do the same thing again every last soul in this town be damned. He would do it again not because it was the right thing to do, but because it was the only thing he was strong enough to do.
In his body he had to struggle to find his voice, but not here. Maybe he should be trying to get back into his body, but he couldn’t fight anymore. Not there. There he was just a useless puking, bloody bag of bones that couldn’t even die with dignity. This was easier and he was tired.
“Really been missing you, bitch,” he told the horrid creature.
She was every bit as wretchedly ugly as he remembered. Obviously she’d been human once but it was like all the humanity had rotted from her and this thing before him was what was left. The only thing that was different was that she didn’t have the transparency he’d remembered her having before, but the guy walking around without his body wasn’t one to be calling the kettle black.
He wouldn’t change what he’d done, but he could change now. He was no longer a scared little boy with his Dad’s life hanging over his head. Now he was just a lonely man that had managed to find a more passive way to kill his Dad.
Anyway he cut it, Dad was gone and he was left here fighting and he would fight it. The only thing at risk now was himself and that was a poker chip he was willing to gamble with. No one else was going to die because of him.
There was nothing solid about what he interpreted around him. Things kept shifting and slipping. Parts of the hotel room, parts of here and it took him a good long while to see that he wasn’t alone with this thing.
The basement was full of them. Half spooks like him. Cattle just lined up for the slaughter. Because of him. Little kids and dads and innocent people that didn’t even know they were here and didn’t deserve to die like this.
Then he remembered it all over again. He’d already been here with her this time around. That’s why she wasn’t paying a whole hell of a lot of attention to him. They’d already had this conversation and she was too busy picking off the others. He’d already tried to stop her.
There had been some kid. Couldn’t have been any older than Sammy had been last time they’d been through town and she’d gulped him down like a White Castle cheeseburger. He’d tried to bust into the circle to stop it and that’s when he’d got shot back to the motel room with one damn nasty jolt.
A direct assault obviously wasn’t going to do crap, but he wasn’t going to stand here and watch her keep munching on souls. These people had all gotten sick after him. She just needed to take him and leave the rest of these poor suckers out of it. If she didn’t want him in the circle he was sure that was where he needed to get. Near as he could tell the only way to get in was to get her to open wide and try to take a bite.
“Hey, I was in line first. Just take me already!” his specter shouted at her as she started to move in on another victim.
Finally she shot a dismissive look towards him. “You forget that you gave yourself to me. You will remain as long as you are needed.”
“So you’re saying if I die now...”
“You won’t.”
“Right...because if I do, your little binge ends.” A dark smirk came to his lips. She’d given him all the information he needed.
He closed his eyes in preparation for the physical assault that he knew was coming. He forced himself to return his focus to the motel room. To the weakness and pain that swallowed him up there.
With a ragged, chocking breath his body struggled back towards consciousness. He gagged at the return of the thick coppery taste that filled his mouth. It would be so easy to leave again, but Ellen’s touch pulled him the rest of the way back. Or at least as far back as he could get.
Blindly he reached out to her and struggled for the words. His mind was too muddled and his vocal cords too cramped, but finally they came, “Ellen, you gotta kill me.”
Continue to Chapter 12
Summary: Dean's obsession with apparently random medical deaths mirrored from his past lands him and Sam in the middle of a deadly epidemic.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Spoilers: Up to and including 'Born Under a Bad Sign'
Word Count: 4,007 for this part
Author's Note: Takes place in 2007 post 'Born Under a Bad Sign' with flashbacks to 1987. Many thanks to Amberdreams for the wonderful editing assistance. Master post can be found here.
~~~
Continued from Chapter 10
To say Ellen was worried didn’t begin to touch it. She knew full well why Sam had been reluctant to leave. It’s not as if she would have been able to leave Jo if their roles were reversed. Hell, she didn’t like sending her daughter off as a perfectly healthy, competent young woman. She’d tracked Jo half way across the country just to stop her from getting involved in this but now they didn’t have a choice. John’s eldest was out of time.
She’d skipped the typically mandatory speech about how Sam better bring her daughter home safe because there was no other option. He would be as careful as he could and if Jo had any sense about her she’d do the same. It wasn’t as if it was the Winchester boy’s fault Jo was here and he had enough weighing on his mind without being burdened further.
It scared the hell out of her, but looking at his frail form, she honestly couldn’t say whether or not Sam’s older brother would live. Yet even if his brother died here, this was no way for Sam to remember a strong young man like Dean. After his father and now seeing Dean like this, Sam couldn’t likely be feeling anymore helpless. If it was going to happen, she couldn’t help but think for Sam’s sake that it would be better if he wasn’t here for it.
Not that she had any intention of letting it happen. She wasn’t under any delusion that if she buried one of them she wasn’t burying them both and she sure as hell hadn’t come here to bury either of the Winchester boys. That’s why she needed to get a read on what Dean’s current condition was as swiftly as possible.
She started with a quick survey of the darkened room. The foul smell in the air was the first thing she had noticed walking in. The stained carpet and piles of dirtied towels and bed sheets explained that quick enough. Little wonder this room smelled of death with all this blood lying around. She didn’t even want to think about the fact that it had all come from the boy that lay motionless in front of her.
As she looked down she noticed that the ice bucket at her feet was partially filled with blood and other fluids. If that was what Sam had been using the ice bucket for she was sure that Sam wasn’t understating just how dehydrated Dean was. God these boys needed a mother.
Half the times she’d seen Dean come through the Roadhouse he had looked incapable of sitting still like he had more energy coursing through his blood than he knew what to do with. A young man like that should never be so still. Her hand set gently on Dean’s feverish forehead. She felt his brow move ever so slightly at the touch. He wasn’t fully out.
“Hey there, sweetie.”
His eyes didn’t open but his brow creased further as he obviously tried to process where she had come from. Judging by the mixed expressions that flashed over his still face, if the poor thing even recognized who she was he probably thought he was hallucinating.
“Ellen?” he asked hoarsely.
She couldn’t help but smile gently at the sound of his voice even if it was barely there. He recognized her. That at least was a good sign. “In the flesh,” she confirmed.
“I didn’t want this,” he mumbled softly.
“Oh, I know you didn’t, baby.”
Ellen ran her hand through his matted hair to let him know that she was really there and that she didn’t give a damn about any of what he was fretting about. She didn’t know the full story here and she really didn’t need to. Bobby had told her enough for her to know that Dean wasn’t at fault here. It wouldn’t matter if he were.
His eyes opened ever so slightly. Just enough for her to see the hurt in them. From the distance in his gaze it looked as if he was somewhere else and didn’t even see the room around him.
“I can’t save them.”
She wasn’t all that certain what he was talking about now, but again she didn’t care. All she wanted was to be able to take all this weight off his shoulders no matter what the cause. It should never have been there to begin with.
“That’s all okay, but Dean, you listen up. I need you to drink something for me.”
The usually sturdy boy looked as if he was so fragile that he could shatter. He barely had the energy to shake his head in protest to her.
“Oh no,” she warned him. “It wasn’t a question.”
The boy wasn’t in any position to be calling the shots and he was going to drink. She’d brought an arsenal in that grocery bag of hers. Ginger ale, frozen fruit pops, chicken broth and plenty else he’d like less. Dean might think he’d sworn off liquids for good, but she’d get him hydrated one way or another.
~~~
“Are we okay?” Sam asked Jo.
He was so far from wanting to have this conversation right now, but he needed to know where they stood before they got started. There wouldn’t be time for anything personal to slow them down and he honestly needed to know if she was even comfortable being around him. As he finished buttoning the police uniform he turned around to look at her.
“If you try to tie me up again I’ll gut you like a fish. Otherwise we’re great,” she replied with a grin. “But just so we’re clear, I’m doing this for Dean. And I’m driving.”
“No you’re not.”
“Hey, I stole this thing fair and square…” At his look she caved. “Okay my mom did, but same diff. I helped and no offense, but you look hell. I’m not letting you drive me anywhere.”
At least they agreed that Dean was the top priority even if they couldn’t agree on much else. The smugness left Jo’s face as the gravity of the situation seemed to sink in. Sam realized he probably had it written all too clearly across his face.
“How’s Dean really doing, Sam?”
He couldn’t bring himself to say the truth about Dean’s condition because the truth was that his brother was dying. That wasn’t something he could admit even to himself and Jo seemed to read as much from his face.
“We’re gonna save him,” she promised. With that she hopped into the drivers seat and looked back up at him. “So where do we start?”
“The library, I guess.” He climbed into the passenger seat beside her. “We need to translate these symbols and...hold on.”
Sam dug through his jacket pocket as his cell phone began to ring. “It’s Sam.”
“If you ever hang up on me like that again, I’m going to string you up, you hear me, boy?” Bobby ranted on the other end of the phone.
Sam held the mouthpiece against his shoulder as he looked to Jo. “Go ahead and drive,” he mouthed to her. “Yeah, I got that, Bobby. Sorry,” Sam continued into the phone. “Dean was having some trouble.”
“Is he okay?”
“He’s not too much worse,” Sam replied after a moment. “Jo and I are on our way to the library. What were you saying about the jump in the number of sacrifices?”
“Your idiot brother. Do you know he’s been to Green Bay before?”
“Dean said he'd been here with Dad, but I checked Dad’s journal. Dad wasn’t here in ’97.”
“Neither was your brother. Wrong decade, you idget.”
“This thing takes sacrifices every ten years, right?”
“And what’s ten plus ten?”
“Twenty years ago? All this stuff Dean’s talking about happened in 1987? He was eight.”
“Just barely and you were barely out of diapers.”
“That’s why I didn’t remember,” Sam said mostly to himself.
“What does your brother remember?”
“I don’t know. It’s Dean. He’s not exactly Mr. Care and Share. He kept remembering things, but said there was a gap. Now he’s saying he did this.”
“I’m sure he thinks he did,” Bobby replied. “Your dad loved you boys more than anything, but he didn’t always have his head on straight when it came to you kids.”
~~~
Singer Salvage Yard - South Dakota - 1987
John Winchester burst through Bobby’s front door like his hair was on fire. If the man wasn’t careful, Bobby might see to just that. Yet despite his better judgment, Bobby eased his grip on the trigger of the shotgun in his hand. Given that the man's children were outside he’d have to settle for just beating John over the head with it.
“Just come on in, John. Don’t mind the fact I was about to shoot you a new one,” he grumbled with a defiant splash of holy water to John’s sour face.
John’s scowl deepened as he wiped the moisture from his face, but he kept his eyes locked on Bobby’s. “There’s something wrong with Dean.”
“Why didn’t you just say so?” Bobby replied as he set the shotgun aside.
“I can’t deal with him right now.”
The sympathetic understanding in Bobby’s face vanished as he got a good look at the expression John was wearing. John was all pissed to hell about something and Bobby was sure it didn’t really have a damn thing to do with either one of those little boys sitting out in the back seat of that car parked out front.
“Is that so?” Bobby asked suspiciously. “So what? You’re dumping him here? What’s that kid gone and done that’s so damn awful you can’t look at him anymore?”
“The thing in Green Bay - he made a deal with it, Bobby.”
“Uh huh,” he replied with clear skepticism. Bobby nodded his head out the window towards the sullen older boy that was staring off at nothing. “That kid went out and made a deal with a devil...for kicks? Do I really look that stupid? He did it to save you didn’t he? Didn’t he, John?”
He didn’t need a verbal answer. “That rotten little brat,” Bobby mocked. “What are you waiting for? Go beat the crap out of the kid on account that his father is a stupid ass! What the hell were you thinking going after that thing with those boys, Winchester? I told you to leave it alone!”
“It doesn’t matter why he did it. Now we’re screwed.”
“No. Your son is screwed and not because of anything he did or didn’t do. That much I know.”
“I’m the one that has to clean this up.”
“Well boohoo. I’m feeling real damn sorry for ya. Just rub some dirt in it. I swear, if I hear you whining about that kid one more time...you’ve got no idea how easy you’ve got it with him.”
There was no point in even trying. It wasn’t as if Bobby was even that interested in convincing the man to keep his sons with him when he was on that much of a tear. Either John or the boy would say something and things would get out of hand.
John might not realize it, but he was practically a god to Dean and it wouldn’t take much for John to unintentionally crush the boy. Better to try to pick up the pieces before it got any uglier.
“Go do what you have to. Your sons will be here when you’re done pouting.”
Bobby stormed away from him and let the door slam behind him as he headed out to the Impala, but he was all smiles by the time he reached the boys. As soon as little Sammy saw him the boy bounded from the back of the car and ran over to hug Bobby’s leg.
“Unky Bobby!”
“Look how big you’re getting,” Bobby said with a smile down at the little boy. He ruffled Sammy’s hair before looking to Dean who was still sitting in the back seat.
A big pout came to Sammy’s lip and he pulled at the bottom of Bobby’s shirt. “Make Dean talk.”
“He ain’t talking?” Sammy shook his head. “Don’t worry, kid. I’ll take care of your brother. Go on inside.”
“Okay.”
With that Sammy was off to find his Dad. This was no place for kids, but Sammy had been around these parts before. Usually it was Dean that kept him out of trouble but John was inside and the man could bother himself to deal with his own son for two minutes longer. With Sammy scampering off Bobby leaned into the car to look at Dean who still wouldn’t look at him. The kid was practically catatonic.
“What’s happened to you boy?”
When Dean still didn’t acknowledge him, Bobby walked around to the side of the car Dean was sitting on. He opened the door and reached in to unbuckle him. Carefully he pulled the silent child into his arms. The kid was getting heavy, but considering that he had turned eight a couple months back he ought to weigh more. What the boy needed was a hearty meal.
It took far too long but finally Bobby felt two small arms wrap tentatively around his neck. He hugged the boy tighter. “I did something really bad, Uncle Bobby,” the boy in his arms confessed quietly into his ear. “Now Dad hates me.”
~~~
“But Dean didn’t even know what he’d done,” Bobby explained to Sam. “He honest to god couldn’t remember. Some kind of hypnosis stunt your dad had found someone to pull. He couldn’t find a way to stop this thing so he thought he’d found a way to keep Dean away from it. Screwed your brother up for a while, but he was always a strong kid. He got over it.”
Sam wasn’t so sure he had. Dean wasn’t as strong as everyone thought he was and he definitely wasn’t okay. Right now Sam wasn’t either.
“Sam?”
He looked to Jo as she spoke and followed her eyes to his hand. His grip on the phone was bordering on tight enough to break it. He forced himself to ease up and steady his breath but it didn’t help what he was feeling. All along he had been assuming that his soul eater or whatever it was had screwed with Dean’s memory, but it had been Dad.
“I don’t think Dean needs to know that,” Sam told Bobby.
“No reason he does,” Bobby agreed.
“But if his memory was wiped clean, why did Dean still latch onto this case?”
“Because it wasn’t wiped. Just covered up and this thing is one smart broad. She found a way to call your brother in regardless of what he remembered. Your dad was there to keep Dean out in '97, but he wasn’t here this time around. I’m sorry, kid.”
Right now Sam was so mad at Dad it was hard for him to think straight, but even with as mad as he was he knew one thing. Even if he hadn’t been able to show it and even if he’d used the hell out Dean, Dad had loved them and he’d done the best he could. In the end he’d given his life for Dean. Dad wouldn’t have gone screwing around in Dean’s head if he’d seen any other option.
“Bobby, if Dad couldn’t stop this - how are we going to?"
“I’m working on that part. Call me when you got something. I’ll do the same.”
“Okay, Bobby. Thanks.”
Sam sighed as he hung up the phone. For a minute he’d forgotten that he wasn’t alone. He glanced towards Jo’s expectant face as she pulled into the library’s empty lot.
“Well?” she finally asked.
“Bobby’s working on it.”
He was thankful when Jo reluctantly let it go at that. She walked by his side to the back door before giving him a look as he worked the lock.
“You know we’ve gotta be the only people in the world to break into a library.”
Sam barely heard her as he ushered her inside. At least this was a small town and the library directors seemed to share Jo’s thought. There was no security alarm. Of course if this was any other town there would probably be rioting in the streets. Here everyone had just gone home. It made the town look as if it was already dead.
From what he’d seen of the news this thing was so focused on this town alone that the news people were covering it as a biological terrorist attack - probably why everyone was hiding in their houses. Unfortunately for those people, there was no way to lock this thing out of their homes.
“We’re looking for anything on Hausa,” he told Jo. While she hit the foreign language section he headed for the reference only area.
“This stuff wasn’t online?” Jo called to Sam. “Don’t they have those online translators or something?”
“Yeah, they do, but after Bobby identified the language I looked it up. It’s widely spoken for an African language, but the language changed its alphabet over fifty years ago. This is the old script we’re looking for.”
A minute later Jo was back at his side holding a book out to him. “No script and it’s got some other languages mixed in, but it’s got basic Hausa grammar.”
“It’ll help. I don’t get the impression that the grammar changed much.” He thumbed through an ancient looking dictionary he’d pulled off the back reference shelf. “This one’s got the script and it's a match.”
Sam led Jo to the nearest table and pulled out the sketch he'd made from Dean’s back. “Go ahead and start on this one. I’ll work on the ritual circle.”
“On it and no pressure, right? We got a whole five minutes to figure this language out.”
With the dictionary open in front of him Sam looked back up at Jo and realized that timing was the issue that kept tugging at the back of his mind. The timing in all of this just didn’t add up. Dean had been sick since just after arriving in Oregon two days ago. No one else that they knew of had lived that long after being infected.
~~~
Dean was in a haze. At some point Sam had turned into Ellen, which somehow wasn’t as disturbing as it sounded. Distantly he could feel his body. It was barely his anymore. Just a useless lead weight. When he focused on it he was trapped inside it. Paralyzed and lingering in what he just wanted to end.
When he focused on not being in it he was still in the dark but the physical pain was gone. Mentally it all hurt like hell anyway he played it so this was easier. He’d been here before and this time when the reaper came he wasn’t going to hesitate. This time he would make the right call before anyone had the chance to sacrifice themselves for him. He was ready.
“You returned, child.”
His soul went cold as the hotel fazed out and he was standing staring at a bunch of boxes. This was where he’d found Dad and that was no reaper speaking to him. It seemed as if time had gone away and it was that night. He was that boy. Suddenly he didn’t hate that he’d done what he had. He only hated that he would do the same thing again every last soul in this town be damned. He would do it again not because it was the right thing to do, but because it was the only thing he was strong enough to do.
In his body he had to struggle to find his voice, but not here. Maybe he should be trying to get back into his body, but he couldn’t fight anymore. Not there. There he was just a useless puking, bloody bag of bones that couldn’t even die with dignity. This was easier and he was tired.
“Really been missing you, bitch,” he told the horrid creature.
She was every bit as wretchedly ugly as he remembered. Obviously she’d been human once but it was like all the humanity had rotted from her and this thing before him was what was left. The only thing that was different was that she didn’t have the transparency he’d remembered her having before, but the guy walking around without his body wasn’t one to be calling the kettle black.
He wouldn’t change what he’d done, but he could change now. He was no longer a scared little boy with his Dad’s life hanging over his head. Now he was just a lonely man that had managed to find a more passive way to kill his Dad.
Anyway he cut it, Dad was gone and he was left here fighting and he would fight it. The only thing at risk now was himself and that was a poker chip he was willing to gamble with. No one else was going to die because of him.
There was nothing solid about what he interpreted around him. Things kept shifting and slipping. Parts of the hotel room, parts of here and it took him a good long while to see that he wasn’t alone with this thing.
The basement was full of them. Half spooks like him. Cattle just lined up for the slaughter. Because of him. Little kids and dads and innocent people that didn’t even know they were here and didn’t deserve to die like this.
Then he remembered it all over again. He’d already been here with her this time around. That’s why she wasn’t paying a whole hell of a lot of attention to him. They’d already had this conversation and she was too busy picking off the others. He’d already tried to stop her.
There had been some kid. Couldn’t have been any older than Sammy had been last time they’d been through town and she’d gulped him down like a White Castle cheeseburger. He’d tried to bust into the circle to stop it and that’s when he’d got shot back to the motel room with one damn nasty jolt.
A direct assault obviously wasn’t going to do crap, but he wasn’t going to stand here and watch her keep munching on souls. These people had all gotten sick after him. She just needed to take him and leave the rest of these poor suckers out of it. If she didn’t want him in the circle he was sure that was where he needed to get. Near as he could tell the only way to get in was to get her to open wide and try to take a bite.
“Hey, I was in line first. Just take me already!” his specter shouted at her as she started to move in on another victim.
Finally she shot a dismissive look towards him. “You forget that you gave yourself to me. You will remain as long as you are needed.”
“So you’re saying if I die now...”
“You won’t.”
“Right...because if I do, your little binge ends.” A dark smirk came to his lips. She’d given him all the information he needed.
He closed his eyes in preparation for the physical assault that he knew was coming. He forced himself to return his focus to the motel room. To the weakness and pain that swallowed him up there.
With a ragged, chocking breath his body struggled back towards consciousness. He gagged at the return of the thick coppery taste that filled his mouth. It would be so easy to leave again, but Ellen’s touch pulled him the rest of the way back. Or at least as far back as he could get.
Blindly he reached out to her and struggled for the words. His mind was too muddled and his vocal cords too cramped, but finally they came, “Ellen, you gotta kill me.”
Continue to Chapter 12