Mirror 1/3
Once in a while, jennytork and I do collaborate on more than just the Different Roads 'verse. Here's one such piece.
Word count: ~12,000
Rating: PG (language)
Spoilers: general for Season 7
Summary: It's just a simple blow to the head. Freakin' poltergeist. But why is everyone telling Dean he's not speaking English anymore? Why does Sam suddenly think he's 27? And why the hell is Sammy suddenly acting like Dad?
Note: Translations not given in the text will appear when you place your mouse over foreign language dialogue; we figured that was the easiest way to work them in, since there’s so much non-English being thrown around. However, some idiomatic exclamations don’t easily translate back into English, so the translations given for those phrases will be the nearest English equivalent.
Mirror
By Enola Jones and San Antonio Rose
Chapter 1
November 14, 2006
The Hunt was going pear-shaped faster and faster. The poltergeist was huge and powerful and Dean was its punching bag. “LOOK OUT!” Sam wailed as it hit his brother with a bureau - across the head. “NO!”
“S’mmy, ’m... ’s geht...” Dean’s eyes crossed almost comically, and he slumped to the ground unconscious.
Sam got the poltergeist destroyed and Dean to the Impala, driving him right to the motel and tending to his head wound there. Dean swam in and out of consciousness, seldom becoming lucid enough to get out more than a garbled word or two. Sam was just about to get him to an ambulance when he surfaced again.
“Thank God.”
Dean frowned blearily at him. “Sammy? Was ist los?”
Sam stroked his hair. “Easy, it’s okay.”
Dean slapped his hand away. “Mir geht’s gut, Mann. Hau ab.”
“Dean, why are you prattling in German?”
“Wie, bitte?”
“Dean, stop it!”
Dean’s frown deepened. “Du, beruhige dich. Wie gesagt, mir geht’s gut.”
“DEAN. This isn’t FUNNY. I can’t UNDERSTAND you!”
“Verdammt noch mal, Sammy, RUHE!”
“I understood my name and the ‘dammit.’”
Dean chuckled a little. “Na, dann.”
“... Dean, why are you speaking German?”
Dean frowned. “Wie, bitte? Ich spreche doch Englisch.”
Sam suddenly held up a hand. “Repeat after me, Dean. Please, just do this, okay?”
Dean blinked. “Doch, okay.”
Sam nodded. “Here we go. What.”
“Was.”
Sam nodded. “Please.”
“Bitte.”
“Okay, that’s half of what you keep saying.” He thought for a second, then smiled. “Bitch.”
“Aas.”
Sam grinned. “You are speaking German, Dean.”
“Du, mach den Kopf zu,” Dean grumbled and rubbed at his head.
Sam dialed his cell. “... Bobby? Can you speak German?”
“What do you think, idjit?” Bobby growled.
“I think suddenly Dean is speaking like he’s from Berlin and I can’t understand him.
“Well, if he’s speaking Berlinisch, even I cain’t help you. But lemme talk to him.”
Sam handed the phone to Dean.
Dean pinched the bridge of his nose briefly as if that would clear his headache. “Hallo, Bobby. Wie geht’s?”
“What do you hear, Dean?” Bobby asked. “English or German?”
“Was meinst du, was höre ich? Sam glaubt, ich spreche Deutsch. Ist total Quatsch.”
“Not hardly nonsense, boy. I’m hearin’ German come outta you, too.”
“Unsinn! Bobby, was... ich hab’ nur ’ne Erschutterung bekommen. Der verdammte Poltergeist hat mich gegen ’ne Schrank gestoßen.”
“May be crazy, but I’m hearin’ German.”
“Wie kann das mal sein? Es ist nur eine verdammte Erschutterung!!”
“And you think you’re speaking English. Okay, try writing something down for Sam.”
Dean blew the air out of his cheeks. “Okay.”
Sam’s eyes went wide when he did and nodded. “It’s English.”
Dean smirked. “Natürlich.”
“Still hearin’ German.”
Dean threw up his hands in defeat.
“Sorry, man.”
“Na, was soll ich uberhaupt denn? Wenn ihr recht habt, wenn ich eigentlich nicht mehr Englisch spreche....”
Over the phone, Bobby said, “You are speaking German. So I suggest you keep it as nonverbal as you can ’til I get there to play translator. Got me?”
“Na klar.”
“Great. See you in the morning.”
“Klasse. Auf Wiederhören.”
He hung up and Sam looked at Dean.
“Was?”
“What did he say?” He handed him a pad.
Dean jotted down a reply and handed the pad to Sam: He said to keep it non-verbal, y el estará aquí mañana para la traducción.
Sam blinked and looked at him. “Dean, say something. Anything.”
“Was zum Teufel....”
“O-KAY. Dean, you’re writing Spanish and speaking German.”
“Du verarscht mich doch.”
Sam smiled ruefully. “Sorry, man.”
Dean grabbed the pad back, stared at it, and started swearing loudly in German. And Latin. And Gaelic and a couple of other languages Sam didn’t know he knew.
“Dean...” He repeated the words back to him so that Dean could hear what he sounded like.
Not that it helped. “Wahnsinn, Sam! Heller Wahnsinn! Verdammt noch mal, es ist nur eine Erschutterung! Warum diese... diese....” Evidently he was reaching for a word that he didn’t know even in English.
“Polyglot,” Sam grinned. “You’re a polyglot!”
“Ich polyglotte dich,” Dean grumbled.
“Dich... that’s you, right? Ich is I?”
“Richtig.” Dean paused. “Woher weiß ich das?”
“I don’t know what you’re saying again.”
Dean bit his lip in thought, then tried Sign. I’m saying things I don’t think I should know how to say.
Sam nodded. “You don’t clearly remember knowing German.”
“Nee.” Dean caught himself. No. And from what you ask, it’s like... not textbook stuff.
“No, it’s more conversational. Your note was idiomatic.”
“Verdammt.” Dean shook his head. You sure it was just a poltergeist?
“At this point? Not really.” Sam sighed. “Not if it did this to you.”
Dean rubbed at his forehead wearily. “Maledictus.”
“Now you’ve switched to Latin.”
Dean nodded. Meant to.
Sam’s eyes went wide. “So if you can switch between languages... just switch to English.”
Dean shot him a look. “Das geht nicht, Sam. Ich wusste nicht am Anfang, dass ich überhaupt nicht Englisch sprach.”
Sam frowned at him.
Dean sighed. It’s not that easy. And the fact that you didn’t hear that in English proves it.
“That was you trying to speak English.”
Dean nodded.
“Wow.”
Dean’s raised eyebrow and grimace said it all.
“A true polyglot, then.”
Dean rolled his eyes. Except something’s jammed my gears.
“And locked it off of English.”
“Genau.” ... Exactly.
“So far I’ve counted six languages.”
Dean rubbed the back of his neck. I don’t remember learning more than ASL, Spanish, and Latin.
“And I’ve counted those and German, Gaelic, and Russian.”
Dean frowned in confusion.
Sam nodded.
Dean rubbed his forehead again and sighed.
“Let’s get some dinner and some sleep.”
Dean nodded and winced a little.
“Head still hurt?”
“Mm.”
“Lay down. I’ll get you some food.”
Dean nodded again and sank back down on his bed.
Sam left the room and called Bobby. “How far out are you?” he half-whined.
“I’ll bring breakfast,” Bobby replied gruffly. “What’s he done now?”
“Spanish. Gaelic. ASL. Russian. Latin.”
“Sam, he don’t know half those languages.”
“He’s speaking them. Idiomatically. Fluently.”
“What the hell was in that house, kid?”
“Just a poltergeist!” His voice was trembling. “Just a damned poltergeist!”
“All right, Sam, just... just calm down. We’ll get this figured out as soon as we can. Keep treatin’ the concussion, and don’t let this language barrier get to you. You know your brother; you can read him like a book if you try.”
“He can’t... he can’t speak English anymore, Uncle Bobby. He managed Sign and Spanish, and I speak both of those, so it’s not so much a barrier, but when-when-when he tries to speak English, it comes out German!”
“Sam, I’m on my way. I’ll be there as quick as I can, less’n you got some way to put a warp drive on this car.”
“I’ll tell Dean.” His laugh came out bitter. “He’ll figure it out.”
Bobby chuckled. “He might just do that, ’less he got his bell rung worse’n we thought.”
Sam started to cry.
“Hey, hey. We’ll fix this, Sam.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m being such a damned girl about this....”
Bobby’s blink was almost audible. “What did you say?”
“I said I don’t know why I’m being such a damned girl about this.”
“Sam... maybe Dean ain’t the only one who’s been whammied.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re both beat to hell, and you’re scared this is somethin’ you cain’t fix. I can understand you gettin’ a little teary-eyed over that. But I ain’t never heard you call yourself a girl before.”
“Well, sometimes I am! I mean, like now....”
“Yeah, but it’s Dean who calls you Samantha.”
Sam scoffed. “Yeah, I know.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, gonna get some food. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Sam... you need to talk, you call me.”
“I will.” And he hung up without saying goodbye.
That wasn’t like Sam.
On the other end of the line, Bobby cursed under his breath and tried to coax a little more speed out of the Chevelle. Something was badly, badly wrong with his boys, and he couldn’t get to them fast enough.
Sam woke Dean up after 3 hours. “Time for the check.”
Dean blinked up at him blearily. “Was sagst du da?”
“Wake up.”
Dean groaned. “Kaffee, bitte.”
“Bitte - please... Kaffee sounds like... coffee?” He handed the cup over.
“Danke.” Dean guzzled the coffee without opening his eyes beyond slits.
“Head hurting?”
“Mm.”
Sam handed him some pills.
Dean blinked at them and frowned a little. “Was....”
“Painkillers.”
Dean shook his head and handed them back. “Paracetamol. Nichts stärkeres.”
“It’s aspirin, not paracetamol.”
Dean grunted and held his hand out again. “’Schuldigung.”
From his tone, Sam figured that Dean had apologized. “It’s okay.”
Dean took the aspirin and washed it down with the rest of the coffee. Then he tapped his wrist where his watch normally sat.
Sam handed it over.
Dean glared at Sam and squinted at the watch face, moving it around as if he couldn’t get his eyes to focus on it.
“Head hurts that bad, huh? It’s 1 AM.”
“Danke.” Dean sighed and slapped the watch back on the nightstand.
“Still German,” Sam sighed, moving to his own bed.
The caffeine clearly wasn’t doing much for Dean, who put the coffee cup on the nightstand and lay down again. “Schlaf wohl, Sammy.”
“Night, Deanie.”
Dean froze, then looked at Sam in alarm. “Deanie?!”
Sam laughed softly as he lay down.
Dean sat up. “Du, seit wann nennst du mir bloß Deanie?”
“Can’t understand you....” he sing-songed.
Dean snarled. “Exorcisamus te, omnis immundus spiritus...”
“I understand THAT,” he laughed, turning to face him. “I’m not possessed.”
“Dann WARUM SPRICHST DU WIE MEG?”
Sam sat up. “Meg? What about Meg?”
Dean’s jaw twitched as he switched to ASL. Listen to yourself. You sound like Meg.
“No, I don’t.”
“Kann dich nicht verstehen,” Dean echoed back in the same mocking sing-song.
“I do not sound like MEG!”
“Na, wer, dann?” Dean demanded before remembering to sign. Well, who DO you sound like, then?
“I don’t know. But I’m not possessed.”
And why the hell did you call me Deanie?
“You call me Sammy!”
So what? I’m your big brother. You NEVER call me Deanie. Dean paused. That was Mom.
“Just thought it’d match. You know - Sammy. Deanie.”
Dean looked at him like he’d grown an extra head.
“I’m serious!”
Dean grabbed his phone and dialed. He barely gave Bobby time to answer before yelping, “Este es LOCO!”
“Well, at least it’s not German now,” Bobby snorted.
Dean grumbled under his breath. “Aber im Ernst, Bobby, etwas ist los hier. Er nennt mir Deanie, zum Teufel noch mal!”
“He did what?” But it was disbelief, not misunderstanding. “Deanie??”
“Zwar!”
“Aw, crap. Look, I’m two hours out.”
Dean blew the air out of his cheeks. “Okay. Ich versuche, ihn nicht zu mördern, bevor du an kommst.”
“You do that, I’ll put you right beside him.”
Dean chuckled. “Bis dann, Bobby.”
“See you in two hours. Rest.”
“Ja, okay. Wiederhör’n.” He hung up with a sigh.
Sam had dozed off.
Dean just watched him for a moment, shaking his head a little. “Was zum Teufel, Sam...” he whispered.
Sam’s eyes opened.
Bobby’s two hours out, Dean signed.
He nodded. “Beer?”
Dean looked at him oddly. “Nein, danke.”
Sam nodded and got a beer for himself. He popped it open and stared out the window at the stars as he drank it.
Dean sighed and got up, then pulled his flask of holy water out of his jacket and walked over to Sam. “Sam.”
“Hm?”
Dean pushed the flask against his chest in a way that clearly meant Drink this.
Sam picked it up and took a huge swig.
No reaction.
Dean shrugged with his eyebrows and took the flask back. Sam smirked at him and went back to bed.
Two hours, Dean told himself, clenching his jaw again. Just two hours. That’s all I gotta get through without knocking him into next week.
Bobby pulled up exactly two hours later.
Dean met him at the door, clearly in pain from the concussion but just as clearly worried about Sam. “Bobby, Gott sei dank. Ich weiß nicht, was hier los ist, aber....”
“Yeah, me neither. Get in there.”
Dean nodded and stepped back to let Bobby into the room.
Bobby walked in and looked at Sam’s sleeping form. “Anything else weird happen?”
“Er fragte, ob ich Bier mochte. Bier. Mit Erschutterung. Sonst ich bin nicht so blöd, Bobby!”
Bobby sighed. “I think he got whammied, too.”
Dean sighed as well. “Nur eine verdammte Poltergeist. Keine Hexe, nichts außerordentliches. Und jetzt... dieses.”
“Yeah. This. You a polyglot, him weird.”
“Was sollen wir tun?”
“First off, you wake him up.”
Dean grabbed a pillow off his bed and threw it at Sam as hard as he could.
Sam came up yelling, a knife in his hand.
Wide-eyed, Dean held up his hands. “Whoa, Sam! Sind nur uns!”
“It’s just us!” Bobby translated.
Sam blinked and frowned. “Thought you weren’t gonna be here till morning.”
“It’s after midnight. It counts.”
Sam chuckled and the knife vanished, seemingly, into thin air.
That, at least, was all Sam.
Dean sighed. “Du, was ist los mit dir?”
When Bobby translated, Sam sighed. “I’m just... I dunno.”
“Well, that’s specific,” said Bobby dryly.
Sam glared at him
“Sam, you’re givin’ your brother pet names that you never used even as a kid.”
“I told him, I just thought we’d match! He calls me Sammy all’a time, so I tried out ‘Deanie’ for size.”
Dean gave Bobby the raised eyebrow that meant See what I mean?
“How old are you?” Bobby asked Sam.
Sam frowned. “I’m 27, why?”
Dean and Bobby exchanged a look of alarm. “What year is it?” Bobby pressed.
“Are you cracked? It’s 2006!”
“And what year were you born?”
“1983... wait.” He frowned. “That don’t add up.”
“Doesn’t.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No, you said ‘don’t.’”
Sam took a deep breath. “I’m gonna need an IV of coffee if we’re gonna play this game.”
“Ist kein Spiel, Alter,” Dean said flatly. “Herr Student spricht nicht so schleppend, aber du, jetzt....”
Bobby translated, and Sam groaned. “Dude, I JUST WOKE UP...”
“You called me Uncle Bobby on the phone,” Bobby noted.
“Well, yeah...”
“I’m gonna ask you again, boy. How old are you?”
Sam’s eyes rolled upward and stayed there as he considered that. “I’m 23.”
“Now, why’d you have to think about that?”
“Because I think I’m 27 but the math’s wrong.”
“Even at 27, you wouldn’t be tryin’ to call your brother ‘Deanie’ just ’cause he calls you Sammy.”
“Would you LAY OFF? I won’t do it again, okay? Sheesh!”
“Sam.” Bobby made his voice as gentle as possible. “We’re tryin’ to figure out what’s goin’ on here. Your brother’s speakin’ languages he never learned, and you’re switchin’ from sounding your normal 23-year-old self to sounding... well, yeah, maybe 27, to sounding... five.”
“FIVE!” Sam roared. “I am NOT FIVE!”
“How old are you, then?”
“I’m TWENTY-THREE!”
“You’re sure?”
Sam shot up off the bed. “I don’t have to sit here and listen to this.”
“Sam,” said Dean sternly.
And Sam erupted. He poured out vehemence all over Dean and Bobby. Dean listened for as long as he could stand to do so and then laid Sam out with a single punch.
Sam collapsed without a word onto the bed.
“Wie gesagt,” Dean said tightly. “Maledictus.” Then he closed his eyes and swayed a little.
“You lay down,” Bobby told him.
Dean nodded and staggered back to bed.
Bobby sighed and studied his ‘nephews’ - who were quickly becoming as close to him as sons. They were both suffering.
Then he sat down at the small table and began rifling through the research materials the boys had gathered for the hunt. There had to be something they’d missed somewhere if they’d both fallen under a curse at that house.
It took him about an hour, but he found it. The thing was a simple poltergeist - in a house rumored to be the house of a witch.
But hadn’t Dean said that there wasn’t a witch involved? How had they reached that conclusion?
He looked at it closer and realized why they had thought so. It was local legend. Not fact.
But what happened to his boys wasn’t legend.
He sat back and ran a hand over his mouth and chin. Looked like he had some serious digging to do come morning.
Dean slowly sat up and looked around. “Merde,” he whispered before laying back down and closing his eyes.
Bobby blinked. French was new. “Dean?”
“Mm?”
“What’s goin’ on, son?”
“Tengo un dolor de cabeza mala.”
“When’s the last time you took something?”
His eyes canted upward and his lips pursed slightly. “Circa... siete?”
Bobby frowned; he’d gotten there at 3. “Seven PM or 7 AM?”
“Siete de la mañana.”
“Dean...” Bobby was as worried by the time slip as by the fact that Dean was suddenly speaking exclusively Spanish. “Es ist nur halb fünf morgens.”
Dean’s eyes widened. “Halb fünf morgens??”
“Doch. Ich bin um drei angekommen.”
Dean lowered his head and cursed in five languages.
Bobby got up and took him the aspirin bottle and a cup of water, then rubbed his shoulder gently. “Hey. We’ll fix this.”
Dean nodded miserably.
“Here.” Bobby shook the aspirin into Dean’s hand and waited while he washed them down. “Need an ice pack? Cold compress?”
“Ja.”
Bobby patted his shoulder and went to the bathroom for washrags. Picking two that looked tolerably clean, he soaked them both in cold water and wrung them out. One he took straight to Dean and gently placed it over the boy’s eyes; the other he filled with ice from the room’s small freezer and tied the corners together. “Here’s the ice pack,” he said as he brought it to Dean. “Where do you need it?”
“Cabeza.”
“I knew that, idjit.” He set the ice pack in Dean’s hand. “I’ll let you place it, okay?”
Dean did so, right on the top and slightly to the right.
Over the language center of his brain.
“Aw, hell,” Bobby breathed. “That ain’t where you got whacked, is it?”
“Ja.”
Bobby frowned and sat down on the edge of the bed. “You did get hit there? Lemme see.”
Dean sat up and bowed his head.
Bobby prodded gently, and sure enough, there was a good-sized goose-egg right over the language center. “Huh.”
“Merde!”
“Sorry, son. You can lie back down now.”
He did so with a soft groan.
“Listen, Dean... this don’t explain everything, but where you got hit is right over the part of the brain that controls language. I’m bettin’ that’s got somethin’ to do with what’s goin’ on with you.”
Dean, eyes closed, gave him a thumbs-up and settled the washrag and ice pack back in place.
“We may need to risk a hospital after breakfast, make sure this ain’t permanent.”
“Nein.”
“I’m not a neurologist, Dean. Until we know for sure that it’s solely the result of a curse....”
Sam stirred, opening his eyes.
Bobby looked over at him. “Hey, Sam.”
“Hey. What’s with Dean?”
“Well, he’s switchin’ languages more now, and it looks like that head injury’s dead over the language center of the brain. Don’t explain why you’re both losin’ time, but... it’s somethin’.”
“He’s losin’ time?”
“Little. Couldn’t remember when he took his last dose of aspirin.”
“Huh.”
“How’s your jaw?”
“Sore. I can’t believe he clocked me.”
Dean snorted. “Dummkopf.”
“Now that, I understood.”
Dean smirked, but Bobby was willing to bet the only lines around the eyes hidden under the washrag were lines of pain.
“So how soon can he be mobile? We need to head out.”
Bobby scowled. “You are loco, boy. He’s got a headache the size of the Chrysler Building. We ain’t movin’ him until tomorrow at best.”
“We can’t stay. That’s not right.”
Bobby’s eyes narrowed. “He stays put-John.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed in return. “Stop that. Dad’s dead.”
“And you and he were always a lot alike, but I ain’t never heard you sound so much like him before.”
“I’m just doing what he would have wanted. He wanted us to leave.”
“No, he wanted you to look after your brother.”
His jaw ticked. “Dean will be fine.”
“Eventually. Not in the next twelve hours, not even in the next 24. He’s concussed, Sam. And if you two are cursed, we need to find the cause and break it ’fore you go harin’ off on your next hunt.”
“Azazel isn’t gonna stop-”
“Azazel?! Boy, have you lost your mind... or your soul?”
“We have to be ready! He’s not gonna stop for us to recover! We just have to suck it up and go on!”
“Padre,” Dean grumbled.
Bobby got up and got in Sam’s face. “Dean is in no fit state to suck it up, John. You wanna go, you can take my car. But head injuries are not something to mess around with. Until I am satisfied that Dean’s not in danger of permanent brain damage, he and I are staying here.”
Sam looked stunned. “... I’m actin’ like him, huh?”
Dean and Bobby gave almost identical derisive snorts. “Just a little,” said Bobby.
Sam sighed. “Something’s wrong, Uncle Bobby.”
“You’re tellin’ me, kid.”
“This... isn’t me.”
“No. It ain’t. Talk to me, Sam. What’s goin’ on in there?”
“It’s all... mixed up.”
“Mixed up how?”
“I can’t think right. So much rage...”
Bobby frowned in concern. “Where’s the rage coming from?”
“I didn’t get to be who I wanted... I gave him everything and became his soldier....”
“Gave who everything, Sam?”
“Dad!”
“You sure?” Bobby asked as gently as possible. “I remember you going to college, even though John told you not to.”
“I didn’t!”
“Moment mal.” Dean got up with a quiet groan and rummaged in his duffle for a moment, then brought a well-worn envelope over to Sam and handed it to him. Bobby didn’t have to look to know what it was; it figured Dean would have kept Sam’s Stanford acceptance letter all these years. Then he went and got John’s journal, opened it to what Bobby assumed was the entry after Sam had left, and brought that to Sam as well.
“Du hast gegangen,” he said quietly when Sam looked at him in confusion. “Du hast Jura studiert. Du hast dich in Jess verliebt. Erinnerst du dich?”
“Who’s Jess?”
Dean’s face crumpled. You were going to marry her. But Yellow Eyes killed her.
Sam chuckled. “I never was going to marry. This is my life.”
Dean shook his head, and a tear rolled down his cheek. No, Sam, he signed. He killed her. Just like he killed Mom. I pulled you out of the fire.
“I don’t remember.”
It was November 2, 2005.
“When Dad went missing.”
Right after we got back from the Woman in White in Jericho.
“I remember that.”
I took you back to Stanford because you had a law school interview.
“Why don’t I remember it?”
“Good question,” replied Bobby. “What do you remember from those years?”
“Hunting. I never left them in my mind.”
“Specific hunts?”
His mouth opened - and then his face went slack. “... it’s all a blur.”
Dean looked at Bobby in despair.
Sam shook his head. “Eh, well, it don’t really matter.”
“Zum Teufel bedeutet es nichts,” Dean snarled before remembering to sign. The hell it doesn’t. You lose four years of memories and suddenly turn into Dad except when you sound like a kid? That is not nothing.
“If anything, I GAINED four,” Sam shot back. “27 now, remember?”
“Quod es demonstravit.”
“And that’s another thing,” Bobby added. “What do you remember between 2006 and 2010?”
He opened his mouth, then frowned. “... not too much.”
Bobby frowned as well. “But you do remember something?”
“Bits and pieces. Pain. Fire. Blood.”
“Hunts?”
“A few.”
“Do you remember details, like what you were hunting? Where, when, why?”
“Yeah! Vampires and demons and....”
“And?” Bobby prompted at the same time Dean said “Und?”
“I had a lover. A brunette. And she was a demon and we killed her.”
Dean’s eyebrows tried to disappear into his hairline.
Sam shrugged.
“Killed her?” Bobby repeated. “With the Colt?”
“No, a knife. That killed demons.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“She gave it to me.”
Dean blinked; Bobby noticed that his color was fading a little, but he seemed determined to stay vertical until they got to the bottom of this. “Warum hatte eine Dämonin ein Messer, dass Dämonen tötet?”
“She was pretending to be on our side, so she needed it to be real.”
“Why would she do that?” Bobby asked quietly.
Sam chuckled “That’s one of the gaps.”
“And why did you kill her? Last I looked, you two were pretty concerned about the effect on the host.”
“I didn’t. You did.”
Dean and Bobby looked at each other in confusion.
“I held her and you ran her through.”
Why, Sam? Dean signed with that confused and worried frown that gave the lie to Sam being the only puppy in the family. What did she do?
“Lied to us. Hurt me. Tricked me into releasing something... horrible.”
Dean swallowed, and his face got a little more ashen. Did we kill that?
“No. But we trapped it. And a lot of good people died.”
Dean bit his lip. Who?
Sam shook his head.
Can’t or won’t?
“Can’t.”
Dean nodded-and swayed dangerously.
“Back to bed, you,” Sam said.
Dean smiled a little. “Mein Sammy,” he whispered before toppling forward into Sam’s arms.
“I understood THAT,” Sam whispered, tucking Dean in and sitting on the bed, rubbing his arm.
Bobby settled the ice pack and cold compress back on Dean’s head and eyes, respectively, then put a gentle hand on Sam’s shoulder. “We’ll stop this somehow,” he whispered. “Whatever’s doin’ this to the two of you, whatever leads up to you hookin’ up with a demon... we’ll stop it.”
“I know ya will, Uncle Bobby,” he whispered back, his eyes huge and trusting.
Bobby shifted his hand to squeeze the back of Sam’s neck. “C’mon. You need your rest, too.”
“Not tired.”
“I mean it, Sam.”
He pouted but lay down.
Bobby sat back down with a sigh and tried to process what he’d just learned. Sam was remembering things that hadn’t happened yet-and they were clearly memories, given that Bobby had once seen Sam when one of his visions hit. Something big was going to go down between then and 2010, something that evidently left Sam reacting like John’s perfect soldier.
But why the hell was Sam remembering it now?
Was this some kind of perverse new type of vision? Or given the timing-and it was one hell of a coincidence-was it linked to what was happening to Dean... and possibly something that was going to leave all three of them way, way out of their depth?
Next
Word count: ~12,000
Rating: PG (language)
Spoilers: general for Season 7
Summary: It's just a simple blow to the head. Freakin' poltergeist. But why is everyone telling Dean he's not speaking English anymore? Why does Sam suddenly think he's 27? And why the hell is Sammy suddenly acting like Dad?
Note: Translations not given in the text will appear when you place your mouse over foreign language dialogue; we figured that was the easiest way to work them in, since there’s so much non-English being thrown around. However, some idiomatic exclamations don’t easily translate back into English, so the translations given for those phrases will be the nearest English equivalent.
Mirror
By Enola Jones and San Antonio Rose
Chapter 1
November 14, 2006
The Hunt was going pear-shaped faster and faster. The poltergeist was huge and powerful and Dean was its punching bag. “LOOK OUT!” Sam wailed as it hit his brother with a bureau - across the head. “NO!”
“S’mmy, ’m... ’s geht...” Dean’s eyes crossed almost comically, and he slumped to the ground unconscious.
Sam got the poltergeist destroyed and Dean to the Impala, driving him right to the motel and tending to his head wound there. Dean swam in and out of consciousness, seldom becoming lucid enough to get out more than a garbled word or two. Sam was just about to get him to an ambulance when he surfaced again.
“Thank God.”
Dean frowned blearily at him. “Sammy? Was ist los?”
Sam stroked his hair. “Easy, it’s okay.”
Dean slapped his hand away. “Mir geht’s gut, Mann. Hau ab.”
“Dean, why are you prattling in German?”
“Wie, bitte?”
“Dean, stop it!”
Dean’s frown deepened. “Du, beruhige dich. Wie gesagt, mir geht’s gut.”
“DEAN. This isn’t FUNNY. I can’t UNDERSTAND you!”
“Verdammt noch mal, Sammy, RUHE!”
“I understood my name and the ‘dammit.’”
Dean chuckled a little. “Na, dann.”
“... Dean, why are you speaking German?”
Dean frowned. “Wie, bitte? Ich spreche doch Englisch.”
Sam suddenly held up a hand. “Repeat after me, Dean. Please, just do this, okay?”
Dean blinked. “Doch, okay.”
Sam nodded. “Here we go. What.”
“Was.”
Sam nodded. “Please.”
“Bitte.”
“Okay, that’s half of what you keep saying.” He thought for a second, then smiled. “Bitch.”
“Aas.”
Sam grinned. “You are speaking German, Dean.”
“Du, mach den Kopf zu,” Dean grumbled and rubbed at his head.
Sam dialed his cell. “... Bobby? Can you speak German?”
“What do you think, idjit?” Bobby growled.
“I think suddenly Dean is speaking like he’s from Berlin and I can’t understand him.
“Well, if he’s speaking Berlinisch, even I cain’t help you. But lemme talk to him.”
Sam handed the phone to Dean.
Dean pinched the bridge of his nose briefly as if that would clear his headache. “Hallo, Bobby. Wie geht’s?”
“What do you hear, Dean?” Bobby asked. “English or German?”
“Was meinst du, was höre ich? Sam glaubt, ich spreche Deutsch. Ist total Quatsch.”
“Not hardly nonsense, boy. I’m hearin’ German come outta you, too.”
“Unsinn! Bobby, was... ich hab’ nur ’ne Erschutterung bekommen. Der verdammte Poltergeist hat mich gegen ’ne Schrank gestoßen.”
“May be crazy, but I’m hearin’ German.”
“Wie kann das mal sein? Es ist nur eine verdammte Erschutterung!!”
“And you think you’re speaking English. Okay, try writing something down for Sam.”
Dean blew the air out of his cheeks. “Okay.”
Sam’s eyes went wide when he did and nodded. “It’s English.”
Dean smirked. “Natürlich.”
“Still hearin’ German.”
Dean threw up his hands in defeat.
“Sorry, man.”
“Na, was soll ich uberhaupt denn? Wenn ihr recht habt, wenn ich eigentlich nicht mehr Englisch spreche....”
Over the phone, Bobby said, “You are speaking German. So I suggest you keep it as nonverbal as you can ’til I get there to play translator. Got me?”
“Na klar.”
“Great. See you in the morning.”
“Klasse. Auf Wiederhören.”
He hung up and Sam looked at Dean.
“Was?”
“What did he say?” He handed him a pad.
Dean jotted down a reply and handed the pad to Sam: He said to keep it non-verbal, y el estará aquí mañana para la traducción.
Sam blinked and looked at him. “Dean, say something. Anything.”
“Was zum Teufel....”
“O-KAY. Dean, you’re writing Spanish and speaking German.”
“Du verarscht mich doch.”
Sam smiled ruefully. “Sorry, man.”
Dean grabbed the pad back, stared at it, and started swearing loudly in German. And Latin. And Gaelic and a couple of other languages Sam didn’t know he knew.
“Dean...” He repeated the words back to him so that Dean could hear what he sounded like.
Not that it helped. “Wahnsinn, Sam! Heller Wahnsinn! Verdammt noch mal, es ist nur eine Erschutterung! Warum diese... diese....” Evidently he was reaching for a word that he didn’t know even in English.
“Polyglot,” Sam grinned. “You’re a polyglot!”
“Ich polyglotte dich,” Dean grumbled.
“Dich... that’s you, right? Ich is I?”
“Richtig.” Dean paused. “Woher weiß ich das?”
“I don’t know what you’re saying again.”
Dean bit his lip in thought, then tried Sign. I’m saying things I don’t think I should know how to say.
Sam nodded. “You don’t clearly remember knowing German.”
“Nee.” Dean caught himself. No. And from what you ask, it’s like... not textbook stuff.
“No, it’s more conversational. Your note was idiomatic.”
“Verdammt.” Dean shook his head. You sure it was just a poltergeist?
“At this point? Not really.” Sam sighed. “Not if it did this to you.”
Dean rubbed at his forehead wearily. “Maledictus.”
“Now you’ve switched to Latin.”
Dean nodded. Meant to.
Sam’s eyes went wide. “So if you can switch between languages... just switch to English.”
Dean shot him a look. “Das geht nicht, Sam. Ich wusste nicht am Anfang, dass ich überhaupt nicht Englisch sprach.”
Sam frowned at him.
Dean sighed. It’s not that easy. And the fact that you didn’t hear that in English proves it.
“That was you trying to speak English.”
Dean nodded.
“Wow.”
Dean’s raised eyebrow and grimace said it all.
“A true polyglot, then.”
Dean rolled his eyes. Except something’s jammed my gears.
“And locked it off of English.”
“Genau.” ... Exactly.
“So far I’ve counted six languages.”
Dean rubbed the back of his neck. I don’t remember learning more than ASL, Spanish, and Latin.
“And I’ve counted those and German, Gaelic, and Russian.”
Dean frowned in confusion.
Sam nodded.
Dean rubbed his forehead again and sighed.
“Let’s get some dinner and some sleep.”
Dean nodded and winced a little.
“Head still hurt?”
“Mm.”
“Lay down. I’ll get you some food.”
Dean nodded again and sank back down on his bed.
Sam left the room and called Bobby. “How far out are you?” he half-whined.
“I’ll bring breakfast,” Bobby replied gruffly. “What’s he done now?”
“Spanish. Gaelic. ASL. Russian. Latin.”
“Sam, he don’t know half those languages.”
“He’s speaking them. Idiomatically. Fluently.”
“What the hell was in that house, kid?”
“Just a poltergeist!” His voice was trembling. “Just a damned poltergeist!”
“All right, Sam, just... just calm down. We’ll get this figured out as soon as we can. Keep treatin’ the concussion, and don’t let this language barrier get to you. You know your brother; you can read him like a book if you try.”
“He can’t... he can’t speak English anymore, Uncle Bobby. He managed Sign and Spanish, and I speak both of those, so it’s not so much a barrier, but when-when-when he tries to speak English, it comes out German!”
“Sam, I’m on my way. I’ll be there as quick as I can, less’n you got some way to put a warp drive on this car.”
“I’ll tell Dean.” His laugh came out bitter. “He’ll figure it out.”
Bobby chuckled. “He might just do that, ’less he got his bell rung worse’n we thought.”
Sam started to cry.
“Hey, hey. We’ll fix this, Sam.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m being such a damned girl about this....”
Bobby’s blink was almost audible. “What did you say?”
“I said I don’t know why I’m being such a damned girl about this.”
“Sam... maybe Dean ain’t the only one who’s been whammied.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re both beat to hell, and you’re scared this is somethin’ you cain’t fix. I can understand you gettin’ a little teary-eyed over that. But I ain’t never heard you call yourself a girl before.”
“Well, sometimes I am! I mean, like now....”
“Yeah, but it’s Dean who calls you Samantha.”
Sam scoffed. “Yeah, I know.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, gonna get some food. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Sam... you need to talk, you call me.”
“I will.” And he hung up without saying goodbye.
That wasn’t like Sam.
On the other end of the line, Bobby cursed under his breath and tried to coax a little more speed out of the Chevelle. Something was badly, badly wrong with his boys, and he couldn’t get to them fast enough.
Sam woke Dean up after 3 hours. “Time for the check.”
Dean blinked up at him blearily. “Was sagst du da?”
“Wake up.”
Dean groaned. “Kaffee, bitte.”
“Bitte - please... Kaffee sounds like... coffee?” He handed the cup over.
“Danke.” Dean guzzled the coffee without opening his eyes beyond slits.
“Head hurting?”
“Mm.”
Sam handed him some pills.
Dean blinked at them and frowned a little. “Was....”
“Painkillers.”
Dean shook his head and handed them back. “Paracetamol. Nichts stärkeres.”
“It’s aspirin, not paracetamol.”
Dean grunted and held his hand out again. “’Schuldigung.”
From his tone, Sam figured that Dean had apologized. “It’s okay.”
Dean took the aspirin and washed it down with the rest of the coffee. Then he tapped his wrist where his watch normally sat.
Sam handed it over.
Dean glared at Sam and squinted at the watch face, moving it around as if he couldn’t get his eyes to focus on it.
“Head hurts that bad, huh? It’s 1 AM.”
“Danke.” Dean sighed and slapped the watch back on the nightstand.
“Still German,” Sam sighed, moving to his own bed.
The caffeine clearly wasn’t doing much for Dean, who put the coffee cup on the nightstand and lay down again. “Schlaf wohl, Sammy.”
“Night, Deanie.”
Dean froze, then looked at Sam in alarm. “Deanie?!”
Sam laughed softly as he lay down.
Dean sat up. “Du, seit wann nennst du mir bloß Deanie?”
“Can’t understand you....” he sing-songed.
Dean snarled. “Exorcisamus te, omnis immundus spiritus...”
“I understand THAT,” he laughed, turning to face him. “I’m not possessed.”
“Dann WARUM SPRICHST DU WIE MEG?”
Sam sat up. “Meg? What about Meg?”
Dean’s jaw twitched as he switched to ASL. Listen to yourself. You sound like Meg.
“No, I don’t.”
“Kann dich nicht verstehen,” Dean echoed back in the same mocking sing-song.
“I do not sound like MEG!”
“Na, wer, dann?” Dean demanded before remembering to sign. Well, who DO you sound like, then?
“I don’t know. But I’m not possessed.”
And why the hell did you call me Deanie?
“You call me Sammy!”
So what? I’m your big brother. You NEVER call me Deanie. Dean paused. That was Mom.
“Just thought it’d match. You know - Sammy. Deanie.”
Dean looked at him like he’d grown an extra head.
“I’m serious!”
Dean grabbed his phone and dialed. He barely gave Bobby time to answer before yelping, “Este es LOCO!”
“Well, at least it’s not German now,” Bobby snorted.
Dean grumbled under his breath. “Aber im Ernst, Bobby, etwas ist los hier. Er nennt mir Deanie, zum Teufel noch mal!”
“He did what?” But it was disbelief, not misunderstanding. “Deanie??”
“Zwar!”
“Aw, crap. Look, I’m two hours out.”
Dean blew the air out of his cheeks. “Okay. Ich versuche, ihn nicht zu mördern, bevor du an kommst.”
“You do that, I’ll put you right beside him.”
Dean chuckled. “Bis dann, Bobby.”
“See you in two hours. Rest.”
“Ja, okay. Wiederhör’n.” He hung up with a sigh.
Sam had dozed off.
Dean just watched him for a moment, shaking his head a little. “Was zum Teufel, Sam...” he whispered.
Sam’s eyes opened.
Bobby’s two hours out, Dean signed.
He nodded. “Beer?”
Dean looked at him oddly. “Nein, danke.”
Sam nodded and got a beer for himself. He popped it open and stared out the window at the stars as he drank it.
Dean sighed and got up, then pulled his flask of holy water out of his jacket and walked over to Sam. “Sam.”
“Hm?”
Dean pushed the flask against his chest in a way that clearly meant Drink this.
Sam picked it up and took a huge swig.
No reaction.
Dean shrugged with his eyebrows and took the flask back. Sam smirked at him and went back to bed.
Two hours, Dean told himself, clenching his jaw again. Just two hours. That’s all I gotta get through without knocking him into next week.
Bobby pulled up exactly two hours later.
Dean met him at the door, clearly in pain from the concussion but just as clearly worried about Sam. “Bobby, Gott sei dank. Ich weiß nicht, was hier los ist, aber....”
“Yeah, me neither. Get in there.”
Dean nodded and stepped back to let Bobby into the room.
Bobby walked in and looked at Sam’s sleeping form. “Anything else weird happen?”
“Er fragte, ob ich Bier mochte. Bier. Mit Erschutterung. Sonst ich bin nicht so blöd, Bobby!”
Bobby sighed. “I think he got whammied, too.”
Dean sighed as well. “Nur eine verdammte Poltergeist. Keine Hexe, nichts außerordentliches. Und jetzt... dieses.”
“Yeah. This. You a polyglot, him weird.”
“Was sollen wir tun?”
“First off, you wake him up.”
Dean grabbed a pillow off his bed and threw it at Sam as hard as he could.
Sam came up yelling, a knife in his hand.
Wide-eyed, Dean held up his hands. “Whoa, Sam! Sind nur uns!”
“It’s just us!” Bobby translated.
Sam blinked and frowned. “Thought you weren’t gonna be here till morning.”
“It’s after midnight. It counts.”
Sam chuckled and the knife vanished, seemingly, into thin air.
That, at least, was all Sam.
Dean sighed. “Du, was ist los mit dir?”
When Bobby translated, Sam sighed. “I’m just... I dunno.”
“Well, that’s specific,” said Bobby dryly.
Sam glared at him
“Sam, you’re givin’ your brother pet names that you never used even as a kid.”
“I told him, I just thought we’d match! He calls me Sammy all’a time, so I tried out ‘Deanie’ for size.”
Dean gave Bobby the raised eyebrow that meant See what I mean?
“How old are you?” Bobby asked Sam.
Sam frowned. “I’m 27, why?”
Dean and Bobby exchanged a look of alarm. “What year is it?” Bobby pressed.
“Are you cracked? It’s 2006!”
“And what year were you born?”
“1983... wait.” He frowned. “That don’t add up.”
“Doesn’t.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No, you said ‘don’t.’”
Sam took a deep breath. “I’m gonna need an IV of coffee if we’re gonna play this game.”
“Ist kein Spiel, Alter,” Dean said flatly. “Herr Student spricht nicht so schleppend, aber du, jetzt....”
Bobby translated, and Sam groaned. “Dude, I JUST WOKE UP...”
“You called me Uncle Bobby on the phone,” Bobby noted.
“Well, yeah...”
“I’m gonna ask you again, boy. How old are you?”
Sam’s eyes rolled upward and stayed there as he considered that. “I’m 23.”
“Now, why’d you have to think about that?”
“Because I think I’m 27 but the math’s wrong.”
“Even at 27, you wouldn’t be tryin’ to call your brother ‘Deanie’ just ’cause he calls you Sammy.”
“Would you LAY OFF? I won’t do it again, okay? Sheesh!”
“Sam.” Bobby made his voice as gentle as possible. “We’re tryin’ to figure out what’s goin’ on here. Your brother’s speakin’ languages he never learned, and you’re switchin’ from sounding your normal 23-year-old self to sounding... well, yeah, maybe 27, to sounding... five.”
“FIVE!” Sam roared. “I am NOT FIVE!”
“How old are you, then?”
“I’m TWENTY-THREE!”
“You’re sure?”
Sam shot up off the bed. “I don’t have to sit here and listen to this.”
“Sam,” said Dean sternly.
And Sam erupted. He poured out vehemence all over Dean and Bobby. Dean listened for as long as he could stand to do so and then laid Sam out with a single punch.
Sam collapsed without a word onto the bed.
“Wie gesagt,” Dean said tightly. “Maledictus.” Then he closed his eyes and swayed a little.
“You lay down,” Bobby told him.
Dean nodded and staggered back to bed.
Bobby sighed and studied his ‘nephews’ - who were quickly becoming as close to him as sons. They were both suffering.
Then he sat down at the small table and began rifling through the research materials the boys had gathered for the hunt. There had to be something they’d missed somewhere if they’d both fallen under a curse at that house.
It took him about an hour, but he found it. The thing was a simple poltergeist - in a house rumored to be the house of a witch.
But hadn’t Dean said that there wasn’t a witch involved? How had they reached that conclusion?
He looked at it closer and realized why they had thought so. It was local legend. Not fact.
But what happened to his boys wasn’t legend.
He sat back and ran a hand over his mouth and chin. Looked like he had some serious digging to do come morning.
Dean slowly sat up and looked around. “Merde,” he whispered before laying back down and closing his eyes.
Bobby blinked. French was new. “Dean?”
“Mm?”
“What’s goin’ on, son?”
“Tengo un dolor de cabeza mala.”
“When’s the last time you took something?”
His eyes canted upward and his lips pursed slightly. “Circa... siete?”
Bobby frowned; he’d gotten there at 3. “Seven PM or 7 AM?”
“Siete de la mañana.”
“Dean...” Bobby was as worried by the time slip as by the fact that Dean was suddenly speaking exclusively Spanish. “Es ist nur halb fünf morgens.”
Dean’s eyes widened. “Halb fünf morgens??”
“Doch. Ich bin um drei angekommen.”
Dean lowered his head and cursed in five languages.
Bobby got up and took him the aspirin bottle and a cup of water, then rubbed his shoulder gently. “Hey. We’ll fix this.”
Dean nodded miserably.
“Here.” Bobby shook the aspirin into Dean’s hand and waited while he washed them down. “Need an ice pack? Cold compress?”
“Ja.”
Bobby patted his shoulder and went to the bathroom for washrags. Picking two that looked tolerably clean, he soaked them both in cold water and wrung them out. One he took straight to Dean and gently placed it over the boy’s eyes; the other he filled with ice from the room’s small freezer and tied the corners together. “Here’s the ice pack,” he said as he brought it to Dean. “Where do you need it?”
“Cabeza.”
“I knew that, idjit.” He set the ice pack in Dean’s hand. “I’ll let you place it, okay?”
Dean did so, right on the top and slightly to the right.
Over the language center of his brain.
“Aw, hell,” Bobby breathed. “That ain’t where you got whacked, is it?”
“Ja.”
Bobby frowned and sat down on the edge of the bed. “You did get hit there? Lemme see.”
Dean sat up and bowed his head.
Bobby prodded gently, and sure enough, there was a good-sized goose-egg right over the language center. “Huh.”
“Merde!”
“Sorry, son. You can lie back down now.”
He did so with a soft groan.
“Listen, Dean... this don’t explain everything, but where you got hit is right over the part of the brain that controls language. I’m bettin’ that’s got somethin’ to do with what’s goin’ on with you.”
Dean, eyes closed, gave him a thumbs-up and settled the washrag and ice pack back in place.
“We may need to risk a hospital after breakfast, make sure this ain’t permanent.”
“Nein.”
“I’m not a neurologist, Dean. Until we know for sure that it’s solely the result of a curse....”
Sam stirred, opening his eyes.
Bobby looked over at him. “Hey, Sam.”
“Hey. What’s with Dean?”
“Well, he’s switchin’ languages more now, and it looks like that head injury’s dead over the language center of the brain. Don’t explain why you’re both losin’ time, but... it’s somethin’.”
“He’s losin’ time?”
“Little. Couldn’t remember when he took his last dose of aspirin.”
“Huh.”
“How’s your jaw?”
“Sore. I can’t believe he clocked me.”
Dean snorted. “Dummkopf.”
“Now that, I understood.”
Dean smirked, but Bobby was willing to bet the only lines around the eyes hidden under the washrag were lines of pain.
“So how soon can he be mobile? We need to head out.”
Bobby scowled. “You are loco, boy. He’s got a headache the size of the Chrysler Building. We ain’t movin’ him until tomorrow at best.”
“We can’t stay. That’s not right.”
Bobby’s eyes narrowed. “He stays put-John.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed in return. “Stop that. Dad’s dead.”
“And you and he were always a lot alike, but I ain’t never heard you sound so much like him before.”
“I’m just doing what he would have wanted. He wanted us to leave.”
“No, he wanted you to look after your brother.”
His jaw ticked. “Dean will be fine.”
“Eventually. Not in the next twelve hours, not even in the next 24. He’s concussed, Sam. And if you two are cursed, we need to find the cause and break it ’fore you go harin’ off on your next hunt.”
“Azazel isn’t gonna stop-”
“Azazel?! Boy, have you lost your mind... or your soul?”
“We have to be ready! He’s not gonna stop for us to recover! We just have to suck it up and go on!”
“Padre,” Dean grumbled.
Bobby got up and got in Sam’s face. “Dean is in no fit state to suck it up, John. You wanna go, you can take my car. But head injuries are not something to mess around with. Until I am satisfied that Dean’s not in danger of permanent brain damage, he and I are staying here.”
Sam looked stunned. “... I’m actin’ like him, huh?”
Dean and Bobby gave almost identical derisive snorts. “Just a little,” said Bobby.
Sam sighed. “Something’s wrong, Uncle Bobby.”
“You’re tellin’ me, kid.”
“This... isn’t me.”
“No. It ain’t. Talk to me, Sam. What’s goin’ on in there?”
“It’s all... mixed up.”
“Mixed up how?”
“I can’t think right. So much rage...”
Bobby frowned in concern. “Where’s the rage coming from?”
“I didn’t get to be who I wanted... I gave him everything and became his soldier....”
“Gave who everything, Sam?”
“Dad!”
“You sure?” Bobby asked as gently as possible. “I remember you going to college, even though John told you not to.”
“I didn’t!”
“Moment mal.” Dean got up with a quiet groan and rummaged in his duffle for a moment, then brought a well-worn envelope over to Sam and handed it to him. Bobby didn’t have to look to know what it was; it figured Dean would have kept Sam’s Stanford acceptance letter all these years. Then he went and got John’s journal, opened it to what Bobby assumed was the entry after Sam had left, and brought that to Sam as well.
“Du hast gegangen,” he said quietly when Sam looked at him in confusion. “Du hast Jura studiert. Du hast dich in Jess verliebt. Erinnerst du dich?”
“Who’s Jess?”
Dean’s face crumpled. You were going to marry her. But Yellow Eyes killed her.
Sam chuckled. “I never was going to marry. This is my life.”
Dean shook his head, and a tear rolled down his cheek. No, Sam, he signed. He killed her. Just like he killed Mom. I pulled you out of the fire.
“I don’t remember.”
It was November 2, 2005.
“When Dad went missing.”
Right after we got back from the Woman in White in Jericho.
“I remember that.”
I took you back to Stanford because you had a law school interview.
“Why don’t I remember it?”
“Good question,” replied Bobby. “What do you remember from those years?”
“Hunting. I never left them in my mind.”
“Specific hunts?”
His mouth opened - and then his face went slack. “... it’s all a blur.”
Dean looked at Bobby in despair.
Sam shook his head. “Eh, well, it don’t really matter.”
“Zum Teufel bedeutet es nichts,” Dean snarled before remembering to sign. The hell it doesn’t. You lose four years of memories and suddenly turn into Dad except when you sound like a kid? That is not nothing.
“If anything, I GAINED four,” Sam shot back. “27 now, remember?”
“Quod es demonstravit.”
“And that’s another thing,” Bobby added. “What do you remember between 2006 and 2010?”
He opened his mouth, then frowned. “... not too much.”
Bobby frowned as well. “But you do remember something?”
“Bits and pieces. Pain. Fire. Blood.”
“Hunts?”
“A few.”
“Do you remember details, like what you were hunting? Where, when, why?”
“Yeah! Vampires and demons and....”
“And?” Bobby prompted at the same time Dean said “Und?”
“I had a lover. A brunette. And she was a demon and we killed her.”
Dean’s eyebrows tried to disappear into his hairline.
Sam shrugged.
“Killed her?” Bobby repeated. “With the Colt?”
“No, a knife. That killed demons.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“She gave it to me.”
Dean blinked; Bobby noticed that his color was fading a little, but he seemed determined to stay vertical until they got to the bottom of this. “Warum hatte eine Dämonin ein Messer, dass Dämonen tötet?”
“She was pretending to be on our side, so she needed it to be real.”
“Why would she do that?” Bobby asked quietly.
Sam chuckled “That’s one of the gaps.”
“And why did you kill her? Last I looked, you two were pretty concerned about the effect on the host.”
“I didn’t. You did.”
Dean and Bobby looked at each other in confusion.
“I held her and you ran her through.”
Why, Sam? Dean signed with that confused and worried frown that gave the lie to Sam being the only puppy in the family. What did she do?
“Lied to us. Hurt me. Tricked me into releasing something... horrible.”
Dean swallowed, and his face got a little more ashen. Did we kill that?
“No. But we trapped it. And a lot of good people died.”
Dean bit his lip. Who?
Sam shook his head.
Can’t or won’t?
“Can’t.”
Dean nodded-and swayed dangerously.
“Back to bed, you,” Sam said.
Dean smiled a little. “Mein Sammy,” he whispered before toppling forward into Sam’s arms.
“I understood THAT,” Sam whispered, tucking Dean in and sitting on the bed, rubbing his arm.
Bobby settled the ice pack and cold compress back on Dean’s head and eyes, respectively, then put a gentle hand on Sam’s shoulder. “We’ll stop this somehow,” he whispered. “Whatever’s doin’ this to the two of you, whatever leads up to you hookin’ up with a demon... we’ll stop it.”
“I know ya will, Uncle Bobby,” he whispered back, his eyes huge and trusting.
Bobby shifted his hand to squeeze the back of Sam’s neck. “C’mon. You need your rest, too.”
“Not tired.”
“I mean it, Sam.”
He pouted but lay down.
Bobby sat back down with a sigh and tried to process what he’d just learned. Sam was remembering things that hadn’t happened yet-and they were clearly memories, given that Bobby had once seen Sam when one of his visions hit. Something big was going to go down between then and 2010, something that evidently left Sam reacting like John’s perfect soldier.
But why the hell was Sam remembering it now?
Was this some kind of perverse new type of vision? Or given the timing-and it was one hell of a coincidence-was it linked to what was happening to Dean... and possibly something that was going to leave all three of them way, way out of their depth?
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