Through the Looking Glass
Title: Through the Looking Glass
Rating: PG-13
Words: ~5,500
Spoilers: None specific past season five.
Pairings: Dean/Carmen (kind of), Dean/Cas (briefly), Dean/Sam (very briefly)
Warnings: Mental illness, panic, violence, implied child abuse, Hell memories, angry queer feminism, repetitive formatting.
Summary: The multiverse theory states that we are living in just one of multiple possible universes that, together, comprise of everything that exists, existed, or could exist. Dean goes down the rabbit hole.
Neurotic author's notes: This is for my darling seeing_ghosts, and pretend it's not 3 am here in America. This it a little bit of a weird fic, and I'm not sure I actually like it, but it's done and it's for you, S. love. The title is stolen from the Lewis Carroll novel of the same name. The cut text is from the great Richard Feynman's The Character of Physical Law.
“Dean. Dean, honey, get up. We’re gonna be late. Dean.”
Dean wakes slowly, weirdly disoriented with a splitting headache. He racks his brain, vaguely remembers passing out in the back of the Impala while Sam sped west in the small hours. No time to scope out cheap motels, these days, now with the apocalypse looming. That’s Sam’s line of thinking, anyways, probably because of the guilt-Dean is inclined more and more towards saying “fuck it” and letting things fall apart as they may, but Sam isn’t willing to endorse that sentiment and Dean isn’t willing to break from Sam again.
“Dean, Christ, it’s three o’clock in the fucking afternoon. You’re not even hungover anymore. Get up. We have to meet everybody at seven, would you at least shower?”
Dean sits up, registering something vaguely familiar in the voice above him, and caught sight of a dark haired woman leaning on a doorframe-for a wild moment, he thinks it’s Lisa Bradeon-in a nurse’s uniform, tugging at her hair, freeing it form a ponytail. He blinks for a moment, and then-
“Carmen?”
“That’s my name,” she says, stepping into the room and wiggling out of her pants, making for the closet, “don’t wear it out.”
“What’re you-I-you’re not real,” he blurts, as she extracted a pair of tights from a drawer, and she freezes, turns, watches him from the closet door, still in her underwear and scrubs top, her face a mask of unbearable sadness.
“Oh, Jesus,” she says, “not this again. Please. It’s Jessica’s birthday, I mean, please-”
“Jessica-Sam’s-oh, God. Oh, God, oh, no, no, this isn’t real-”
He jumps about a foot when he feels hands, small and gentle, grip his shoulders. Her face is an inch from his. “Dean. Sweetheart. Please, not tonight. I’ll call Dr. Adler tomorrow morning, first thing, I promise, but honey, tonight, please believe me. It’s real. I’m real. Don’t do this. You’re my husband, Dean-”
“You don’t know jack about me,” Dean grits out, unwilling to look her in the eye. This isn’t right. What the hell is he doing back here? This was an artificially constructed dying dream three years ago, for God’s sake, and he wouldn’t be back in such a place unless-
“Dean, I can call Sam or-or your mom-”
That cinched it. Mom was always the one. He knows this game, now.
He wrenches himself away from Carmen’s delicate grip, directs his voice at the ceiling. “Alistair, if this is you, I’m not FUCKING falling for it!” he hollers, while Carmen flinches and makes a valiant effort to shush him, rubs his shoulders. He shudders, imagining her skin peeling from her body in long curling strips like an apple peeled in one go. Dean can do that, he remembers, he’s done it and it’s been done to him and he knows how to make a body into a fucking Christmas gift-
He doesn’t realize he’s talking aloud until he hears Carmen let out of choked, scared noise, catches her perched on the corner of the bed, eyes wide and terrified, and he wants to feel badly, he does, but the black behind her eyes is glinting through, the world around the bed is melting into unending shadows and the smell of burning meat is permeating the air-
For an instant before it fades away, Dean thinks he hears a familiar voice calling his name. Distantly, he thinks it was probably Alistair coaxing him awake, and then he’s gone.
:::
“Jesus, boss! Calm down. Sorry to wake you, it’s just-we got some real sketchy shit going down by the west gate, and Cas said to get you out here-”
Dean, his headache returning in full force, blinks up at a blurry figure he doesn’t recognize, looming over him and chattering nervously. Wherever it is he’s fallen asleep, it’s nowhere near as comfortable as Carmen’s bed, and the smell of dust and warm beer fills the air.
He sits up, squints. He knows this place. Christ, no. It’s 2014, and his brother is dead.
The kid above him is maybe twenty-two, pin thin and armed to the teeth, skittish. He’s waiting for a dismissal or an order, and Dean swallows, tries to orient himself. This-this wasn’t a dream, and this hasn’t been averted. This is all he’s been killing himself trying to stop. He clears his throat, starts to stand and winces when he puts weight on his left leg. A cursory glance-poorly hidden from the kid, who’s watching him closely, nervous and possibly, bizarrely, star struck-to find a poorly-dressed, still-healing bullet wound in his thigh. Outstanding. “Fucking croats,” he breathes, before he can stop himself, and he swears he hears the kid gulp.
“So,” he continues, seizing a random pair of discarded pants from the floor and tugging them on, mindful of his thigh. “Cas sent you to get me?”
“Um,” says the kid, “well, Cas sent me to get more information and so I went to Risa who sent me to Chuck who sent me to Cas who sent me to you.”
“So,” says Dean, lifting a heavy, smoky-smelling jacket from the chair by his bed, “Cas sent you.”
“Right,” says the kid, gulping, and Dean almost chuckles.
“Well,” he says, “I could use a chat with Cas.” He says it lightly, but panic is building in his chest, because this is a world gone violently wrong and his control here in minimal-he knows how this turns out. Dead Cas, Sam worse. He grips at the overlong sleeves on his jacket and tries to breathe around this fresh wave of disorientation and panic. He needs to find Cas.
As if on cue, a series of short, sharp raps on the door made the kid jump. “Dean!” calls Cas’s voice, wonderfully familiar, but when Dean goes to open the door he finds it locked fast.
“Cas!” he shouts, his head aching again, and Cas knocks harder, yells “Dean!” with as much urgency as Dean has ever heard from him, and he hears the dull thump of Cas throwing his body against the door. That act of desperation from an angel-even a fallen one, a treacherous voice in Dean’s head sing-songs-signifies big trouble, and Dean wants to help, is desperate to help, because maybe Cas will understand what is happening here, but the pain in his head is growing and he slumps forward against the door.
“Cas,” he mumbles, and he needs to get through, because out here there’s no Sam and no Bobby and not even his fucking car, just Cas, broken and distant but his Cas all the same.
He calls Cas’s name again, pleadingly, and hears Cas’s distant response before he’s gone.
:::
Dean jerks awake in the backseat of a moving car, and for a brief, shining moment, he thinks he’s home, and he’s mumbled, “Sam,” before he can think about it. He gets to no reply, though he thinks he hears someone with a high pitched voice whispering the same name, which can’t mean anything good.
Another female voice floats to his ears, vaguely familiar in a way he can’t place. For a second, he thinks it’s his mother, but that’s wrong-it’s deeper, and distinctly annoyed.
“All I’m saying,” it’s saying, “is just because some turn of the century advertising company decided the best way to sell razors was to shame women about their natural bodies in the precise period when it was becoming gradually acceptable for a woman to display that body and be proud of it doesn’t mean I have any obligation to scrape perfectly natural hair off my legs twice a week for the theoretical enjoyment of a bunch of straight white pricks I don’t care about.”
“O-okay,” replies another voice, and Dean sits up so fast he smacks his head on the car roof, because-
“Dad?” Dean flinches at his own voice, which is too high and light and makes him wonder if he swallowed an eraser at some point and forgot about it.
His father meets his eyes in the rearview mirror, pleadingly, and raises his eyebrows. “Finally awake?” he asks, and Dean nods automatically, feeling vaguely queasy-
And just barely stops himself from yelping when, upon lowering his eyes, he sees breasts.
“Don’t ‘okay’ me, don’t pat my head and roll your eyes and ‘okay sweetheart’ me just because it’s uncomfortable for you to admit that you’ve been benefitting from a patriarchal and oppressive system for your entire life. Nobody shames you for that beard, but I go two days without shaving my pits and suddenly it’s a forfeit of my fucking femininity, I’m just saying, Dad.” The woman chattering in the front seat, who on closer inspection looks to be about sixteen years old, gives a little huff that is oddly familiar and turns to look at Dean. “You agree with me, right?” she says, and Dean has to bite down hard on his cheek to keep from yelling at the top of his lungs, because the girl is Sam. “I mean, I get you like makeup and you like to shave your legs and that’s awesome, De, it is, it is in no way a detriment to your credit as a feminist, but you do those things because you want to, not because you have to.”
Sam’s eyes are the same. His-her-dimples and moles are the same. The hair is similar. Even the height remains. But Sam-Sam is a girl. So, apparently, is Dean. Which is utterly, utterly not okay.
“I-um-” Dean can’t really conceive of a world where shaving his legs and wearing makeup are things he does for fun (that one time in Portland notwithstanding), but as he goes to shrug he notices a strand of long, blonde-brown hair falling free from his ponytail and notes with horror, as he goes to push it from his face, that his nails are pristine. “Whatever makes you happy, Sammy, is what I say.”
“Christ,” Sam huffs, turning back to their father, “I can’t even be mad about the Sammy, because she’s right, Dad, and just because Deanna likes boys”-what now?-“and I like girls”-oh, not fair-“does not mean one of us is more of a real woman than the other!”
“Honey, I-I never said I had a problem with-” Dean is almost too busy containing his confusion and distant shock that John would ever call one of his children “honey” to notice that Sam’s face, expectant and annoyed as she waits for John to answer, is flickering strangely, her jaw hardening, her nose elongating for only a split second before Sam-real Sam’s-face fades back into this girlish copy. It’s not right, it’s deep-shit shifter territory, and Dean’s headache is building again. He opens his mouth to try to warn his father, or perhaps announce he’s going to throw up, but he’s gone before he gets a word out.
:::
A chirping alarm clock at Dean’s ear rouses him this time, and he flails out for it, sits up, himself in Dean Smith’s sleek, spacious apartment in Ohio. “Christ, no,” he groans aloud, lying back on the pillow to try and sort out what is going on, before a cell phone chirping brings him back to the present.
The phone is gleaming and expensive, and the touch screen informs him Sam Wesson is calling. His heart leaps, he thinks, Sammy, and it’s only when a blessedly familiar voice on the other end says, “I told you not to call me that” that he realizes he’s spoken aloud.
“Sorry, Sam,” he says, his heart hammering and trying to control his disappointment that Sam isn’t Sam. “What’s up?”
“Well, I was just checking you got home okay last night,” says Sam, and it sounds like he’s driving. He chuckles warmly. “You were pretty sloshed.” When Dean doesn’t answer, merely sits on the bed and clings to the phone like a lifeline and tries to think of how to tell Sam listen something is very wrong here, Sam snorts and goes on, “But hey, who am I to complain? I got my fair of Mama and Papa Smith stories, and those are my favorites-though, I gotta say, that one about the gravy bowl is gonna make it hard not to crack up at Thanksgiving this year.”
Dean swallows. Sam is waiting for him to talk. “I’m sure you’ll find a way to keep a straight face,” he says, keeping his voice even, Sam, my Sam, where are you, “good Midwestern boy.”
“What can I say?” Sam laughs. “Your mom loves me. And she feeds me well, so I’m not complaining. It’s like I said at Christmas-”
Dean jumps as there’s a screech, a barrage of thumps and clatters and a “Hey, what the hell?” on the other end before he hears heavy breathing in his ear.
“Dean?”
“Sam, man, what-”
“Dean, it’s me.”
“I know, Sam, I was just-”
“No, Dean, listen it’s me. Sam Winchester-something’s-”
Sam’s voice is garbled and Dean leans forward, grips his sheets tightly, mouths Sam’s name again and again, begging him to be him, really him, to know Dean and understand-
“I’m coming, Dean!” he heard, before the line began to distort again and that same blinding headache overtook him. He tried to yell Sam’s name, and then he was gone.
:::
Dean wakes up shouting to warm hands on his shoulders, rubbing up and down, going to his face. “It was a nightmare,” someone is saying, “wake up, it’s just a dream.”
It’s soothing, and before he knows it his breath is evening out, and he’s relaxing, prying his eyes open as his headache recedes to find his face an inch from Castiel’s. Cas’s face is pinched a little in concentration, as it frequently is when he is doing human things by rote rather than instinct, but his hands on Dean’s shoulder and neck are solid and warm, if a little more intimate that Dean is accustomed to, and the concern in his face is real. At the moment, Dean is absurdly grateful, because it’s Cas, his Cas, so far as he can tell, awkward and present and drawing Dean up from this garble of nightmares.
“Better?” Cas asks, and Dean nods, expecting Cas to slide away. He doesn’t, and instead smiles with outstanding affection and, leaning forward, presses a kiss to Dean’s forehead. It’s strange and uncomfortable and unexpected, but gentle, almost soothing, and Dean wriggles away without any outward display of disgust as he might have, had it been anyone but Cas.
“Shh,” says Cas, gripping his shoulders again, “Dean, it’s me.” He pulls Dean in, and before Dean is quite aware what’s going on his hands are cradling Dean’s skull, gently, and he’s kissing Dean, on the mouth, in a quick, intimate sort of way. It’s not a first kiss at all. It’s an easy, couple’s kiss, and it’s over before Dean has fully registered it and thrown himself away from Cas, against a headboard he doesn’t recognize.
“Dean,” says Cas, worried, and Dean pants, screwing up his eyes briefly against the full-fledged return of his headache, unable to separate his memories and exhaustion from what is happening, to process the kindness and familiarity of the kiss.
“Don’t touch me!” he barks as Cas advances, slowly and jerkily like this is something he doesn’t know how to handle, and Cas jerks back, his face falling.
“Dean, I’m sorry,” he says, hands up in the air, voice even and low. “It’s only me. It was just a dream-Dean? Are you alri-”
:::
He wakes up with a fist to his face. He reels back, attempts to orient himself, but someone is hoisting him up by the collar, and there’s hot breath on his face and the nauseatingly strong smell of sulfer and no, no, no-
“Daddy always said,” growls a singsong voice, “you’d have to kill me or save me. The bastard didn’t figure I’d beat you.”
Dean tries to clear his vision, finds it blurry no matter how much he blinks, his entire body aching and a coppery coating of blood clinging to most every part of him. His ears are ringing. His brother’s face is an inch from his, leering. His grin is unhinged and triumphant.
“Meg?” Dean guesses, finds his mouth swollen and cottony and several teeth missing. Sam seems to understand anyways, lets out a cold, clear laugh.
“You think I’m letting that whore ride me? That low level little suck up? Dean, please. Nobody’s possessing me.” He chuckles again, like Dean’s made an excellent joke, and lets go of Dean’s lapels. Dean falls unceremoniously to the ground, lands in a heap, curls up against the pain and confusion and the familiar despair, because he knows this scene, but it was always Alistair underneath, stop it, STOP IT, stop fucking around, Alistair, stop hiding behind Sam, oh Christ take him away please-
“Alistair?” Sam, from above, sounds genuinely engaged at last, curious. He crouches down to Dean’s level, tilts his head in a gesture that’s so familiar and sweetly Sam-like Dean wants to cry. “How could you know Alistair?”
“That’s not funny,” Dean spits, and Sam stands, kicks him hard in the ribs, and crouches back down.
“It wasn’t supposed to be, you fucking maggot, TELL ME HOW YOU KNOW ALISTAIR!”
Dean tries to flinch away, but something yanks him back, props him on his knees, and he’s bleeding, everything hurts, and Sam is screaming, “ALISTAIR YOU STUPID LITTLE LOWLIFE, I WILL SEND YOU BACK INTO THE FUCKING DEPTHS OF THE PIT WHERE NOT EVEN THE OTHER FILTHY LITTLE FUCKERS CAN HEAR YOU SCREAMING!”
He’s shouting, raving, insane, and Dean tries to pull out of his kneeling position, topples only when Sam smacks him hard in the head, ranting and screaming still. Dean curls against the coming blow, but before it comes he hears his brother’s voice, more softly, calling “Dean? Dean! C’mon, Dean, please-”
He cracks his eyes open, sees Sam kneeling before him, all trace of malice gone from his eyes, replaced by a tapered kind of panic. “Where are you?” he whispers, gripping Dean’s shoulder.
“Hell, I think,” says Dean, and Sam’s face cracks wide into a grin that shows nearly all his teeth.
“Right you are, bucko,” he says, and stands back up, but whatever comes next, Dean misses, as he’s floating away again.
:::
Dean wakes to find Sam’s face again an inch from his, and he jumps back, his head still pounding, but Sam’s eyes are soft and sleepy. Almost weirdly so.
“Just me,” he mumbles, moving closer to Dean, and Dean realizes they’re in a bed together, close, but Sam doesn’t seem young enough to need such things. He wonders if he’s got a concussion or is hallucinating or something-to explain this pain and insanity-and Sam is trying to wake him up to check on him.
But Sam is draping himself over Dean in a way that is uncomfortable and making Dean claustrophobic, and when he tries to squirm away Sam gives a sleepy sigh and pulls him closer.
“Sam,” he mutters, “get off me.”
Sam opens his eyes, retracts one arm, squints at Dean in the darkness. Where the fuck are we?
“Babe,” says Sam, “you okay? It’s only me.”
“Babe?” Dean repeats disbelievingly, and Sam rolls his eyes.
“What would you prefer,” he says, voice low and teasing, leaning forward and what the fuck, “baby? Sweetie pie? Cuddly bear?”
“Sam,” says Dean, his mouth very dry. “Sam, what the fuck.”
“Relax,” says Sam, and he leans in, and Dean thinks maybe Sam is going to do something completely delusional like kiss him and he throws himself back once again, but Cas was one thing this is Sam, and before he quite knows what he’s doing he’s seized a pillow and is holding it in front of him like a shield, still scooting backwards, mumbling, “woah, woah, woah” under his breath and frantically quelling the urge to scream because this, whatever the fuck this is, has gone entirely too far. Dean spares a moment’s thought for Becky and her fantasies before realizing that Sam is watching him with an appraising affection, like he wants to fuck. Oh, what the fucking fuck.
Sam gives a little laugh deep in his throat and advances, and he’s so big and the bed is sort of small and Sam is pinning him, without force but with an unyielding, surefire presence, and Dean’s heart is going to explode out his chest, his head is going to explode with confusion and old sulfur-smelling memories and this blinding fucking headache, as he wriggles and says, “No, no, Sammy, Christ, no-”
“Dean, it’s just me,” says Sam from somewhere above him, softly, his hands leaving Dean’s arms, but the panic continues and then Sam’s voice changes and he’s almost yelling. “Dean? Dean! It’s me, Dean, c’mon-”
Dean flails, might even whine low in his throat, and Sam is repeating his name endlessly but he pulls away, lost, stuck, pain in his head white hot and Sam’s urgent voice fading into the background noise.
:::
“Heal him!”
Dean comes to himself in the middle of a warehouse. The smells of blood and sulfur are close to overpowering, and it takes Dean a moment to register that someone is yelling at him, that it’s Anna, the angel, that she’s hollering her head off as she grips the lapels of a kneeling, freely bleeding Castiel, who is listing against her and plainly losing consciousness. Astonished, Dean looks around, and sees Alistair slumped on the floor. He swallows, wants to throw up, and turns back to Anna.
“Did Cas-did he-”
“He got like this doing your dirty work!” Anna shouts. “So don’t you fucking pin this on him or get all holier than thou on me! Heal him! Heal my brother right now, Dean!”
Dean’s mind is still racing, and he’s trying to put distance between himself and the body that was Alistair, because even if the pediatrician is damn tame compared to the forms and faces Dean saw in Hell, the memory is strong and terrifying and as Anna continues to shout and Cas continues to slump worriedly Dean catches sight of his brother, splayed on the ground with dark, ashen wings burned into the ground on either side of him.
“Is Sam-is Sam d-” Dean can’t breath, he can’t, Anna is here and yelling at him and Cas is dying and Sam is dead and Alistair was here, he was just here he’s coming back he’ll get me-
“He’s not gonna get you, you worthless fucking-I killed him because you couldn’t!” Anna hollered, and Dean turned to stare at her, confused, and then her whole face contorts and she looks like she’s going to cry. “He was going to kill you and Cas both, Dean, I didn’t have a-you have to heal him!”
There’s a lot Dean wants to say to this-Anna didn’t kill Alistair and yes, he can still get me, Anna, he never really dies, and how am I supposed to heal Castiel, exactly, and why can’t you do it. What comes out of his mouth is, “Sam-Sam’s dead.”
“Cas is going to be dead if you don’t DO something, Dean! Please. He’s my brother. Heal him.”
“Anna,” says Dean, mouth dry again, head throbbing, stepping away from Alistair’s slumped form and Sam’s cooling body, towards the place where Cas has slumped, bleeding and swollen, against Anna’s legs. It’s taking everything she’s got to keep him upright with one hand. Dean crouches, reaches forward takes Cas’s shoulders and pulls him forward. His head lolls forward briefly before he takes a pained breath through his noise and opens his eyes, tries to focus on Dean. “I can’t, Anna,” says Dean.
“You’re an angel!” Anna shrieks.
“Jesus Christ,” Dean rasps, and Cas smiles at him, or tries, his mouth bleeding and his lips split.
“Blaspheming at a time like this?” he whispers, and Dean wants to sob, wants to gather Cas close and cling, wants Sam, and as his hands tighten on Cas’s shoulders he hears Cas breathe, “Dean? Dean, come back,” but he ignores it, merely pulls Castiel’s broken body against his own while Anna, frantic, yanks a cell phone from her pocket and steps past Sam’s angel corpse as she rattles off an address into the phone.
“I’m sorry, Cas,” Dean says, because Cas is getting heavy like maybe he’s dying.
“Dean,” says this skinny, human Cas. This righteous man, Dean realizes far too late. “Dean, come back.”
:::
Dean wakes up yelling yet again, and he’s tied down and it’s loud and white and his head hurts so much and somebody is wailing, screaming, please I don’t want this anymore please help me and somebody else is shouting and lots of people are shouting and then he’s out.
He’s surprised to wake up later in the same place, slow and sleepy, and it takes him a long time to register the consistent beeping and whirring and footsteps on linoleum that mean hospital, and longer still to notice Sam sitting by his bed, looking exhausted and reading. He tries to sit up, finds himself restrained.
“I told them you don’t like it,” says Sam, setting down his book and meeting Dean’s eyes with a face so weary it makes Dean’s bones ache. “But you attacked someone in a grocery store and put him in the hospital, then started screaming about Hell. Ben-Ben heard. They weren’t really gonna listen to me.”
Dean blinks, doesn’t say anything. His head is achy and heavy. He thinks maybe Sam is calling him crazy, and he thinks Sam might have a real good point, there.
Sam sighs deeply. “Lisa took Ben home,” he says. “She and Dr. Adler will be here in the morning,” he continues, “and Jess and the baby will be by later, too, if you’re up for it.” He sighs again, studies his hands, then looks at Dean. “Why didn’t you tell me? You said they were working, the new meds. I’d-I’d have listened, Dean. I know, I was awful before, but I was eighteen an idiot, but this is getting fucking ridiculous and I’ve been trying to make it up to you to you for-” He stops, takes a deep breath through his nose. Fidgets with his book for a moment.
“Is Cas okay?” Dean asks slowly, the fragmented memory of Cas bleeding out in a warehouse floating into his head.
“Cas isn’t real, Dean,” says Sam firmly. “Okay? There is no Cas, and no Anna, no Gabriel, no Zachariah or Ruby or Meg or any of these people, okay? No Azazel, no Alistair-”
“That never gets any cuter, you know,” Dean mumbles, still sleepy, too tired to try to outsmart Alistair anymore.
“What?”
“The whole pretending and name drop thing,” says Dean thickly, “it’s still just as stupid as it always was. I know it’s you, Alistair.”
“Alistair isn’t real!” Sam snaps, and Dean closes his eyes, turns away, waits for it to melt away into Hell, or else for Cas to show up and tell him it’s all his fucking fault. “Okay, there are no demons,” Sam is saying, “there’s me, your brother, and your wife and your son, who by the way today saw you beating the living shit out a stranger for no fucking reason so can you please, please just ground yourself for a goddamn minute and listen to me?”
“Not real,” says Dean.
“That’s what I-”
“No,” says Dean, head full of buzzing and insistent pressure, unable to try to make sense of anything anymore, “you’re not real.”
“Dean,” says Sam softly, then more loudly, “Dean! Come back!”
“From where,” Dean mutters.
:::
He’s cold. He’s sleepy. He’s cramped. He’s achy. Somebody is leaning against him, and he’s in a car.
Dean blinks. The world is at a strange angle, everything too big, and Dean’s body feels compact and rubbery beneath a layer of dull pain that comes, he realizes, from an impressive layer of bruising that covers his arms and, from the feel of things, his legs and torso, too.
He’s in the back of a police car, and he’s small, and a much smaller Sammy, still round cheeked and tiny, is curled against him, asleep with his fingers curling in Dean’s shirt.
“Help,” he breathes softly, unable to think what else to say. This is the strangest Hell he’s ever seen.
“You awake?” asks the man driving the car, and his voice is gentle. “It’s okay, you were only asleep about ten minutes. We’re about five minutes from the station, son, but you can keep sleeping.”
Who are you where did we come from I’m too small this body is so small it can’t hold so much, so much stress-“I don’t feel good,” he blurts.
“No, buddy, I bet you don’t,” says the cop sadly, “but you’re leaving that place, okay. No more hunting monsters.”
“No-no more hunting?” Dean repeats, his voice high and breathy to his own ears. Beside him, Sam gives a little sigh, and Dean pulls him closer. It might not even really be Sam, but it’s all he has, right now.
“There are no monsters,” says the cop kindly, slowly, “and you don’t have to be afraid. It’s okay if you are, but you’re safe now.”
“Where’s my dad?” says Dean, aware it’s a whine.
“In a holding cell,” the cop mutters, then clears his throat. “Far away, buddy. He can’t hurt you or Sammy anymore.” They were turning into the lot now, and before Dean could say anything else the cop had gotten out of the car and had come around and opened the back seat door, crouching down.
“We need to take some pictures,” he says gently, “and talk to you and Sammy for a little while. Then we’ll find somewhere for you to stay. If you’re scared, just say so. Nobody’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
It’s all so utterly insane, and Dean’s tiny little body is bursting with it, and he feels tears building in his eyes and spilling onto his hot cheeks. The cop reaches forward and Dean flinches without meaning to, relaxing as the cop, a sorry look on his face, cups the back of Dean’s head. “It’ll be okay,” he says. “You were very brave today. You did the right thing, dialing 911. You’re a smart boy.” Dean sits still and lets the cop hold his head, crying without meaning to, distant memories of the smell of decaying bodies and John, drunk and furious, wildly brandishing a canister of kerosene and screaming about ghosts. He shudders, makes the connection slowly even now-his father is going to burn down the house with Sammy sleeping right upstairs-and wonders if this is real.
“I want my daddy,” he chokes, and the cop’s face collapses sadly, and he says, “oh, kid,” and Dean feels more tears threatening, feels a childish crying jag, the kind you can’t stop, approaching, and he shakes his head and leans into the cop’s embrace, Sammy still clutched to his side, and says, “Sammy” again and again until he hears an answering whisper coming from the familiar-smelling place where the cop was, “Come back, Dean, come back.”
:::
He wakes up and sees the stars immediately, feels hands cradling his head, Sam’s face upside down and poised in tentative relief.
“Dean?” he asks.
“Sam,” Dean answers, and Sam collapses forward, nearly touches their foreheads together. Dean is lying in the dirt by the pulled-over car, his head in Sam’s lap. Cas is crouched at Sam’s side, his face a more schooled portrait of relief.
“Zachariah,” Sam chokes out, righting himself, “and we couldn’t find you.”
“I thought it was Hell,” Dean offers, not moving from Sam’s grip. Sam holds on. Cas’s hand finds Dean’s forearm and he squeezes, almost like he doesn’t mean to do it. Dean lets him.
“I’m sorry, Dean,” he says, and Dean lifts one hand lazily-he’s so exhausted he can feel every bone weighting him to the dirt-and waves Cas’s apology away.
“We found you,” says Sam again, and they did. Dean closes his eyes, lets the cool night air wash over his face, relishes the end of the monstrous headache. Cas’s fingers stay pressed into Dean’s arm, and Sam’s breath comes from some place close above Dean in warm, perfectly familiar little huffs, and the stars above Dean must surely still be glinting, even if his eyes are closed.
“You did,” he answers at length, “and now all’s right in the world.”
Rating: PG-13
Words: ~5,500
Spoilers: None specific past season five.
Pairings: Dean/Carmen (kind of), Dean/Cas (briefly), Dean/Sam (very briefly)
Warnings: Mental illness, panic, violence, implied child abuse, Hell memories, angry queer feminism, repetitive formatting.
Summary: The multiverse theory states that we are living in just one of multiple possible universes that, together, comprise of everything that exists, existed, or could exist. Dean goes down the rabbit hole.
Neurotic author's notes: This is for my darling seeing_ghosts, and pretend it's not 3 am here in America. This it a little bit of a weird fic, and I'm not sure I actually like it, but it's done and it's for you, S. love. The title is stolen from the Lewis Carroll novel of the same name. The cut text is from the great Richard Feynman's The Character of Physical Law.
“Dean. Dean, honey, get up. We’re gonna be late. Dean.”
Dean wakes slowly, weirdly disoriented with a splitting headache. He racks his brain, vaguely remembers passing out in the back of the Impala while Sam sped west in the small hours. No time to scope out cheap motels, these days, now with the apocalypse looming. That’s Sam’s line of thinking, anyways, probably because of the guilt-Dean is inclined more and more towards saying “fuck it” and letting things fall apart as they may, but Sam isn’t willing to endorse that sentiment and Dean isn’t willing to break from Sam again.
“Dean, Christ, it’s three o’clock in the fucking afternoon. You’re not even hungover anymore. Get up. We have to meet everybody at seven, would you at least shower?”
Dean sits up, registering something vaguely familiar in the voice above him, and caught sight of a dark haired woman leaning on a doorframe-for a wild moment, he thinks it’s Lisa Bradeon-in a nurse’s uniform, tugging at her hair, freeing it form a ponytail. He blinks for a moment, and then-
“Carmen?”
“That’s my name,” she says, stepping into the room and wiggling out of her pants, making for the closet, “don’t wear it out.”
“What’re you-I-you’re not real,” he blurts, as she extracted a pair of tights from a drawer, and she freezes, turns, watches him from the closet door, still in her underwear and scrubs top, her face a mask of unbearable sadness.
“Oh, Jesus,” she says, “not this again. Please. It’s Jessica’s birthday, I mean, please-”
“Jessica-Sam’s-oh, God. Oh, God, oh, no, no, this isn’t real-”
He jumps about a foot when he feels hands, small and gentle, grip his shoulders. Her face is an inch from his. “Dean. Sweetheart. Please, not tonight. I’ll call Dr. Adler tomorrow morning, first thing, I promise, but honey, tonight, please believe me. It’s real. I’m real. Don’t do this. You’re my husband, Dean-”
“You don’t know jack about me,” Dean grits out, unwilling to look her in the eye. This isn’t right. What the hell is he doing back here? This was an artificially constructed dying dream three years ago, for God’s sake, and he wouldn’t be back in such a place unless-
“Dean, I can call Sam or-or your mom-”
That cinched it. Mom was always the one. He knows this game, now.
He wrenches himself away from Carmen’s delicate grip, directs his voice at the ceiling. “Alistair, if this is you, I’m not FUCKING falling for it!” he hollers, while Carmen flinches and makes a valiant effort to shush him, rubs his shoulders. He shudders, imagining her skin peeling from her body in long curling strips like an apple peeled in one go. Dean can do that, he remembers, he’s done it and it’s been done to him and he knows how to make a body into a fucking Christmas gift-
He doesn’t realize he’s talking aloud until he hears Carmen let out of choked, scared noise, catches her perched on the corner of the bed, eyes wide and terrified, and he wants to feel badly, he does, but the black behind her eyes is glinting through, the world around the bed is melting into unending shadows and the smell of burning meat is permeating the air-
For an instant before it fades away, Dean thinks he hears a familiar voice calling his name. Distantly, he thinks it was probably Alistair coaxing him awake, and then he’s gone.
:::
“Jesus, boss! Calm down. Sorry to wake you, it’s just-we got some real sketchy shit going down by the west gate, and Cas said to get you out here-”
Dean, his headache returning in full force, blinks up at a blurry figure he doesn’t recognize, looming over him and chattering nervously. Wherever it is he’s fallen asleep, it’s nowhere near as comfortable as Carmen’s bed, and the smell of dust and warm beer fills the air.
He sits up, squints. He knows this place. Christ, no. It’s 2014, and his brother is dead.
The kid above him is maybe twenty-two, pin thin and armed to the teeth, skittish. He’s waiting for a dismissal or an order, and Dean swallows, tries to orient himself. This-this wasn’t a dream, and this hasn’t been averted. This is all he’s been killing himself trying to stop. He clears his throat, starts to stand and winces when he puts weight on his left leg. A cursory glance-poorly hidden from the kid, who’s watching him closely, nervous and possibly, bizarrely, star struck-to find a poorly-dressed, still-healing bullet wound in his thigh. Outstanding. “Fucking croats,” he breathes, before he can stop himself, and he swears he hears the kid gulp.
“So,” he continues, seizing a random pair of discarded pants from the floor and tugging them on, mindful of his thigh. “Cas sent you to get me?”
“Um,” says the kid, “well, Cas sent me to get more information and so I went to Risa who sent me to Chuck who sent me to Cas who sent me to you.”
“So,” says Dean, lifting a heavy, smoky-smelling jacket from the chair by his bed, “Cas sent you.”
“Right,” says the kid, gulping, and Dean almost chuckles.
“Well,” he says, “I could use a chat with Cas.” He says it lightly, but panic is building in his chest, because this is a world gone violently wrong and his control here in minimal-he knows how this turns out. Dead Cas, Sam worse. He grips at the overlong sleeves on his jacket and tries to breathe around this fresh wave of disorientation and panic. He needs to find Cas.
As if on cue, a series of short, sharp raps on the door made the kid jump. “Dean!” calls Cas’s voice, wonderfully familiar, but when Dean goes to open the door he finds it locked fast.
“Cas!” he shouts, his head aching again, and Cas knocks harder, yells “Dean!” with as much urgency as Dean has ever heard from him, and he hears the dull thump of Cas throwing his body against the door. That act of desperation from an angel-even a fallen one, a treacherous voice in Dean’s head sing-songs-signifies big trouble, and Dean wants to help, is desperate to help, because maybe Cas will understand what is happening here, but the pain in his head is growing and he slumps forward against the door.
“Cas,” he mumbles, and he needs to get through, because out here there’s no Sam and no Bobby and not even his fucking car, just Cas, broken and distant but his Cas all the same.
He calls Cas’s name again, pleadingly, and hears Cas’s distant response before he’s gone.
:::
Dean jerks awake in the backseat of a moving car, and for a brief, shining moment, he thinks he’s home, and he’s mumbled, “Sam,” before he can think about it. He gets to no reply, though he thinks he hears someone with a high pitched voice whispering the same name, which can’t mean anything good.
Another female voice floats to his ears, vaguely familiar in a way he can’t place. For a second, he thinks it’s his mother, but that’s wrong-it’s deeper, and distinctly annoyed.
“All I’m saying,” it’s saying, “is just because some turn of the century advertising company decided the best way to sell razors was to shame women about their natural bodies in the precise period when it was becoming gradually acceptable for a woman to display that body and be proud of it doesn’t mean I have any obligation to scrape perfectly natural hair off my legs twice a week for the theoretical enjoyment of a bunch of straight white pricks I don’t care about.”
“O-okay,” replies another voice, and Dean sits up so fast he smacks his head on the car roof, because-
“Dad?” Dean flinches at his own voice, which is too high and light and makes him wonder if he swallowed an eraser at some point and forgot about it.
His father meets his eyes in the rearview mirror, pleadingly, and raises his eyebrows. “Finally awake?” he asks, and Dean nods automatically, feeling vaguely queasy-
And just barely stops himself from yelping when, upon lowering his eyes, he sees breasts.
“Don’t ‘okay’ me, don’t pat my head and roll your eyes and ‘okay sweetheart’ me just because it’s uncomfortable for you to admit that you’ve been benefitting from a patriarchal and oppressive system for your entire life. Nobody shames you for that beard, but I go two days without shaving my pits and suddenly it’s a forfeit of my fucking femininity, I’m just saying, Dad.” The woman chattering in the front seat, who on closer inspection looks to be about sixteen years old, gives a little huff that is oddly familiar and turns to look at Dean. “You agree with me, right?” she says, and Dean has to bite down hard on his cheek to keep from yelling at the top of his lungs, because the girl is Sam. “I mean, I get you like makeup and you like to shave your legs and that’s awesome, De, it is, it is in no way a detriment to your credit as a feminist, but you do those things because you want to, not because you have to.”
Sam’s eyes are the same. His-her-dimples and moles are the same. The hair is similar. Even the height remains. But Sam-Sam is a girl. So, apparently, is Dean. Which is utterly, utterly not okay.
“I-um-” Dean can’t really conceive of a world where shaving his legs and wearing makeup are things he does for fun (that one time in Portland notwithstanding), but as he goes to shrug he notices a strand of long, blonde-brown hair falling free from his ponytail and notes with horror, as he goes to push it from his face, that his nails are pristine. “Whatever makes you happy, Sammy, is what I say.”
“Christ,” Sam huffs, turning back to their father, “I can’t even be mad about the Sammy, because she’s right, Dad, and just because Deanna likes boys”-what now?-“and I like girls”-oh, not fair-“does not mean one of us is more of a real woman than the other!”
“Honey, I-I never said I had a problem with-” Dean is almost too busy containing his confusion and distant shock that John would ever call one of his children “honey” to notice that Sam’s face, expectant and annoyed as she waits for John to answer, is flickering strangely, her jaw hardening, her nose elongating for only a split second before Sam-real Sam’s-face fades back into this girlish copy. It’s not right, it’s deep-shit shifter territory, and Dean’s headache is building again. He opens his mouth to try to warn his father, or perhaps announce he’s going to throw up, but he’s gone before he gets a word out.
:::
A chirping alarm clock at Dean’s ear rouses him this time, and he flails out for it, sits up, himself in Dean Smith’s sleek, spacious apartment in Ohio. “Christ, no,” he groans aloud, lying back on the pillow to try and sort out what is going on, before a cell phone chirping brings him back to the present.
The phone is gleaming and expensive, and the touch screen informs him Sam Wesson is calling. His heart leaps, he thinks, Sammy, and it’s only when a blessedly familiar voice on the other end says, “I told you not to call me that” that he realizes he’s spoken aloud.
“Sorry, Sam,” he says, his heart hammering and trying to control his disappointment that Sam isn’t Sam. “What’s up?”
“Well, I was just checking you got home okay last night,” says Sam, and it sounds like he’s driving. He chuckles warmly. “You were pretty sloshed.” When Dean doesn’t answer, merely sits on the bed and clings to the phone like a lifeline and tries to think of how to tell Sam listen something is very wrong here, Sam snorts and goes on, “But hey, who am I to complain? I got my fair of Mama and Papa Smith stories, and those are my favorites-though, I gotta say, that one about the gravy bowl is gonna make it hard not to crack up at Thanksgiving this year.”
Dean swallows. Sam is waiting for him to talk. “I’m sure you’ll find a way to keep a straight face,” he says, keeping his voice even, Sam, my Sam, where are you, “good Midwestern boy.”
“What can I say?” Sam laughs. “Your mom loves me. And she feeds me well, so I’m not complaining. It’s like I said at Christmas-”
Dean jumps as there’s a screech, a barrage of thumps and clatters and a “Hey, what the hell?” on the other end before he hears heavy breathing in his ear.
“Dean?”
“Sam, man, what-”
“Dean, it’s me.”
“I know, Sam, I was just-”
“No, Dean, listen it’s me. Sam Winchester-something’s-”
Sam’s voice is garbled and Dean leans forward, grips his sheets tightly, mouths Sam’s name again and again, begging him to be him, really him, to know Dean and understand-
“I’m coming, Dean!” he heard, before the line began to distort again and that same blinding headache overtook him. He tried to yell Sam’s name, and then he was gone.
:::
Dean wakes up shouting to warm hands on his shoulders, rubbing up and down, going to his face. “It was a nightmare,” someone is saying, “wake up, it’s just a dream.”
It’s soothing, and before he knows it his breath is evening out, and he’s relaxing, prying his eyes open as his headache recedes to find his face an inch from Castiel’s. Cas’s face is pinched a little in concentration, as it frequently is when he is doing human things by rote rather than instinct, but his hands on Dean’s shoulder and neck are solid and warm, if a little more intimate that Dean is accustomed to, and the concern in his face is real. At the moment, Dean is absurdly grateful, because it’s Cas, his Cas, so far as he can tell, awkward and present and drawing Dean up from this garble of nightmares.
“Better?” Cas asks, and Dean nods, expecting Cas to slide away. He doesn’t, and instead smiles with outstanding affection and, leaning forward, presses a kiss to Dean’s forehead. It’s strange and uncomfortable and unexpected, but gentle, almost soothing, and Dean wriggles away without any outward display of disgust as he might have, had it been anyone but Cas.
“Shh,” says Cas, gripping his shoulders again, “Dean, it’s me.” He pulls Dean in, and before Dean is quite aware what’s going on his hands are cradling Dean’s skull, gently, and he’s kissing Dean, on the mouth, in a quick, intimate sort of way. It’s not a first kiss at all. It’s an easy, couple’s kiss, and it’s over before Dean has fully registered it and thrown himself away from Cas, against a headboard he doesn’t recognize.
“Dean,” says Cas, worried, and Dean pants, screwing up his eyes briefly against the full-fledged return of his headache, unable to separate his memories and exhaustion from what is happening, to process the kindness and familiarity of the kiss.
“Don’t touch me!” he barks as Cas advances, slowly and jerkily like this is something he doesn’t know how to handle, and Cas jerks back, his face falling.
“Dean, I’m sorry,” he says, hands up in the air, voice even and low. “It’s only me. It was just a dream-Dean? Are you alri-”
:::
He wakes up with a fist to his face. He reels back, attempts to orient himself, but someone is hoisting him up by the collar, and there’s hot breath on his face and the nauseatingly strong smell of sulfer and no, no, no-
“Daddy always said,” growls a singsong voice, “you’d have to kill me or save me. The bastard didn’t figure I’d beat you.”
Dean tries to clear his vision, finds it blurry no matter how much he blinks, his entire body aching and a coppery coating of blood clinging to most every part of him. His ears are ringing. His brother’s face is an inch from his, leering. His grin is unhinged and triumphant.
“Meg?” Dean guesses, finds his mouth swollen and cottony and several teeth missing. Sam seems to understand anyways, lets out a cold, clear laugh.
“You think I’m letting that whore ride me? That low level little suck up? Dean, please. Nobody’s possessing me.” He chuckles again, like Dean’s made an excellent joke, and lets go of Dean’s lapels. Dean falls unceremoniously to the ground, lands in a heap, curls up against the pain and confusion and the familiar despair, because he knows this scene, but it was always Alistair underneath, stop it, STOP IT, stop fucking around, Alistair, stop hiding behind Sam, oh Christ take him away please-
“Alistair?” Sam, from above, sounds genuinely engaged at last, curious. He crouches down to Dean’s level, tilts his head in a gesture that’s so familiar and sweetly Sam-like Dean wants to cry. “How could you know Alistair?”
“That’s not funny,” Dean spits, and Sam stands, kicks him hard in the ribs, and crouches back down.
“It wasn’t supposed to be, you fucking maggot, TELL ME HOW YOU KNOW ALISTAIR!”
Dean tries to flinch away, but something yanks him back, props him on his knees, and he’s bleeding, everything hurts, and Sam is screaming, “ALISTAIR YOU STUPID LITTLE LOWLIFE, I WILL SEND YOU BACK INTO THE FUCKING DEPTHS OF THE PIT WHERE NOT EVEN THE OTHER FILTHY LITTLE FUCKERS CAN HEAR YOU SCREAMING!”
He’s shouting, raving, insane, and Dean tries to pull out of his kneeling position, topples only when Sam smacks him hard in the head, ranting and screaming still. Dean curls against the coming blow, but before it comes he hears his brother’s voice, more softly, calling “Dean? Dean! C’mon, Dean, please-”
He cracks his eyes open, sees Sam kneeling before him, all trace of malice gone from his eyes, replaced by a tapered kind of panic. “Where are you?” he whispers, gripping Dean’s shoulder.
“Hell, I think,” says Dean, and Sam’s face cracks wide into a grin that shows nearly all his teeth.
“Right you are, bucko,” he says, and stands back up, but whatever comes next, Dean misses, as he’s floating away again.
:::
Dean wakes to find Sam’s face again an inch from his, and he jumps back, his head still pounding, but Sam’s eyes are soft and sleepy. Almost weirdly so.
“Just me,” he mumbles, moving closer to Dean, and Dean realizes they’re in a bed together, close, but Sam doesn’t seem young enough to need such things. He wonders if he’s got a concussion or is hallucinating or something-to explain this pain and insanity-and Sam is trying to wake him up to check on him.
But Sam is draping himself over Dean in a way that is uncomfortable and making Dean claustrophobic, and when he tries to squirm away Sam gives a sleepy sigh and pulls him closer.
“Sam,” he mutters, “get off me.”
Sam opens his eyes, retracts one arm, squints at Dean in the darkness. Where the fuck are we?
“Babe,” says Sam, “you okay? It’s only me.”
“Babe?” Dean repeats disbelievingly, and Sam rolls his eyes.
“What would you prefer,” he says, voice low and teasing, leaning forward and what the fuck, “baby? Sweetie pie? Cuddly bear?”
“Sam,” says Dean, his mouth very dry. “Sam, what the fuck.”
“Relax,” says Sam, and he leans in, and Dean thinks maybe Sam is going to do something completely delusional like kiss him and he throws himself back once again, but Cas was one thing this is Sam, and before he quite knows what he’s doing he’s seized a pillow and is holding it in front of him like a shield, still scooting backwards, mumbling, “woah, woah, woah” under his breath and frantically quelling the urge to scream because this, whatever the fuck this is, has gone entirely too far. Dean spares a moment’s thought for Becky and her fantasies before realizing that Sam is watching him with an appraising affection, like he wants to fuck. Oh, what the fucking fuck.
Sam gives a little laugh deep in his throat and advances, and he’s so big and the bed is sort of small and Sam is pinning him, without force but with an unyielding, surefire presence, and Dean’s heart is going to explode out his chest, his head is going to explode with confusion and old sulfur-smelling memories and this blinding fucking headache, as he wriggles and says, “No, no, Sammy, Christ, no-”
“Dean, it’s just me,” says Sam from somewhere above him, softly, his hands leaving Dean’s arms, but the panic continues and then Sam’s voice changes and he’s almost yelling. “Dean? Dean! It’s me, Dean, c’mon-”
Dean flails, might even whine low in his throat, and Sam is repeating his name endlessly but he pulls away, lost, stuck, pain in his head white hot and Sam’s urgent voice fading into the background noise.
:::
“Heal him!”
Dean comes to himself in the middle of a warehouse. The smells of blood and sulfur are close to overpowering, and it takes Dean a moment to register that someone is yelling at him, that it’s Anna, the angel, that she’s hollering her head off as she grips the lapels of a kneeling, freely bleeding Castiel, who is listing against her and plainly losing consciousness. Astonished, Dean looks around, and sees Alistair slumped on the floor. He swallows, wants to throw up, and turns back to Anna.
“Did Cas-did he-”
“He got like this doing your dirty work!” Anna shouts. “So don’t you fucking pin this on him or get all holier than thou on me! Heal him! Heal my brother right now, Dean!”
Dean’s mind is still racing, and he’s trying to put distance between himself and the body that was Alistair, because even if the pediatrician is damn tame compared to the forms and faces Dean saw in Hell, the memory is strong and terrifying and as Anna continues to shout and Cas continues to slump worriedly Dean catches sight of his brother, splayed on the ground with dark, ashen wings burned into the ground on either side of him.
“Is Sam-is Sam d-” Dean can’t breath, he can’t, Anna is here and yelling at him and Cas is dying and Sam is dead and Alistair was here, he was just here he’s coming back he’ll get me-
“He’s not gonna get you, you worthless fucking-I killed him because you couldn’t!” Anna hollered, and Dean turned to stare at her, confused, and then her whole face contorts and she looks like she’s going to cry. “He was going to kill you and Cas both, Dean, I didn’t have a-you have to heal him!”
There’s a lot Dean wants to say to this-Anna didn’t kill Alistair and yes, he can still get me, Anna, he never really dies, and how am I supposed to heal Castiel, exactly, and why can’t you do it. What comes out of his mouth is, “Sam-Sam’s dead.”
“Cas is going to be dead if you don’t DO something, Dean! Please. He’s my brother. Heal him.”
“Anna,” says Dean, mouth dry again, head throbbing, stepping away from Alistair’s slumped form and Sam’s cooling body, towards the place where Cas has slumped, bleeding and swollen, against Anna’s legs. It’s taking everything she’s got to keep him upright with one hand. Dean crouches, reaches forward takes Cas’s shoulders and pulls him forward. His head lolls forward briefly before he takes a pained breath through his noise and opens his eyes, tries to focus on Dean. “I can’t, Anna,” says Dean.
“You’re an angel!” Anna shrieks.
“Jesus Christ,” Dean rasps, and Cas smiles at him, or tries, his mouth bleeding and his lips split.
“Blaspheming at a time like this?” he whispers, and Dean wants to sob, wants to gather Cas close and cling, wants Sam, and as his hands tighten on Cas’s shoulders he hears Cas breathe, “Dean? Dean, come back,” but he ignores it, merely pulls Castiel’s broken body against his own while Anna, frantic, yanks a cell phone from her pocket and steps past Sam’s angel corpse as she rattles off an address into the phone.
“I’m sorry, Cas,” Dean says, because Cas is getting heavy like maybe he’s dying.
“Dean,” says this skinny, human Cas. This righteous man, Dean realizes far too late. “Dean, come back.”
:::
Dean wakes up yelling yet again, and he’s tied down and it’s loud and white and his head hurts so much and somebody is wailing, screaming, please I don’t want this anymore please help me and somebody else is shouting and lots of people are shouting and then he’s out.
He’s surprised to wake up later in the same place, slow and sleepy, and it takes him a long time to register the consistent beeping and whirring and footsteps on linoleum that mean hospital, and longer still to notice Sam sitting by his bed, looking exhausted and reading. He tries to sit up, finds himself restrained.
“I told them you don’t like it,” says Sam, setting down his book and meeting Dean’s eyes with a face so weary it makes Dean’s bones ache. “But you attacked someone in a grocery store and put him in the hospital, then started screaming about Hell. Ben-Ben heard. They weren’t really gonna listen to me.”
Dean blinks, doesn’t say anything. His head is achy and heavy. He thinks maybe Sam is calling him crazy, and he thinks Sam might have a real good point, there.
Sam sighs deeply. “Lisa took Ben home,” he says. “She and Dr. Adler will be here in the morning,” he continues, “and Jess and the baby will be by later, too, if you’re up for it.” He sighs again, studies his hands, then looks at Dean. “Why didn’t you tell me? You said they were working, the new meds. I’d-I’d have listened, Dean. I know, I was awful before, but I was eighteen an idiot, but this is getting fucking ridiculous and I’ve been trying to make it up to you to you for-” He stops, takes a deep breath through his nose. Fidgets with his book for a moment.
“Is Cas okay?” Dean asks slowly, the fragmented memory of Cas bleeding out in a warehouse floating into his head.
“Cas isn’t real, Dean,” says Sam firmly. “Okay? There is no Cas, and no Anna, no Gabriel, no Zachariah or Ruby or Meg or any of these people, okay? No Azazel, no Alistair-”
“That never gets any cuter, you know,” Dean mumbles, still sleepy, too tired to try to outsmart Alistair anymore.
“What?”
“The whole pretending and name drop thing,” says Dean thickly, “it’s still just as stupid as it always was. I know it’s you, Alistair.”
“Alistair isn’t real!” Sam snaps, and Dean closes his eyes, turns away, waits for it to melt away into Hell, or else for Cas to show up and tell him it’s all his fucking fault. “Okay, there are no demons,” Sam is saying, “there’s me, your brother, and your wife and your son, who by the way today saw you beating the living shit out a stranger for no fucking reason so can you please, please just ground yourself for a goddamn minute and listen to me?”
“Not real,” says Dean.
“That’s what I-”
“No,” says Dean, head full of buzzing and insistent pressure, unable to try to make sense of anything anymore, “you’re not real.”
“Dean,” says Sam softly, then more loudly, “Dean! Come back!”
“From where,” Dean mutters.
:::
He’s cold. He’s sleepy. He’s cramped. He’s achy. Somebody is leaning against him, and he’s in a car.
Dean blinks. The world is at a strange angle, everything too big, and Dean’s body feels compact and rubbery beneath a layer of dull pain that comes, he realizes, from an impressive layer of bruising that covers his arms and, from the feel of things, his legs and torso, too.
He’s in the back of a police car, and he’s small, and a much smaller Sammy, still round cheeked and tiny, is curled against him, asleep with his fingers curling in Dean’s shirt.
“Help,” he breathes softly, unable to think what else to say. This is the strangest Hell he’s ever seen.
“You awake?” asks the man driving the car, and his voice is gentle. “It’s okay, you were only asleep about ten minutes. We’re about five minutes from the station, son, but you can keep sleeping.”
Who are you where did we come from I’m too small this body is so small it can’t hold so much, so much stress-“I don’t feel good,” he blurts.
“No, buddy, I bet you don’t,” says the cop sadly, “but you’re leaving that place, okay. No more hunting monsters.”
“No-no more hunting?” Dean repeats, his voice high and breathy to his own ears. Beside him, Sam gives a little sigh, and Dean pulls him closer. It might not even really be Sam, but it’s all he has, right now.
“There are no monsters,” says the cop kindly, slowly, “and you don’t have to be afraid. It’s okay if you are, but you’re safe now.”
“Where’s my dad?” says Dean, aware it’s a whine.
“In a holding cell,” the cop mutters, then clears his throat. “Far away, buddy. He can’t hurt you or Sammy anymore.” They were turning into the lot now, and before Dean could say anything else the cop had gotten out of the car and had come around and opened the back seat door, crouching down.
“We need to take some pictures,” he says gently, “and talk to you and Sammy for a little while. Then we’ll find somewhere for you to stay. If you’re scared, just say so. Nobody’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
It’s all so utterly insane, and Dean’s tiny little body is bursting with it, and he feels tears building in his eyes and spilling onto his hot cheeks. The cop reaches forward and Dean flinches without meaning to, relaxing as the cop, a sorry look on his face, cups the back of Dean’s head. “It’ll be okay,” he says. “You were very brave today. You did the right thing, dialing 911. You’re a smart boy.” Dean sits still and lets the cop hold his head, crying without meaning to, distant memories of the smell of decaying bodies and John, drunk and furious, wildly brandishing a canister of kerosene and screaming about ghosts. He shudders, makes the connection slowly even now-his father is going to burn down the house with Sammy sleeping right upstairs-and wonders if this is real.
“I want my daddy,” he chokes, and the cop’s face collapses sadly, and he says, “oh, kid,” and Dean feels more tears threatening, feels a childish crying jag, the kind you can’t stop, approaching, and he shakes his head and leans into the cop’s embrace, Sammy still clutched to his side, and says, “Sammy” again and again until he hears an answering whisper coming from the familiar-smelling place where the cop was, “Come back, Dean, come back.”
:::
He wakes up and sees the stars immediately, feels hands cradling his head, Sam’s face upside down and poised in tentative relief.
“Dean?” he asks.
“Sam,” Dean answers, and Sam collapses forward, nearly touches their foreheads together. Dean is lying in the dirt by the pulled-over car, his head in Sam’s lap. Cas is crouched at Sam’s side, his face a more schooled portrait of relief.
“Zachariah,” Sam chokes out, righting himself, “and we couldn’t find you.”
“I thought it was Hell,” Dean offers, not moving from Sam’s grip. Sam holds on. Cas’s hand finds Dean’s forearm and he squeezes, almost like he doesn’t mean to do it. Dean lets him.
“I’m sorry, Dean,” he says, and Dean lifts one hand lazily-he’s so exhausted he can feel every bone weighting him to the dirt-and waves Cas’s apology away.
“We found you,” says Sam again, and they did. Dean closes his eyes, lets the cool night air wash over his face, relishes the end of the monstrous headache. Cas’s fingers stay pressed into Dean’s arm, and Sam’s breath comes from some place close above Dean in warm, perfectly familiar little huffs, and the stars above Dean must surely still be glinting, even if his eyes are closed.
“You did,” he answers at length, “and now all’s right in the world.”