In His Image: Jokerman
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In which Sam tells Dean that Castiel is alive, they start out for Delacroix, Bobby gets an unexpected delivery, and somebody ’fesses up.
Sam, Dean, Bobby, Gabriel.
Sam woke to a pounding headache and the sensation of being loomed over. The brazier had gone out. The only light was coming in through the window, and silhouetted against that was the silent shape of Dean. He was sitting on the only bed in the room, face invisible, hands between his knees.
Crap. Sam should have known he’d see through that whole “the motel’s only got two single rooms left” thing.
“So. Archangels huh, Sammy?”
Sam groaned and let his head fall back against the worn wooden floor. It hurt already, so what the hell. He already knew how well the “I didn’t want to tell you in case you got your hopes up” talk was going to go. “You heard that, then.”
Dean’s voice was oddly muted, without a trace of the accusation and hurt Sam was expecting. “Dude, you were full-on sleep-talking.” He paused, then swallowed audibly. “He gonna be okay?”
… Oh. He’d heard that. Sam’s sluggish brain caught up and he rolled to his feet in one movement, reaching for the lamp by the bed. Dean was sitting with his shoulders slumped, white-faced, his eyes wide and full and fixed on Sam.
Sam hastily replayed the conversation with Castiel in his head, trying to work out what impression Dean would have got from hearing only Sam’s side. Not much detail, but probably nothing good, at least from the look on Dean’s face. He tried to pitch his voice to reassuring, but there wasn’t really any way to soften it. “Sounds like he’s human, or as good as. And pretty knocked about.”
Dean closed his eyes, let out a hissed breath, and dragged a hand down over his face. “Cas, you stupid stubborn bastard.”
There was something too raw and private in that for Sam to handle, something that echoed right back into the little catch and drag in Castiel’s quiet voice when he had spoken of Dean. So Sam opted for business, crossing over to where his laptop sat on the tiny table against one wall and calling it out of standby mode.
“He said he was in a hospital somewhere near Delacroix.”
“Delacroix, Louisiana?”
“Can’t think of any other.” The browser popped up under Sam’s fingers, and he clicked on his Google maps bookmark.
“The hell’s he doing there?”
The incredulous mutter was half-hearted, but there was an edge to it, as if Dean wasn’t sure whether to go for accusation, relief, or panic. Sam reached for the comfort of the normal, as if Dean were just being an ass over any old case, and let exasperation and mild sarcasm creep into his voice. “I don’t know, Dean. Guess that banishing sigil doesn’t just throw them down the street.” A road by the name of Delacroix somewhere in Nevada, three others of various colours in California, but the only town - “Yes. Louisiana.” Another search term, and a satisfying cluster of red flags sprang up nearby. “All the nearest hospitals are in New Orleans.”
“Okay then.” The bedsprings creaked as Dean stood up. Then he punched Sam lightly on the shoulder, all casual brotherly jerkhood that Sam was willing to pretend wasn’t bravado. “Beddie-byes, Sammykin. We’re heading south tomorrow, and you’re driving.”
Sam ducked and pulled a face at him, relieved and grateful, letting the implicit “thanks for finding my lost not-really-a-boyfriend” truce offer stand. Besides, the way Dean’s hands were trembling, he wasn’t going to get to sleep any time soon.
“You’re such an ass.”
Dean waved a hand airily and pulled up the chair to settle in at the computer. “Bitch, you love me.”
Sam snorted, and rubbed his forehead (seriously, it felt like he had pulled a muscle in his brain at the end there). But he hovered for a moment, as Dean started to pull up the websites of every hospital in the greater New Orleans area. He had asked Bobby to look into the archangels whose names Lucifer had mentioned, just in case. And since Dean had overheard the tail-end of that conversation, it had only made sense to incorporate them into his hasty cover story. But even as he’d bullshitted, he’d sort of convinced himself. With Castiel onside, they might even be able to swing it. Assuming any of them were still alive.
Sam knocked his hip against Dean’s shoulder. “I meant it about the archangels, though.”
Dean’s voice was still a little rough, but it sounded firm. “Good. Because that was a freaking awesome idea. If we can get an archangel in our corner we might just be able to do this thing.”
Before Sam fell asleep, he whispered a few words of thanks to another archangel. It was pretty much a guarantee that he was listening, after all.
---
When Sam got up at five, Dean was slumped forward over the table with his head pillowed on his arms. Beside him, on motel paper, was a list of hospitals in New Orleans, all but three crossed out. By each of these, Dean had scrawled a date in the last three weeks and a single word: “amnesia,” “semi-comatose,” and “brain-dead.” Admissions with identity unknown.
Sam circled the last one.
Then he touched the trackpad to dismiss the screensaver, and frowned. There were three yellow notes on the screen, in that obnoxiously cheerful and irritatingly familiar font:
no dinosaurs in 5C mexico. you kids know that bad sleeping pattenrs stunt ur growth, right?
Baby, im enormous where it counts.
and, more worryingly,
what’s in new orleans?
Sam alt-tabbed to check Dean’s last Google queries. Castiel was vulnerable just now. And both sides would be glad to get their hands on him.
& yet still teh bigger man
Then:
just a case
Okay. So Dean wasn’t just trusting it, fine. Sam still didn’t get how he didn’t find it creepy as all hell.
He went out to grab coffee and breakfast, sending Bobby a text on the way.
SW: P a bust. Heading to louisiana - think we’ve found C.
---
Dean was in a mood all day, alternating between wound up tight jiggling and fiddling, and dozing in a boneless sprawl in the passenger seat. It was the most he’d slept in weeks. Sam let him choose the music, even though he wasn’t driving.
Some time in the mid afternoon, when the needle hovered a little above empty, they pulled over to refuel, and Sam managed to talk Dean into sitting down in a diner to eat instead of getting takeout.
Even though he hadn’t been connected to the internet since that morning, a note had popped up in the interim.
1820 egypt, sum1 shd tell MA swapping ur own trained troops for conqured slaves = fail. ur species v. strange.
… Okay, now it wasn’t even trying. It could have got that straight out of Wikipedia.
As they ate, Sam flicked through websites on Azrael. Bobby was right - there was a hell of a lot on him, but most of it was pop-culture fantasy apocrypha. And that one passing reference in one of Pratchett’s books hadn’t helped. The “angel of death” epithet Sam mostly dismissed - Lucifer had named him as an archangel, so he was hardly going to be a horseman as well. The few pages that looked potentially useful Sam left open, to read in the car. Dean had had long enough in the passenger seat.
Dean was restless. He was barely noticing his burger, preferred shredding his napkin over flirting with the waitress, and, horror of horrors, didn’t object when Sam stole one of his fries. After fifteen minutes Sam took pity on him and tossed his phone across the table with a “Seriously, just ring the damn hospital already.”
Dean left without finishing his food.
Sam eyed the browser challengingly. He had a feeling that there was something important he was missing, just on the brink of understanding.
His fingers twitched.
He opened a new tab. A new search term.
azrael pestilence
Yes, that felt right.
Huh.
Of course, it was right at that moment, before he could hit return, that another yellow note popped up with its ridiculously cheerful font.
she preferred Sariel. just fyi.
Sam glared at it as the moment of almost-comprehension scattered. He swallowed down the urge to snap back with “what do you know about it?”, or “stay the hell away from my computer, I do very important and private thinking on it.” Because, honestly, after all the things in his life that had wanted to get into his body, his blood stream, his mind, his soul, a little computer possession shouldn’t even ding on the violation radar. It just felt creepy.
But. If it could help…
He gritted his teeth and opened an umpteenth tab.
preferred? is she dead?
It worked, just like Dean had said. Only a few seconds, and another note popped up.
word is she went down in 1666.
1666.
Sam blinked slowly. Annus mirabilis. The Year of Wonders. The Great Fire of London. The last great wave of the Black Death. The last of the sightings of Pestilence, according to the blog that this thing had linked Dean to. Also, his brain added, meticulous and unhelpful, one of the Anglo-Dutch wars, and Sir Isaac Newton splitting sunlight with a prism. Yeah, probably not so much with those ones.
He stared at his Google query, the cursor still blinking, waiting for him to hit return. He’d known that. How had he known that?
Another note popped up, with an obnoxious visual DING! effect (and where had Sam seen that font before?).
come on, honeybuns. You do the math.
Quick and curt, Sam rapped out,
Why are you helping?
cant i just be a sweet thoughtful guy?
… No.
Really, no. Not in their lives. And not this… thing. It was too seductive. It was too easy to fall into a familiar pattern of smart-assed replies. That was what made it suspicious, over and beyond the whole supernatural computer hitchhiking gig: whatever it was, it was way too good at mimicking the style of his and Dean’s habitual banter, provoking them to respond in kind. Like it was trying to set them at their ease.
The door jangled. Dean came back in with a stupid little grin on his face.
“He’s there.”
Sam couldn’t help the grin that spread over his face in return. “Yeah? Did you speak to him?”
Dean shook his head, sliding smug and comfortable into the chair opposite Sam. “But get this. My uncle, dark hair, blue eyes, five-eleven, last seen three weeks back wearing a beige trench coat and a ratty suit way too big for him? Brought in there unconscious same day, and matched up last week with the MPB for - Jimmy Novak.” He sat back in his chair, grinning a little too broadly. “Guess your dreams are good for something, hey Sammy?”
Sam just raised his eyebrows, provokingly casual. “Should have asked to be put through to his room. Then you could have told him we’d be there tomorrow.”
Dean’s cocky expression froze for just a moment, then slid back into place with a shrug. “Couldn’t. They were asking for my name and number. I had to fake a dropped line.” At Sam’s unimpressed face, he protested, “Hey, if they’ve got Jimmy’s name they can probably check out his nephews and blow my story. And then there’d be talking to the police, and investigations into how he ended up in hospital, and where he’d been, and why I said he’d been missing three weeks if Jimmy’s wife put out the MPB back when he said yes to Cas. Way better just to stroll in there tomorrow, grab him, and vanish before they figure it doesn’t check out.”
“Sure. And you worked all that out on the spur of the moment.”
Dean spread his hands wide with his old shit-eating grin. “What can I say. I’m a clever guy.” He stole Sam’s ketchup packet and squeezed it over his fries.
Sam smirked. “Course you are, Dean.”
Then he picked up his cup, just so he could cough “Coward” behind it.
Dean shot him a glare that promised surprise vengeance by superglue at some point in Sam’s future.
Yeah, they were good. They weren’t perfect, but when were they ever?
---
Bobby rang, not long after they’d pulled off the road to catch a few hours’ rest somewhere past the New Mexico / Texas border.
His greeting was, “Either of you two chuckleheads know who’d be sending Sam a delivery van full of mediaeval books, c/o yours truly?”
Sam blinked at the phone in his hand. “… That’s a new one. What are the books?”
He could hear Bobby’s eyeroll. “They’re older than the printing press, genius. They don’t have a title and publisher’s imprint stamped on their spines. And it wasn’t exactly unusual to bind a whole bunch of manuscripts together in one volume, to save time and beefskin. I’d have to go through and read them all cover to cover to find out, and I’m hardly about to do that until I know who - or what - sent them.”
“Okay, is there a note or something?”
“Yeah, but it don’t make a lick of sense. Sounds like a time-traveller.”
“… A time-traveller. Sending us info.” Sam swivelled around in the passenger seat and met Dean’s sharp gaze as he lifted his head from the pillow of his folded coat in the back. He switched to speakerphone. “Bobby, these books - do they look genuine? I mean, looking at them, would you buy that this guy is for real?”
Bobby grunted. “Bound about right for the period. All the periods - some of these have to be from before the Normans hit England. And they look about five hundred years younger than I’d expect, so yeah, I’m going with genuine here. You thinking angel?”
Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. He could feel the headache coming back. “Could you just read me the note?”
Bobby cleared his throat. “‘So old Harry really did a number on England’s libraries. Also kind of a germ freak. You know, for the sixteenth century. Saw him yesterday having a hissy fit over hygiene standards in the palace kitchens. Seems to think kitchen boys should actually wear clothes, and only piss in the fireplaces that don’t actually have food in them.’” Dean snorted. “‘Oh, and, books. Guaranteed pre-Anglican. Told you post-Dissolution collectors useless. John ap Rhys very bribable. Singer, they’re delicate, please restrain your paranoia re. curses or traps or whatever. Call your pet trench coat if you must check. Go wild, guys!’”
Sam breathed out through his nose, slow and deliberate, then tossed the phone onto the coin tray. “Okay, that’s it.” Dean grabbed the laptop from Sam’s bag and passed it over the seat to him. Sam booted it up and jammed the charger into the cigarette lighter, leaving Dean to lean over on one elbow towards the phone and say, “Think we know what’s doing it, Bobby. Call you back, okay?”
Bobby’s voice vibrated beside him. “Sam? If this checks out, you better give me this angel’s number.”
Dean thanked Bobby and hung up, then leaned back on his elbows to watch between the seats. “You wanna fill me in on the start of that?”
Sam glowered at the Windows-is-resuming screen. “You heard it. That freaking computer monster just sent Bobby a truckload of books that he says are from pre-Dissolution England.”
“Yeah, Cliff notes for the ones who actually got laid in high school?”
“The Dissolution, Dean. In the 1530s. Henry VIII was short on cash and pissed at the Pope, so he shut down all the monasteries and auctioned off everything they had to private owners. Which meant tons of books ended up lost or destroyed, especially the really superstitiously Catholic ones.” Logon screen. Username, password. “Or, you know, the ones that people decided were heretical for other reasons.”
Dean’s voice hardened as he zeroed in on the obvious. “Occult lore and monsters.”
“Exactly.” The browser opened. No internet connection, but Sam suspected that didn’t really matter at this point.
whoever you are, give me a name before i just go and buy a new laptop and tell bobby to burn those books
Sam hit return. “I want to know what the hell this guy’s game is.”
Dean smirked. “Knows Bobby’s weak spot, whoever it is.”
“Not just Bobby, Dean.” Sam’s fingers drummed out an erratic rhythm on the dash. Nothing on the screen yet. “It knows exactly how to bait us. Because we can’t afford to pass this up if there’s even a chance. That doesn’t strike you as suspicious?”
Before Dean could answer, Sam’s cell chirped. And Sam groaned. Because of course: it was synched to his computer.
One new message.
1001100011: ur phone too?
The number wasn’t withheld, but it was far too long to be real, a string of a few dozen 0s and 1s that shifted and swapped places on the screen as if the phone wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. Sam stared at it for a moment, then pressed the call button for the hell of it.
The phone just made its “are you kidding me?” dial tone.
Fine. Reply by text.
SW: Name.
Apparently that got through. Ten seconds later, the phone beeped again.
0100001100: don’t have one
>
Sam narrowed his eyes at it.
SW: Bullshit.
1110110101: trufax. :)
The cheery little smiley face that made Sam want to stab his phone with a stick.
“He saying anything interesting?” Sam was too busy glowering and thumbing in a reply, so Dean sat up and draped himself over the back of Sam’s seat to stickybeak.
SW: texting b to make himself a book bonfire now.
That was, apparently, the right leverage, because the phone beeped again almost immediately. Threaten the books. Duly noted.
1001101101: whoa. Fine.
A long silence. Then:
0001010110: they called me Gabriel. :P
For a moment, Sam wasn’t sure that the four words and the stupid emoticon weren’t dancing on the screen just like the 0s and 1s. The air seemed to have been punched out of his stomach.
0101011100: happy, guys?
Behind his ear, Dean just breathed, “Son of a bitch.”
Sam fought the temptation to bury his head in his hands. Because he suddenly knew where he’d seen the font before. Nowhere special, just a list of fun fonts. But he remembered now what it was called.
Jokerman.
“Well, shit.” Dean cackled suddenly, the smug bastard. “Guess we should all have seen that one coming.”
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