The Killing Moon
11. Time Out of Mind
Gabe works alongside the big guy, pulling back branches, snapping them, reaching in, feeling about. He eyes the hot lady as she does the same a few feet over, thinks she seems friendly enough, but Big Guy has a weird vibe coming off him even if Gabe feels safe with him. It's like hostility but not, and Gabe's so fuckin' sick of trying to work out what's coming next, when the next explosion is coming, just what the fuck it is he's done to mess with Lee's head, that he just doesn't want to think about pissing anyone else off if he can help it.
Even so, "I don't think your buddy's under here, dude," he broaches cautiously.
Big Guy ignores him, keeps working, and all the while he has this funny look on his face like devastation all mixed up with disbelief, suspicion and what-the-fuckery face-palmery type stuff.
"He's not here, Sam," Hot Lady agrees after a moment or two, and Gabe glances over at her again, smiles to himself as he sees her tee riding up just so, and an ever increasing strip of tanned skin. There's a dark patch of sweat on the fabric between her shoulder blades there, and if it just slips up higher, yep lady, just reach over there, bit further, yes, no, fuck, caught out. She pulls down her tee, narrowing her eyes at Gabe, and he shrugs.
"That thing was here, Sam," she says then. "This tree didn't just fall. You heard it, it was ripped up at the roots."
Gabe glances down to the opposite end of the trunk, points. "Mister. Look. Roots." It's as if he never spoke, the guy blanks him. "Hey, Sam," he tries.
Big Guy's head snaps round, and now his face is all lit up with something new.
"Look, Mister," Gabe repeats. "Roots. Thing ripped it up."
Big Guy's face falls. "What thing? What thing ripped it up?"
"Fuck if I know," Gabe replies. "She said it, not me."
"So you didn't see anything?"
Gabe looks at Big Guy, calculates. There's still this weird vibe coming off him, violent maybe, and Christ, Gabe can do without that. He rubs his back, the bruise where Lee stomped him good. Feels better now. "Well," he says slowly. "I saw the tree. Obviously." He chuckles, knows it comes out nervous, uneasy. "Else I'd be under the damn thing."
Hot Lady stands up. "He's right," she says wearily. "Bobby isn't under here, Sam. That thing grabbed him, maybe pushed Dean out of the way. It's the only explanation."
And Gabe gets this odd, sick feeling in his gut, his head, something's throbbing in there, isn't right. It just slips out of him. "You lost your Dean too? That's careless, buddy. Real careless." He doesn't mean it to sound so abrasive, so spiteful, but he knows that it does.
Big Guy must think so too because he shoots bolt upright, and Jesus he's as tall as Lee, fuckin' sasquatch as he stares down at Gabe, his eyes bleak.
"Sam, consult," Hot Lady barks.
"Don't mind me," Gabe retorts as Big Guy stalks towards her. "I'll just sit a spell, I guess." And he sits, tries to remember where he was going through the ache and noise in his head.
Sam hasn't even wanted to think about it, has forced it to the back of his mind even as they searched, but Hudak is characteristically upfront.
"Do you think Bobby's still alive?"
He crumples down on to the ground, scrubs at his sweat-damp hair hard with his fingers, thinks absentmindedly that he'd feel a whole lot cooler if he buzzed it like Dean's. "They store food and they eat it in order," he says.
"It'll eat the others first then."
"Probably." He eyes her, uncomfortable. "I'm sorry. About your friend."
She nods slowly and her voice is tight, controlled. "So we have time." She gestures over to where his brother is sitting, staring into space. "What do you think this is? Post-traumatic stress disorder? Or do you think he hit his head or something?"
"I don't know. Maybe… though he's alert." Sam reaches for his pack, unhooks his canteen, drinks long and deep.
"Has anything like this happened before?" Hudak prods. "It's just so - complete. So convincing. He really believes it. What about the dreams, the flashbacks… is this what happens when he has those?"
"Yeah," Sam admits, pushing his sweat-lanky hair out of his eyes. "Sort of, I guess. He had a pretty bad one couple weeks back, got out, shot Bobby's dogs. Thought it was the pitbulls. But he was Dean. He wasn't Gabe."
"Has he been Gabe in any of the other flashbacks?"
"Yeah, but they're like waking nightmares really," Sam tells her. "He isn't really conscious. I just put him back to bed and he's fine in the morning."
"How could you tell he was Gabe those other times?" she presses. "If he wasn't conscious, I mean?"
Sam's mind flits back to Dean padding over to the bedroom door at Bobby's and twisting the doorknob, and the anxiety that seeps off him every time it happens. "He's - timid, I guess. Beaten down."
Hudak taps her fingers on her thighs. "Time being a factor," she says, "is it feasible to take him back to town and then come back out here to find Bobby?"
Sam shakes his head. "That'll add a couple of days to this. I don't want to leave Bobby with that thing any longer than necessary."
"Then how do we handle him?" Hudak sighs, chews at her bottom lip. "Do we humor him, wait until he snaps out of it? Or push him to remember who he really is?"
"I don't know…" Sam trails off, watches Dean for a few minutes. His brother is sitting staring into space, motionless, quiet, and God help him but Sam thinks of the possibilities, even though the night before should have been warning enough that some of the things his brother endured are too painful, too raw to ever confront. He thinks of the opportunities, even though the night before should have been warning enough that some of the things his brother endured are too secret, too private to ever confess. Dean's silence is like a fuse between them that sparks suddenly into life, and Sam opens his mouth, and God help him but it's the curiosity, the jealousy, the possessiveness, curling in his gut like some insidious snake, that speaks. "I think we should wait and see if he snaps out of it himself," he says softly.
Hudak doesn't seem to think it's unreasonable, simply nods, squeezes his arm, pushes up onto her feet and picks up her pack. "Hey," she calls over to Dean. "With us."
As Gabe jogs up to them, Big Guy's hand suddenly floats up to his mouth.
"Bobby had the map," he says hoarsely. He dips his head down onto his knees, takes deep breaths. "We need the map to find the mines," he says, voice muffled. "Jesus."
Hot Lady makes a frustrated sound. "Well, he said they were in this area," she says. "We just need to keep walking, try different directions, keep looking, we're bound to-"
"Uh. Ma'am. I know where there's a mine." Gabe just throws it in there, doesn't really think about what it could mean for him, but Big Guy's head snaps up.
"You know where there's a mine?" he demands. "Is it a deep pit mine?"
"Deep pit?" Gabe fishes. "Hole-in-the-ground type, you mean?"
"Yes it is," Hot Lady interjects. "Is it near here? Where did you see it? Have you been there?"
"Not so much." Gabe shrugs. "I just passed by it. My brother showed it to me."
Big Guy snorts, pinches the bridge of his nose.
Hot Lady ignores him. "Could you find it again?"
"I guess I could, it's…" Gabe stops, hunches his shoulders defensively, starts shifting from foot to foot, because honest, he has wasted enough time here. "Look, ma'am, I'm sorry about your friend, but this isn't my problem and I really need to get moving myself."
"Forget it," she says. "We could use another set of hands. I think you know damn well what's out there and that you know these woods better than us. And don't ever call me ma'am. I'm not eighty."
Gabe bristles. "Look, lady, where the hell do you get off-"
"Gabriel Bender," she snaps, harsh, businesslike. Fuckin' scorching hot if he's honest. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights?"
Gabe knows his jaw drops. "You're a cop?" So what can we do for you, Officer Washington? He blinks hard, shakes his head, voices, fuck, going crazy just like Lee says. "You're arresting me? You're fuckin' arresting me?"
"Arrest-ed, Gabe," she clarifies tartly. "It's done. You're in my custody, and I will cuff you if I have to."
Gabe doesn't know what to do with that, backs away a step or two before looking at Big Guy, who seems as taken aback as he is. "Arresting me for what?" he challenges. "And where's your badge?"
Hot Lady reaches into her jacket, flips open her wallet and there it is. "I'll think of something," she says. "And if you run, I will shoot you in the leg."
"Shoot me?" And Gabe gets this weird flash of - what? Like an echo in his head, you shot me, noise, shouting, confusion, and he reaches up, rubs his shoulder. "Wait a minute. How come you know me, know my name?" he says, and fuck, his head aches and it's so busy, so loud in there.
But she's walking away, Big Guy beside her, and she doesn't actually seem to be carrying out her threat, almost like she maybe thinks she doesn't have to, like Gabe will just follow them anyway. Like he is, in fact, and once he's alongside her he pats her arm, pats for attention like some kid. "Wait," he says, feeling tight in the chest, sick in the gut. "I can't stay here. I need to leave, that's what I'm doing. Leaving."
Big Guy stops, looks at him oddly.
"There must be a town nearby if you're here," Gabe continues, despite the examination. "Is there a town? I can't be here no more, lady, I can't, he's looking for me and I-"
And suddenly Big Guy cuts in and is right there, up close, staring into his eyes. "You're running… are you? Leaving? Trying to get away from Lee?"
Gabe is even more confused by that, looks from one face to the other. "How do you know this?" he says. "What is this?"
Big Guy's face softens and his eyes are suddenly so warm, so kind, and Gabe feels his throat start closing up because kindness, fuckin' kindness… Jesus. What is that? When did he last see that look, feel cared for in the way this dude's eyes seem to be telling him he is? "You don't know me," he croaks helplessly.
Hot Lady coughs, looks at him, at Big Guy. Sam.
"Look," she says, gentle, and so much more fuckin' kindness. "We can't do this now. We have to move."
Sam stares at Gabe for a long moment, looks to the woman, nods, looks back to Gabe. "Gabe," he says, and he says it funny, like he's forcing it out. "Help us find the mine. And we'll help you. You'll be safe with us. Lee isn't here. He's gone."
"But he isn't-"
"He is, Gabe. He's gone. He won't hurt you again." Hot Lady is already walking, and Sam turns to follow her.
Gabe trails along behind. "I don't understand," he says.
"You will."
"Lee, he-"
"He's gone. I wouldn't lie to you about that, Gabe. He's gone."
For some odd reason he can't fathom, Gabe trusts Big Guy. Sam. But the dude is wrong by a country fuckin' mile. "Lee isn't gone," he whispers. "He's just layin' low."
Sam doesn't hear him.
"Did you… bring food?"
"Uh."
"Food… Did you… bring food?"
"Nuh."
"Wake up… Do you… have food?"
Needling him, in his ear, the barest whisper. Bobby cracks his eyes, sees shadows, dim light coming in from above. His head is spinning, his guts turning handsprings. And there's a face right there, mad eyes, dark circles, black blood dried on, hair wild, foul breath, cracked lips.
"I know you," he breathes.
"Food… you have food?"
Wallet… badge. "Kelley," Bobby remembers. "You're Kelley."
She leans in closer, pats weakly at him. "Food…"
Bobby thinks through the fog, fumbles in his pocket. Power bar.
He has to take it back because she can't unwrap it, too weak. He breaks pieces off it, feeds them into her mouth. He sees a canteen, a pile of them, reaches over to snag one. Old, water brackish. He holds it to her lips and maybe some of it goes in. He glances around at tattered backpacks, things strewn about, bones, larger shapes. Something strung up over there, and the air is hung with the sickly-sweet miasma of putrefaction.
It dawns on him. "Fuckin' pantry," he murmurs. His eyes fall on a dark shape lying in the shadows. Dean.
Bobby isn't hurt - at least he thinks he isn't. He starts to push up, thinks better of it when he sees sparks. He crawls over instead. Up close the clothing is wrong, surely, what the fuck was he wearing, can't remember, please don't let it be him. He rolls the body over, recoils at partially exposed jawbones, teeth, eyeballs, all crawling with maggots. "Fuck."
Too far gone, and Bobby eases a shaking hand into the jacket, pulls out a wallet, and holds it up to a shaft of light. Wesley Schweitzer. His eyes fall on more shapes, five in all, and he crawls to each in turn, and not him. The relief, the fucking relief. He can die happy.
He crawls back over to the prone woman, puts more crumbs in her mouth and she smiles.
When he wakes up again, she's staring at nothing and he closes her eyes and shuffles away to find another spot.
In so many ways it's Dean walking ahead of them, looking for signs, tracks.
"Are you tracking or are you taking us to the mine?" Sam snaps, childishly he knows. "If you're tracking, what are you tracking?"
Dean shrugs. Dean. Because the whole Gabe thing sickens Sam, it sickens him how fast he's fallen into thinking Gabe, saying Gabe.
"Something passed this way," his brother says simply. "Its track is there, on the grass. Flatter there, see? Maybe what took your pal."
"What do you know about the thing that took him?" Sam demands.
His brother turns to him with a look of such exasperation that Sam just knows a bitchface comment is coming, even starts to smile in anticipation.
"Look," Dean snaps. "Mister, I didn't see anything take your friend. I didn't see your friend period. Please drop it. You're confusing me. I haven't done anything wrong. And you're keeping me here against my will."
Hudak steps in, diplomatic. "Where did you learn to track like this, Gabe?" she says, shoots Sam a warning glare.
Dean's face suddenly brightens. "My pa showed me. And there's a Zen to it."
"A Zen?" she responds.
"Yeah, it's-
"Your pa?" Sam spits it out. "Christ!"
"-when you look at your soul or something…" Dean trails off, doesn't really react much bar a flicker of the eyes, but Sam can see his brother's body is suddenly rigid with pent-up something that he hopes isn't fear. Dean squints then. "Do I - know you?"
"You tell me," Sam says, and he ignores Hudak gurning mightily at him from behind Dean's shoulder.
"You're familiar," Dean says. "Feels like I know you. But my head isn't right, so…"
So much potential there, Sam thinks, so much potential to find out just what was said, done, to so totally convince Dean, fool him so completely into forgetting. And Jesus, if he isn't somehow compelled to do it, even though he knows damn well the wendigo chorus should have taught him his lesson by now. "Who told you your head wasn't right?"
"My brother. He's…" Dean rolls his eyes, shudders theatrically. "He isn't right in the head either. I don't think he is anyway. He's. Uh… he's sure got a temper on him." He laughs weakly, briefly, chews his lip, so Dean-like it's like a knife in Sam's chest. "I hear voices," he says, and frowns. "Sometimes see things." His voice is flat, the labored humor gone. "It's getting dark."
"What do you see?"
Dean stares at him, shifty, eyes darting from his face to beyond him in the trees. "My brother," he says, hesitantly. "It's like I catch sight of him and then when I look properly he isn't there… it's like he hid or something. Ducked out of sight. I feel like he's watching me. It makes me jumpy." He looks past Sam again, nervous, and it's almost like he's looking out for something, Sam thinks, he even cranes his head. "I really want to get on my way," he blurts out then. "He catches up with me, he'll be real pissed…"
It suddenly hits Sam that in some weird way this is him and Dean with their positions reversed, that it's effectively a facsimile of so many conversations over so many years, years of being comforted, reassured, guided, sometimes ordered, only he's the oldest in this conversation and Gabe Bender is a frightened, fucked up, abused, trapped kid. "Tell me some more about your brother," he says, and then Hudak is right there, leading him away.
"Do you think this is wise?" she hisses.
"I have no idea," Sam says. "But he can't stay like this, h-"
"You've changed your tune," she retorts. "Look, we have no idea what's going on here, what's caused this, but if it's PTSD or some kind of breakdown pushing him could make it worse."
Sam glances over at Dean, sees him staring at them, wide eyed and anxious.
"When I said that before I was-"
"Sam," Hudak says. "I sympathize, believe me. But don't forget, we need him like this until he finds the mine. Gabe knows where it is - Dean doesn't. I know it doesn't make sense, but if he snaps out of this delusion he might not remember where to go. And anyway, we have a more immediate problem."
"Which is?"
"Like he said. It's getting dark. We need to set up camp, do all of that crazy symbol stuff, yes? And I'm hungry." She glances over at his brother, drifting again now, cocking his head, gazing into the woods. "Sam, if that thing comes back, how do you think he's going to react now he's Gabe?"
And that hasn't even occurred to Samm. "Crap. Crap. I don't-"
"Hey, Mister," Dean calls out, and when Sam snaps his head around again, his brother has walked off the trail, is pointing into the trees.
"The mine's over there."
Hudak stands next to Sam as he stares at the battered wooden exterior, and she reaches out to tug on the chain and padlock holding the doors firmly closed.
"What do you make of that?"
He kicks uselessly at the wood. "Has to be using another way in. Has to be." Because Jesus, he doesn't even want to think what it might mean for Bobby if this isn't the right mine.
Hudak calls over to Dean, who's flopped out on the ground. "Gabe. Is there another entrance to this mine?"
He frowns. "Don't think so. Sorry."
She looks at her wristwatch and then up at the sky. "Can you pick that?" she says, gesturing at the padlock. "Maybe we could go in from this end, grab Bobby while this thing is out hunting?"
"What if it doesn't go?" Sam says. "If it has Dean's scent and knows he's here, it might hang around the house instead."
"Yeah… that would spoil the party." She ponders, jerks her head over at his brother. "There's always the Jurassic Park goat."
Sam goggles at her, almost lunges into her space so that she backs up against the doors. "Are you cracked?" he yelps. "Are you seriously suggesting we stake him out here by himself and-"
"No!" she snaps. "That's not what I'm suggesting. But this thing seems to have a crush on your brother and maybe, just maybe, it'll come for him. So what I'm saying is that we don't go looking for it - now we've found the mine, we set up camp here and wait for it to come to us."
Sam stops, thinks. "Yeah… it's a good plan," he says slowly. He glances around them, frowns. "But it's too open… we need a ring of trees for the symbols, just drawing them in the dirt might not be enough." He stares beyond her, at the wooden doors. "Wait a damn minute," he breathes, reaches out to touch the chain. "Jesus. It's perfect."
She follows his gaze. "You want to camp in there?"
"It's perfect," Sam tells her. "I can paint the sigils on the doors. We can set up just inside and if it turns up, it'll have to double back and come at us from the tunnel end… we can just pick it off."
She nods. "Makes sense. Even though I can't believe I'm even using that word in this conversation. But." She looks over at Dean. "What about him?"
"What? About him?"
"He said Lee told him to keep away, so I'm thinking he isn't going to be up on the idea of sleeping in there."
Sam sighs. "I guess we're about to find out."
Dean is lying with his hands clasped under his head, eyes closed, and Sam walks over, looks down at him. He cracks an eye, smiles up. "I like this place."
Sam squats down. "I thought Lee said it was a bad place."
Dean breathes in out, relaxed, easy. "That he did. But I like it."
"Why do you like it here?"
"My head. It's empty here. Quiet. Like it all just switched off. The voices."
Sam has to swallow hard. "Whose voice do you hear, Gabe?"
"My brother's, mostly."
Christ, Sam thinks, which brother?, and suddenly he isn't sure if he wants to know the answer to that question. "Is that a good thing?"
"Fuck, no!" Dean declares. "Lee, he's… He confuses me. One minute happy, next he's - not. He's got a real bad temper." He gives the same nervous laugh as before, looks up at Sam as if he isn't really sure what Sam will do, like maybe he's expecting a blow.
"And you hear him in your head?" Sam asks.
"All the time, Mister. All the damn time. Maybe it's some freak psychic thing."
Christ. It's like his brother is on the cusp between Gabe and Dean, so near and yet so far. "This bad temper," Sam ventures cautiously. "Does he hurt you?"
Dean sits up and suddenly his eyes are wary, his jaw set. "Look. For the first time in a long time, my head is clear," he says quietly. "It's peaceful in here. I don't wanna talk about Lee fuckin' Bender."
But Sam presses it. "If he hurts you, why do you stay?"
"I'm not staying," Dean snaps, clearly irritated. "I'm trying to leave. You're keeping me here. And when my brother catches me, he'll beat the living shit out of me. So why don't you just let me enjoy the peace while I can, huh?"
Sam doesn't. "Why don't you fight?"
"It would be worse then," Dean mutters. "That's why I'm leaving."
Sam feels sick. But he seizes the moment. "We can hide you," he says.
After nine hundred and ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, Bobby takes measurements. Fifteen by twelve. Doesn't lead to any kind of mine shaft. No tunnel. Must have been a cave-in at some point, blocked it off.
It's crowded. He hauls the bodies over to the other side, squints up through the dimness to where the light is coming in. Mine entrance of some sort, set in the ground, and for a minute or two he debates piling up the bodies, wonders if it would get him high up enough to push his way through.
His stomach growls and he counts all twelve steps to the corner where he slides down the wall, bites off a corner of what's left of the power bar, wonders if he'd have given any of it to the woman if he'd known there was nothing he could do for her.
One thousand bottles of beer on the wall…
"My dog's called Sam," Dean says, around a mouthful of power bar. He chews thoroughly, nods, and then stares into space for a few seconds, eyes blank, until he jolts back into himself. "S'good. My sister don't cook too well. Slop mostly. Tastes off. Give mine to the dog most of the time." He yawns hugely, reaches up to rub one eye with the heel of his hand.
Hudak is sitting next to Sam, shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee. She's staring at Dean, and she seems entranced as he drifts in and out of the conversation. Moonlight seeps in through the wooden doors and it's quiet in there, still. For now, Sam can't help thinking, and he's straining to hear beyond the doors, torn between morbid fascination with what the thing might reveal if it shows up and with this alternate-universe version of his brother.
"It's got to be PTSD… or maybe he hit his head or something," Hudak murmurs out of the corner of her mouth. "He's spacing out every few minutes. Look at him, he's miles away, it's like petit mal… and then he snaps back."
And it's true, Sam has been thinking it himself for the past hour as he scrawled sigils in the dirt in a circle around the mine entrance and spray painted them on the wooden doors while his brother sat there, totally oblivious one minute and watching him like a hawk the next.
"You think? It's not some rip in the space-time continuum?" he mutters. "He hasn't said his head hurts."
Hudak chews her lip for a minute. "How's your head, Gabe?" she asks.
"Peaceful," Dean reports, apparently happily.
"It's not bothering you where you hit it, then?"
He frowns. "I didn't hit it. It's fine. What makes you think I hit it?"
"Well," Sam cuts in. "A tree did fall on you."
Dean shakes his head, swats the air dismissively. "It was miles away. Didn't touch me."
Fair enough.
"I did hurt it a while back though," Dean continues after a beat. "Wolf attack." He huffs out ruefully. "Was pretty bad, tore up my leg some. Lucky my brother found me, killed the fucker, and-" He stops abruptly. "Is that what you're gonna arrest me for?" he says to Hudak. "Killing wolves? Only you said that was illegal."
Sam winces at the sudden dig in his ribs and he meets her gaze as her eyes widen slightly in emphasis, because she said that before this happened, said it to Dean, not Gabe. Just like the Zen private joke, whatever the hell that was. Dean is in there, hiding. But why?
"Don't sweat it, Gabe," Hudak says with a smile.
Dean's teeth flash in the dim light and he relaxes again, leaning back against the door only to straighten and scowl at the chain Sam wound through a couple of holes in the lumber to keep the door closed. He shifts to the left, peers out through a crack in the boards, and frowns. "Killing moon."
"Where did-" Sam is cut off by Hudak reading his mind, speaking in chorus with him, and she gives him another meaningful glance as she continues instead.
"Where did you hear about the killing moon, Gabe? What does it mean?"
Dean studies her for a second, looks to Sam and back again. "I don't know," he says offhandedly, starts tapping his hands on his thighs. "Just picked it up along the road somewhere, I guess." He's beating out a steady two-note rhythm, emphasizing the beat every so often, and he catches Sam's eye after a minute or two and raises an eyebrow.
"Jaws theme," Sam says.
Dean stops abruptly, gapes, starts tapping again a tad faster.
"Star Wars."
Dean smirks, triumphant.
"Episode five. The Empire Strikes Back."
Dean's mouth drops open. "How the fuck did you guess that? They have the same music." He narrows his eyes, suspicious. "Are you shining at me?"
Sam feels a wave of something that might be joy, hell, is joy, relief, gratitude. "Dean," he breathes, and he starts to move over to his brother's side.
Dean stares back, flinty eyed, hostile. "What about him? I told you. I never saw your friends."
The thing unfolds itself, emerges, plunges into the trees and runs.
And then it stops, listens to the sleepy murmur of the woods, reads signs, sounds, sniffs in great lungfuls, every nerve ending straining and tense as it searches for the one who calls.
Shafts of moonlight filter in through the wooden door and Sam cranes to see if his brother is awake. Dean is slumped in the corner formed by the doorframe and the dirt wall, and Sam wishes for once that he snored so they could keep track of how aware he might be.
Hudak is leaning up against Sam, dozing, drooling all over his shoulder in fact, and he shifts his butt carefully on the rock floor, wishes he'd had the foresight to fold a bedroll up and sit on it. He reaches for the pack, snags it, pulls it gently towards him.
Hudak stirs, sits up abruptly. "What? What?"
"Nothing," he whispers. "Go back to sleep."
Instead she yawns again, stretches, flicks on her flashlight to peer at her watch. "Twelve hours. Do you think he's okay? Do you think it would have-"
"No. Too soon."
"Jesus," she sighs. "Sitting here feels so useless."
"We're getting him back," Sam mutters. "He's going to be fine."
They sit in the stillness for a few minutes.
"So," Hudak says. "He didn't hit his head."
Sam doesn't want to do this and there's a reason why. So he really has no idea why the next words out of his mouth are, "I think I caused this."
He can see Hudak turn to look at him in the dark. "How?" And then, quickly. "Is he asleep?"
"Yes. So keep it down. I think it's because of something I told him this morning."
"Which was?"
"That he was to blame for it. Because he never tried to escape from them." He bites his lip, waits for - shock, distaste, disgust.
"Did you use those exact words?" she inquires.
"Well. No. I said I couldn't understand why he never left."
"Well that's something at least." Her tone is withering now, and Sam knows he deserves it.
He leans forward on his knees, watches his brother as he speaks. "When I spoke to him it just ended up with me blaming him for not doing more to get away. And Christ, I know it's crap. I know he fought, I saw the bruises. And the rest of it… and I know that bastard fucking overwhelmed him. But the initials. Fuck. Happy fucking families. It just…" He pinches the bridge of his nose, blinks hard. "I can't understand that. To think he might have bonded with that bastard. It makes me sick. That he stayed."
"You need to stop focusing on the initials, Sam," Hudak says bluntly. "You're investing a whole lot of meaning there that you shouldn't. This wasn't Lee and Dean sitting in a tree."
Sam glances back to see her shaking her head, and for a minute he finds himself wondering if she's thinking of her brother, maybe wondering what he might have endured at the Benders' hands.
"The moment Bender stopped taking his meds, Dean was in a situation of genuine threat and terror," she continues, shuffling forward, clasping her hands across her own knees and resting her chin there. "He would have been even if he hadn't been hurt as badly as he was. And it's a basic response to be compliant. To try to avoid making it worse for yourself. They tell women to do that if they're attacked."
"It's just. I just don't… Christ. Dean can kill with one bare hand and not break a sweat," Sam whispers. "I've seen him do it. And so I just can't wrap my mind around him letting Bender do that to him."
"Dean can kill with one hand and not break a sweat," Hudak picks up, "but Gabe can't. What he did was irrational to you, sitting here now, not hurt, not in the situation Dean was in. He was overwhelmed. Like you said."
"It's irrational, period," Sam insists, and he can hear his voice break. "Why didn't he leave? He didn't have to go through that. When we found him he could walk. He could have left."
Hudak is silent for a long moment. "Look," she says then. "It is irrational that he stayed, even I think so. But he wasn't himself. Literally." She huffs. "Look, blaming the victim is a basic response. Blaming him is how you rationalize it, but you have to try to see the reasons why he did it at that time, Sam - instead of seeing it through the prism of Dean as he was before this all happened."
"He told me it was because he projected me onto Bender," Sam tells her. "That he couldn't kill him, couldn't leave because he transferred what he felt for me to Bender."
"Well, that's believable, quite frankly." Hudak shakes her head. "You two seem to be unusually codependent, in a pretty dysfunctional way, to be honest. But Sam, I think you're just going to tie yourself in knots if you focus on that without considering-"
Dean whimpers in his sleep, jerks slightly and they both freeze, listen, until his breathing evens out again, steady, deep.
"Without considering other factors," Hudak whispers. "I mean, that must be part of it if he says it is - but it does sound like Bender was kind to him at first, and maybe that gave him some hope that he would survive. And then when Bender turned, maybe that hope for survival got all twisted up with terror about what Bender might do. So don't you think it's natural that he would try to please Bender? Try to feel positive about him? That he might bond with him, for want of a better word, as a mental and physical survival strategy?"
Sam nods dumbly, feels even more of an asshat.
"He couldn't alienate Bender," she goes on, "because what do you think would have happened if he had fought harder? Bender might have beaten him to death." She leans back against the wall. "Anyhoo. All that aside, how does this tie into the fact he seems to have had some sort of dissociative breakdown?"
"I think it's partly this business with the wendigo and the sound effects, the shock of it," Sam says. "But. He said he was leaving. He's running from Lee, and it can't be a coincidence that he's doing this now, after what I said."
Hudak nods, considers. "You know, he could have done this before," she says. "We don't know for a fact that he never tried to leave. And maybe Bender chased him down. He could be reliving it, and if he is it might help him given that Bender isn't going to catch him this time…" She glances at him, a measured look. "It might help you too. He's trying to leave, trying to do what you wanted him to do."
He rubs at his jaw. "Yeah. I wonder if-"
Hey Gabe get over here purty boy…
It's quiet, distant, but it's there, and Sam reaches for his flashlight and the flaregun, rises silently to his feet. "Keep him here," he hisses to Hudak. "If he's here, it'll stay out there." Maybe, he hopes to God and all the angels.
"Wait, Sam, that wasn't the plan," Hudak whispers urgently, her alarm palpable even in the dark. "What happened to waiting here and picking it off?"
"This is a better plan," he says. "I can get Bobby without that thing in the equation if it's out there sniffing around Dean."
"But what if it gets in here? What if-"
"It won't come though the sigils," Sam says. "Kathleen. If I thought there was any danger I wouldn't leave him here. Or you. Now I'm getting Bobby. Okay?"
Sam points the flashlight beam down the tunnel, starts walking.
"He'll wake up!" Hudak hisses behind him. "What'll I do! We never discussed this! Sam!"
He keeps walking.
Next
Gabe works alongside the big guy, pulling back branches, snapping them, reaching in, feeling about. He eyes the hot lady as she does the same a few feet over, thinks she seems friendly enough, but Big Guy has a weird vibe coming off him even if Gabe feels safe with him. It's like hostility but not, and Gabe's so fuckin' sick of trying to work out what's coming next, when the next explosion is coming, just what the fuck it is he's done to mess with Lee's head, that he just doesn't want to think about pissing anyone else off if he can help it.
Even so, "I don't think your buddy's under here, dude," he broaches cautiously.
Big Guy ignores him, keeps working, and all the while he has this funny look on his face like devastation all mixed up with disbelief, suspicion and what-the-fuckery face-palmery type stuff.
"He's not here, Sam," Hot Lady agrees after a moment or two, and Gabe glances over at her again, smiles to himself as he sees her tee riding up just so, and an ever increasing strip of tanned skin. There's a dark patch of sweat on the fabric between her shoulder blades there, and if it just slips up higher, yep lady, just reach over there, bit further, yes, no, fuck, caught out. She pulls down her tee, narrowing her eyes at Gabe, and he shrugs.
"That thing was here, Sam," she says then. "This tree didn't just fall. You heard it, it was ripped up at the roots."
Gabe glances down to the opposite end of the trunk, points. "Mister. Look. Roots." It's as if he never spoke, the guy blanks him. "Hey, Sam," he tries.
Big Guy's head snaps round, and now his face is all lit up with something new.
"Look, Mister," Gabe repeats. "Roots. Thing ripped it up."
Big Guy's face falls. "What thing? What thing ripped it up?"
"Fuck if I know," Gabe replies. "She said it, not me."
"So you didn't see anything?"
Gabe looks at Big Guy, calculates. There's still this weird vibe coming off him, violent maybe, and Christ, Gabe can do without that. He rubs his back, the bruise where Lee stomped him good. Feels better now. "Well," he says slowly. "I saw the tree. Obviously." He chuckles, knows it comes out nervous, uneasy. "Else I'd be under the damn thing."
Hot Lady stands up. "He's right," she says wearily. "Bobby isn't under here, Sam. That thing grabbed him, maybe pushed Dean out of the way. It's the only explanation."
And Gabe gets this odd, sick feeling in his gut, his head, something's throbbing in there, isn't right. It just slips out of him. "You lost your Dean too? That's careless, buddy. Real careless." He doesn't mean it to sound so abrasive, so spiteful, but he knows that it does.
Big Guy must think so too because he shoots bolt upright, and Jesus he's as tall as Lee, fuckin' sasquatch as he stares down at Gabe, his eyes bleak.
"Sam, consult," Hot Lady barks.
"Don't mind me," Gabe retorts as Big Guy stalks towards her. "I'll just sit a spell, I guess." And he sits, tries to remember where he was going through the ache and noise in his head.
Sam hasn't even wanted to think about it, has forced it to the back of his mind even as they searched, but Hudak is characteristically upfront.
"Do you think Bobby's still alive?"
He crumples down on to the ground, scrubs at his sweat-damp hair hard with his fingers, thinks absentmindedly that he'd feel a whole lot cooler if he buzzed it like Dean's. "They store food and they eat it in order," he says.
"It'll eat the others first then."
"Probably." He eyes her, uncomfortable. "I'm sorry. About your friend."
She nods slowly and her voice is tight, controlled. "So we have time." She gestures over to where his brother is sitting, staring into space. "What do you think this is? Post-traumatic stress disorder? Or do you think he hit his head or something?"
"I don't know. Maybe… though he's alert." Sam reaches for his pack, unhooks his canteen, drinks long and deep.
"Has anything like this happened before?" Hudak prods. "It's just so - complete. So convincing. He really believes it. What about the dreams, the flashbacks… is this what happens when he has those?"
"Yeah," Sam admits, pushing his sweat-lanky hair out of his eyes. "Sort of, I guess. He had a pretty bad one couple weeks back, got out, shot Bobby's dogs. Thought it was the pitbulls. But he was Dean. He wasn't Gabe."
"Has he been Gabe in any of the other flashbacks?"
"Yeah, but they're like waking nightmares really," Sam tells her. "He isn't really conscious. I just put him back to bed and he's fine in the morning."
"How could you tell he was Gabe those other times?" she presses. "If he wasn't conscious, I mean?"
Sam's mind flits back to Dean padding over to the bedroom door at Bobby's and twisting the doorknob, and the anxiety that seeps off him every time it happens. "He's - timid, I guess. Beaten down."
Hudak taps her fingers on her thighs. "Time being a factor," she says, "is it feasible to take him back to town and then come back out here to find Bobby?"
Sam shakes his head. "That'll add a couple of days to this. I don't want to leave Bobby with that thing any longer than necessary."
"Then how do we handle him?" Hudak sighs, chews at her bottom lip. "Do we humor him, wait until he snaps out of it? Or push him to remember who he really is?"
"I don't know…" Sam trails off, watches Dean for a few minutes. His brother is sitting staring into space, motionless, quiet, and God help him but Sam thinks of the possibilities, even though the night before should have been warning enough that some of the things his brother endured are too painful, too raw to ever confront. He thinks of the opportunities, even though the night before should have been warning enough that some of the things his brother endured are too secret, too private to ever confess. Dean's silence is like a fuse between them that sparks suddenly into life, and Sam opens his mouth, and God help him but it's the curiosity, the jealousy, the possessiveness, curling in his gut like some insidious snake, that speaks. "I think we should wait and see if he snaps out of it himself," he says softly.
Hudak doesn't seem to think it's unreasonable, simply nods, squeezes his arm, pushes up onto her feet and picks up her pack. "Hey," she calls over to Dean. "With us."
As Gabe jogs up to them, Big Guy's hand suddenly floats up to his mouth.
"Bobby had the map," he says hoarsely. He dips his head down onto his knees, takes deep breaths. "We need the map to find the mines," he says, voice muffled. "Jesus."
Hot Lady makes a frustrated sound. "Well, he said they were in this area," she says. "We just need to keep walking, try different directions, keep looking, we're bound to-"
"Uh. Ma'am. I know where there's a mine." Gabe just throws it in there, doesn't really think about what it could mean for him, but Big Guy's head snaps up.
"You know where there's a mine?" he demands. "Is it a deep pit mine?"
"Deep pit?" Gabe fishes. "Hole-in-the-ground type, you mean?"
"Yes it is," Hot Lady interjects. "Is it near here? Where did you see it? Have you been there?"
"Not so much." Gabe shrugs. "I just passed by it. My brother showed it to me."
Big Guy snorts, pinches the bridge of his nose.
Hot Lady ignores him. "Could you find it again?"
"I guess I could, it's…" Gabe stops, hunches his shoulders defensively, starts shifting from foot to foot, because honest, he has wasted enough time here. "Look, ma'am, I'm sorry about your friend, but this isn't my problem and I really need to get moving myself."
"Forget it," she says. "We could use another set of hands. I think you know damn well what's out there and that you know these woods better than us. And don't ever call me ma'am. I'm not eighty."
Gabe bristles. "Look, lady, where the hell do you get off-"
"Gabriel Bender," she snaps, harsh, businesslike. Fuckin' scorching hot if he's honest. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights?"
Gabe knows his jaw drops. "You're a cop?" So what can we do for you, Officer Washington? He blinks hard, shakes his head, voices, fuck, going crazy just like Lee says. "You're arresting me? You're fuckin' arresting me?"
"Arrest-ed, Gabe," she clarifies tartly. "It's done. You're in my custody, and I will cuff you if I have to."
Gabe doesn't know what to do with that, backs away a step or two before looking at Big Guy, who seems as taken aback as he is. "Arresting me for what?" he challenges. "And where's your badge?"
Hot Lady reaches into her jacket, flips open her wallet and there it is. "I'll think of something," she says. "And if you run, I will shoot you in the leg."
"Shoot me?" And Gabe gets this weird flash of - what? Like an echo in his head, you shot me, noise, shouting, confusion, and he reaches up, rubs his shoulder. "Wait a minute. How come you know me, know my name?" he says, and fuck, his head aches and it's so busy, so loud in there.
But she's walking away, Big Guy beside her, and she doesn't actually seem to be carrying out her threat, almost like she maybe thinks she doesn't have to, like Gabe will just follow them anyway. Like he is, in fact, and once he's alongside her he pats her arm, pats for attention like some kid. "Wait," he says, feeling tight in the chest, sick in the gut. "I can't stay here. I need to leave, that's what I'm doing. Leaving."
Big Guy stops, looks at him oddly.
"There must be a town nearby if you're here," Gabe continues, despite the examination. "Is there a town? I can't be here no more, lady, I can't, he's looking for me and I-"
And suddenly Big Guy cuts in and is right there, up close, staring into his eyes. "You're running… are you? Leaving? Trying to get away from Lee?"
Gabe is even more confused by that, looks from one face to the other. "How do you know this?" he says. "What is this?"
Big Guy's face softens and his eyes are suddenly so warm, so kind, and Gabe feels his throat start closing up because kindness, fuckin' kindness… Jesus. What is that? When did he last see that look, feel cared for in the way this dude's eyes seem to be telling him he is? "You don't know me," he croaks helplessly.
Hot Lady coughs, looks at him, at Big Guy. Sam.
"Look," she says, gentle, and so much more fuckin' kindness. "We can't do this now. We have to move."
Sam stares at Gabe for a long moment, looks to the woman, nods, looks back to Gabe. "Gabe," he says, and he says it funny, like he's forcing it out. "Help us find the mine. And we'll help you. You'll be safe with us. Lee isn't here. He's gone."
"But he isn't-"
"He is, Gabe. He's gone. He won't hurt you again." Hot Lady is already walking, and Sam turns to follow her.
Gabe trails along behind. "I don't understand," he says.
"You will."
"Lee, he-"
"He's gone. I wouldn't lie to you about that, Gabe. He's gone."
For some odd reason he can't fathom, Gabe trusts Big Guy. Sam. But the dude is wrong by a country fuckin' mile. "Lee isn't gone," he whispers. "He's just layin' low."
Sam doesn't hear him.
"Did you… bring food?"
"Uh."
"Food… Did you… bring food?"
"Nuh."
"Wake up… Do you… have food?"
Needling him, in his ear, the barest whisper. Bobby cracks his eyes, sees shadows, dim light coming in from above. His head is spinning, his guts turning handsprings. And there's a face right there, mad eyes, dark circles, black blood dried on, hair wild, foul breath, cracked lips.
"I know you," he breathes.
"Food… you have food?"
Wallet… badge. "Kelley," Bobby remembers. "You're Kelley."
She leans in closer, pats weakly at him. "Food…"
Bobby thinks through the fog, fumbles in his pocket. Power bar.
He has to take it back because she can't unwrap it, too weak. He breaks pieces off it, feeds them into her mouth. He sees a canteen, a pile of them, reaches over to snag one. Old, water brackish. He holds it to her lips and maybe some of it goes in. He glances around at tattered backpacks, things strewn about, bones, larger shapes. Something strung up over there, and the air is hung with the sickly-sweet miasma of putrefaction.
It dawns on him. "Fuckin' pantry," he murmurs. His eyes fall on a dark shape lying in the shadows. Dean.
Bobby isn't hurt - at least he thinks he isn't. He starts to push up, thinks better of it when he sees sparks. He crawls over instead. Up close the clothing is wrong, surely, what the fuck was he wearing, can't remember, please don't let it be him. He rolls the body over, recoils at partially exposed jawbones, teeth, eyeballs, all crawling with maggots. "Fuck."
Too far gone, and Bobby eases a shaking hand into the jacket, pulls out a wallet, and holds it up to a shaft of light. Wesley Schweitzer. His eyes fall on more shapes, five in all, and he crawls to each in turn, and not him. The relief, the fucking relief. He can die happy.
He crawls back over to the prone woman, puts more crumbs in her mouth and she smiles.
When he wakes up again, she's staring at nothing and he closes her eyes and shuffles away to find another spot.
In so many ways it's Dean walking ahead of them, looking for signs, tracks.
"Are you tracking or are you taking us to the mine?" Sam snaps, childishly he knows. "If you're tracking, what are you tracking?"
Dean shrugs. Dean. Because the whole Gabe thing sickens Sam, it sickens him how fast he's fallen into thinking Gabe, saying Gabe.
"Something passed this way," his brother says simply. "Its track is there, on the grass. Flatter there, see? Maybe what took your pal."
"What do you know about the thing that took him?" Sam demands.
His brother turns to him with a look of such exasperation that Sam just knows a bitchface comment is coming, even starts to smile in anticipation.
"Look," Dean snaps. "Mister, I didn't see anything take your friend. I didn't see your friend period. Please drop it. You're confusing me. I haven't done anything wrong. And you're keeping me here against my will."
Hudak steps in, diplomatic. "Where did you learn to track like this, Gabe?" she says, shoots Sam a warning glare.
Dean's face suddenly brightens. "My pa showed me. And there's a Zen to it."
"A Zen?" she responds.
"Yeah, it's-
"Your pa?" Sam spits it out. "Christ!"
"-when you look at your soul or something…" Dean trails off, doesn't really react much bar a flicker of the eyes, but Sam can see his brother's body is suddenly rigid with pent-up something that he hopes isn't fear. Dean squints then. "Do I - know you?"
"You tell me," Sam says, and he ignores Hudak gurning mightily at him from behind Dean's shoulder.
"You're familiar," Dean says. "Feels like I know you. But my head isn't right, so…"
So much potential there, Sam thinks, so much potential to find out just what was said, done, to so totally convince Dean, fool him so completely into forgetting. And Jesus, if he isn't somehow compelled to do it, even though he knows damn well the wendigo chorus should have taught him his lesson by now. "Who told you your head wasn't right?"
"My brother. He's…" Dean rolls his eyes, shudders theatrically. "He isn't right in the head either. I don't think he is anyway. He's. Uh… he's sure got a temper on him." He laughs weakly, briefly, chews his lip, so Dean-like it's like a knife in Sam's chest. "I hear voices," he says, and frowns. "Sometimes see things." His voice is flat, the labored humor gone. "It's getting dark."
"What do you see?"
Dean stares at him, shifty, eyes darting from his face to beyond him in the trees. "My brother," he says, hesitantly. "It's like I catch sight of him and then when I look properly he isn't there… it's like he hid or something. Ducked out of sight. I feel like he's watching me. It makes me jumpy." He looks past Sam again, nervous, and it's almost like he's looking out for something, Sam thinks, he even cranes his head. "I really want to get on my way," he blurts out then. "He catches up with me, he'll be real pissed…"
It suddenly hits Sam that in some weird way this is him and Dean with their positions reversed, that it's effectively a facsimile of so many conversations over so many years, years of being comforted, reassured, guided, sometimes ordered, only he's the oldest in this conversation and Gabe Bender is a frightened, fucked up, abused, trapped kid. "Tell me some more about your brother," he says, and then Hudak is right there, leading him away.
"Do you think this is wise?" she hisses.
"I have no idea," Sam says. "But he can't stay like this, h-"
"You've changed your tune," she retorts. "Look, we have no idea what's going on here, what's caused this, but if it's PTSD or some kind of breakdown pushing him could make it worse."
Sam glances over at Dean, sees him staring at them, wide eyed and anxious.
"When I said that before I was-"
"Sam," Hudak says. "I sympathize, believe me. But don't forget, we need him like this until he finds the mine. Gabe knows where it is - Dean doesn't. I know it doesn't make sense, but if he snaps out of this delusion he might not remember where to go. And anyway, we have a more immediate problem."
"Which is?"
"Like he said. It's getting dark. We need to set up camp, do all of that crazy symbol stuff, yes? And I'm hungry." She glances over at his brother, drifting again now, cocking his head, gazing into the woods. "Sam, if that thing comes back, how do you think he's going to react now he's Gabe?"
And that hasn't even occurred to Samm. "Crap. Crap. I don't-"
"Hey, Mister," Dean calls out, and when Sam snaps his head around again, his brother has walked off the trail, is pointing into the trees.
"The mine's over there."
Hudak stands next to Sam as he stares at the battered wooden exterior, and she reaches out to tug on the chain and padlock holding the doors firmly closed.
"What do you make of that?"
He kicks uselessly at the wood. "Has to be using another way in. Has to be." Because Jesus, he doesn't even want to think what it might mean for Bobby if this isn't the right mine.
Hudak calls over to Dean, who's flopped out on the ground. "Gabe. Is there another entrance to this mine?"
He frowns. "Don't think so. Sorry."
She looks at her wristwatch and then up at the sky. "Can you pick that?" she says, gesturing at the padlock. "Maybe we could go in from this end, grab Bobby while this thing is out hunting?"
"What if it doesn't go?" Sam says. "If it has Dean's scent and knows he's here, it might hang around the house instead."
"Yeah… that would spoil the party." She ponders, jerks her head over at his brother. "There's always the Jurassic Park goat."
Sam goggles at her, almost lunges into her space so that she backs up against the doors. "Are you cracked?" he yelps. "Are you seriously suggesting we stake him out here by himself and-"
"No!" she snaps. "That's not what I'm suggesting. But this thing seems to have a crush on your brother and maybe, just maybe, it'll come for him. So what I'm saying is that we don't go looking for it - now we've found the mine, we set up camp here and wait for it to come to us."
Sam stops, thinks. "Yeah… it's a good plan," he says slowly. He glances around them, frowns. "But it's too open… we need a ring of trees for the symbols, just drawing them in the dirt might not be enough." He stares beyond her, at the wooden doors. "Wait a damn minute," he breathes, reaches out to touch the chain. "Jesus. It's perfect."
She follows his gaze. "You want to camp in there?"
"It's perfect," Sam tells her. "I can paint the sigils on the doors. We can set up just inside and if it turns up, it'll have to double back and come at us from the tunnel end… we can just pick it off."
She nods. "Makes sense. Even though I can't believe I'm even using that word in this conversation. But." She looks over at Dean. "What about him?"
"What? About him?"
"He said Lee told him to keep away, so I'm thinking he isn't going to be up on the idea of sleeping in there."
Sam sighs. "I guess we're about to find out."
Dean is lying with his hands clasped under his head, eyes closed, and Sam walks over, looks down at him. He cracks an eye, smiles up. "I like this place."
Sam squats down. "I thought Lee said it was a bad place."
Dean breathes in out, relaxed, easy. "That he did. But I like it."
"Why do you like it here?"
"My head. It's empty here. Quiet. Like it all just switched off. The voices."
Sam has to swallow hard. "Whose voice do you hear, Gabe?"
"My brother's, mostly."
Christ, Sam thinks, which brother?, and suddenly he isn't sure if he wants to know the answer to that question. "Is that a good thing?"
"Fuck, no!" Dean declares. "Lee, he's… He confuses me. One minute happy, next he's - not. He's got a real bad temper." He gives the same nervous laugh as before, looks up at Sam as if he isn't really sure what Sam will do, like maybe he's expecting a blow.
"And you hear him in your head?" Sam asks.
"All the time, Mister. All the damn time. Maybe it's some freak psychic thing."
Christ. It's like his brother is on the cusp between Gabe and Dean, so near and yet so far. "This bad temper," Sam ventures cautiously. "Does he hurt you?"
Dean sits up and suddenly his eyes are wary, his jaw set. "Look. For the first time in a long time, my head is clear," he says quietly. "It's peaceful in here. I don't wanna talk about Lee fuckin' Bender."
But Sam presses it. "If he hurts you, why do you stay?"
"I'm not staying," Dean snaps, clearly irritated. "I'm trying to leave. You're keeping me here. And when my brother catches me, he'll beat the living shit out of me. So why don't you just let me enjoy the peace while I can, huh?"
Sam doesn't. "Why don't you fight?"
"It would be worse then," Dean mutters. "That's why I'm leaving."
Sam feels sick. But he seizes the moment. "We can hide you," he says.
After nine hundred and ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, Bobby takes measurements. Fifteen by twelve. Doesn't lead to any kind of mine shaft. No tunnel. Must have been a cave-in at some point, blocked it off.
It's crowded. He hauls the bodies over to the other side, squints up through the dimness to where the light is coming in. Mine entrance of some sort, set in the ground, and for a minute or two he debates piling up the bodies, wonders if it would get him high up enough to push his way through.
His stomach growls and he counts all twelve steps to the corner where he slides down the wall, bites off a corner of what's left of the power bar, wonders if he'd have given any of it to the woman if he'd known there was nothing he could do for her.
One thousand bottles of beer on the wall…
"My dog's called Sam," Dean says, around a mouthful of power bar. He chews thoroughly, nods, and then stares into space for a few seconds, eyes blank, until he jolts back into himself. "S'good. My sister don't cook too well. Slop mostly. Tastes off. Give mine to the dog most of the time." He yawns hugely, reaches up to rub one eye with the heel of his hand.
Hudak is sitting next to Sam, shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee. She's staring at Dean, and she seems entranced as he drifts in and out of the conversation. Moonlight seeps in through the wooden doors and it's quiet in there, still. For now, Sam can't help thinking, and he's straining to hear beyond the doors, torn between morbid fascination with what the thing might reveal if it shows up and with this alternate-universe version of his brother.
"It's got to be PTSD… or maybe he hit his head or something," Hudak murmurs out of the corner of her mouth. "He's spacing out every few minutes. Look at him, he's miles away, it's like petit mal… and then he snaps back."
And it's true, Sam has been thinking it himself for the past hour as he scrawled sigils in the dirt in a circle around the mine entrance and spray painted them on the wooden doors while his brother sat there, totally oblivious one minute and watching him like a hawk the next.
"You think? It's not some rip in the space-time continuum?" he mutters. "He hasn't said his head hurts."
Hudak chews her lip for a minute. "How's your head, Gabe?" she asks.
"Peaceful," Dean reports, apparently happily.
"It's not bothering you where you hit it, then?"
He frowns. "I didn't hit it. It's fine. What makes you think I hit it?"
"Well," Sam cuts in. "A tree did fall on you."
Dean shakes his head, swats the air dismissively. "It was miles away. Didn't touch me."
Fair enough.
"I did hurt it a while back though," Dean continues after a beat. "Wolf attack." He huffs out ruefully. "Was pretty bad, tore up my leg some. Lucky my brother found me, killed the fucker, and-" He stops abruptly. "Is that what you're gonna arrest me for?" he says to Hudak. "Killing wolves? Only you said that was illegal."
Sam winces at the sudden dig in his ribs and he meets her gaze as her eyes widen slightly in emphasis, because she said that before this happened, said it to Dean, not Gabe. Just like the Zen private joke, whatever the hell that was. Dean is in there, hiding. But why?
"Don't sweat it, Gabe," Hudak says with a smile.
Dean's teeth flash in the dim light and he relaxes again, leaning back against the door only to straighten and scowl at the chain Sam wound through a couple of holes in the lumber to keep the door closed. He shifts to the left, peers out through a crack in the boards, and frowns. "Killing moon."
"Where did-" Sam is cut off by Hudak reading his mind, speaking in chorus with him, and she gives him another meaningful glance as she continues instead.
"Where did you hear about the killing moon, Gabe? What does it mean?"
Dean studies her for a second, looks to Sam and back again. "I don't know," he says offhandedly, starts tapping his hands on his thighs. "Just picked it up along the road somewhere, I guess." He's beating out a steady two-note rhythm, emphasizing the beat every so often, and he catches Sam's eye after a minute or two and raises an eyebrow.
"Jaws theme," Sam says.
Dean stops abruptly, gapes, starts tapping again a tad faster.
"Star Wars."
Dean smirks, triumphant.
"Episode five. The Empire Strikes Back."
Dean's mouth drops open. "How the fuck did you guess that? They have the same music." He narrows his eyes, suspicious. "Are you shining at me?"
Sam feels a wave of something that might be joy, hell, is joy, relief, gratitude. "Dean," he breathes, and he starts to move over to his brother's side.
Dean stares back, flinty eyed, hostile. "What about him? I told you. I never saw your friends."
The thing unfolds itself, emerges, plunges into the trees and runs.
And then it stops, listens to the sleepy murmur of the woods, reads signs, sounds, sniffs in great lungfuls, every nerve ending straining and tense as it searches for the one who calls.
Shafts of moonlight filter in through the wooden door and Sam cranes to see if his brother is awake. Dean is slumped in the corner formed by the doorframe and the dirt wall, and Sam wishes for once that he snored so they could keep track of how aware he might be.
Hudak is leaning up against Sam, dozing, drooling all over his shoulder in fact, and he shifts his butt carefully on the rock floor, wishes he'd had the foresight to fold a bedroll up and sit on it. He reaches for the pack, snags it, pulls it gently towards him.
Hudak stirs, sits up abruptly. "What? What?"
"Nothing," he whispers. "Go back to sleep."
Instead she yawns again, stretches, flicks on her flashlight to peer at her watch. "Twelve hours. Do you think he's okay? Do you think it would have-"
"No. Too soon."
"Jesus," she sighs. "Sitting here feels so useless."
"We're getting him back," Sam mutters. "He's going to be fine."
They sit in the stillness for a few minutes.
"So," Hudak says. "He didn't hit his head."
Sam doesn't want to do this and there's a reason why. So he really has no idea why the next words out of his mouth are, "I think I caused this."
He can see Hudak turn to look at him in the dark. "How?" And then, quickly. "Is he asleep?"
"Yes. So keep it down. I think it's because of something I told him this morning."
"Which was?"
"That he was to blame for it. Because he never tried to escape from them." He bites his lip, waits for - shock, distaste, disgust.
"Did you use those exact words?" she inquires.
"Well. No. I said I couldn't understand why he never left."
"Well that's something at least." Her tone is withering now, and Sam knows he deserves it.
He leans forward on his knees, watches his brother as he speaks. "When I spoke to him it just ended up with me blaming him for not doing more to get away. And Christ, I know it's crap. I know he fought, I saw the bruises. And the rest of it… and I know that bastard fucking overwhelmed him. But the initials. Fuck. Happy fucking families. It just…" He pinches the bridge of his nose, blinks hard. "I can't understand that. To think he might have bonded with that bastard. It makes me sick. That he stayed."
"You need to stop focusing on the initials, Sam," Hudak says bluntly. "You're investing a whole lot of meaning there that you shouldn't. This wasn't Lee and Dean sitting in a tree."
Sam glances back to see her shaking her head, and for a minute he finds himself wondering if she's thinking of her brother, maybe wondering what he might have endured at the Benders' hands.
"The moment Bender stopped taking his meds, Dean was in a situation of genuine threat and terror," she continues, shuffling forward, clasping her hands across her own knees and resting her chin there. "He would have been even if he hadn't been hurt as badly as he was. And it's a basic response to be compliant. To try to avoid making it worse for yourself. They tell women to do that if they're attacked."
"It's just. I just don't… Christ. Dean can kill with one bare hand and not break a sweat," Sam whispers. "I've seen him do it. And so I just can't wrap my mind around him letting Bender do that to him."
"Dean can kill with one hand and not break a sweat," Hudak picks up, "but Gabe can't. What he did was irrational to you, sitting here now, not hurt, not in the situation Dean was in. He was overwhelmed. Like you said."
"It's irrational, period," Sam insists, and he can hear his voice break. "Why didn't he leave? He didn't have to go through that. When we found him he could walk. He could have left."
Hudak is silent for a long moment. "Look," she says then. "It is irrational that he stayed, even I think so. But he wasn't himself. Literally." She huffs. "Look, blaming the victim is a basic response. Blaming him is how you rationalize it, but you have to try to see the reasons why he did it at that time, Sam - instead of seeing it through the prism of Dean as he was before this all happened."
"He told me it was because he projected me onto Bender," Sam tells her. "That he couldn't kill him, couldn't leave because he transferred what he felt for me to Bender."
"Well, that's believable, quite frankly." Hudak shakes her head. "You two seem to be unusually codependent, in a pretty dysfunctional way, to be honest. But Sam, I think you're just going to tie yourself in knots if you focus on that without considering-"
Dean whimpers in his sleep, jerks slightly and they both freeze, listen, until his breathing evens out again, steady, deep.
"Without considering other factors," Hudak whispers. "I mean, that must be part of it if he says it is - but it does sound like Bender was kind to him at first, and maybe that gave him some hope that he would survive. And then when Bender turned, maybe that hope for survival got all twisted up with terror about what Bender might do. So don't you think it's natural that he would try to please Bender? Try to feel positive about him? That he might bond with him, for want of a better word, as a mental and physical survival strategy?"
Sam nods dumbly, feels even more of an asshat.
"He couldn't alienate Bender," she goes on, "because what do you think would have happened if he had fought harder? Bender might have beaten him to death." She leans back against the wall. "Anyhoo. All that aside, how does this tie into the fact he seems to have had some sort of dissociative breakdown?"
"I think it's partly this business with the wendigo and the sound effects, the shock of it," Sam says. "But. He said he was leaving. He's running from Lee, and it can't be a coincidence that he's doing this now, after what I said."
Hudak nods, considers. "You know, he could have done this before," she says. "We don't know for a fact that he never tried to leave. And maybe Bender chased him down. He could be reliving it, and if he is it might help him given that Bender isn't going to catch him this time…" She glances at him, a measured look. "It might help you too. He's trying to leave, trying to do what you wanted him to do."
He rubs at his jaw. "Yeah. I wonder if-"
Hey Gabe get over here purty boy…
It's quiet, distant, but it's there, and Sam reaches for his flashlight and the flaregun, rises silently to his feet. "Keep him here," he hisses to Hudak. "If he's here, it'll stay out there." Maybe, he hopes to God and all the angels.
"Wait, Sam, that wasn't the plan," Hudak whispers urgently, her alarm palpable even in the dark. "What happened to waiting here and picking it off?"
"This is a better plan," he says. "I can get Bobby without that thing in the equation if it's out there sniffing around Dean."
"But what if it gets in here? What if-"
"It won't come though the sigils," Sam says. "Kathleen. If I thought there was any danger I wouldn't leave him here. Or you. Now I'm getting Bobby. Okay?"
Sam points the flashlight beam down the tunnel, starts walking.
"He'll wake up!" Hudak hisses behind him. "What'll I do! We never discussed this! Sam!"
He keeps walking.
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