The Killing Moon
18. Dueling Banjos
There's this feeling of not having had a before with his brother and sister that sometimes throws Gabe off his game.
He chalks it up to the knock on his head and he doesn't say anything to Missy because she's just a bitch, in a how Carrie got even at the fuckin' Prom sort of way, though from what Lee tells him about Pa the old goat would have sawed off his right testicle with a plastic spoon before letting Gabe watch that crap. Gabe can't really remember much of Pa himself, the knock on the head that screwed with his noggin means his memories are fuzzy. He just gets the odd flash of glittering eyes that must be shining out of Pa's mad-as-hell-and-I-ain't-gonna-take-it-anymore face, interspersed with other glimpses of the past in which Pa's eyes are dark and gentle. And those times Pa's eyes aren't like his eyes, aren't like Lee's, and sure as shit slides off a hot shovel, they aren't like Missy's.
Gabe doesn't know how the hell Lee puts up with Missy, but then Lee isn't all there sometimes himself. Missy knows it, and she keeps nagging at Lee to take the red happy pills, but Gabe knows Lee isn't doing it. Which is fine as far as he's concerned, since it means more for him and he loves the floating, content, satisfied, untroubled feeling he gets when he takes them. It's the only thing keeping him sane, he muses sometimes. Or maybe keeping him less insane, in spite of the Missy's attempts to drive him psycho-loony-nutjob mad.
Truth be told, Gabe doesn't know how he puts up with Missy either, and that's the thing - because when he pays it any mind, that whole feeling of not having had a before kicks in, and it means he has no memory of ever having put up with Missy. Ever. It's because she's a fuckin' bitch, he tells himself. It's because he hit his head, head injuries are a fuckin' douche and his made him blank her out; and sometimes he thinks wouldn't it be awesome to just bang her on the head, maybe Lee too, so they'd all stand there blank, and decide they didn't really know each other before going their separate ways. Gabe thinks he could too, thinks he could get by just fine without them. Sometimes he pictures Lee bleating away at him about how he shouldn't be out there by himself, and he swaggers and smart-mouths, dude, I'm twenty-six, and he's the alpha-dog in his imagination, the big cahuna, a young man with an important purpose… and where the fuck that came from is just out of reach, but Gabe knows someone once told him that.
And he could make an honest living if he lit out by himself. He's good with his hands, he just knows he is, his gut tells him that even if his brain is mush and there's no before. He stares at them, neat hands, capable hands, strong hands, and he gets this feeling like he's fixed things. And then one day Lee throws him the gun, and he finds himself stripping it down automatically, cleaning it, oiling it, and then another time Missy says something about him being good at what they do. And Jesus, Gabe doesn't ever want to be good at what they do. It gives him chills, makes him think of his Pa leering right up in his face, laying it out for him, how they hunt people and have done for generations. And he knows he has hunted, sees it sometimes, and after that when he looks at his hands he knows he has used them to rip, and tear, and destroy.
But he isn't hunting people in his daydreams and nightmares, he's hunting things that should not be. Which he guesses makes him even sicker than his Pa, sicker than Lee and Missy and that other one he never really sees properly, the one who maybe upped and left. Because it is sick, what they do. But then sometimes when he looks at his hands, he thinks maybe he has used them to care, used them to pin diapers, used them to spoon feed, used them to ruffle hair, used them to tie shoelaces the bunny ears way, used them to button up warm winter jackets, used them to hold someone's hand, used them to make someone better, used them to wipe away tears and snot, used them to soothe fevered brows, used them to clean up cuts, scrapes and worse. When he thinks of worse, he feels a thrill of horror. Worse things he doesn't ever want to happen. Happen to who? He doesn't have a clue. It gives him a sick feeling of dread, combined with a shy glow of happiness that his hands have done good things too. Well, maybe, he thinks. He hopes. Doesn't know if he really believes, though.
One day he steels himself to have it out with Lee, because that's what brothers do - they talk, they confide, they trust, and he remembers so many earnest late-night conversations, just him and his brother, chick-flick moments, talking about school, girls, helping with homework, dozing off in front of cartoons, whacked out movies about vampire dogs and giant man-eating rabbits, Okla-fuckin-homa. And that don't make a lick of sense, and the really queird thing is that Gabe doesn't just think that, he actually hears a voice saying it in his head. It's a voice he knows but doesn't know, and it makes the fog in his brain even murkier because the voice and those memories all mean there was a before, because the voice can't be from the future, can it? But it's the wrong before, because Lee and Missy aren't in it, although sometimes Gabe scrunches his eyes tight shut and hopes that maybe it's the right before, and that when he opens his eyes again he'll be back there.
So one day he says to Lee, "We don't have a before, and I feel like I don't know you and that you're not really my brother."
And it changes everything, because Lee sits there smiling, and his smile stays fixed to his round, cheerful face, and in that instant Gabe realizes that Lee has real bad teeth but he doesn't, and that doesn't make sense either.
Lee keeps smiling all the time he's burying his fists in Gabe, kicking him and pressing his face into the mud and leaves, all the time he's pulling at Gabe's pants and saying that he's a purty boy with a smart mouth on him who needs teachin' a fuckin' lesson and that Lee's the one to do it. Gabe tries to talk Lee out of it, and Jesus, he begs, and he twists his head around to try to catch Lee's eye. And Lee's still smiling, and Gabe thinks Lee might even still be smiling when he sinks his teeth into the back of Gabe's neck and forces himself inside Gabe.
Brothers don't do that.
And suddenly Gabe is running, he's a kid again, chasing something, someone, chasing, reaching out but never catching.
Lee rolls onto his back and goes to sleep after, and Gabe fumbles up his pants, his hands shaking so bad he can't button them all the way. He doesn't cry, even though it hurts and he thinks he might be bleeding. He doesn't cry even though he wants to, because he's a man, not a kid, and because there's a horrible familiarity about it, and he thinks maybe Lee did it before, when Gabe was still hurt and high on red happy pills after the wolf attack, though he can't be sure.
He pulls a blanket up over Lee because Lee didn't bother tidying himself away, and because it helps him to cover it up, helps him put it out of his mind and think that maybe it never happened, helps him force it back, brick it up. Missy is passing the time flicking stones at the mules with her catapult, and Gabe tells her he's going to clean up down at the river. She looks at him cross-eyed, but he doesn't care. He walks, walks away because he can't run, he hurts inside and he feels dizzy and sick, and his bad leg is sore where Lee put his knee in back of it.
Gabe walks past the river and he keeps walking. His heart flip-flops and grieves in his chest because this leaving, this leaving his brother, his family, is killing him. But still he walks until it starts to get dark, and he can hear shouting and he's terrified, and that's when he does start wiping tears away because he thought he made it but it turns out he didn't, and some part of him is pathetically grateful that his brother cared enough to come looking for him and find him, because it must mean that he matters. So he just sinks to the ground and sits, and Sam trots out of the trees, wagging his tail and glad to see him.
And there comes Lee now, looming up so his shadow falls right over him. "Time to get back to camp now, boy," Lee says, and his voice is kind, warm, but Gabe can't help it, he feels this despair, this hopelessness, this feeling of no before, of wrong, of confusion.
Lee squats down and tells him it's all okay. "You hit your head is all," he reassures. "You ain't right in the head any more just like I ain't sometimes, and don't that make us two peas in a pod, and the bestest of buddies?"
And it turns out that there was another brother, because Lee says so, and Lee tells Gabe what a sonofabitch he was, a real mean bastard, and that Gabe's his favorite brother. There was another brother but Lee loves him best, and so does Missy.
So for a minute Gabe rummages feverishly through his mind, and he can see himself throwing stuff every which way, like he's in someone's house, some old house where he feels safe, and he's searching through piles of stuff, old books, curse boxes, jars of teeth, no, not teeth, jars of herbs, odd twisty bits of bark, snake skins, charms, spellwork, only he's really in his own head searching for his other brother, because he has this feeling, these butterflies, this sudden pretty red flower of hope that blossoms in his heart, that the other brother is significant. And Lee's voice drifts in, bitching about how his other brother left, and then Gabe gets this feeling like maybe he does remember that, remembers being left.
Lee puts his arm around Gabe then, tells him how it's all going be just fine and dandy, about how they're a family, the three musketeers, and they're all in this together and he's never going to leave Gabe like the other brother did. "But there's times when ole Lee just gets this mad red mist in his eyes," Lee cautions. "Like when you mouth off, and then Lee has to step up and be the man of the house and keep you in line. And Lee hates having to do it but them's the breaks when you're the boss, Gabe, ain't that what Pa always used to say?" He blows out a rueful sigh, shakes his head. "Hurts me to do it, boy, but I do it because I care."
There's still something not right about it, so even as Gabe leans gratefully into Lee, even as he wants to stammer out his thanks, his relief that he matters, his flesh crawls and his guts twist so miserably he thinks he might be sick. But at least it means he has his family and he's so fuckin' grateful he shows Lee by taking his Bowie and carving all of their initials on a tree as they walk back to the campsite. He goes to carve the other brother's name too, but he can't remember what it is. When he asks, Lee tells him it's a J for Jared, but it doesn't ring any bells and Gabe thinks Lee might be lying because even though he doesn't remember the other brother's name he knows damn well it wasn't Jared. So he doesn't carve it on there and he doesn't call Lee out on it either, because he's too cowardly, too worried about the red mist.
From then on, when Lee beats up on Gabe, he just keeps reminding himself that Lee's his brother and that it's the red mist, and he needs to keep it fuckin' buttoned when he's outmanned, because it's like Tourette's, whatever the hell that is. And he lies there afterwards and sometimes he runs the blade of his Bowie along his arm, just testing, like. And he wonders about the other brother, wonders if he might be out there, might be looking for him, wonders if his eyes might be gentle and dark like Pa's are when he makes nice in Gabe's memory.
It makes it hurt less, even if he sometimes thinks what a fuckin' girl he is, sitting there waiting for someone to ride in and rescue him.
It all flashes through Dean's brain in a tenth of a second, the time it takes Lee to pick him up, shake him so hard his brain feels like it comes loose from its moorings, and slam him back down onto the ground.
"Hey, Gabe," Lee drawls out, leisurely, lazy. "Hey boy… I'm gonna whup you good, boy…"
"I see you're corporeal," Dean manages. He feels a dull sort of triumph at the fact the dimwitted bastard won't even know what the word means, winces as it turns out that Bender's pig ignorance doesn't stop him from taking full advantage of being corporeal as he flips Dean over so he's face down. "Can you even get it up, Lee?" Dean taunts as he spits dirt and leaf matter, maybe even a bug, and isn't it ironic that he really is genuinely curious about it, thinks maybe it'll answer that question he's often pondered about just how the hell Angel managed to bang Buffy if he didn't have any circulation.
There's no response, so, "Jesus, Lee, you're man of few words dead, aren't you?" Dean dares. "How about some pillow talk?" He twists his head, dares a look, sees Lee flickering there, feels the air crackling, thinks maybe it's working, knows he's so fuckin' frightened he might even have another heart attack. "Though I guess you always were a man of action…"
He can feel ice fingers on the skin of his hips and then he does hear Lee, a scream of rage. And then it's still and Dean pushes up on his elbows, flops himself over onto his back laughing like a fuckin' hyena, a fuckin' totally insanehyena, as he slowly, clumsily, pulls up his pants over the chain he has wrapped over his shorts, low down, under, between and around.
Lee flickers back into phase a few feet away as Dean buttons his jeans.
"Iron," Dean smirks. "You weren't expecting that were you, you fuckin' douche. I call it my full metal jacket." He can feel the buzz as the drugs start to take hold, feel his heart hop, skip and jump that bit faster, feels soaring euphoria, feels like he can do anything, even as his mind peaks and then hits the downslope, flitting through worry, anxiety, agitation, along the way. Mountain goats, he's suddenly thinking. It's like those fuckin' mountain goats that spend all day racing at each other and clanging their horns together, the crash resounding and echoing for miles, as his sheer exhilaration butts up against a sudden feeling of persecution and a really fuckin' embarrassing desire to dissolve in tears. Just what's called for when you get ready to rumble with your rapi-nope, not that. Nemesis, he decides, and he snorts because it's so Stargate he almost expects Lee's eyes to glow yellow.
He rises painfully up onto his knees, grabs his poker in one hand and his giant Q-tip in the other and heaves himself up, tucking his good leg under him and pushing hard, letting out a barely stifled yelp as his weight briefly rests on the splint.
"Gonna teach you a fuckin' lesson, Gabe, real hard this time, whup you good, you little-"
"Whatfuckin'ever…" Dean parries, pulling his leg under him. "And my name isn't Gabe, asswipe." Upright he reels, leans up against a tree, tries to catch his breath, wipes his face and stares out through a headrush that has the woods pinwheel around him, grow tiny and multiply, before dashing up to tag him and run away. It's like he's peering at it all through one of those funny tube things, kaleidoscope, and it takes a few moments for it to settle down. All the while Lee berates him from a few feet away. It drones out of the jerkoff in a monotone, and Dean sniggers childishly because it's Lee's bendigo impression.
"Take it like a man purty boy, ole Lee's gonna teach you a lesson Gabe, stick it to you good, little-"
"What's your fuckin' point, Lee?" Dean crows as he tightens his grip on his poker, twirling it like a drum majorette in a Fourth of July parade as the spirit ventures closer, its lips pulled back in a snarl of silent rage. He waves the poker in its face. "Bite me," he snaps, and he feels an unwelcome curdling sensation in his gut as he remembers the times Lee did just that, remembers his own fingertips tracing over the indentation of teeth marks at the back of his neck, on his shoulders. The sudden reminder of the piercing sting of being chewed on, nipped, sampled, tasted, like he was nameless, faceless meat, is bitter humiliation, shame, defilement and degradation, and Dean feels himself slipping back there, feels tears scald his eyes.
"Hey, Gabe, you scared yet boy, you ready for ole Lee, you ready to stop messin' with my head and be a man about it, you worthless little piece of-"
"Shut the fuck up!" Dean hollers, so harsh it tears up out of his throat, scraping its nails along the sides and leaving raw, shredded flesh in its wake. He draws himself up, winces and slumps back against his tree, and Christ he's so sick of trees, and his leg gripes, tingles, torments him, a screaming riff of pain. "What you did to me, you unspeakable, worthless piece of scum," he wheezes, reaches up to rub at his neck, because man, it fuckin' hurts right there. "What did you think it was, Lee? What was all that crap about me bein' the best brother you ever had? Had… that's a fuckin' laugh riot, isn't it?"
The spectre is fussing away there in front of Dean, and there's no weight to it even though Dean knows that if he reaches out to touch it, it will feel as solid, as bulky, as overwhelming as Lee always felt. He can see Lee's fingers flexing, stretching, can see his lips moving, and he tries to blot out what he's saying, clamps his hands to his ears, can see Lee's eyes staring, leering, eating him up, and there's a split second when he wonders if he gets that exact expression when he's circling, wonders if he looked at Lucy Ross like that, wonders if he looked at Hudak like that, wonders, idiotically, if he maybe even looks at Sam like that when he's high on morphine and hitting on anything.
He hurts. He isn't getting out of this. He isn't finding his brother, and it's like the heel of Bender's hobnail boot grinding into Dean's heart, and his soul, and his nads all at once, and it makes him think that just letting the life drain out of him through his leg won't be such a bad thing after all. She got out, he thinks abstractedly. The one good thing in this fubar. She got out.
His voice breaks, throat desert-dry, because Lee's just staring at him as he paces and mutters, dead eyes somehow alive with things he doesn't want to remember. "Why'd you do it, Lee?" he asks impulsively, swallowing down the lump in his throat. "I trusted you…"
He hates himself for sounding fuckin' pathetic, for sounding like hurt feelings are the worst of it, like Lee just offended him mightily instead of pounding him until he didn't know who he was, where he was, what he wanted even, because he betrayed himself with his wretched, deplorable relief at being hunted down and welcomed back into the family with open fuckin' arms. "Was it some sort of power kick?" he chokes. "You got off your meds and thought you'd stick it to someone for a change? That poor bastard Gabe, who was too fuckin' sick and hurting too bad, and too doped on drugs to fight back? That the best you can do? Stick it to Gabe, stick it to me, like Pa stuck it to you? Like Jared did? So you were sick of being the family bike, thought you'd do some fuckin' peddling of your own?"
Lee lunges at him and Dean's heart pulls up short as he waves the poker, obliterates the spirit in a flash of static. He starts walking, shuffling, swipes angrily at his eyes, because he does feel fuckin' hurt, because it was treachery, what he did, this thing who was his brother, his only support, his only fuckin' solace in the misery of life as a Bender, with no before and the feeling of not right that plagued his dreams and every waking moment too. And the worse thing is that the rage swirling around inside him like a whirlpool, his fuckin' righteous anger, is fading away, leaving behind it the loss, the loss of himself, that started in the moment the dog took him and finished in the moment Bender took him, finished as he froze and tried to wish himself elsewhere, somewhere, anywhere, finished every night when he slowly died inside because nobody came.
"You were my brother," he whispers. "My brother. You were my fuckin' brother, and you fuckin' betrayed me. How dare you!" His voice rises in a thin, reedy cry, as Bender flickers back into phase and keeps pace with him while he stumbles along.
"Take it like a man, Gabe, all you's good for, you gutless little runt, get your ass over here and-"
"Shut the fuck up!" Dean screams. "Leave me the fuck alone." He shakes his poker, stabs at the bastard. "I never stopped fuckin' lovin' you even when you were doing it, you sonofabitch. I never stopped hoping it'd be better. And when I ran, I was glad you found me. That's what you did to me."
It's like it hits him for the first time, and he has to stop, catch his breath, hang onto his crutch. "You made me feel ashamed of myself," he mutters. "You made me feel worthless, made me feel fuckin' helpless, made me think that was all my life was ever going to be… you took my life, and my power, and my control, and you had no fuckin' right, Lee. No right. I didn't do anything to you, I didn't even fight you… and you took my body, you took my mind, and you took my fuckin' family from me, took my brother, you prick, made him something less, turned someone I love into a fuckin' threat…" He can hear his voice rise again, to frantic, distressed. "And you fuckin' hurt me, you sick bastard. You hurt me…"
He's still staring at Bender, and now he sees a flicker on the apparition's face, something that passes through Bender's expression, his eyes.
"Oh, are you telling me you thought it was good for me too, Lee?" Dean rages. "Is that what you think, that I liked you doing that? Did you like it, when Pa did it? When Jared did it? You hurt me. You fuckin' hurt me, and I didn't want it, and I told you that and I asked you to stop, I begged and I hollered for you to stop." Dean cocks his head. "Did you put all that together and come up with yes, Lee? Is that how it was for you? And you just never clued into the way you had to beat me senseless so you could do your thing?"
The spirit's face crumples, and now Dean's fury starts to tornado around his head, churns through the Kansan cornfields, picks up houses, cows, a crate of chickens, two old guys in a rowboat, old ladies in rocking chairs, wicked witches on broomsticks. "Don't you feel remorse, you bastard," he snarls, as the black smoky funnel snakes around his brain and sweeps up all his hurt and terror with it. "Don't you feel sorry. I don't want you looking to me for absolution. I'm not in the business of making you feel better about what you did. I'm here to end you." He swings wildly, and the overwhelming feeling as the poker slips through numb, nerveless fingers and bounces out of reach is of. Fuckin'. Course.
And Bender is on him, has him by the hair, because his chain-link chastity belt might be keeping his virtue intact this time, but the rest of Dean is fair game, and he yells out as his crutch is tossed away, as blinding agony scorches up his leg and smokes out of his ears, and he's careering through the air. He crashes down onto his belly, and then he's hooked up by corporeal ghost boots, rolled over, grabbed and lifted by a twisted handful of his tee, shaken till his teeth feel like they might shatter in his mouth and his cry of pain turns into the jiggling stop-start woo-woo-woo the injuns warble out in all those John Ford westerns.
He's slammed back down into the dirt then, and Lee's smiling, a Joker smile, like his cheeks have been slashed up to his eyes, and he might be long dead but his eyes are alive, aglow. He's walking a circle around Dean, looking him up and down, greedy, and Dean thinks if the bastard licks his lips he's going to lose it right then and there, because he's already rigid with terror. But still there's a voice in his head, and it's familiar, and it's strong, and it's trust, and he pushes up on his elbows, hisses out in pain. "I haven't got time for this. I'm finding my brother and you can't-"
But Lee can, and does, and Dean screams out one of those movie screams that sends flocks of birds flapping up from the treetops at the pressure of the boot on his leg, can hear this weird feeding-time-at-the-zoo jabbering, yelping, fuckin' yodeling, for crying out loud, that's coming from him as he sobs for mercy. And then, out of nowhere, he hears a voice. His heart leaps, and the tiny part of himself he has on lockdown, safe from the pain and the fear, peeks out from between its fingers, looks this way and that, and now his racket has died down he can hear his voice mumbling in the same monotone the thing had used, "Bobby-Bobby-Bobby…"
Shut the fuck up! resounds again, and Dean feels his brow furrow, because he can't work out why Bobby would be mad at him. He tries to crane his neck to look in the direction of the voice but it's stiff, and his head feels heavier than it ever has, his mouth drier. He knows now why animals chew off their own paws in traps, knows that if he could bend himself in half he'd be ripping at his own flesh with his teeth, because a ragged stump would be like a walk in the park compared to the pain of Lee's boot on there. "Bobby," he whispers, but he still can't see the old man.
And then he sinks back down because this, now, is the absence of hope, as the thing lopes into the clearing, yakking away in that well-loved voice, like everything Dean held dear hasn't already been corrupted up the wazoo. And it comes back, because maybe he really had forgotten, that Bobby is long gone, dead, that maybe nothing left of him because of the killing moon. Dean howls out his grief and the thing howls along with him, a beat behind, using Dean's own voice, because it's a quick study. And then the spectre is grabbing Dean by the wrist, jerking him up into a sitting position, the world whirling and tilting around him like a fairground ride.
"Beg me, boy," Lee growls, and Dean can see the vicious delight and greed in his eyes. "Beg for mercy, Gabe, just like you always did, beg your brother for mercy, yeller little bastard, take it like a man, beg me, boy…"
Dean stares up at the apparition, and then over to the thing, where it's doing some sort of frenzied hornpipe a couple of yards behind Lee, bopping about in a way that suddenly reminds Dean of Sam and itching powder, and suddenly he doesn't feel afraid any more, suddenly he doesn't care, because it's done, over.
He looks up at Lee, and he can barely get the words out from his raw vocal cords. "Please, Lee," he whispers, and Lee leans in closer, his eyes sparking now, intent. And Dean doesn't even flinch because he's beyond flinching now. "Go fuck yourself." He literally sees the rage build, feels the air surrounding Lee throb with it, and he forces out his closing argument with all he has left, and his voice rises until he's yelling. "And for the record, you're not my brother, you dipshit hillbilly waste of skin."
As Dean streaks through the air again, reflexively wrapping his arms up around his head before he bounces maybe two, three times, he thinks it's like Lee is playing skipping stones with him. He rolls over a couple of times, comes up flush against the thing's feet, long, bony, taloned toes that could really use a fuckin' manicure, and he looks up at it and it looks down at him. He spares a second to think that if it had eyebrows it might be raising one, and that's all he has time to think because he's being grabbed by the ankle, just like the fucker to pick the ruined one, and dragged along in the dirt. And he can see the talons keeping pace with him even through the dust, and he can see its lipless mouth forming a word and he frowns squints, and Jesus Christo, yes, yes, yes.
"Kin!" Dean croaks out, reaches up to it with his hands. "Kin! That's me, you fuckin' monster! Kin… help me… kin."
Codeword or what? Hell yes, because the thing is reaching out, grabbing onto his hands and shrieking at Bender, yowling, caterwauling at the ghost, and there's a minute when Dean is suspended between them, Gabe Bendigo at one end and Lee Bender at the other, before they both let go of him and he belly flops to the ground. He wriggles like a beached fish, winded, pain piercing his ribcage, panting for air that doesn't seem to be making it any further than the back of his throat before it decides Dean Winchester's lungs aren't such an attractive proposition after all and whistles back out between his lips.
And then, it's quiet, Dean thinks through his daze. Too quiet.
But then, abruptly, it isn't quiet at all, because Dean is smack-bang in the middle of Muhammed fuckin' Ali versus Joe Frazier.
"Watch the fuckin' merchandise," he whispers hoarsely as he crawls out from under them, towards his pack, towards salvation. He collects his poker along the way, can't help looking back and cackling because he has a ringside seat at one of the nastiest bare-knuckle fights he's ever seen and it's like CGI, flinging, tossing, whoah, felt that one, Christ, even some stamping going on, because Lee doesn't have the brains to just dematerialize. And he knows it's so fuckin' gay, but he feels a frisson of excitement that they're fighting over him as he reaches for the flare gun with hands that shake so much he's in danger of lighting himself up before he even takes aim.
Dean hauls himself more upright, can't help a low moan of pain because that's all he can manage; agony takes energy he just doesn't have any more, he's spent, finished, and all that's left after this is his Desert Eagle, because if he can just end the thing, he can end his association with Lee by ending himself, and he longs for release now, longs for peace, rest. Please God, he thinks, please God, let my brother get out. Even though I don't believe in you, please help my brother get out. His head is so woolly now he thinks that if someone came up and blew at it, it might just gently shatter into hundreds of pieces that drift off on the wind like dandelion seeds, and he can't see right, though he can see something looming up, silvery gray, three, four of them, and he takes aim at the one on the right, fires.
The flare shoots harmlessly through thin air and Dean's hand drops limply to his side as it squats there in front of him, eyes glowing into his, like it's waiting for something.
"Missed," Dean rasps. "Who'd have thunk that'd happen, huh?"
It reaches across him, picks up the flare gun, studies it for a moment and looks back at Dean.
He shrugs. "I wasn't going to use that on you, buddy, honest," he mumbles. "Why would I do that?"
It flings the gun with the kind of pitch Dean thinks might secure it a place in the baseball hall of fame if it weren't for the whole wendigo thing, then turns back to gaze at him again.
"Kin," it hisses.
"Whatthefuckever," Dean mutters, because he just wants to sleep now. "Just. No licking."
It gathers him up, cradles him against cold flesh stretched tight over bones, because it's never full, always needs more, pushes up onto its feet, starts running.
"Take me to your leader," Dean whispers, as he drifts off with the breeze caressing his face.
Next
There's this feeling of not having had a before with his brother and sister that sometimes throws Gabe off his game.
He chalks it up to the knock on his head and he doesn't say anything to Missy because she's just a bitch, in a how Carrie got even at the fuckin' Prom sort of way, though from what Lee tells him about Pa the old goat would have sawed off his right testicle with a plastic spoon before letting Gabe watch that crap. Gabe can't really remember much of Pa himself, the knock on the head that screwed with his noggin means his memories are fuzzy. He just gets the odd flash of glittering eyes that must be shining out of Pa's mad-as-hell-and-I-ain't-gonna-take-it-anymore face, interspersed with other glimpses of the past in which Pa's eyes are dark and gentle. And those times Pa's eyes aren't like his eyes, aren't like Lee's, and sure as shit slides off a hot shovel, they aren't like Missy's.
Gabe doesn't know how the hell Lee puts up with Missy, but then Lee isn't all there sometimes himself. Missy knows it, and she keeps nagging at Lee to take the red happy pills, but Gabe knows Lee isn't doing it. Which is fine as far as he's concerned, since it means more for him and he loves the floating, content, satisfied, untroubled feeling he gets when he takes them. It's the only thing keeping him sane, he muses sometimes. Or maybe keeping him less insane, in spite of the Missy's attempts to drive him psycho-loony-nutjob mad.
Truth be told, Gabe doesn't know how he puts up with Missy either, and that's the thing - because when he pays it any mind, that whole feeling of not having had a before kicks in, and it means he has no memory of ever having put up with Missy. Ever. It's because she's a fuckin' bitch, he tells himself. It's because he hit his head, head injuries are a fuckin' douche and his made him blank her out; and sometimes he thinks wouldn't it be awesome to just bang her on the head, maybe Lee too, so they'd all stand there blank, and decide they didn't really know each other before going their separate ways. Gabe thinks he could too, thinks he could get by just fine without them. Sometimes he pictures Lee bleating away at him about how he shouldn't be out there by himself, and he swaggers and smart-mouths, dude, I'm twenty-six, and he's the alpha-dog in his imagination, the big cahuna, a young man with an important purpose… and where the fuck that came from is just out of reach, but Gabe knows someone once told him that.
And he could make an honest living if he lit out by himself. He's good with his hands, he just knows he is, his gut tells him that even if his brain is mush and there's no before. He stares at them, neat hands, capable hands, strong hands, and he gets this feeling like he's fixed things. And then one day Lee throws him the gun, and he finds himself stripping it down automatically, cleaning it, oiling it, and then another time Missy says something about him being good at what they do. And Jesus, Gabe doesn't ever want to be good at what they do. It gives him chills, makes him think of his Pa leering right up in his face, laying it out for him, how they hunt people and have done for generations. And he knows he has hunted, sees it sometimes, and after that when he looks at his hands he knows he has used them to rip, and tear, and destroy.
But he isn't hunting people in his daydreams and nightmares, he's hunting things that should not be. Which he guesses makes him even sicker than his Pa, sicker than Lee and Missy and that other one he never really sees properly, the one who maybe upped and left. Because it is sick, what they do. But then sometimes when he looks at his hands, he thinks maybe he has used them to care, used them to pin diapers, used them to spoon feed, used them to ruffle hair, used them to tie shoelaces the bunny ears way, used them to button up warm winter jackets, used them to hold someone's hand, used them to make someone better, used them to wipe away tears and snot, used them to soothe fevered brows, used them to clean up cuts, scrapes and worse. When he thinks of worse, he feels a thrill of horror. Worse things he doesn't ever want to happen. Happen to who? He doesn't have a clue. It gives him a sick feeling of dread, combined with a shy glow of happiness that his hands have done good things too. Well, maybe, he thinks. He hopes. Doesn't know if he really believes, though.
One day he steels himself to have it out with Lee, because that's what brothers do - they talk, they confide, they trust, and he remembers so many earnest late-night conversations, just him and his brother, chick-flick moments, talking about school, girls, helping with homework, dozing off in front of cartoons, whacked out movies about vampire dogs and giant man-eating rabbits, Okla-fuckin-homa. And that don't make a lick of sense, and the really queird thing is that Gabe doesn't just think that, he actually hears a voice saying it in his head. It's a voice he knows but doesn't know, and it makes the fog in his brain even murkier because the voice and those memories all mean there was a before, because the voice can't be from the future, can it? But it's the wrong before, because Lee and Missy aren't in it, although sometimes Gabe scrunches his eyes tight shut and hopes that maybe it's the right before, and that when he opens his eyes again he'll be back there.
So one day he says to Lee, "We don't have a before, and I feel like I don't know you and that you're not really my brother."
And it changes everything, because Lee sits there smiling, and his smile stays fixed to his round, cheerful face, and in that instant Gabe realizes that Lee has real bad teeth but he doesn't, and that doesn't make sense either.
Lee keeps smiling all the time he's burying his fists in Gabe, kicking him and pressing his face into the mud and leaves, all the time he's pulling at Gabe's pants and saying that he's a purty boy with a smart mouth on him who needs teachin' a fuckin' lesson and that Lee's the one to do it. Gabe tries to talk Lee out of it, and Jesus, he begs, and he twists his head around to try to catch Lee's eye. And Lee's still smiling, and Gabe thinks Lee might even still be smiling when he sinks his teeth into the back of Gabe's neck and forces himself inside Gabe.
Brothers don't do that.
And suddenly Gabe is running, he's a kid again, chasing something, someone, chasing, reaching out but never catching.
Lee rolls onto his back and goes to sleep after, and Gabe fumbles up his pants, his hands shaking so bad he can't button them all the way. He doesn't cry, even though it hurts and he thinks he might be bleeding. He doesn't cry even though he wants to, because he's a man, not a kid, and because there's a horrible familiarity about it, and he thinks maybe Lee did it before, when Gabe was still hurt and high on red happy pills after the wolf attack, though he can't be sure.
He pulls a blanket up over Lee because Lee didn't bother tidying himself away, and because it helps him to cover it up, helps him put it out of his mind and think that maybe it never happened, helps him force it back, brick it up. Missy is passing the time flicking stones at the mules with her catapult, and Gabe tells her he's going to clean up down at the river. She looks at him cross-eyed, but he doesn't care. He walks, walks away because he can't run, he hurts inside and he feels dizzy and sick, and his bad leg is sore where Lee put his knee in back of it.
Gabe walks past the river and he keeps walking. His heart flip-flops and grieves in his chest because this leaving, this leaving his brother, his family, is killing him. But still he walks until it starts to get dark, and he can hear shouting and he's terrified, and that's when he does start wiping tears away because he thought he made it but it turns out he didn't, and some part of him is pathetically grateful that his brother cared enough to come looking for him and find him, because it must mean that he matters. So he just sinks to the ground and sits, and Sam trots out of the trees, wagging his tail and glad to see him.
And there comes Lee now, looming up so his shadow falls right over him. "Time to get back to camp now, boy," Lee says, and his voice is kind, warm, but Gabe can't help it, he feels this despair, this hopelessness, this feeling of no before, of wrong, of confusion.
Lee squats down and tells him it's all okay. "You hit your head is all," he reassures. "You ain't right in the head any more just like I ain't sometimes, and don't that make us two peas in a pod, and the bestest of buddies?"
And it turns out that there was another brother, because Lee says so, and Lee tells Gabe what a sonofabitch he was, a real mean bastard, and that Gabe's his favorite brother. There was another brother but Lee loves him best, and so does Missy.
So for a minute Gabe rummages feverishly through his mind, and he can see himself throwing stuff every which way, like he's in someone's house, some old house where he feels safe, and he's searching through piles of stuff, old books, curse boxes, jars of teeth, no, not teeth, jars of herbs, odd twisty bits of bark, snake skins, charms, spellwork, only he's really in his own head searching for his other brother, because he has this feeling, these butterflies, this sudden pretty red flower of hope that blossoms in his heart, that the other brother is significant. And Lee's voice drifts in, bitching about how his other brother left, and then Gabe gets this feeling like maybe he does remember that, remembers being left.
Lee puts his arm around Gabe then, tells him how it's all going be just fine and dandy, about how they're a family, the three musketeers, and they're all in this together and he's never going to leave Gabe like the other brother did. "But there's times when ole Lee just gets this mad red mist in his eyes," Lee cautions. "Like when you mouth off, and then Lee has to step up and be the man of the house and keep you in line. And Lee hates having to do it but them's the breaks when you're the boss, Gabe, ain't that what Pa always used to say?" He blows out a rueful sigh, shakes his head. "Hurts me to do it, boy, but I do it because I care."
There's still something not right about it, so even as Gabe leans gratefully into Lee, even as he wants to stammer out his thanks, his relief that he matters, his flesh crawls and his guts twist so miserably he thinks he might be sick. But at least it means he has his family and he's so fuckin' grateful he shows Lee by taking his Bowie and carving all of their initials on a tree as they walk back to the campsite. He goes to carve the other brother's name too, but he can't remember what it is. When he asks, Lee tells him it's a J for Jared, but it doesn't ring any bells and Gabe thinks Lee might be lying because even though he doesn't remember the other brother's name he knows damn well it wasn't Jared. So he doesn't carve it on there and he doesn't call Lee out on it either, because he's too cowardly, too worried about the red mist.
From then on, when Lee beats up on Gabe, he just keeps reminding himself that Lee's his brother and that it's the red mist, and he needs to keep it fuckin' buttoned when he's outmanned, because it's like Tourette's, whatever the hell that is. And he lies there afterwards and sometimes he runs the blade of his Bowie along his arm, just testing, like. And he wonders about the other brother, wonders if he might be out there, might be looking for him, wonders if his eyes might be gentle and dark like Pa's are when he makes nice in Gabe's memory.
It makes it hurt less, even if he sometimes thinks what a fuckin' girl he is, sitting there waiting for someone to ride in and rescue him.
It all flashes through Dean's brain in a tenth of a second, the time it takes Lee to pick him up, shake him so hard his brain feels like it comes loose from its moorings, and slam him back down onto the ground.
"Hey, Gabe," Lee drawls out, leisurely, lazy. "Hey boy… I'm gonna whup you good, boy…"
"I see you're corporeal," Dean manages. He feels a dull sort of triumph at the fact the dimwitted bastard won't even know what the word means, winces as it turns out that Bender's pig ignorance doesn't stop him from taking full advantage of being corporeal as he flips Dean over so he's face down. "Can you even get it up, Lee?" Dean taunts as he spits dirt and leaf matter, maybe even a bug, and isn't it ironic that he really is genuinely curious about it, thinks maybe it'll answer that question he's often pondered about just how the hell Angel managed to bang Buffy if he didn't have any circulation.
There's no response, so, "Jesus, Lee, you're man of few words dead, aren't you?" Dean dares. "How about some pillow talk?" He twists his head, dares a look, sees Lee flickering there, feels the air crackling, thinks maybe it's working, knows he's so fuckin' frightened he might even have another heart attack. "Though I guess you always were a man of action…"
He can feel ice fingers on the skin of his hips and then he does hear Lee, a scream of rage. And then it's still and Dean pushes up on his elbows, flops himself over onto his back laughing like a fuckin' hyena, a fuckin' totally insanehyena, as he slowly, clumsily, pulls up his pants over the chain he has wrapped over his shorts, low down, under, between and around.
Lee flickers back into phase a few feet away as Dean buttons his jeans.
"Iron," Dean smirks. "You weren't expecting that were you, you fuckin' douche. I call it my full metal jacket." He can feel the buzz as the drugs start to take hold, feel his heart hop, skip and jump that bit faster, feels soaring euphoria, feels like he can do anything, even as his mind peaks and then hits the downslope, flitting through worry, anxiety, agitation, along the way. Mountain goats, he's suddenly thinking. It's like those fuckin' mountain goats that spend all day racing at each other and clanging their horns together, the crash resounding and echoing for miles, as his sheer exhilaration butts up against a sudden feeling of persecution and a really fuckin' embarrassing desire to dissolve in tears. Just what's called for when you get ready to rumble with your rapi-nope, not that. Nemesis, he decides, and he snorts because it's so Stargate he almost expects Lee's eyes to glow yellow.
He rises painfully up onto his knees, grabs his poker in one hand and his giant Q-tip in the other and heaves himself up, tucking his good leg under him and pushing hard, letting out a barely stifled yelp as his weight briefly rests on the splint.
"Gonna teach you a fuckin' lesson, Gabe, real hard this time, whup you good, you little-"
"Whatfuckin'ever…" Dean parries, pulling his leg under him. "And my name isn't Gabe, asswipe." Upright he reels, leans up against a tree, tries to catch his breath, wipes his face and stares out through a headrush that has the woods pinwheel around him, grow tiny and multiply, before dashing up to tag him and run away. It's like he's peering at it all through one of those funny tube things, kaleidoscope, and it takes a few moments for it to settle down. All the while Lee berates him from a few feet away. It drones out of the jerkoff in a monotone, and Dean sniggers childishly because it's Lee's bendigo impression.
"Take it like a man purty boy, ole Lee's gonna teach you a lesson Gabe, stick it to you good, little-"
"What's your fuckin' point, Lee?" Dean crows as he tightens his grip on his poker, twirling it like a drum majorette in a Fourth of July parade as the spirit ventures closer, its lips pulled back in a snarl of silent rage. He waves the poker in its face. "Bite me," he snaps, and he feels an unwelcome curdling sensation in his gut as he remembers the times Lee did just that, remembers his own fingertips tracing over the indentation of teeth marks at the back of his neck, on his shoulders. The sudden reminder of the piercing sting of being chewed on, nipped, sampled, tasted, like he was nameless, faceless meat, is bitter humiliation, shame, defilement and degradation, and Dean feels himself slipping back there, feels tears scald his eyes.
"Hey, Gabe, you scared yet boy, you ready for ole Lee, you ready to stop messin' with my head and be a man about it, you worthless little piece of-"
"Shut the fuck up!" Dean hollers, so harsh it tears up out of his throat, scraping its nails along the sides and leaving raw, shredded flesh in its wake. He draws himself up, winces and slumps back against his tree, and Christ he's so sick of trees, and his leg gripes, tingles, torments him, a screaming riff of pain. "What you did to me, you unspeakable, worthless piece of scum," he wheezes, reaches up to rub at his neck, because man, it fuckin' hurts right there. "What did you think it was, Lee? What was all that crap about me bein' the best brother you ever had? Had… that's a fuckin' laugh riot, isn't it?"
The spectre is fussing away there in front of Dean, and there's no weight to it even though Dean knows that if he reaches out to touch it, it will feel as solid, as bulky, as overwhelming as Lee always felt. He can see Lee's fingers flexing, stretching, can see his lips moving, and he tries to blot out what he's saying, clamps his hands to his ears, can see Lee's eyes staring, leering, eating him up, and there's a split second when he wonders if he gets that exact expression when he's circling, wonders if he looked at Lucy Ross like that, wonders if he looked at Hudak like that, wonders, idiotically, if he maybe even looks at Sam like that when he's high on morphine and hitting on anything.
He hurts. He isn't getting out of this. He isn't finding his brother, and it's like the heel of Bender's hobnail boot grinding into Dean's heart, and his soul, and his nads all at once, and it makes him think that just letting the life drain out of him through his leg won't be such a bad thing after all. She got out, he thinks abstractedly. The one good thing in this fubar. She got out.
His voice breaks, throat desert-dry, because Lee's just staring at him as he paces and mutters, dead eyes somehow alive with things he doesn't want to remember. "Why'd you do it, Lee?" he asks impulsively, swallowing down the lump in his throat. "I trusted you…"
He hates himself for sounding fuckin' pathetic, for sounding like hurt feelings are the worst of it, like Lee just offended him mightily instead of pounding him until he didn't know who he was, where he was, what he wanted even, because he betrayed himself with his wretched, deplorable relief at being hunted down and welcomed back into the family with open fuckin' arms. "Was it some sort of power kick?" he chokes. "You got off your meds and thought you'd stick it to someone for a change? That poor bastard Gabe, who was too fuckin' sick and hurting too bad, and too doped on drugs to fight back? That the best you can do? Stick it to Gabe, stick it to me, like Pa stuck it to you? Like Jared did? So you were sick of being the family bike, thought you'd do some fuckin' peddling of your own?"
Lee lunges at him and Dean's heart pulls up short as he waves the poker, obliterates the spirit in a flash of static. He starts walking, shuffling, swipes angrily at his eyes, because he does feel fuckin' hurt, because it was treachery, what he did, this thing who was his brother, his only support, his only fuckin' solace in the misery of life as a Bender, with no before and the feeling of not right that plagued his dreams and every waking moment too. And the worse thing is that the rage swirling around inside him like a whirlpool, his fuckin' righteous anger, is fading away, leaving behind it the loss, the loss of himself, that started in the moment the dog took him and finished in the moment Bender took him, finished as he froze and tried to wish himself elsewhere, somewhere, anywhere, finished every night when he slowly died inside because nobody came.
"You were my brother," he whispers. "My brother. You were my fuckin' brother, and you fuckin' betrayed me. How dare you!" His voice rises in a thin, reedy cry, as Bender flickers back into phase and keeps pace with him while he stumbles along.
"Take it like a man, Gabe, all you's good for, you gutless little runt, get your ass over here and-"
"Shut the fuck up!" Dean screams. "Leave me the fuck alone." He shakes his poker, stabs at the bastard. "I never stopped fuckin' lovin' you even when you were doing it, you sonofabitch. I never stopped hoping it'd be better. And when I ran, I was glad you found me. That's what you did to me."
It's like it hits him for the first time, and he has to stop, catch his breath, hang onto his crutch. "You made me feel ashamed of myself," he mutters. "You made me feel worthless, made me feel fuckin' helpless, made me think that was all my life was ever going to be… you took my life, and my power, and my control, and you had no fuckin' right, Lee. No right. I didn't do anything to you, I didn't even fight you… and you took my body, you took my mind, and you took my fuckin' family from me, took my brother, you prick, made him something less, turned someone I love into a fuckin' threat…" He can hear his voice rise again, to frantic, distressed. "And you fuckin' hurt me, you sick bastard. You hurt me…"
He's still staring at Bender, and now he sees a flicker on the apparition's face, something that passes through Bender's expression, his eyes.
"Oh, are you telling me you thought it was good for me too, Lee?" Dean rages. "Is that what you think, that I liked you doing that? Did you like it, when Pa did it? When Jared did it? You hurt me. You fuckin' hurt me, and I didn't want it, and I told you that and I asked you to stop, I begged and I hollered for you to stop." Dean cocks his head. "Did you put all that together and come up with yes, Lee? Is that how it was for you? And you just never clued into the way you had to beat me senseless so you could do your thing?"
The spirit's face crumples, and now Dean's fury starts to tornado around his head, churns through the Kansan cornfields, picks up houses, cows, a crate of chickens, two old guys in a rowboat, old ladies in rocking chairs, wicked witches on broomsticks. "Don't you feel remorse, you bastard," he snarls, as the black smoky funnel snakes around his brain and sweeps up all his hurt and terror with it. "Don't you feel sorry. I don't want you looking to me for absolution. I'm not in the business of making you feel better about what you did. I'm here to end you." He swings wildly, and the overwhelming feeling as the poker slips through numb, nerveless fingers and bounces out of reach is of. Fuckin'. Course.
And Bender is on him, has him by the hair, because his chain-link chastity belt might be keeping his virtue intact this time, but the rest of Dean is fair game, and he yells out as his crutch is tossed away, as blinding agony scorches up his leg and smokes out of his ears, and he's careering through the air. He crashes down onto his belly, and then he's hooked up by corporeal ghost boots, rolled over, grabbed and lifted by a twisted handful of his tee, shaken till his teeth feel like they might shatter in his mouth and his cry of pain turns into the jiggling stop-start woo-woo-woo the injuns warble out in all those John Ford westerns.
He's slammed back down into the dirt then, and Lee's smiling, a Joker smile, like his cheeks have been slashed up to his eyes, and he might be long dead but his eyes are alive, aglow. He's walking a circle around Dean, looking him up and down, greedy, and Dean thinks if the bastard licks his lips he's going to lose it right then and there, because he's already rigid with terror. But still there's a voice in his head, and it's familiar, and it's strong, and it's trust, and he pushes up on his elbows, hisses out in pain. "I haven't got time for this. I'm finding my brother and you can't-"
But Lee can, and does, and Dean screams out one of those movie screams that sends flocks of birds flapping up from the treetops at the pressure of the boot on his leg, can hear this weird feeding-time-at-the-zoo jabbering, yelping, fuckin' yodeling, for crying out loud, that's coming from him as he sobs for mercy. And then, out of nowhere, he hears a voice. His heart leaps, and the tiny part of himself he has on lockdown, safe from the pain and the fear, peeks out from between its fingers, looks this way and that, and now his racket has died down he can hear his voice mumbling in the same monotone the thing had used, "Bobby-Bobby-Bobby…"
Shut the fuck up! resounds again, and Dean feels his brow furrow, because he can't work out why Bobby would be mad at him. He tries to crane his neck to look in the direction of the voice but it's stiff, and his head feels heavier than it ever has, his mouth drier. He knows now why animals chew off their own paws in traps, knows that if he could bend himself in half he'd be ripping at his own flesh with his teeth, because a ragged stump would be like a walk in the park compared to the pain of Lee's boot on there. "Bobby," he whispers, but he still can't see the old man.
And then he sinks back down because this, now, is the absence of hope, as the thing lopes into the clearing, yakking away in that well-loved voice, like everything Dean held dear hasn't already been corrupted up the wazoo. And it comes back, because maybe he really had forgotten, that Bobby is long gone, dead, that maybe nothing left of him because of the killing moon. Dean howls out his grief and the thing howls along with him, a beat behind, using Dean's own voice, because it's a quick study. And then the spectre is grabbing Dean by the wrist, jerking him up into a sitting position, the world whirling and tilting around him like a fairground ride.
"Beg me, boy," Lee growls, and Dean can see the vicious delight and greed in his eyes. "Beg for mercy, Gabe, just like you always did, beg your brother for mercy, yeller little bastard, take it like a man, beg me, boy…"
Dean stares up at the apparition, and then over to the thing, where it's doing some sort of frenzied hornpipe a couple of yards behind Lee, bopping about in a way that suddenly reminds Dean of Sam and itching powder, and suddenly he doesn't feel afraid any more, suddenly he doesn't care, because it's done, over.
He looks up at Lee, and he can barely get the words out from his raw vocal cords. "Please, Lee," he whispers, and Lee leans in closer, his eyes sparking now, intent. And Dean doesn't even flinch because he's beyond flinching now. "Go fuck yourself." He literally sees the rage build, feels the air surrounding Lee throb with it, and he forces out his closing argument with all he has left, and his voice rises until he's yelling. "And for the record, you're not my brother, you dipshit hillbilly waste of skin."
As Dean streaks through the air again, reflexively wrapping his arms up around his head before he bounces maybe two, three times, he thinks it's like Lee is playing skipping stones with him. He rolls over a couple of times, comes up flush against the thing's feet, long, bony, taloned toes that could really use a fuckin' manicure, and he looks up at it and it looks down at him. He spares a second to think that if it had eyebrows it might be raising one, and that's all he has time to think because he's being grabbed by the ankle, just like the fucker to pick the ruined one, and dragged along in the dirt. And he can see the talons keeping pace with him even through the dust, and he can see its lipless mouth forming a word and he frowns squints, and Jesus Christo, yes, yes, yes.
"Kin!" Dean croaks out, reaches up to it with his hands. "Kin! That's me, you fuckin' monster! Kin… help me… kin."
Codeword or what? Hell yes, because the thing is reaching out, grabbing onto his hands and shrieking at Bender, yowling, caterwauling at the ghost, and there's a minute when Dean is suspended between them, Gabe Bendigo at one end and Lee Bender at the other, before they both let go of him and he belly flops to the ground. He wriggles like a beached fish, winded, pain piercing his ribcage, panting for air that doesn't seem to be making it any further than the back of his throat before it decides Dean Winchester's lungs aren't such an attractive proposition after all and whistles back out between his lips.
And then, it's quiet, Dean thinks through his daze. Too quiet.
But then, abruptly, it isn't quiet at all, because Dean is smack-bang in the middle of Muhammed fuckin' Ali versus Joe Frazier.
"Watch the fuckin' merchandise," he whispers hoarsely as he crawls out from under them, towards his pack, towards salvation. He collects his poker along the way, can't help looking back and cackling because he has a ringside seat at one of the nastiest bare-knuckle fights he's ever seen and it's like CGI, flinging, tossing, whoah, felt that one, Christ, even some stamping going on, because Lee doesn't have the brains to just dematerialize. And he knows it's so fuckin' gay, but he feels a frisson of excitement that they're fighting over him as he reaches for the flare gun with hands that shake so much he's in danger of lighting himself up before he even takes aim.
Dean hauls himself more upright, can't help a low moan of pain because that's all he can manage; agony takes energy he just doesn't have any more, he's spent, finished, and all that's left after this is his Desert Eagle, because if he can just end the thing, he can end his association with Lee by ending himself, and he longs for release now, longs for peace, rest. Please God, he thinks, please God, let my brother get out. Even though I don't believe in you, please help my brother get out. His head is so woolly now he thinks that if someone came up and blew at it, it might just gently shatter into hundreds of pieces that drift off on the wind like dandelion seeds, and he can't see right, though he can see something looming up, silvery gray, three, four of them, and he takes aim at the one on the right, fires.
The flare shoots harmlessly through thin air and Dean's hand drops limply to his side as it squats there in front of him, eyes glowing into his, like it's waiting for something.
"Missed," Dean rasps. "Who'd have thunk that'd happen, huh?"
It reaches across him, picks up the flare gun, studies it for a moment and looks back at Dean.
He shrugs. "I wasn't going to use that on you, buddy, honest," he mumbles. "Why would I do that?"
It flings the gun with the kind of pitch Dean thinks might secure it a place in the baseball hall of fame if it weren't for the whole wendigo thing, then turns back to gaze at him again.
"Kin," it hisses.
"Whatthefuckever," Dean mutters, because he just wants to sleep now. "Just. No licking."
It gathers him up, cradles him against cold flesh stretched tight over bones, because it's never full, always needs more, pushes up onto its feet, starts running.
"Take me to your leader," Dean whispers, as he drifts off with the breeze caressing his face.
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