The Killing Moon
19. The Hole in the Ground Gang
Hudak cracks her eyes briefly only to be confronted the sight of a gigantic head looming up in the half-light. "Big giant head," she slurs. "You got that job by kissing the big giant butt."
The big giant head's voice booms down at her and she closes her eyes, winces. Incoming message from the big giant head.
Inside her own head is… one long endless drumroll, that's what it is, like she's just about to do her famous trapeze act without a safety net, or as if some guy dressed as a Cossack is throwing flaming knives at her. Bass drums, snare drums, bongo drums, those quirky little drums they play at Irish ceilidhs… bodhráns, that's it, she thinks. Irish stepdancers with those clumpy shoes, riverdancing through her head. Cowbells. "More cowbell," she whispers. "Michael Flatley is in my head."
The big giant head looms closer and its mouth opens again. "Kathleen. You hit your head."
She squints up at it. "No need to shout," she whispers.
"Kathleen. Where's Dean? You said he was up on his feet. Where is he? Does he have a weapon?"
She scowls. "Who the hell are you?"
The big giant head's eyes grow huge. "Oh man, you have to be kidding me. Bobby. She doesn't know me-"
"Of course I know you," Hudak snaps irritably, and rolls her eyes even though she thinks it might have made them just pop out of their sockets and bounce off her face down to the ground. "And you need a haircut."
"Then who am I?" the big giant head says.
"You are number six," Hudak tells it, and she smiles, maybe even bats her eyelashes up at the head for a minute before it's time to sleep again.
"What do you think?" Sam broaches as he glances over at Bobby. "It was a pretty hard knock."
The old man shakes his head. "Hard to tell. She hit it at the back, skull's thicker there. The sides are the most fragile."
"She thought I was the big giant head," Sam says, frowning.
"There's a the big giant head?" Bobby replies. "I thought she was just talking about your big giant head."
"No. The big giant head," Sam clarifies. "Third Rock from the Sun. Dean loved that show."
Bobby's voice is suddenly strained. "Don't talk about him in the past tense, Sam. We don't-"
"No," Sam cuts in, swift. "The TV show is past tense. Old, I mean. The TV show. Not…" He trails off. "She thought I was number six too. That's from The Prisoner. And I think she thought she was on Saturday Night Live. And I was Michael Flatley for a second there, too."
"Man of a thousand faces," Bobby snarks, voice milder now.
"We need her awake," Sam says. "If I can get her up on my shoulders she might be able to reach the rope…" He bends his knees, steeples his palms on them, rests his chin on his fingertips and stares up at the frayed end, hanging a foot or so over the lip of the cellar. And the gun, they'd heard gunfire. A weapon, so tantalizingly near, and yet so far.
"If you bounce from the knees?" Bobby retorts witheringly. "It hasn't worked so far."
"We have to keep trying," Sam decides. "We can't reach it because you can't bounce me high enough. She's lighter than me, I could definitely bounce her higher." He nods. "I'm going to wake her."
He starts pushing up, but Bobby puts a hand on his arm.
"Leave her," he says softly. "It was a hard knock and she isn't up to this right now."
"But we heard her fire the gun, it must be up there if she dropped it when-"
"Sam." Bobby is gentle still, but he's firm. "Leave her. She'll fall again, hurt herself worse. Just let her rest for now. Thing'll likely stay out now until dawn."
"Stay out until dawn hunting," Sam mutters. Hunting my brother, he thinks, and he shivers. He hates this loss of hope, the miasma of thick, cloying defeat that shrouds them like a nineteen fifties smog, the inaction, the waiting. He stands, looks longingly up. It's getting darker out there.
"Where do you think it is?" Bobby says, and every word is sprinkled with the fragments of what he isn't saying. Where do you think Dean is?
Sam hazards a glance back and down, and despite his weariness, Bobby's face is all lit up with the hope that Sam's going to tell him the thing is probably off hunting hikers, that it turned right when Dean turned left. "Kathleen said Dean was up and at it, so his foot can't have been as bad as it looked," he tells the old man, and he even manages to sound confident. "They had the guns, the silver bullets. The flaregun was in my pack too. It wouldn't surprise me if he's up a tree laying in wait for it."
Bobby nods. "Kid's pretty resourceful. I doubt that thing could out-maneuver him."
Not at his best, Sam concedes inwardly. But he saw the damage from the trap, knows Dean isn't at his best, suspects he's stumbling, unseeing and scared out of his mind, through these woods while his foot steadily rots on the end of his leg and Bender pops up like a jack-in-the-box every five minutes. He swallows thickly, glances over at Hudak. She's peaceful, all the tension smoothed out of her features, and Sam wonders abstractedly if everyone looks like a kid when they sleep, if maybe Dean doesn't have the lock on it after all, because in slumber she sheds a decade just like his brother does. And then… there's something there, something on the air seeping in from above, and he cocks his head, listens intently.
"What?" Bobby says, sharply.
Sam holds up a hand. "Shhhh…"
It's just there, faint, distant, Sam is sure of it. And he listens, wills his ears off the side of his head so that they flutter up the top of the pit like butterflies and perch there, basking in the cool night air. Only that doesn't happen, because they remain firmly attached to the sides of his head and the sound is gone. "Nothing," he sighs. "It was nothing. Just hearing things that aren't there." Because, dear God in Heaven, don't let his brother still be there. Let him be long gone. I believe in you, God, he says to himself, and inside his head he throws himself at the feet of one of those cold marble statues of the man upstairs, prostrates himself in submission with his nose pressed firmly on the strap of God's thong sandal, Jesus boots, he can hear Dean snigger, God wears Jesus boots, Sammy. Please help my brother. Please get my brother out of here, Sam prays, and he clenches his fists so hard he can feel his fingernails digging little crescent moons in the skin of his palms.
"Did you tell your dad what happened to Dean?" Bobby says.
It's out of the blue, catches Sam off-guard. "Uh. No. No, I didn't," he says, as he moves to set himself down on the ground again. "It's not really my decision. Don't you think?"
Bobby huffs out. "Yeah. I guess."
"Anyway," Sam adds, and he can't help the snippish note that sneaks into his voice. "Dad never even called me back when I told him Dean was missing. Though he called you."
"Well," Bobby says carefully. "Technically I called him."
"And he picked up," Sam notes.
Nodding slowly, Bobby says, "He picked up."
Sam snorts. "I look forward to that happening one of these days when I call him."
It hangs there in the silence for a few moments until Bobby clears his throat. "I don't have an answer for you, Sam," he says. "I don't agree with some of what your dad's done over the last twenty years with you boys, but he had his reasons. There's things that you-"
"Don't know?" Sam snaps. "Things that I don't know? But that you do know?"
Bobby meets his gaze. "Something like that," he says steadily. "If your dad isn't telling you, it's because that's the best way he knows to keep you boys safe."
"But if there's something, some reason he cut us loose, cut Dean loose, and you know what that reason is, you could tell me," Sam persists.
Bobby still stares right at him. "It's not really my decision," he says quietly. "Don't you think?"
Sam loses the staring game, and he slumps disconsolately back against the wall. "Dad would have a meltdown if he knew what happened to Dean," he bitches. "Dean's his soldier boy. The perfect son."
Bobby doesn't rise to it. "You know that isn't true, Sam. Your dad doesn't play favorites, boy. Your brother's just less liable than you are to clash with him."
And Sam does know, he really does, and anyway it's an unsettling reminder of what he spat so bitterly at Dean in Rockford, so he puts it in his mental bottom drawer and piles a couple of blankets on it to muffle its sheer spite, and changes the subject, sort of. "Dad left Dean out there by himself."
"Well," Bobby muses. "Dean had done ten or twelve pretty hard hunts by himself before your dad upped and left, so he was-"
"Hurt," Sam cuts in. "Did he ever get hurt?" He doesn't really know why he's asking, he knows the answer - he's seen the scars. "Tell me about my brother," he rushes out before Bobby can reply. "Tell me about my brother when I wasn't there. Tell me everything."
Bobby just studies Sam for a moment, and just when Sam thinks the old man is going to say it isn't his place, Bobby shrugs. "He was pretty charged. Yeah." He nods to himself then, smiles at some memory Sam isn't party to, and Sam feels a stab of jealousy that surprises him.
"He did get hurt pretty bad, three or four times," Bobby goes on. "One time I had to drive down to the panhandle to fetch him back… harpy cut him up real bad. You remember all those marks on his ribs, left side? At Bender's?"
Sam nods mutely.
"And that scar low down on his hip? He cauterized it himself." The old man shivers. "Tough kid. The toughest."
"He shouldn't have to be," Sam snaps. "He should have had a chance. A shot at something else. He was good with his hands. Is good with them. He's good with cars. And dad, dad…" He finds his hands up on his cheeks, stretching the skin, stretching out the tension, the frustration. "Dad turned him into a killer. Into John Winchester's mini-me."
Bobby gives a low chuckle, shakes his head.
"What?" Sam challenges.
"It's just funny," Bobby says. "Funny that you think your brother's so like your dad when it's you that's the carbon copy. Both of you moody bastards, butting up against each other all the damn time." He snorts. "You both wanted to run the show, that was the problem with you and your dad. Two chiefs, and your brother the injun stuck in the middle trying to hold you two apart."
Sam bristles. "Are you saying I should have stuck around and just followed orders?" Like Dean? hovers on the end of the sentence, unspoken, but Sam thinks maybe Bobby can hear it even so because the old man's tone goes sharper.
"No, I'm not saying that, Sam. Look…" Bobby's tone loses its edge, becomes even, noncommittal. "Like I said. Your dad had his reasons."
Sam exhales out some of his tension. "The demon that killed mom."
"Yep," Bobby concedes. "The demon that killed your mom."
"What do you know about it?" Sam fishes, throwing the old man a quick glance.
Bobby stares resolutely ahead. "About as much as you, kid."
Sam can sense it's a dead end, can't really work out if it's natural or whether Bobby just put a roadblock in his path. He doesn't persist, changes the subject. "Did Dean miss me when I left?" he asks, though he doesn't know why he should settle on that topic.
Bobby still stares ahead of him. "Yeah," he says. "He missed you."
"You don't think I should have left," Sam offers.
The old man looks at him then, astonishment plain on his face as his eyebrows shoot up under the peak of his cap. "Of course I think you should have left," he splutters. "I wish your brother had too, Sam, believe me. I don't blame you. God knows, I wouldn't have chosen this for you boys."
"But you were mad at me for doing it," Sam points out, and he knows Bobby was, remembers his tone of disbelief when he folded Sam's letter back up, thrust it at him. Don't ask me how you tell him you're leaving Sam. I don't have the words.
"Not mad, kid," Bobby says wearily. "Just - I just couldn't believe you'd actually do it. Leave him." He blows out as he considers it. "You were his whole life, you know that," he goes on. "I know you had your reasons, God knows I do. Like I said, I think you were right. What kid wants this life? I'm not stupid, I saw the look on your face every time your brother got himself in trouble stepping in front of you. And you got banged up pretty bad yourself, Sam, more than once. Who needs that? A kid with your brains, you could do anything. But, like I said. I couldn't believe you'd do it… it was the doing of it. Jesus. I don't know…" He rubs at his beard. "I've been in this hole for a couple of days, Sam. I'm not making much sense, I know."
"I knew I could do more," Sam murmurs, lost for a moment in the memories the old man's words evoke.
"And so did Dean, and he was proud, real proud." Bobby nudges Sam with his shoulder. "He was never mad at you for going, Sam. Fact, some part of him was relieved you were away from the life… he knew you hated it. But it broke his heart. I'm not going to lie and pretend it was all fine. He was hitting the liquor pretty hard there for a while, and he was reckless." Bobby manages a dry chuckle. "And the skirt, Jesus. How he stayed awake by day is beyond me, because he sure wasn't sleeping his nights away. Your dad threatened to castrate him one time."
Sam can sense the old man smiling in the dark. "Did he talk about me?" he says.
"When he'd done enough shots," Bobby says, rueful now. "He said that when the feds finally caught up to him and he was on Death Row, you'd be his lawyer and you'd get him off at the last minute on some technicality only you managed to think up. Said you'd be just like that TV lawyer… who was it?"
"Matlock," Sam recalls.
Bobby shakes his head. "No… Al something."
"Alan Shore."
"Ally McBeal. That was it."
"Ally McBeal?" Sam yelps.
"Yeah, that one," Bobby nods. "He'd call you too. Call after call. I heard him through the bedroom wall." He looks at Sam. "You never picked up, and you never called him back," he says meaningfully. "Touch of the John Winchesters there, Sam?"
Sam looks down. "I thought a clean break would be easier."
"Easier for who?" Bobby prods.
Sam doesn't know. Or maybe he does. But he doesn't think about it if he can help it, and he sure as hell doesn't think about it now. "It was hard for me too," he mutters. "No safety net, no security. He was all I really had, Bobby, you know me and my dad were at loggerheads all the damn time when he was actually there. But Dean… Dean was always there."
"Did you miss him?"
It's the question Sam asked in reverse, and it's a challenge, he can hear it in the old man's voice. "I would have taken him with me," he says softly. "That was the plan. I was going to ask him."
"But you didn't," Bobby knocks back.
"No. I didn't," Sam concedes. "I thought he'd say no."
Bobby makes an unidentifiable noise and Sam eyes him.
"What?"
The old man shrugs. "When he was hammered he'd get real maudlin, say he wanted to go see you but that he might just embarrass you in front of your high faluting college buddies. So…" He pauses for a second. "Maybe you didn't ask because you thought he'd say yes."
It cuts closer to the bone than Sam has admitted even to himself. "I missed him," he whispers. "I did. But… at the same time, I didn't. I wanted to be me. Not his idea of me. I wanted a life outside of Dean, outside of this life."
He casts a look at Bobby, senses no hostility or judgment in the old man's demeanor. So, "I'm twenty-three, Bobby," he presses on. "And this is what stretches out before me, and until when? Until I'm too slow, until I miss, until I'm outnumbered because Dean got taken out stepping in front of me. I don't want that, Bobby. I'm not like Dean. I want to live slow, die old and leave a really ugly, wrinkled corpse. Heck, I want to see twenty-four if I can. And I never, never want to see my brother take the fall for me. But here I am, sucked back into this. And yeah, it's partly because of Jessica, but… Dean needs. So fucking much. And there isn't room for me in that need, and sometimes I think maybe I'll never be able to walk away again. And it makes me feel trapped."
"Maybe your brother feels the same way," Bobby says quietly, after a moment. "You ever thought of that? He's just a kid himself, Sam. He's trapped just as much as you, by his sense of responsibility, and his loyalty. Are you telling me you seriously think he'd choose this life, choose to die young and bloody?"
It pulls Sam up abruptly, because no, he never has thought of that. Never has thought Dean might yearn for the things he yearns for, for a life outside the hunt, although suddenly in his head he can hear his brother's choked-out words from before, right after the woods, I had them too you know. Dreams… He's just trying to formulate a response when the voice wafts up, faint, exhausted.
"Do you mind? I'm trying to sleep over here."
Sam is already tipping forward onto his hands and knees, crawling over to her. "Do you know me? Kathleen?"
She's staring up, and the moonlight seeping in from above makes the whites of her eyes glimmer.
"Kathleen?" Sam repeats, urgent now, because he needs information. "Come on, please…"
Hudak's eyes flicker like she's coming out of a trance. "Help me sit up, Sam," she says. "And yes, of course I know you."
The relief is like a warm comfort in Sam's chest. Answers, he's thinking as he threads his hands under her arms to support her. "Dean," he says. "Where is he? Is he still in the cabin?"
She shakes her head, wincing at the motion and Sam feels a shot of hope. "He got out? Kathleen, did he get out?"
Hudak groans, presses a hand to her head. "Jesus," she mutters. "Head. Hurts."
Bobby leans in. "Kathleen, you fell down here with us, or it threw you in, one or the other. Do you remember what happened up there? Can you tell us about Dean?"
She slumps forward into her palms, voice muffled. "I feel sick. I have percussion."
"Concussion," Sam supplies.
"No. Percussion. In my head. Drums." Hudak peers at him through her fingers. "Concussion too, maybe."
"Okay, but what about Dean?" Sam knows how damned insensitive he must sound, but he persists anyway. "I know your head hurts, but-"
"Other parts too."
Bobby leans in then, unexpectedly curt. "Kathleen. Cut the crap. Where is Dean?"
Sam's mouth drops open and when Hudak's face reappears from behind her hands, her expression mimics his.
"Out there," she says, her voice steady. "He choked me out and left me cuffed to the fireplace with a box of paperclips. He took the flaregun and the poker-"
"But how was he even walking?" Sam gapes.
"Speed," she elaborates. "There was some in the first aid kit at the cabin."
Sam knows he must be bitchfacing at her, because she hurries on, defensive now.
"There was no other way. We had to get out and he never would have gotten up otherwise. He took the pills, he was high as a kite, talking a blue streak. I strapped the leg, splinted it, scavenged some wood for a crutch." She leans to the side, winces as she digs in her pocket, waves a scrap of paper. "He wrote me a dear John letter."
Sam takes it, stands, holds it up to the shaft of light, squints at the scrawled words.
"What condition was he in?" Bobby says from behind Sam, and Hudak huffs.
"Perky. Chatty. Perky, chatty dead man walking, basically. His leg…"
Sam glances back, sees her shaking her head at Bobby.
"His leg was a mess."
"Did the thing come back?" Sam asks. "Or Bender?"
Hudak bites her lip. "Not the wendigo, but Bender was hovering around the cabin as I left. I shot him full of rock salt and phhttt. I heard you shouting… and then that thing came out of nowhere, I didn't even have time to aim at it." Her tone is astonishment, disbelief. "You were right behind the cabin all along. Jesus… who writes this stuff?"
Sam rolls his eyes, looks up at the opening above. "How tall are you?"
"Five five," she tells him, and she sounds doubtful as she adds, "And please don't tell me you're planning to toss me up there."
"We've been trying to get up there," Bobby confirms wearily. "Maybe if we can get you up on Sam's shoulders, you can make a grab for the rope."
Hudak peers up herself, to where the moonlight is glowing overhead. "The moon," she murmurs. "It's still red."
Bobby glances up at Sam, back at her. "It means we don't have much time," he says, and her head shoots around, her hand flying up to the back of her skull as she yelps.
"Christ…" She breathes deep for a minute. "Who's next, Bobby?" she asks. "Has it finished with the others?"
Bobby clears his throat. "We, uh, think it might have finished with them," he says quietly.
"You're next," she breathes.
"I'm next," he confirms. "But it's dark, so it might not be back now till sunup. Gives us some time."
"Help me up," she says, reaching up a hand, and Sam heaves her up onto her feet, steadies her as she rocks.
"I'm ready," she says, and she smiles weakly.
And then the weird thing is that Sam is snatched away, wrestled to the ground, and he can see her falling, see Bobby catching her, has no clue what the hell is happening to him, only that he's being spun, tossed, crashed up against the walls, along to the accompaniment of shouts and cries from afar. And then he's pinned by a vise-like grip at his throat, and he remembers in that split second that the wendigo moved house, moved house because it was lonely and because its roommate didn't like the neighborhood, didn't like the iron, because he's staring into pig eyes, penetrating eyes, doughy folds of flesh. Up this close he could swear Lee is sweating, and he wonders if ghosts actually can or if it might be suspended animation sweat, the glisten of sweat that was slicking Bender's skin when Sam was pummeling him back then, when he was sinking the knife in and feeling it grind through vertebrae, twisting it to make damned sure there was no coming back. No coming back… how fucking ironic is that, Sam thinks, as his vision begins to speckle wildly, like the floaters he counts on the screen behind his eyelids every night as he drifts off all escaped and took over the world, because they're floating everywhere now.
And then, abruptly, his knees buckle and he crumples down on to his butt, sucking in oxygen. Bender is gone and Bobby is on his knees in front of Sam, big hands gripping his face.
"Sam? You with us?"
"What the hell just happened?" Sam chokes out, and then Bobby is waving a bottle of water under his nose. He takes it gratefully, gulps a mouthful as Hudak drifts into view.
"Salt," she says, and she's holding something up in front of Sam's face, swinging it from side to side.
"That's a tube sock," he rasps, reaches up to rub his neck. "God."
"A tube sock full of salt," she says, reaching in for a pinch of the white stuff and tossing it over her left shoulder. "Might as well keep the devil at bay while we're here." And she's laughing, almost maniacal, maybe even tearful. "Jesus. I'm fighting off ghosts with a tube sock of salt. If they could see me now."
Bobby pushes up, takes her arm, guides her over to the opposite wall and sits her down, and then he's back. "Her pockets are full of salt too," he says, admiringly. "Woman thinks of everything. Might be enough for a perimeter line if we all sit close together. Come on."
He moves to pull Sam up but Sam shakes his head. "Nope, not happening. I'll crawl." He all-fours it over next to Hudak, flops down. "Just a couple of minutes," he sighs out. "Then we try for the rope. Think you can do it?"
She's leaning her head back, eyes closed, and the red light from above catches her face. Sam can see the exhaustion, the strain that tugs at her features again now she's conscious. "I can do it," she murmurs. "You'll have to bounce from the knees though."
And Sam hears Bobby's snort, and he smiles despite himself.
The air is light and cool on Dean's face and he opens his eyes and stares up at the roof of the world, sees darker patches, foamy clouds scudding along in an inky sky, and the moon, huge, blood-red and blotched with darker red-wine-stain lunar plains, long dead seas. Tranquility, he thinks to himself. Tranquility. Serenity. Safe.
The trees are sighing, rustling, whispering in the night, reaching up through the mist, touching the sky, trailing fingertip branches across the sea of clouds, and Dean can smell the damp, the earthiness of it. Reborn here, he was. And now he will die here.
He's weightless, and he has a memory of being carried through these woods before, cradled in someone's arms, pressed against skin, and he grips someone's arm. Sam.
But no. Too cold, this flesh; too clammy, diseased, foul, unholy. Not Sam.
But… Dean is cocooned, comforted. It doesn't speak, it doesn't feel, its humanity is long gone. But somehow it soothes, and he thinks he might die in peace after all.
They cry out in unison when it drops into the pit, graceful, bending at the knees and pushing smoothly up to its full height, and for an absurd second Sam wonders if it might even raise its arms and twist to the right, then to the left, and then wave to the adoring crowds; and maybe they will all silently produce score cards, five point nine, five point eight, maybe Hudak will give it the perfect six. Only it doesn't reach up because it holds his brother in its arms, and Sam can't pull out his score card, can't move, can't even speak through his swelling, aching throat, because his brother is dead, his head lolling, his arm swinging; he's boneless, battered, bleeding, a length of gray tape trailing from his blood-soaked ankle.
Sam senses rather than sees or hears Hudak turn her face into Bobby's shoulder, and the old man folds her up against him with his arm shielding her, but Sam doesn't see that, he just knows that's how it happens. He gasps out his brother's name, but he doesn't hear himself say it or feel his lips form the word, he just knows that he does it. He can't breathe, and his heart slows to a crawl, beating so loud in his ears that it drowns out anything and everything, but he doesn't feel it stutter in his chest or boom in his ears, he just knows that it happens. His tears stream down his cheeks and past his jaw, trickle down his neck and soak into his shirt, but he doesn't feel their progress, he just knows they fall. He knows his gasp turns into sobs, cries, howls of grief, but he doesn't hear the sound of his sorrow, he just knows he makes noise. He knows all of this because this is his nightmare made real, this is something he has endured in his head time after time, this is something he has expected since the day Dean told him about the family business. And just like Sam practiced his spelling, practiced his multiplication tables, practiced his Latin, practiced his marksmanship, practiced his knife skills, he has practiced for this moment, practiced for this death. He knows exactly how he is reacting, but he won't feel it. Won't let himself feel it, keeps himself removed from it, apart from it.
Something is shaking him, shaking him hard.
"Let me alone," he murmurs mechanically. "Let me alone."
Harder now, the shaking, and a face is in front of him, eyes gazing into his, desolate eyes.
"Sam, snap out of it."
No. He never will, maybe he'll stay suspended in this moment forever, so he doesn't have to move forward alone.
"Sam, look at me. He's alive. Look at me."
Bobby is nose to nose with Sam, pretty much. "Sam. He's alive. He's moving, making sounds. He's alive."
Sam has been soaring somewhere up in the stratosphere, but he's hang-gliding in fast and hard now for a crash landing, and it's like he hits the ground running, way too fast, arms windmilling. He overshoots himself and pitches right onto his nose, but solid ground is the best feeling in the world, and Sam leans forward into a crouch, stealthy and prowling closer, ignoring Bobby's warning hiss as he stares, watches, craves a sign. And there it is: the twitch of fingers, the faintest whistle of labored breath, eyes moving rapidly under their lids.
The thing sits in its boneyard, crosslegged like a kindergartner at circle time, with Dean nestled close to its heart, and there is just no fucking way Sam will sit for that because he is damned to the ninth ring of hell if his brother is dying in a monster's embrace. He reaches out his hands, says the words firmly, clearly. "Give him to me."
It stares at him, insolent, quirks its head slightly, and it doesn't speak but Sam could swear its eyes are lasering out a clear message, right at him. Or what?
"He'll die," Sam tells it. "Give him to me."
And Christ, but he can see something in its eyes, like the glow is dying, fading. Something in its eyes that's like contemplation, consideration, deliberation. It's fucking mulling, he realizes, weighing up what it should do, maybe even making a mental list of the pros and cons, and he sees it grip his brother fractionally tighter, protective, protecting Dean from him, and how fucking dare it think he's a threat to his own brother.
It makes a low, throaty sound, the kind of sound Sam has heard tomcats make when they're squaring off against each other, a continuous, threatening, mewling growl, and the glow starts up in its eyes again.
Sam sifts through his brain for something, anything that will halt this stalemate, seizes on the only thing he can think of. "Kin," he says, and he taps at his chest. "Kin."
Its neck must be freakishly long and stretchy because it seems to lunge without really moving and then its face is just inches from Sam's. For a second he's enveloped in hot, steamy air, can see down past serrated two-inch long fangs into its ridged red throat, see the taste buds on its tongue, see its uvula jiggling wildly, see its fucking tonsils, because it was a man once, it had humanity, it wrote down its regret, its sorrow and its contrition in its journals, and it pleaded for God's help and mercy as it succumbed to madness.
"Please," Sam whispers, and he appeals to something long dead, long corrupted. Appeals to Gabe Bender. "Please give me my brother. He's dying."
Nothing, and Bobby whispers from behind him. "Try backing away from it. See what it does."
Sam crawls backward, under the thing's measured stare.
And gently, carefully, like it's handling something precious, something delicate and brittle that might shatter at the slightest pressure, it leans forward and lays Dean down on the ground, and backs away into its corner.
Just as gently, just as carefully, Sam eases his hands under his brother's shoulders, pulls him back over to the wall beside Bobby and Hudak, keeps one eye on the thing as Bobby falls on Dean like a starving man on a steak dinner, efficiently checking his pulse, pacing a hand on his brow, crawling down to examine his foot.
Hudak eases painfully out of her shirt, rips at it with her teeth, starts tearing it into strips. "Do you think it would fetch my pack?" she asks Sam, glancing over to where it sits and observes them. "If you asked it nicely? Since you seem to have built up a rapport with it?"
Sam's not entirely sure if she's joking. "Do you think it understands?" he mutters, as he reaches for the bottle of water, leans over and starts trickling single drops into his brother's mouth.
"This is filthy," Bobby says from the other end of Dean's slumped body. "I'll have to take off the boot."
"Yeah, I think it understands," Hudak says. "When it first saw him, it damn well understood. And if it's been working with Bender it must, surely?"
Dean makes a tiny choking sound and his eyes flutter open, look up, black and bottomless, and he's looking at nothing, doesn't really see Sam as his eyes wander from right to left.
"I think he hit his head," Sam says urgently. "His pupils are blown. Doesn't that mean-"
"It could be the drugs," Hudak interjects. "He might have taken more while he was out there…" She trails off as gobbling, smacking noises start up from the corner, and she grimaces. "Is that it eating?" She looks from Sam to Bobby, back again at Sam, mouths the words, "We have to get out of here."
Sam sees the message in her eyes. Bobby's next. And not for one fraction of a second does he think this temporary truce of sorts means the thing won't fall on them and tear them asunder when its hunger gripes and pangs again. He appealed to this thing's dormant humanity, but he knows its basic instincts will show them no mercy. And even as he gazes into his brother's confused, drowsy eyes, his brain is racing, churning, cogs are whirring, axles are spinning, gears are grinding, pistons are firing, all towards a common end: a way to kill it when they have no weapons.
Next
Hudak cracks her eyes briefly only to be confronted the sight of a gigantic head looming up in the half-light. "Big giant head," she slurs. "You got that job by kissing the big giant butt."
The big giant head's voice booms down at her and she closes her eyes, winces. Incoming message from the big giant head.
Inside her own head is… one long endless drumroll, that's what it is, like she's just about to do her famous trapeze act without a safety net, or as if some guy dressed as a Cossack is throwing flaming knives at her. Bass drums, snare drums, bongo drums, those quirky little drums they play at Irish ceilidhs… bodhráns, that's it, she thinks. Irish stepdancers with those clumpy shoes, riverdancing through her head. Cowbells. "More cowbell," she whispers. "Michael Flatley is in my head."
The big giant head looms closer and its mouth opens again. "Kathleen. You hit your head."
She squints up at it. "No need to shout," she whispers.
"Kathleen. Where's Dean? You said he was up on his feet. Where is he? Does he have a weapon?"
She scowls. "Who the hell are you?"
The big giant head's eyes grow huge. "Oh man, you have to be kidding me. Bobby. She doesn't know me-"
"Of course I know you," Hudak snaps irritably, and rolls her eyes even though she thinks it might have made them just pop out of their sockets and bounce off her face down to the ground. "And you need a haircut."
"Then who am I?" the big giant head says.
"You are number six," Hudak tells it, and she smiles, maybe even bats her eyelashes up at the head for a minute before it's time to sleep again.
"What do you think?" Sam broaches as he glances over at Bobby. "It was a pretty hard knock."
The old man shakes his head. "Hard to tell. She hit it at the back, skull's thicker there. The sides are the most fragile."
"She thought I was the big giant head," Sam says, frowning.
"There's a the big giant head?" Bobby replies. "I thought she was just talking about your big giant head."
"No. The big giant head," Sam clarifies. "Third Rock from the Sun. Dean loved that show."
Bobby's voice is suddenly strained. "Don't talk about him in the past tense, Sam. We don't-"
"No," Sam cuts in, swift. "The TV show is past tense. Old, I mean. The TV show. Not…" He trails off. "She thought I was number six too. That's from The Prisoner. And I think she thought she was on Saturday Night Live. And I was Michael Flatley for a second there, too."
"Man of a thousand faces," Bobby snarks, voice milder now.
"We need her awake," Sam says. "If I can get her up on my shoulders she might be able to reach the rope…" He bends his knees, steeples his palms on them, rests his chin on his fingertips and stares up at the frayed end, hanging a foot or so over the lip of the cellar. And the gun, they'd heard gunfire. A weapon, so tantalizingly near, and yet so far.
"If you bounce from the knees?" Bobby retorts witheringly. "It hasn't worked so far."
"We have to keep trying," Sam decides. "We can't reach it because you can't bounce me high enough. She's lighter than me, I could definitely bounce her higher." He nods. "I'm going to wake her."
He starts pushing up, but Bobby puts a hand on his arm.
"Leave her," he says softly. "It was a hard knock and she isn't up to this right now."
"But we heard her fire the gun, it must be up there if she dropped it when-"
"Sam." Bobby is gentle still, but he's firm. "Leave her. She'll fall again, hurt herself worse. Just let her rest for now. Thing'll likely stay out now until dawn."
"Stay out until dawn hunting," Sam mutters. Hunting my brother, he thinks, and he shivers. He hates this loss of hope, the miasma of thick, cloying defeat that shrouds them like a nineteen fifties smog, the inaction, the waiting. He stands, looks longingly up. It's getting darker out there.
"Where do you think it is?" Bobby says, and every word is sprinkled with the fragments of what he isn't saying. Where do you think Dean is?
Sam hazards a glance back and down, and despite his weariness, Bobby's face is all lit up with the hope that Sam's going to tell him the thing is probably off hunting hikers, that it turned right when Dean turned left. "Kathleen said Dean was up and at it, so his foot can't have been as bad as it looked," he tells the old man, and he even manages to sound confident. "They had the guns, the silver bullets. The flaregun was in my pack too. It wouldn't surprise me if he's up a tree laying in wait for it."
Bobby nods. "Kid's pretty resourceful. I doubt that thing could out-maneuver him."
Not at his best, Sam concedes inwardly. But he saw the damage from the trap, knows Dean isn't at his best, suspects he's stumbling, unseeing and scared out of his mind, through these woods while his foot steadily rots on the end of his leg and Bender pops up like a jack-in-the-box every five minutes. He swallows thickly, glances over at Hudak. She's peaceful, all the tension smoothed out of her features, and Sam wonders abstractedly if everyone looks like a kid when they sleep, if maybe Dean doesn't have the lock on it after all, because in slumber she sheds a decade just like his brother does. And then… there's something there, something on the air seeping in from above, and he cocks his head, listens intently.
"What?" Bobby says, sharply.
Sam holds up a hand. "Shhhh…"
It's just there, faint, distant, Sam is sure of it. And he listens, wills his ears off the side of his head so that they flutter up the top of the pit like butterflies and perch there, basking in the cool night air. Only that doesn't happen, because they remain firmly attached to the sides of his head and the sound is gone. "Nothing," he sighs. "It was nothing. Just hearing things that aren't there." Because, dear God in Heaven, don't let his brother still be there. Let him be long gone. I believe in you, God, he says to himself, and inside his head he throws himself at the feet of one of those cold marble statues of the man upstairs, prostrates himself in submission with his nose pressed firmly on the strap of God's thong sandal, Jesus boots, he can hear Dean snigger, God wears Jesus boots, Sammy. Please help my brother. Please get my brother out of here, Sam prays, and he clenches his fists so hard he can feel his fingernails digging little crescent moons in the skin of his palms.
"Did you tell your dad what happened to Dean?" Bobby says.
It's out of the blue, catches Sam off-guard. "Uh. No. No, I didn't," he says, as he moves to set himself down on the ground again. "It's not really my decision. Don't you think?"
Bobby huffs out. "Yeah. I guess."
"Anyway," Sam adds, and he can't help the snippish note that sneaks into his voice. "Dad never even called me back when I told him Dean was missing. Though he called you."
"Well," Bobby says carefully. "Technically I called him."
"And he picked up," Sam notes.
Nodding slowly, Bobby says, "He picked up."
Sam snorts. "I look forward to that happening one of these days when I call him."
It hangs there in the silence for a few moments until Bobby clears his throat. "I don't have an answer for you, Sam," he says. "I don't agree with some of what your dad's done over the last twenty years with you boys, but he had his reasons. There's things that you-"
"Don't know?" Sam snaps. "Things that I don't know? But that you do know?"
Bobby meets his gaze. "Something like that," he says steadily. "If your dad isn't telling you, it's because that's the best way he knows to keep you boys safe."
"But if there's something, some reason he cut us loose, cut Dean loose, and you know what that reason is, you could tell me," Sam persists.
Bobby still stares right at him. "It's not really my decision," he says quietly. "Don't you think?"
Sam loses the staring game, and he slumps disconsolately back against the wall. "Dad would have a meltdown if he knew what happened to Dean," he bitches. "Dean's his soldier boy. The perfect son."
Bobby doesn't rise to it. "You know that isn't true, Sam. Your dad doesn't play favorites, boy. Your brother's just less liable than you are to clash with him."
And Sam does know, he really does, and anyway it's an unsettling reminder of what he spat so bitterly at Dean in Rockford, so he puts it in his mental bottom drawer and piles a couple of blankets on it to muffle its sheer spite, and changes the subject, sort of. "Dad left Dean out there by himself."
"Well," Bobby muses. "Dean had done ten or twelve pretty hard hunts by himself before your dad upped and left, so he was-"
"Hurt," Sam cuts in. "Did he ever get hurt?" He doesn't really know why he's asking, he knows the answer - he's seen the scars. "Tell me about my brother," he rushes out before Bobby can reply. "Tell me about my brother when I wasn't there. Tell me everything."
Bobby just studies Sam for a moment, and just when Sam thinks the old man is going to say it isn't his place, Bobby shrugs. "He was pretty charged. Yeah." He nods to himself then, smiles at some memory Sam isn't party to, and Sam feels a stab of jealousy that surprises him.
"He did get hurt pretty bad, three or four times," Bobby goes on. "One time I had to drive down to the panhandle to fetch him back… harpy cut him up real bad. You remember all those marks on his ribs, left side? At Bender's?"
Sam nods mutely.
"And that scar low down on his hip? He cauterized it himself." The old man shivers. "Tough kid. The toughest."
"He shouldn't have to be," Sam snaps. "He should have had a chance. A shot at something else. He was good with his hands. Is good with them. He's good with cars. And dad, dad…" He finds his hands up on his cheeks, stretching the skin, stretching out the tension, the frustration. "Dad turned him into a killer. Into John Winchester's mini-me."
Bobby gives a low chuckle, shakes his head.
"What?" Sam challenges.
"It's just funny," Bobby says. "Funny that you think your brother's so like your dad when it's you that's the carbon copy. Both of you moody bastards, butting up against each other all the damn time." He snorts. "You both wanted to run the show, that was the problem with you and your dad. Two chiefs, and your brother the injun stuck in the middle trying to hold you two apart."
Sam bristles. "Are you saying I should have stuck around and just followed orders?" Like Dean? hovers on the end of the sentence, unspoken, but Sam thinks maybe Bobby can hear it even so because the old man's tone goes sharper.
"No, I'm not saying that, Sam. Look…" Bobby's tone loses its edge, becomes even, noncommittal. "Like I said. Your dad had his reasons."
Sam exhales out some of his tension. "The demon that killed mom."
"Yep," Bobby concedes. "The demon that killed your mom."
"What do you know about it?" Sam fishes, throwing the old man a quick glance.
Bobby stares resolutely ahead. "About as much as you, kid."
Sam can sense it's a dead end, can't really work out if it's natural or whether Bobby just put a roadblock in his path. He doesn't persist, changes the subject. "Did Dean miss me when I left?" he asks, though he doesn't know why he should settle on that topic.
Bobby still stares ahead of him. "Yeah," he says. "He missed you."
"You don't think I should have left," Sam offers.
The old man looks at him then, astonishment plain on his face as his eyebrows shoot up under the peak of his cap. "Of course I think you should have left," he splutters. "I wish your brother had too, Sam, believe me. I don't blame you. God knows, I wouldn't have chosen this for you boys."
"But you were mad at me for doing it," Sam points out, and he knows Bobby was, remembers his tone of disbelief when he folded Sam's letter back up, thrust it at him. Don't ask me how you tell him you're leaving Sam. I don't have the words.
"Not mad, kid," Bobby says wearily. "Just - I just couldn't believe you'd actually do it. Leave him." He blows out as he considers it. "You were his whole life, you know that," he goes on. "I know you had your reasons, God knows I do. Like I said, I think you were right. What kid wants this life? I'm not stupid, I saw the look on your face every time your brother got himself in trouble stepping in front of you. And you got banged up pretty bad yourself, Sam, more than once. Who needs that? A kid with your brains, you could do anything. But, like I said. I couldn't believe you'd do it… it was the doing of it. Jesus. I don't know…" He rubs at his beard. "I've been in this hole for a couple of days, Sam. I'm not making much sense, I know."
"I knew I could do more," Sam murmurs, lost for a moment in the memories the old man's words evoke.
"And so did Dean, and he was proud, real proud." Bobby nudges Sam with his shoulder. "He was never mad at you for going, Sam. Fact, some part of him was relieved you were away from the life… he knew you hated it. But it broke his heart. I'm not going to lie and pretend it was all fine. He was hitting the liquor pretty hard there for a while, and he was reckless." Bobby manages a dry chuckle. "And the skirt, Jesus. How he stayed awake by day is beyond me, because he sure wasn't sleeping his nights away. Your dad threatened to castrate him one time."
Sam can sense the old man smiling in the dark. "Did he talk about me?" he says.
"When he'd done enough shots," Bobby says, rueful now. "He said that when the feds finally caught up to him and he was on Death Row, you'd be his lawyer and you'd get him off at the last minute on some technicality only you managed to think up. Said you'd be just like that TV lawyer… who was it?"
"Matlock," Sam recalls.
Bobby shakes his head. "No… Al something."
"Alan Shore."
"Ally McBeal. That was it."
"Ally McBeal?" Sam yelps.
"Yeah, that one," Bobby nods. "He'd call you too. Call after call. I heard him through the bedroom wall." He looks at Sam. "You never picked up, and you never called him back," he says meaningfully. "Touch of the John Winchesters there, Sam?"
Sam looks down. "I thought a clean break would be easier."
"Easier for who?" Bobby prods.
Sam doesn't know. Or maybe he does. But he doesn't think about it if he can help it, and he sure as hell doesn't think about it now. "It was hard for me too," he mutters. "No safety net, no security. He was all I really had, Bobby, you know me and my dad were at loggerheads all the damn time when he was actually there. But Dean… Dean was always there."
"Did you miss him?"
It's the question Sam asked in reverse, and it's a challenge, he can hear it in the old man's voice. "I would have taken him with me," he says softly. "That was the plan. I was going to ask him."
"But you didn't," Bobby knocks back.
"No. I didn't," Sam concedes. "I thought he'd say no."
Bobby makes an unidentifiable noise and Sam eyes him.
"What?"
The old man shrugs. "When he was hammered he'd get real maudlin, say he wanted to go see you but that he might just embarrass you in front of your high faluting college buddies. So…" He pauses for a second. "Maybe you didn't ask because you thought he'd say yes."
It cuts closer to the bone than Sam has admitted even to himself. "I missed him," he whispers. "I did. But… at the same time, I didn't. I wanted to be me. Not his idea of me. I wanted a life outside of Dean, outside of this life."
He casts a look at Bobby, senses no hostility or judgment in the old man's demeanor. So, "I'm twenty-three, Bobby," he presses on. "And this is what stretches out before me, and until when? Until I'm too slow, until I miss, until I'm outnumbered because Dean got taken out stepping in front of me. I don't want that, Bobby. I'm not like Dean. I want to live slow, die old and leave a really ugly, wrinkled corpse. Heck, I want to see twenty-four if I can. And I never, never want to see my brother take the fall for me. But here I am, sucked back into this. And yeah, it's partly because of Jessica, but… Dean needs. So fucking much. And there isn't room for me in that need, and sometimes I think maybe I'll never be able to walk away again. And it makes me feel trapped."
"Maybe your brother feels the same way," Bobby says quietly, after a moment. "You ever thought of that? He's just a kid himself, Sam. He's trapped just as much as you, by his sense of responsibility, and his loyalty. Are you telling me you seriously think he'd choose this life, choose to die young and bloody?"
It pulls Sam up abruptly, because no, he never has thought of that. Never has thought Dean might yearn for the things he yearns for, for a life outside the hunt, although suddenly in his head he can hear his brother's choked-out words from before, right after the woods, I had them too you know. Dreams… He's just trying to formulate a response when the voice wafts up, faint, exhausted.
"Do you mind? I'm trying to sleep over here."
Sam is already tipping forward onto his hands and knees, crawling over to her. "Do you know me? Kathleen?"
She's staring up, and the moonlight seeping in from above makes the whites of her eyes glimmer.
"Kathleen?" Sam repeats, urgent now, because he needs information. "Come on, please…"
Hudak's eyes flicker like she's coming out of a trance. "Help me sit up, Sam," she says. "And yes, of course I know you."
The relief is like a warm comfort in Sam's chest. Answers, he's thinking as he threads his hands under her arms to support her. "Dean," he says. "Where is he? Is he still in the cabin?"
She shakes her head, wincing at the motion and Sam feels a shot of hope. "He got out? Kathleen, did he get out?"
Hudak groans, presses a hand to her head. "Jesus," she mutters. "Head. Hurts."
Bobby leans in. "Kathleen, you fell down here with us, or it threw you in, one or the other. Do you remember what happened up there? Can you tell us about Dean?"
She slumps forward into her palms, voice muffled. "I feel sick. I have percussion."
"Concussion," Sam supplies.
"No. Percussion. In my head. Drums." Hudak peers at him through her fingers. "Concussion too, maybe."
"Okay, but what about Dean?" Sam knows how damned insensitive he must sound, but he persists anyway. "I know your head hurts, but-"
"Other parts too."
Bobby leans in then, unexpectedly curt. "Kathleen. Cut the crap. Where is Dean?"
Sam's mouth drops open and when Hudak's face reappears from behind her hands, her expression mimics his.
"Out there," she says, her voice steady. "He choked me out and left me cuffed to the fireplace with a box of paperclips. He took the flaregun and the poker-"
"But how was he even walking?" Sam gapes.
"Speed," she elaborates. "There was some in the first aid kit at the cabin."
Sam knows he must be bitchfacing at her, because she hurries on, defensive now.
"There was no other way. We had to get out and he never would have gotten up otherwise. He took the pills, he was high as a kite, talking a blue streak. I strapped the leg, splinted it, scavenged some wood for a crutch." She leans to the side, winces as she digs in her pocket, waves a scrap of paper. "He wrote me a dear John letter."
Sam takes it, stands, holds it up to the shaft of light, squints at the scrawled words.
"What condition was he in?" Bobby says from behind Sam, and Hudak huffs.
"Perky. Chatty. Perky, chatty dead man walking, basically. His leg…"
Sam glances back, sees her shaking her head at Bobby.
"His leg was a mess."
"Did the thing come back?" Sam asks. "Or Bender?"
Hudak bites her lip. "Not the wendigo, but Bender was hovering around the cabin as I left. I shot him full of rock salt and phhttt. I heard you shouting… and then that thing came out of nowhere, I didn't even have time to aim at it." Her tone is astonishment, disbelief. "You were right behind the cabin all along. Jesus… who writes this stuff?"
Sam rolls his eyes, looks up at the opening above. "How tall are you?"
"Five five," she tells him, and she sounds doubtful as she adds, "And please don't tell me you're planning to toss me up there."
"We've been trying to get up there," Bobby confirms wearily. "Maybe if we can get you up on Sam's shoulders, you can make a grab for the rope."
Hudak peers up herself, to where the moonlight is glowing overhead. "The moon," she murmurs. "It's still red."
Bobby glances up at Sam, back at her. "It means we don't have much time," he says, and her head shoots around, her hand flying up to the back of her skull as she yelps.
"Christ…" She breathes deep for a minute. "Who's next, Bobby?" she asks. "Has it finished with the others?"
Bobby clears his throat. "We, uh, think it might have finished with them," he says quietly.
"You're next," she breathes.
"I'm next," he confirms. "But it's dark, so it might not be back now till sunup. Gives us some time."
"Help me up," she says, reaching up a hand, and Sam heaves her up onto her feet, steadies her as she rocks.
"I'm ready," she says, and she smiles weakly.
And then the weird thing is that Sam is snatched away, wrestled to the ground, and he can see her falling, see Bobby catching her, has no clue what the hell is happening to him, only that he's being spun, tossed, crashed up against the walls, along to the accompaniment of shouts and cries from afar. And then he's pinned by a vise-like grip at his throat, and he remembers in that split second that the wendigo moved house, moved house because it was lonely and because its roommate didn't like the neighborhood, didn't like the iron, because he's staring into pig eyes, penetrating eyes, doughy folds of flesh. Up this close he could swear Lee is sweating, and he wonders if ghosts actually can or if it might be suspended animation sweat, the glisten of sweat that was slicking Bender's skin when Sam was pummeling him back then, when he was sinking the knife in and feeling it grind through vertebrae, twisting it to make damned sure there was no coming back. No coming back… how fucking ironic is that, Sam thinks, as his vision begins to speckle wildly, like the floaters he counts on the screen behind his eyelids every night as he drifts off all escaped and took over the world, because they're floating everywhere now.
And then, abruptly, his knees buckle and he crumples down on to his butt, sucking in oxygen. Bender is gone and Bobby is on his knees in front of Sam, big hands gripping his face.
"Sam? You with us?"
"What the hell just happened?" Sam chokes out, and then Bobby is waving a bottle of water under his nose. He takes it gratefully, gulps a mouthful as Hudak drifts into view.
"Salt," she says, and she's holding something up in front of Sam's face, swinging it from side to side.
"That's a tube sock," he rasps, reaches up to rub his neck. "God."
"A tube sock full of salt," she says, reaching in for a pinch of the white stuff and tossing it over her left shoulder. "Might as well keep the devil at bay while we're here." And she's laughing, almost maniacal, maybe even tearful. "Jesus. I'm fighting off ghosts with a tube sock of salt. If they could see me now."
Bobby pushes up, takes her arm, guides her over to the opposite wall and sits her down, and then he's back. "Her pockets are full of salt too," he says, admiringly. "Woman thinks of everything. Might be enough for a perimeter line if we all sit close together. Come on."
He moves to pull Sam up but Sam shakes his head. "Nope, not happening. I'll crawl." He all-fours it over next to Hudak, flops down. "Just a couple of minutes," he sighs out. "Then we try for the rope. Think you can do it?"
She's leaning her head back, eyes closed, and the red light from above catches her face. Sam can see the exhaustion, the strain that tugs at her features again now she's conscious. "I can do it," she murmurs. "You'll have to bounce from the knees though."
And Sam hears Bobby's snort, and he smiles despite himself.
The air is light and cool on Dean's face and he opens his eyes and stares up at the roof of the world, sees darker patches, foamy clouds scudding along in an inky sky, and the moon, huge, blood-red and blotched with darker red-wine-stain lunar plains, long dead seas. Tranquility, he thinks to himself. Tranquility. Serenity. Safe.
The trees are sighing, rustling, whispering in the night, reaching up through the mist, touching the sky, trailing fingertip branches across the sea of clouds, and Dean can smell the damp, the earthiness of it. Reborn here, he was. And now he will die here.
He's weightless, and he has a memory of being carried through these woods before, cradled in someone's arms, pressed against skin, and he grips someone's arm. Sam.
But no. Too cold, this flesh; too clammy, diseased, foul, unholy. Not Sam.
But… Dean is cocooned, comforted. It doesn't speak, it doesn't feel, its humanity is long gone. But somehow it soothes, and he thinks he might die in peace after all.
They cry out in unison when it drops into the pit, graceful, bending at the knees and pushing smoothly up to its full height, and for an absurd second Sam wonders if it might even raise its arms and twist to the right, then to the left, and then wave to the adoring crowds; and maybe they will all silently produce score cards, five point nine, five point eight, maybe Hudak will give it the perfect six. Only it doesn't reach up because it holds his brother in its arms, and Sam can't pull out his score card, can't move, can't even speak through his swelling, aching throat, because his brother is dead, his head lolling, his arm swinging; he's boneless, battered, bleeding, a length of gray tape trailing from his blood-soaked ankle.
Sam senses rather than sees or hears Hudak turn her face into Bobby's shoulder, and the old man folds her up against him with his arm shielding her, but Sam doesn't see that, he just knows that's how it happens. He gasps out his brother's name, but he doesn't hear himself say it or feel his lips form the word, he just knows that he does it. He can't breathe, and his heart slows to a crawl, beating so loud in his ears that it drowns out anything and everything, but he doesn't feel it stutter in his chest or boom in his ears, he just knows that it happens. His tears stream down his cheeks and past his jaw, trickle down his neck and soak into his shirt, but he doesn't feel their progress, he just knows they fall. He knows his gasp turns into sobs, cries, howls of grief, but he doesn't hear the sound of his sorrow, he just knows he makes noise. He knows all of this because this is his nightmare made real, this is something he has endured in his head time after time, this is something he has expected since the day Dean told him about the family business. And just like Sam practiced his spelling, practiced his multiplication tables, practiced his Latin, practiced his marksmanship, practiced his knife skills, he has practiced for this moment, practiced for this death. He knows exactly how he is reacting, but he won't feel it. Won't let himself feel it, keeps himself removed from it, apart from it.
Something is shaking him, shaking him hard.
"Let me alone," he murmurs mechanically. "Let me alone."
Harder now, the shaking, and a face is in front of him, eyes gazing into his, desolate eyes.
"Sam, snap out of it."
No. He never will, maybe he'll stay suspended in this moment forever, so he doesn't have to move forward alone.
"Sam, look at me. He's alive. Look at me."
Bobby is nose to nose with Sam, pretty much. "Sam. He's alive. He's moving, making sounds. He's alive."
Sam has been soaring somewhere up in the stratosphere, but he's hang-gliding in fast and hard now for a crash landing, and it's like he hits the ground running, way too fast, arms windmilling. He overshoots himself and pitches right onto his nose, but solid ground is the best feeling in the world, and Sam leans forward into a crouch, stealthy and prowling closer, ignoring Bobby's warning hiss as he stares, watches, craves a sign. And there it is: the twitch of fingers, the faintest whistle of labored breath, eyes moving rapidly under their lids.
The thing sits in its boneyard, crosslegged like a kindergartner at circle time, with Dean nestled close to its heart, and there is just no fucking way Sam will sit for that because he is damned to the ninth ring of hell if his brother is dying in a monster's embrace. He reaches out his hands, says the words firmly, clearly. "Give him to me."
It stares at him, insolent, quirks its head slightly, and it doesn't speak but Sam could swear its eyes are lasering out a clear message, right at him. Or what?
"He'll die," Sam tells it. "Give him to me."
And Christ, but he can see something in its eyes, like the glow is dying, fading. Something in its eyes that's like contemplation, consideration, deliberation. It's fucking mulling, he realizes, weighing up what it should do, maybe even making a mental list of the pros and cons, and he sees it grip his brother fractionally tighter, protective, protecting Dean from him, and how fucking dare it think he's a threat to his own brother.
It makes a low, throaty sound, the kind of sound Sam has heard tomcats make when they're squaring off against each other, a continuous, threatening, mewling growl, and the glow starts up in its eyes again.
Sam sifts through his brain for something, anything that will halt this stalemate, seizes on the only thing he can think of. "Kin," he says, and he taps at his chest. "Kin."
Its neck must be freakishly long and stretchy because it seems to lunge without really moving and then its face is just inches from Sam's. For a second he's enveloped in hot, steamy air, can see down past serrated two-inch long fangs into its ridged red throat, see the taste buds on its tongue, see its uvula jiggling wildly, see its fucking tonsils, because it was a man once, it had humanity, it wrote down its regret, its sorrow and its contrition in its journals, and it pleaded for God's help and mercy as it succumbed to madness.
"Please," Sam whispers, and he appeals to something long dead, long corrupted. Appeals to Gabe Bender. "Please give me my brother. He's dying."
Nothing, and Bobby whispers from behind him. "Try backing away from it. See what it does."
Sam crawls backward, under the thing's measured stare.
And gently, carefully, like it's handling something precious, something delicate and brittle that might shatter at the slightest pressure, it leans forward and lays Dean down on the ground, and backs away into its corner.
Just as gently, just as carefully, Sam eases his hands under his brother's shoulders, pulls him back over to the wall beside Bobby and Hudak, keeps one eye on the thing as Bobby falls on Dean like a starving man on a steak dinner, efficiently checking his pulse, pacing a hand on his brow, crawling down to examine his foot.
Hudak eases painfully out of her shirt, rips at it with her teeth, starts tearing it into strips. "Do you think it would fetch my pack?" she asks Sam, glancing over to where it sits and observes them. "If you asked it nicely? Since you seem to have built up a rapport with it?"
Sam's not entirely sure if she's joking. "Do you think it understands?" he mutters, as he reaches for the bottle of water, leans over and starts trickling single drops into his brother's mouth.
"This is filthy," Bobby says from the other end of Dean's slumped body. "I'll have to take off the boot."
"Yeah, I think it understands," Hudak says. "When it first saw him, it damn well understood. And if it's been working with Bender it must, surely?"
Dean makes a tiny choking sound and his eyes flutter open, look up, black and bottomless, and he's looking at nothing, doesn't really see Sam as his eyes wander from right to left.
"I think he hit his head," Sam says urgently. "His pupils are blown. Doesn't that mean-"
"It could be the drugs," Hudak interjects. "He might have taken more while he was out there…" She trails off as gobbling, smacking noises start up from the corner, and she grimaces. "Is that it eating?" She looks from Sam to Bobby, back again at Sam, mouths the words, "We have to get out of here."
Sam sees the message in her eyes. Bobby's next. And not for one fraction of a second does he think this temporary truce of sorts means the thing won't fall on them and tear them asunder when its hunger gripes and pangs again. He appealed to this thing's dormant humanity, but he knows its basic instincts will show them no mercy. And even as he gazes into his brother's confused, drowsy eyes, his brain is racing, churning, cogs are whirring, axles are spinning, gears are grinding, pistons are firing, all towards a common end: a way to kill it when they have no weapons.
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