The Killing Moon
7. It's Just a Shot Away
He'd be lying if he said he'd never thought about bumping into Hudak again, perhaps even bumping into her again, and again, and again, and again, in quick, sweat-drenched succession, with bare skin factoring in there somewhere, in the back of his dream car, twenty-foot long… Sometimes in his whisky-sodden haze Dean has thought about what he might say, in that low rumble chicks die for.
"You changed your hair," he blurts out. Which is totally not what he said in his whisky-sodden haze.
"I did?" she says, runs her hand through it: shorter, choppier. "I did." She smiles. "I'm sorry, I realize I should have checked with you first, Dean, but it was spur of the moment. Bobby, Sam…"
She leans in, gives the older man and his brother brief hugs and Dean finds himself wondering where the fuck his hug is, and reading all sorts of profound meaning into the fact he didn't get one. "Good to see you all," she says, a tad distracted. "Timely too."
"Trouble?" Bobby says, cutting to the chase straightaway.
"Right here in River City. G-Man, and some hotshot forensic pathologist out of DC. They had Conrad take them into the woods to the campsite-"
Bobby frowns in irritation, sucks in. "Jesus. I thought I said-"
"No point, Bobby," Hudak continues, smoothly. "This case is under FBI jurisdiction now, and I can't stop them going in to search without either telling all or taking them hostage. But. They didn't find the camera because I already have it, and there's only one fed here. He won't have enough backup and supplies for a proper search until Monday."
"Gives us a four-day headstart if we head out first thing, Bobby," Sam says.
"Will that be enough time?"
"With my crack team to lend a hand?" Bobby huffs. "We'll have to hope so. You got the camera?"
Hudak roots in her pocket, hands it over, and Bobby clicks it on, squints at the screen, Sam peering over his shoulder. "Looks pretty definite to me."
Hudak shakes her head. "This is just way beyond me at the moment. How can something like that have been out there all this time, just picking people off? How is it no one's seen it?"
Dean shrugs. "They hibernate for months or years at a time, wake up, and bam, feeding frenzy. By the time anyone notices anything, damn thing's tucked up in bed again. Pattern of disappearances mainly spring and summer?"
"As it happens, yeah," Hudak confirms. "So the feeding frenzy is this thing putting meat on its bones for the winter?"
Dean nods. "Not much out there to hunt once it gets colder." His gaze suddenly drifts off past her. "Who's that?" he says, motioning over to a tall, dark-haired young woman standing in front of the Impala, hands on hips.
"Pathologist I was talking about," Hudak says. "She's quite a character."
"I'll bet she is," Dean murmurs, and he rocks on his heels for a minute before strolling over towards the woman.
Sam watches as his brother ranges up beside the woman, and within thirty seconds she's engaged in animated conversation with him.
Hudak waits until he's out of earshot. "So," she says. "He doing okay? Looks awful skinny."
Sam shrugs. "He's… not. Not really. Later, yeah? There are some things you need to know if he's coming on this hunt with us. But - later?"
She gives him a hard stare. "Right… sorry, Sam, that's - not what I was hoping you'd say."
Sam hears her voice fracture just slightly, so slight it's almost indiscernible. It's fleeting though, because Dean is suddenly spinning on his heel and heading back towards them, walking fast, head down. "This," Hudak says through a grin, "is going to be priceless. Woman's a space cadet. Savor the moment."
Dean pulls up in front of them, tries not to catch their eyes, blurts out, "Nothing," before any of them even speaks.
"Are you blushing boy?" Bobby enquires. "She blind you with science?"
When Dean looks up, his face is stained pink.
"Dean?" Sam prods.
"She asked me for a - donation," his brother hisses, looks down at his boots and scuffs them in the dirt.
"A donation for what?" Sam says, mystified.
Dean looks up, eyes hurling daggers at Sam, leans in close. "For. Her. Eggs."
"A donation for her eggs?" Bobby repeats. "Eggs? What the hell does that mean?"
Dean is puce by now, and as it sinks in, Sam feels laughter bubble up, throws his head back to release it, the first proper laugh he's laughed in weeks and God he needs it. "Sperm!" he cackles. "She asked you for your sperm!"
Hudak smiles beside them. "She's broody," she confides, jabs Dean in the ribs. "You should be flattered. She said the donor needed to be a perfect physical specimen."
The woman is watching them, and she waves and calls over. "Let me know when you've decided!"
The red tinge sprints up to the tips of Dean's ears, Sam notices. "Wow, Dean, even your ears are blushing," he can't help saying. "That's, like, category five embarrassment, dude."
"Shut the f-"
"Dean," the woman is calling now. "Is it? Dean? What are you doing for dinner?"
"Something else," Dean hollers back. He shuffles around so his back is turned to her, and he suddenly has this dazed, hurt expression on his face, Sam thinks, like he's been kicked.
"Dude, lighten up," he says, bops his brother on the shoulder. "You love this. Admit it. It's the kind of thing you never stop bragging about usually, and-"
Suddenly Hudak interrupts, her voice sharp. "Hey, Sam. No more, huh?"
Puzzled, Sam give her a searching look, raising his eyebrows. "What? What did I say?" he asks, looks from her to Dean to Bobby, who looks just as baffled as Sam feels.
"I'm glad you think it's so fuckin' funny, Sam," Dean says softly. "Nothing like being the comic relief after all." He glances over towards the Impala, sees the woman is nowhere in sight. "I'll wait in the car," he mutters, and he stalks over to it, gets in and slams the door.
Sam sighs. "This is what I mean," he tells Hudak, sees Bobby nodding beside him. "He's all over the place, he's drinking like it's going out of fashion. He's like Jekyll and Hyde. What the hell was that even about?"
Hudak gives him a pointed look and Sam knows she's worked it out before him, feels like he's operating totally in the dark. "What the hell was that about?" he says again.
"I thought you'd crammed all there is to know about this, Sam," she says. "You think about it. It'll… come to you. Meantime, I think maybe I'll just go have a word with him." She turns, walks over to the car.
"I hate being the last to know," Sam grumbles, knows he sounds damn childish but Jesus if he isn't a tad pissed off at the fact female intuition has worked this out long before he has, despite the fact he's closer to his brother than anyone on the planet.
Bobby sighs. "I think I just got it," he says, ruefully.
"What? What is it? Bobby?"
"Oy." Bobby just shakes his head, points to a diner across the street. "Caffeine." He starts walking, pauses and looks back over his shoulder. "Think about it, kid," he says. "Like she said. It'll come to you.
Sam stares after him, racks his brain.
And finally he gets it.
And he suddenly remembers the girl, back at Bobby's. Don't ask, don't tell… No wonder his brother had been so damn circumspect about it, when his usual MO was tell all, in 3-D smell-o-vision.
Crap.
Hudak taps on the side window and Dean jumps slightly as she opens the door, says, "Mind if I join you?"
He flaps his hand vaguely. "Would it make a difference if I did?"
"No." She smiles as she gets in and pulls the door over. "So…"
Dean raises his eyebrows. "So back."
She shifts in the seat and stares out front. "Your brother isn't a mind reader, Dean."
He laughs at that. "Thank God." He wonders briefly if Sam told her anything about his shining, his visions, wonders for split second if, shit, his brother can read minds and just hasn't told him, mentally talks himself out of that one speedy quick because it's just too fuckin' awful to contemplate and, besides, it's damned obvious Sam doesn't have a clue about what's going on inside his head, because if he did… he shudders.
"What I mean is that it's a tad unfair to expect him to edit himself as he goes along just in case he causes offense."
Dean nods this time. "I know exactly what you mean, Kathleen. Fact, didn't we already have this conversation? You think I should be baring my heart and soul to him."
"Well. That isn't quite how I'd put it. But basically, yeah. He needs to know. Don't you think?"
Dean throws her a sideways glance, eyes narrowed. "Not everything. He doesn't need to know everything. And since you seemed to work it out, I'd rather he didn't know that."
She considers. "Okay. I guess the whole male pride thing isn't something I have much insight into. Of course, I tend towards the theory that you have way more to offer than that anyway."
Well, heck. Dean stretches, shuffles his butt closer, snakes his arm out along the back of the bench seat. "Here we are, Kathleen," he says. "The floor is yours. Why don't you tell me just what I have to offer?"
He looks at her, and she looks at him. She smiles and he smiles back, sort of. And it's suddenly comfortable between them.
"Sam says you're drinking pretty heavily."
He shrugs. "Yeah, as it happens. I am. I drink to forget." His tone is light but Dean knows she can damn well see past it, so he drops it in short order. "I get these… bad dreams. Flashbacks, I guess. Don't even remember when I wake up. What I said, what I did." Something occurs to him and he pulls a face. "You still got that dog?"
"Yeah…" Hudak says with a frown. "Why?"
"Can you board it with a friend tonight?"
She stares at him for a minute and, thank fuck, doesn't labor the point. "Shouldn't be a problem."
He relaxes a tad, looks back out front again. "That the fed?"
Hudak looks across to where Booth is talking to the woman pathologist, their heads close up, intimate. "Yeah. He's pretty straight up, I think. Gave me quite a shock though. Turned up out of the blue and God, I had a hard time remembering what was in my report." She pauses. "He thinks Bender's still out there."
Dean slams his hand down on his leg, holds it the fuck still. "Well," he says tightly. "We know better, huh?"
He can see her gaze travel down to his hand. "You're not in any trouble with the feds?" he deflects. "Over what happened? Shooting old man Bender and all? Tracking Bender by yourself?"
She shakes her head. "Nah. He's sharp enough to see the holes, but he thinks we're all dumb culchies out here anyway, so I don't think he'll make a mountain out of it. And the FBI only noticed this case in the first place because Szuba's dad is an ex-fed."
It's a relief, and Dean sighs it out, feels the tension in his neck and shoulders relax slightly. "That's good."
She smiles. "It is. Listen, I thought we'd-"
"I'm losing control of it," he says suddenly, and fuck, where did that come from? "The drinking. I'm drinking on hunts. I nearly shot a john in Montana, some guy in an alley behind a bar working it off in some kid. And I froze on another job, nearly got me killed, Sam too."
Hudak eyes him, calm appraisal that he knows is adding up the split lip and the discoloration along his cheekbone and around his eye: right hook plus left jab equals bar fight. "I left three or four messages on your cell," she says. "Never heard back. Then when I called Bobby he said you were in the ER."
Dean touches his hand to his lip. "Yeah." And then does it almost by rote: rubs his brow, back, forth.
"Hey," she says, reaches out and grasps his hand, pulls it down and doesn't let go. He grips on tight.
"I hit it real hard," he mutters. "I mean, real hard. Like, get into a fight with four guys built like brick shithouses hard. Like, end up in the ER getting my stomach pumped hard." He squeezes her hand so tightly now he's sure it must be hurting her, but she doesn't flinch. "Like, maybe wrap my car round a tree hard, or blow my own fuckin' head off hard."
Her face is impassive, voice too. "Very first thing that goes when you start drinking is your sense of judgment," she says. "Which means that if you feel that way it's because you're drunk, Dean. Not because you're suicidal."
"Yeah. Right."
"Do Sam and Bobby know this?"
"No. Yeah. No. Maybe. I don't know." Dean shrugs, helpless.
"You're sober now, aren't you?" Hudak says then. "Would you take out a gun and blow your head off now? Would you consider doing that to that to him right now, sitting here sober?" She motions over to Sam, strolling back towards the car with a couple of Styrofoam coffee cups.
And it's so simple in that moment. "No," Dean answers, his voice ragged. "I could never do that to him." He wonders if she can hear the not while I'm sober that floats there at the end of his sentence, unspoken.
Hudak stares at him intently. "Well maybe that means you're hanging in there for him and not for yourself, but it's something to be going along with."
Sam's closer now, and she twists round, winds down the window, calls out. "Sam? Give us a second, huh?" She turns back. "Listen Dean, I know you aren't stupid. And above and beyond the reasons why you're drinking, you know it has to stop. Like I said. Judgment, out the window - and so you get in your car when you're seeing double, or you eat your gun. If that happens, who do you think is going to find you? Or get hauled in to the morgue to ID you?"
He looks past her, sees his wookiee of a baby brother staring off into the middle distance, brow furrowed, nose wrinkled, hair exploding every which way in the breeze. "Christ," he murmurs, and he's having to force the words through a throat that's closing up with tears all of a sudden, has to reach up, scrub at his eyes. "I'm so, so fuckin' proud of him… I did that, you know, Kathleen? I raised him. I did that."
"And you could never leave him, Dean. No?"
"Jesus, no." He shakes his head vehemently. "No."
"Then the drinking stops," she says softly. "Because the drinking turns you into somebody who could leave him. Will leave him, maybe."
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Dean mutters, "I know. I know you're right. And I'm trying. But my head… it's killing me, and I feel like I'm climbing the walls. My heart, it's racing, hands shaking like a ninety-year-old man's. I haven't slept in a day and a half. Just one shot, just one, just to… So I can rest. If I could just have one… I know Bobby doesn't trust me to keep off it, and I don't blame him. I feel fuckin' desperate sometimes."
Hudak leans in then, and Dean wonders if it might be his hug and he can't help it, he raises one hand to fend her off. "Don't. Please," he says. "I mean it. I have to - stop. Calm down, not up. Because if you do that, if you're kind to me, I'm losing it, right here and now. And if I do that, if I really let go, I'll start screaming, and I think I might never stop."
She leans back in the seat. "Okay."
Dean catches his breath, steadies himself, glances out at his brother. "Can you tell him to ride with Bobby?"
She nods, moves to get out.
"But get my coffee," he calls out after her.
He sinks his head down onto his chest, brings his hands up and rubs hard at his cheeks. I need a fuckin' drink, he thinks.
But it seems his usual poison is off the menu.
Sam watches Dean ram their dad's journal down into his pack, chews the inside of his cheek for a few minutes as he tries to figure out a way of saying what he needs to without his brother going ballistic. He glances over at Bobby, sees the old man jerk his head meaningfully at Dean, mouth get on with it.
He comes to the conclusion that there really isn't any diplomatic way to say it, so he reaches into his own pack, pulls them out, dangles and jangles them at arm's length, prepares himself for the full force of his brother's withdrawal jitters.
Dean stops, stares at him. "Kinky," he murmurs. "Why now, Sammy, after all these years?"
Sam thanks God his brother's mood is swinging up and not down, for now at least, even if Dean's hands are constantly flexing and fisting, strumming out his agitation, the stress of his enforced sobriety, on the air. "It's a precaution," he says awkwardly.
Dean gives him a blank look. "Your point?"
"The dreams, Dean," Sam says quietly. "The nightmares. Tents don't have locks. I'm not risking you getting away from us and disappearing into the woods again if you have a flashback. Not with that thing out there."
Dean sighs, doesn't argue. "I can't believe this," he mutters. Then he smirks. "What if I need my hand for something?"
Sam works it out a heck of a lot faster this time, screws up his face in mock disgust, hears Bobby sniggering while he tucks spare flares into his own pack. "I so didn't need that image, dude. But whatever. You're right-handed. We can put it on your left wrist."
"You're right-handed too, Sammy boy," his brother says, and he winks slyly. "Just think, two healthy young guys like us… come sunup we won't see the trees for the wood, kiddo. Means we'll need to be keeping our hands to ourselves."
After what happened earlier Sam knows damn well Dean's fronting, but he goes along with it, hopes the illusion might boost his brother's fragile self-esteem. "God, Dean, no more. Save it for the shower. Anyway. Kathleen had a spare set of handcuffs so she-"
"Spare set of handcuffs, you say?" Dean leers, stares into the middle distance, smiles and nods at whatever picture he's seeing in his mind.
Sam grins. "Way out of your league, dude. By a country mile."
"Yeah. Totally," his brother concedes. He sucks in his bottom lip, winces as it cracks. "Hey," he says suddenly. "Uh. In the woods… do you think. Will we…"
Sam watches him for a minute, notes the sudden shadow in his eyes. "You don't have to go," he says, almost eagerly, because he's damn well hoping his brother might have second thoughts.
"No. It's fine. It's just. I was wondering," Dean says, pauses again. And then he fires it out really quickly, in joined-up speaking. "Whatarewegoingtoeatthere?"
It takes Sam a second to decipher the babble. "What… are… we…" His brain gets ahead, and he thinks on it. "I'm not sure I understand?" he says. "What you mean, Dean. I mean."
Dean snorts. "Sam-I-am, you can, man. When you've finished your cat-in-the-hat impression." And he's smiling, but there are lines of tension around his mouth. "It's -camping."
Sam's really lost now. "Yeah. Dean, we've slept out in woods, up trees, in caves, down holes. What's the problem with the food?"
"Well. It's slop," Dean elaborates. "From cans. Slop. That you can't, you can't… you don't know. What it is." He trails off to a mutter. "You don't know what it is. That you're eating. That's what I mean."
And clang goes the anvil in Sam's head. Again.
Bobby's watching them both from his spot on the couch. "Well," the old man ventures. "We'll be traveling on foot, so we won't be able to carry much in the way of canned food as well as the weapons. So I guess that means the land will have to provide. Of course it all depends on how long it takes to find this thing. If we even do."
Dean considers that, nods slowly. "Yeah," he eases out. "And I mean, it isn't as if it's journey to the center of the earth is it?" He looks to Bobby for reassurance. "We can bail out for a decent meal, go back in afterwards. Yeah?"
Bobby nods back. "Yeah, son. I'd have thunk." He stands up slowly, stretches and makes his way over to the door. "We should get an early night," he says. "We'll be leaving at first light."
"Hey, Bobby," Dean says, tone impassive. "Ask Kathleen if she has a room we can lock, huh?"
He finishes shoving things into his pack, taps his fingers on his thighs for a few minutes.
"Do you. Are you," Sam starts.
"What? Come on Sam, bring it home."
"Thinking. About having a drink."
Dean barks out a harsh laugh. "Nope, Sam, I am not thinking about having a drink. I'm thinking about having many drinks. Too many to count."
He taps for a minute more, seems to have a lightbulb moment, and roots through the duffel. He pulls out his gun cleaning kit, sits cross-legged and starts meticulously field stripping his Colt, setting the parts down on the floor in front of him. He picks up the barrel and passes the bore brush down it, seems totally absorbed in what he's doing, and Sam watches, tries to ignore the tremor in his brother's busy hands, finds it hypnotic as he always has, the careful, practiced fingers caressing the steel.
"I'm not sure about the cuffs, Sam," Dean says suddenly, his voice devoid of any emotion. "I'm not sure I can have you lying up next to me out there. Close up like that. You're. You're a big guy."
He doesn't look up, keeps passing the cloth patches down the barrel, tapping out his tension on the floor with his right boot now that his fingers are occupied.
And Sam finds he doesn't really have an answer.
Bobby buttonholes Hudak in the kitchen. "Two things," he says, urgently, not giving her a chance to react. "Dean needs locking in tonight. Bad dreams, he wanders. If he gets out of the house it could turn nasty."
She produces a key by some sleight of hand. "My room has a lock," she says. "Sam already mentioned the dreams when he asked for the handcuffs. You said two things?"
Bobby takes the key, pockets it. "Yup. What are we going to eat out there? Because it absolutely cannot be slop from a can."
Hudak doesn't bat an eyelid. "We can fish. There are wild ducks, rabbits. Wild rice, even. The food will look like… well, that. Not slop. And I have a boxful of power bars. And now I need to ask you something. About Dean's drinking."
Bobby blows out a deep breath, walks back over to the door and closes it. "This is some serious shit," he admits, ahead of her question because he knows damn well what it'll be anyway. "When you called and I said we were in the ER it was because we'd found him collapsed. Jesus."
He drops heavily into a chair, rubs his jaw. "Thing is, Sam's been real keen to let Dean manage his own recovery, so to speak. But this is a fuckin' emotional minefield for the kid. For both of them. Sam, Christ, he's doing his best… but I don't know if it's working. I really don't know. Dean, he always did deal by getting loaded and getting in fights. But this, well. I don't know if it's him dealing or - not."
Hudak doesn't say anything and when Bobby looks up she's biting her lip. He studies her for a minute. "In the car," he says. "I saw you talking to him. He tell you any of this?"
She nods, still bites her lip.
"Guess you got the magic touch," he grouses. "Taken him all month to even be able to say Bender's name to me." In a strange way, he feels jealous. This kid he's known and loved as his own since he was knee high can't talk to him about this, can't let him put his arms around him and soothe him through the nightmares. And Christ, it hurts.
"He said something to me," Hudak says, crossing to sit opposite. "I think he said it in confidence. But I need to tell you, I think. You have to watch him. When he's drinking. He said - I got the impression - that he might do something stupid."
Bobby puts tow and two together immediately, and he can almost feel the blood drain from his face, even feels lightheaded from its loss.
"Not because he wants to," Hudak adds, hurriedly. "Because he's drunk. He thinks about it when he's drunk."
"Well thank God he only thinks about it then," he responds witheringly. "What a huge relief that is."
She frowns. "I'm just saying. He said he's going to stop anyway. Drinking, I mean."
Bobby yawns hugely, suddenly, because he's been awake for hours. And because he's tired of worrying about Dean. "I damn well told him he was going to stop," he says. "Nearly got him and his brother killed. Jesus. At the hospital the doctor was telling us he's an alcoholic. That just isn't him, Kathleen, I just can't conceive of him… giving up like that. Giving into it. He's stronger than that. Bet-"
"Don't say that," she says suddenly. "Better. Don't say that, Bobby. He isn't giving in, this isn't weakness… don't say you expect him to do better, like he's failing in some way. None of us will ever really understand what he's been through. Don't say he could be handling it better." She sounds damned annoyed as she leans forward and bangs her hand down on the table. "Christ - he's still here isn't he? He's walking around, talking, smiling, doing his best. Hunting. He's able to put on some semblance of normal. I don't see how he could be any stronger or be doing any better."
She flops back in her seat, her tirade over though she still looks tense and pissed off.
Bobby keeps his tone conciliatory. "I hear what you're saying. It isn't the right word to use. But Kathleen, I got to think about this in practical terms. In practical terms of him passing out and choking on his own puke, or getting worked over by some other version of Bender when he's too drunk to fight back, or flipping out with a fuckin' cannon in his hand and harming someone. Or himself." He has to stop for a moment to put the images his words conjure out of his mind.
"If he's that bad off, do you think it was wise to even bring him?" Hudal prods, her tone snippy. "If he's been drinking that heavily, he's going to be in withdrawal… he already is. He told me he hasn't slept, that he has the shakes, headaches."
"We're hoping this might help him," Bobby says, though he isn't sure how convinced he sounds. "Help him lay the ghost, confront his demons. Give him a sense of purpose. Distract him from the booze."
Hudak shakes her head. "I don't know if it's that simple, Bobby. He said he's desperate. If he were in detox they'd be giving him tranquilizers to help him through this."
Scowling, Bobby says, "There's no way. Not after what happened with Bender and the drugs. He can handle it, Kathleen. He's going to have to."
Dean's head still aches and the shake in his hands is rattling all the way up to his elbows. He feels hot, drenched in sweat, and his skin crawls with the feeling that he's being watched. He remembers that feeling from before, remembers how he - Gabe? - palmed his eyes and hid from whatever the hell was out there. And it doesn't help that the woods get so fuckin' oppressive as the undergrowth and trees get thicker. It had been tail-end of winter last time, the forest not so thick and verdant. This is like one of those old black-and-white Tarzan movies where the natives range ahead slashing a path through the brush with machetes as big as preschoolers, and big furry things with teeth and fangs jump out and grab them, and he thinks to himself, lions, and tigers and bears, oh my, as his brother ranges up next to him.
"You okay?" Sam enquires, reaching up with his hand wrapped in the hem of his tee to wipe sweat from his brow.
"Yeah," Dean says distantly. "Well. It's pretty creepy. Makes me think of Snow White and how she ran through the woods, and all those eyes were out in there in the darkness watching her."
"Snow White?" Sam stares at him, contemplative. "Are you sure you're okay, Dean?"
"Fucktard. You loved that movie."
They tramp on for a few yards.
"The eyes all turned out to be cute little woodland dwellers, Dean," Sam says. "Remember? Squirrels. Deer. Rabbits."
"Giant man-eating rabbits knowing our luck," Dean mutters. He reaches for his canteen, takes a gulp of water. "I'm just. You know. It's familiar."
It occurs to him that he hasn't really ever talked to Sam about the woods as an entity, and about all those weeks, about what they did, the three Benders. "It's - familiar. This." He sweeps his hand around. "Like coming home. But - unreal too. Like a dreamscape. You know, I woke up here and it was like a kind of birth, I guess. Reborn, as Gabe Bender. There was no Dean. There was nothing else for me except for little flashes, glimpses of before. Like before was the dream."
"Flashes of what?" Sam pushes carefully, as Bobby and Hudak walk up behind them.
"The car," Dean says. "Hunting. I could see hunts in my head, and you and dad were there but it was like you were shadows. All blurry. Couldn't see your faces, just knew I knew you. Somehow. Lee… he twisted that all up. Made me see them, see him. Instead of seeing you." He realizes he's shaking, that his voice sounds choked.
"Dean," Bobby says, putting his hand on his shoulder.
"Don't even know if he did it on purpose," Dean mutters. "Sometimes I think he was just as confused and messed up as me. Made me think I was his brother, and I think he really believed it too. It felt all wrong. But right too." His chest is tight, he's finding it hard to catch his breath. "I knew I had a brother. Inside me, in my heart, I just, I knew. And for a while, he was it. My brother. Family. Felt like family. For a while."
He looks up at Sam, sees his brother - his real brother, who would never hurt him - is pale, eyes shiny, sad. He shrugs helplessly. "They felt like family," he says again, and he can barely hear himself. "They took care of me. Only… not really." And Christ, he just can't, he can't do this. "I'm sorry… I don't. Don't think I can. I-"
"Dean," Hudak says suddenly, clearly, firmly. "Tell me again about this wendigo. Bobby's playing this pretty close to his chest. I need to know exactly what we're dealing with here."
Dean is sure the gratitude must be written all over his face as Bobby drapes an arm around his silent brother's shoulder and leads him ahead.
"Uh, wendigos," he husks, clears his throat, steadies his voice as they walk along behind. "They're a sort of woods spirit, if you like…"
"Spirit?" Hudak broaches. "Like, walk through walls? I thought these things were, you know, solid?"
"Corporeal!" Dean calls out impulsively, loud enough for his brother to hear, and Sam glance back and flashes a white-toothed grin.
"The Algonquian tribes - the Chippewa, the Cree - used to say it was a gigantic spirit, so thin it could only be seen sideways on," Dean continues, warming to the topic now. "It was transformed into a spirit by magic into a spirit of the lonely places, with a heart of ice. An evil spirit that devours mankind."
Hudak shudders. "A cannibal."
"Come on down, Kathleen Hudak," Dean sing-songs, and it's like a switch flips inside him, and suddenly he can feel the sharp thrill electrify his nerve endings, the tension gnaw at his gut, the hairs rise on the back of his neck. It's visceral. It's the hunt. "The indians said it was never satisfied," he breathes. "It was ferocious. Ruthless. Bloodthirsty. Because no matter how much it fed it could never be full, and it always starved and craved…"
Hudak glances over at him, seems enthralled, and he knows his eyes are blazing incandescent with his own ferocity, and ruthlessness, and thirst for blood, and craving to hunt that mother down and end it. "Its eyes," he says, and he stares, unblinking, right into hers, "its eyes glowed yellow and red out of its skull, and its teeth were jagged needles, and it had no lips because it was so hungry it chewed them off… its bones showed through its skin, and it ran so fast it burned off its own feet, and still it ran on stumps until new feet formed-"
"Most likely they were woodsmen and trappers cut off by snow and ice and forced to eat each other when game ran out," Bobby throws back over his shoulder, his voice matter-of-fact. "Don't scare the woman with the Stephen King version, son."
Dean sniggers, sidestepping nimbly around Hudak so she's forced to stop in her tracks. "Seeing the wendigo was like a portent, a death omen," he continues. "A signal to watch out because it was on the hunt for human flesh…" He widens his eyes in emphasis, sees her eyes mimic his. "It doesn't kill you," he breathes, his voice a low rasp. "It takes you, and it hangs you up in its lair and keeps you alive, and then it eats you piece by piece, a bite at a time… and the thing it craves most is the soft skin and flesh of a woman. So be afraid, Kathleen… be very afraid…"
"Jerk," she snaps.
He starts to reply automatically. "Bi-"
"Dean!" Sam yelps, in the fuckin' nick of, and Dean nods at his brother, winks.
He can handle this.
All of it.
He can do this.
But Christ, he needs a drink.
Next
He'd be lying if he said he'd never thought about bumping into Hudak again, perhaps even bumping into her again, and again, and again, and again, in quick, sweat-drenched succession, with bare skin factoring in there somewhere, in the back of his dream car, twenty-foot long… Sometimes in his whisky-sodden haze Dean has thought about what he might say, in that low rumble chicks die for.
"You changed your hair," he blurts out. Which is totally not what he said in his whisky-sodden haze.
"I did?" she says, runs her hand through it: shorter, choppier. "I did." She smiles. "I'm sorry, I realize I should have checked with you first, Dean, but it was spur of the moment. Bobby, Sam…"
She leans in, gives the older man and his brother brief hugs and Dean finds himself wondering where the fuck his hug is, and reading all sorts of profound meaning into the fact he didn't get one. "Good to see you all," she says, a tad distracted. "Timely too."
"Trouble?" Bobby says, cutting to the chase straightaway.
"Right here in River City. G-Man, and some hotshot forensic pathologist out of DC. They had Conrad take them into the woods to the campsite-"
Bobby frowns in irritation, sucks in. "Jesus. I thought I said-"
"No point, Bobby," Hudak continues, smoothly. "This case is under FBI jurisdiction now, and I can't stop them going in to search without either telling all or taking them hostage. But. They didn't find the camera because I already have it, and there's only one fed here. He won't have enough backup and supplies for a proper search until Monday."
"Gives us a four-day headstart if we head out first thing, Bobby," Sam says.
"Will that be enough time?"
"With my crack team to lend a hand?" Bobby huffs. "We'll have to hope so. You got the camera?"
Hudak roots in her pocket, hands it over, and Bobby clicks it on, squints at the screen, Sam peering over his shoulder. "Looks pretty definite to me."
Hudak shakes her head. "This is just way beyond me at the moment. How can something like that have been out there all this time, just picking people off? How is it no one's seen it?"
Dean shrugs. "They hibernate for months or years at a time, wake up, and bam, feeding frenzy. By the time anyone notices anything, damn thing's tucked up in bed again. Pattern of disappearances mainly spring and summer?"
"As it happens, yeah," Hudak confirms. "So the feeding frenzy is this thing putting meat on its bones for the winter?"
Dean nods. "Not much out there to hunt once it gets colder." His gaze suddenly drifts off past her. "Who's that?" he says, motioning over to a tall, dark-haired young woman standing in front of the Impala, hands on hips.
"Pathologist I was talking about," Hudak says. "She's quite a character."
"I'll bet she is," Dean murmurs, and he rocks on his heels for a minute before strolling over towards the woman.
Sam watches as his brother ranges up beside the woman, and within thirty seconds she's engaged in animated conversation with him.
Hudak waits until he's out of earshot. "So," she says. "He doing okay? Looks awful skinny."
Sam shrugs. "He's… not. Not really. Later, yeah? There are some things you need to know if he's coming on this hunt with us. But - later?"
She gives him a hard stare. "Right… sorry, Sam, that's - not what I was hoping you'd say."
Sam hears her voice fracture just slightly, so slight it's almost indiscernible. It's fleeting though, because Dean is suddenly spinning on his heel and heading back towards them, walking fast, head down. "This," Hudak says through a grin, "is going to be priceless. Woman's a space cadet. Savor the moment."
Dean pulls up in front of them, tries not to catch their eyes, blurts out, "Nothing," before any of them even speaks.
"Are you blushing boy?" Bobby enquires. "She blind you with science?"
When Dean looks up, his face is stained pink.
"Dean?" Sam prods.
"She asked me for a - donation," his brother hisses, looks down at his boots and scuffs them in the dirt.
"A donation for what?" Sam says, mystified.
Dean looks up, eyes hurling daggers at Sam, leans in close. "For. Her. Eggs."
"A donation for her eggs?" Bobby repeats. "Eggs? What the hell does that mean?"
Dean is puce by now, and as it sinks in, Sam feels laughter bubble up, throws his head back to release it, the first proper laugh he's laughed in weeks and God he needs it. "Sperm!" he cackles. "She asked you for your sperm!"
Hudak smiles beside them. "She's broody," she confides, jabs Dean in the ribs. "You should be flattered. She said the donor needed to be a perfect physical specimen."
The woman is watching them, and she waves and calls over. "Let me know when you've decided!"
The red tinge sprints up to the tips of Dean's ears, Sam notices. "Wow, Dean, even your ears are blushing," he can't help saying. "That's, like, category five embarrassment, dude."
"Shut the f-"
"Dean," the woman is calling now. "Is it? Dean? What are you doing for dinner?"
"Something else," Dean hollers back. He shuffles around so his back is turned to her, and he suddenly has this dazed, hurt expression on his face, Sam thinks, like he's been kicked.
"Dude, lighten up," he says, bops his brother on the shoulder. "You love this. Admit it. It's the kind of thing you never stop bragging about usually, and-"
Suddenly Hudak interrupts, her voice sharp. "Hey, Sam. No more, huh?"
Puzzled, Sam give her a searching look, raising his eyebrows. "What? What did I say?" he asks, looks from her to Dean to Bobby, who looks just as baffled as Sam feels.
"I'm glad you think it's so fuckin' funny, Sam," Dean says softly. "Nothing like being the comic relief after all." He glances over towards the Impala, sees the woman is nowhere in sight. "I'll wait in the car," he mutters, and he stalks over to it, gets in and slams the door.
Sam sighs. "This is what I mean," he tells Hudak, sees Bobby nodding beside him. "He's all over the place, he's drinking like it's going out of fashion. He's like Jekyll and Hyde. What the hell was that even about?"
Hudak gives him a pointed look and Sam knows she's worked it out before him, feels like he's operating totally in the dark. "What the hell was that about?" he says again.
"I thought you'd crammed all there is to know about this, Sam," she says. "You think about it. It'll… come to you. Meantime, I think maybe I'll just go have a word with him." She turns, walks over to the car.
"I hate being the last to know," Sam grumbles, knows he sounds damn childish but Jesus if he isn't a tad pissed off at the fact female intuition has worked this out long before he has, despite the fact he's closer to his brother than anyone on the planet.
Bobby sighs. "I think I just got it," he says, ruefully.
"What? What is it? Bobby?"
"Oy." Bobby just shakes his head, points to a diner across the street. "Caffeine." He starts walking, pauses and looks back over his shoulder. "Think about it, kid," he says. "Like she said. It'll come to you.
Sam stares after him, racks his brain.
And finally he gets it.
And he suddenly remembers the girl, back at Bobby's. Don't ask, don't tell… No wonder his brother had been so damn circumspect about it, when his usual MO was tell all, in 3-D smell-o-vision.
Crap.
Hudak taps on the side window and Dean jumps slightly as she opens the door, says, "Mind if I join you?"
He flaps his hand vaguely. "Would it make a difference if I did?"
"No." She smiles as she gets in and pulls the door over. "So…"
Dean raises his eyebrows. "So back."
She shifts in the seat and stares out front. "Your brother isn't a mind reader, Dean."
He laughs at that. "Thank God." He wonders briefly if Sam told her anything about his shining, his visions, wonders for split second if, shit, his brother can read minds and just hasn't told him, mentally talks himself out of that one speedy quick because it's just too fuckin' awful to contemplate and, besides, it's damned obvious Sam doesn't have a clue about what's going on inside his head, because if he did… he shudders.
"What I mean is that it's a tad unfair to expect him to edit himself as he goes along just in case he causes offense."
Dean nods this time. "I know exactly what you mean, Kathleen. Fact, didn't we already have this conversation? You think I should be baring my heart and soul to him."
"Well. That isn't quite how I'd put it. But basically, yeah. He needs to know. Don't you think?"
Dean throws her a sideways glance, eyes narrowed. "Not everything. He doesn't need to know everything. And since you seemed to work it out, I'd rather he didn't know that."
She considers. "Okay. I guess the whole male pride thing isn't something I have much insight into. Of course, I tend towards the theory that you have way more to offer than that anyway."
Well, heck. Dean stretches, shuffles his butt closer, snakes his arm out along the back of the bench seat. "Here we are, Kathleen," he says. "The floor is yours. Why don't you tell me just what I have to offer?"
He looks at her, and she looks at him. She smiles and he smiles back, sort of. And it's suddenly comfortable between them.
"Sam says you're drinking pretty heavily."
He shrugs. "Yeah, as it happens. I am. I drink to forget." His tone is light but Dean knows she can damn well see past it, so he drops it in short order. "I get these… bad dreams. Flashbacks, I guess. Don't even remember when I wake up. What I said, what I did." Something occurs to him and he pulls a face. "You still got that dog?"
"Yeah…" Hudak says with a frown. "Why?"
"Can you board it with a friend tonight?"
She stares at him for a minute and, thank fuck, doesn't labor the point. "Shouldn't be a problem."
He relaxes a tad, looks back out front again. "That the fed?"
Hudak looks across to where Booth is talking to the woman pathologist, their heads close up, intimate. "Yeah. He's pretty straight up, I think. Gave me quite a shock though. Turned up out of the blue and God, I had a hard time remembering what was in my report." She pauses. "He thinks Bender's still out there."
Dean slams his hand down on his leg, holds it the fuck still. "Well," he says tightly. "We know better, huh?"
He can see her gaze travel down to his hand. "You're not in any trouble with the feds?" he deflects. "Over what happened? Shooting old man Bender and all? Tracking Bender by yourself?"
She shakes her head. "Nah. He's sharp enough to see the holes, but he thinks we're all dumb culchies out here anyway, so I don't think he'll make a mountain out of it. And the FBI only noticed this case in the first place because Szuba's dad is an ex-fed."
It's a relief, and Dean sighs it out, feels the tension in his neck and shoulders relax slightly. "That's good."
She smiles. "It is. Listen, I thought we'd-"
"I'm losing control of it," he says suddenly, and fuck, where did that come from? "The drinking. I'm drinking on hunts. I nearly shot a john in Montana, some guy in an alley behind a bar working it off in some kid. And I froze on another job, nearly got me killed, Sam too."
Hudak eyes him, calm appraisal that he knows is adding up the split lip and the discoloration along his cheekbone and around his eye: right hook plus left jab equals bar fight. "I left three or four messages on your cell," she says. "Never heard back. Then when I called Bobby he said you were in the ER."
Dean touches his hand to his lip. "Yeah." And then does it almost by rote: rubs his brow, back, forth.
"Hey," she says, reaches out and grasps his hand, pulls it down and doesn't let go. He grips on tight.
"I hit it real hard," he mutters. "I mean, real hard. Like, get into a fight with four guys built like brick shithouses hard. Like, end up in the ER getting my stomach pumped hard." He squeezes her hand so tightly now he's sure it must be hurting her, but she doesn't flinch. "Like, maybe wrap my car round a tree hard, or blow my own fuckin' head off hard."
Her face is impassive, voice too. "Very first thing that goes when you start drinking is your sense of judgment," she says. "Which means that if you feel that way it's because you're drunk, Dean. Not because you're suicidal."
"Yeah. Right."
"Do Sam and Bobby know this?"
"No. Yeah. No. Maybe. I don't know." Dean shrugs, helpless.
"You're sober now, aren't you?" Hudak says then. "Would you take out a gun and blow your head off now? Would you consider doing that to that to him right now, sitting here sober?" She motions over to Sam, strolling back towards the car with a couple of Styrofoam coffee cups.
And it's so simple in that moment. "No," Dean answers, his voice ragged. "I could never do that to him." He wonders if she can hear the not while I'm sober that floats there at the end of his sentence, unspoken.
Hudak stares at him intently. "Well maybe that means you're hanging in there for him and not for yourself, but it's something to be going along with."
Sam's closer now, and she twists round, winds down the window, calls out. "Sam? Give us a second, huh?" She turns back. "Listen Dean, I know you aren't stupid. And above and beyond the reasons why you're drinking, you know it has to stop. Like I said. Judgment, out the window - and so you get in your car when you're seeing double, or you eat your gun. If that happens, who do you think is going to find you? Or get hauled in to the morgue to ID you?"
He looks past her, sees his wookiee of a baby brother staring off into the middle distance, brow furrowed, nose wrinkled, hair exploding every which way in the breeze. "Christ," he murmurs, and he's having to force the words through a throat that's closing up with tears all of a sudden, has to reach up, scrub at his eyes. "I'm so, so fuckin' proud of him… I did that, you know, Kathleen? I raised him. I did that."
"And you could never leave him, Dean. No?"
"Jesus, no." He shakes his head vehemently. "No."
"Then the drinking stops," she says softly. "Because the drinking turns you into somebody who could leave him. Will leave him, maybe."
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Dean mutters, "I know. I know you're right. And I'm trying. But my head… it's killing me, and I feel like I'm climbing the walls. My heart, it's racing, hands shaking like a ninety-year-old man's. I haven't slept in a day and a half. Just one shot, just one, just to… So I can rest. If I could just have one… I know Bobby doesn't trust me to keep off it, and I don't blame him. I feel fuckin' desperate sometimes."
Hudak leans in then, and Dean wonders if it might be his hug and he can't help it, he raises one hand to fend her off. "Don't. Please," he says. "I mean it. I have to - stop. Calm down, not up. Because if you do that, if you're kind to me, I'm losing it, right here and now. And if I do that, if I really let go, I'll start screaming, and I think I might never stop."
She leans back in the seat. "Okay."
Dean catches his breath, steadies himself, glances out at his brother. "Can you tell him to ride with Bobby?"
She nods, moves to get out.
"But get my coffee," he calls out after her.
He sinks his head down onto his chest, brings his hands up and rubs hard at his cheeks. I need a fuckin' drink, he thinks.
But it seems his usual poison is off the menu.
Sam watches Dean ram their dad's journal down into his pack, chews the inside of his cheek for a few minutes as he tries to figure out a way of saying what he needs to without his brother going ballistic. He glances over at Bobby, sees the old man jerk his head meaningfully at Dean, mouth get on with it.
He comes to the conclusion that there really isn't any diplomatic way to say it, so he reaches into his own pack, pulls them out, dangles and jangles them at arm's length, prepares himself for the full force of his brother's withdrawal jitters.
Dean stops, stares at him. "Kinky," he murmurs. "Why now, Sammy, after all these years?"
Sam thanks God his brother's mood is swinging up and not down, for now at least, even if Dean's hands are constantly flexing and fisting, strumming out his agitation, the stress of his enforced sobriety, on the air. "It's a precaution," he says awkwardly.
Dean gives him a blank look. "Your point?"
"The dreams, Dean," Sam says quietly. "The nightmares. Tents don't have locks. I'm not risking you getting away from us and disappearing into the woods again if you have a flashback. Not with that thing out there."
Dean sighs, doesn't argue. "I can't believe this," he mutters. Then he smirks. "What if I need my hand for something?"
Sam works it out a heck of a lot faster this time, screws up his face in mock disgust, hears Bobby sniggering while he tucks spare flares into his own pack. "I so didn't need that image, dude. But whatever. You're right-handed. We can put it on your left wrist."
"You're right-handed too, Sammy boy," his brother says, and he winks slyly. "Just think, two healthy young guys like us… come sunup we won't see the trees for the wood, kiddo. Means we'll need to be keeping our hands to ourselves."
After what happened earlier Sam knows damn well Dean's fronting, but he goes along with it, hopes the illusion might boost his brother's fragile self-esteem. "God, Dean, no more. Save it for the shower. Anyway. Kathleen had a spare set of handcuffs so she-"
"Spare set of handcuffs, you say?" Dean leers, stares into the middle distance, smiles and nods at whatever picture he's seeing in his mind.
Sam grins. "Way out of your league, dude. By a country mile."
"Yeah. Totally," his brother concedes. He sucks in his bottom lip, winces as it cracks. "Hey," he says suddenly. "Uh. In the woods… do you think. Will we…"
Sam watches him for a minute, notes the sudden shadow in his eyes. "You don't have to go," he says, almost eagerly, because he's damn well hoping his brother might have second thoughts.
"No. It's fine. It's just. I was wondering," Dean says, pauses again. And then he fires it out really quickly, in joined-up speaking. "Whatarewegoingtoeatthere?"
It takes Sam a second to decipher the babble. "What… are… we…" His brain gets ahead, and he thinks on it. "I'm not sure I understand?" he says. "What you mean, Dean. I mean."
Dean snorts. "Sam-I-am, you can, man. When you've finished your cat-in-the-hat impression." And he's smiling, but there are lines of tension around his mouth. "It's -camping."
Sam's really lost now. "Yeah. Dean, we've slept out in woods, up trees, in caves, down holes. What's the problem with the food?"
"Well. It's slop," Dean elaborates. "From cans. Slop. That you can't, you can't… you don't know. What it is." He trails off to a mutter. "You don't know what it is. That you're eating. That's what I mean."
And clang goes the anvil in Sam's head. Again.
Bobby's watching them both from his spot on the couch. "Well," the old man ventures. "We'll be traveling on foot, so we won't be able to carry much in the way of canned food as well as the weapons. So I guess that means the land will have to provide. Of course it all depends on how long it takes to find this thing. If we even do."
Dean considers that, nods slowly. "Yeah," he eases out. "And I mean, it isn't as if it's journey to the center of the earth is it?" He looks to Bobby for reassurance. "We can bail out for a decent meal, go back in afterwards. Yeah?"
Bobby nods back. "Yeah, son. I'd have thunk." He stands up slowly, stretches and makes his way over to the door. "We should get an early night," he says. "We'll be leaving at first light."
"Hey, Bobby," Dean says, tone impassive. "Ask Kathleen if she has a room we can lock, huh?"
He finishes shoving things into his pack, taps his fingers on his thighs for a few minutes.
"Do you. Are you," Sam starts.
"What? Come on Sam, bring it home."
"Thinking. About having a drink."
Dean barks out a harsh laugh. "Nope, Sam, I am not thinking about having a drink. I'm thinking about having many drinks. Too many to count."
He taps for a minute more, seems to have a lightbulb moment, and roots through the duffel. He pulls out his gun cleaning kit, sits cross-legged and starts meticulously field stripping his Colt, setting the parts down on the floor in front of him. He picks up the barrel and passes the bore brush down it, seems totally absorbed in what he's doing, and Sam watches, tries to ignore the tremor in his brother's busy hands, finds it hypnotic as he always has, the careful, practiced fingers caressing the steel.
"I'm not sure about the cuffs, Sam," Dean says suddenly, his voice devoid of any emotion. "I'm not sure I can have you lying up next to me out there. Close up like that. You're. You're a big guy."
He doesn't look up, keeps passing the cloth patches down the barrel, tapping out his tension on the floor with his right boot now that his fingers are occupied.
And Sam finds he doesn't really have an answer.
Bobby buttonholes Hudak in the kitchen. "Two things," he says, urgently, not giving her a chance to react. "Dean needs locking in tonight. Bad dreams, he wanders. If he gets out of the house it could turn nasty."
She produces a key by some sleight of hand. "My room has a lock," she says. "Sam already mentioned the dreams when he asked for the handcuffs. You said two things?"
Bobby takes the key, pockets it. "Yup. What are we going to eat out there? Because it absolutely cannot be slop from a can."
Hudak doesn't bat an eyelid. "We can fish. There are wild ducks, rabbits. Wild rice, even. The food will look like… well, that. Not slop. And I have a boxful of power bars. And now I need to ask you something. About Dean's drinking."
Bobby blows out a deep breath, walks back over to the door and closes it. "This is some serious shit," he admits, ahead of her question because he knows damn well what it'll be anyway. "When you called and I said we were in the ER it was because we'd found him collapsed. Jesus."
He drops heavily into a chair, rubs his jaw. "Thing is, Sam's been real keen to let Dean manage his own recovery, so to speak. But this is a fuckin' emotional minefield for the kid. For both of them. Sam, Christ, he's doing his best… but I don't know if it's working. I really don't know. Dean, he always did deal by getting loaded and getting in fights. But this, well. I don't know if it's him dealing or - not."
Hudak doesn't say anything and when Bobby looks up she's biting her lip. He studies her for a minute. "In the car," he says. "I saw you talking to him. He tell you any of this?"
She nods, still bites her lip.
"Guess you got the magic touch," he grouses. "Taken him all month to even be able to say Bender's name to me." In a strange way, he feels jealous. This kid he's known and loved as his own since he was knee high can't talk to him about this, can't let him put his arms around him and soothe him through the nightmares. And Christ, it hurts.
"He said something to me," Hudak says, crossing to sit opposite. "I think he said it in confidence. But I need to tell you, I think. You have to watch him. When he's drinking. He said - I got the impression - that he might do something stupid."
Bobby puts tow and two together immediately, and he can almost feel the blood drain from his face, even feels lightheaded from its loss.
"Not because he wants to," Hudak adds, hurriedly. "Because he's drunk. He thinks about it when he's drunk."
"Well thank God he only thinks about it then," he responds witheringly. "What a huge relief that is."
She frowns. "I'm just saying. He said he's going to stop anyway. Drinking, I mean."
Bobby yawns hugely, suddenly, because he's been awake for hours. And because he's tired of worrying about Dean. "I damn well told him he was going to stop," he says. "Nearly got him and his brother killed. Jesus. At the hospital the doctor was telling us he's an alcoholic. That just isn't him, Kathleen, I just can't conceive of him… giving up like that. Giving into it. He's stronger than that. Bet-"
"Don't say that," she says suddenly. "Better. Don't say that, Bobby. He isn't giving in, this isn't weakness… don't say you expect him to do better, like he's failing in some way. None of us will ever really understand what he's been through. Don't say he could be handling it better." She sounds damned annoyed as she leans forward and bangs her hand down on the table. "Christ - he's still here isn't he? He's walking around, talking, smiling, doing his best. Hunting. He's able to put on some semblance of normal. I don't see how he could be any stronger or be doing any better."
She flops back in her seat, her tirade over though she still looks tense and pissed off.
Bobby keeps his tone conciliatory. "I hear what you're saying. It isn't the right word to use. But Kathleen, I got to think about this in practical terms. In practical terms of him passing out and choking on his own puke, or getting worked over by some other version of Bender when he's too drunk to fight back, or flipping out with a fuckin' cannon in his hand and harming someone. Or himself." He has to stop for a moment to put the images his words conjure out of his mind.
"If he's that bad off, do you think it was wise to even bring him?" Hudal prods, her tone snippy. "If he's been drinking that heavily, he's going to be in withdrawal… he already is. He told me he hasn't slept, that he has the shakes, headaches."
"We're hoping this might help him," Bobby says, though he isn't sure how convinced he sounds. "Help him lay the ghost, confront his demons. Give him a sense of purpose. Distract him from the booze."
Hudak shakes her head. "I don't know if it's that simple, Bobby. He said he's desperate. If he were in detox they'd be giving him tranquilizers to help him through this."
Scowling, Bobby says, "There's no way. Not after what happened with Bender and the drugs. He can handle it, Kathleen. He's going to have to."
Dean's head still aches and the shake in his hands is rattling all the way up to his elbows. He feels hot, drenched in sweat, and his skin crawls with the feeling that he's being watched. He remembers that feeling from before, remembers how he - Gabe? - palmed his eyes and hid from whatever the hell was out there. And it doesn't help that the woods get so fuckin' oppressive as the undergrowth and trees get thicker. It had been tail-end of winter last time, the forest not so thick and verdant. This is like one of those old black-and-white Tarzan movies where the natives range ahead slashing a path through the brush with machetes as big as preschoolers, and big furry things with teeth and fangs jump out and grab them, and he thinks to himself, lions, and tigers and bears, oh my, as his brother ranges up next to him.
"You okay?" Sam enquires, reaching up with his hand wrapped in the hem of his tee to wipe sweat from his brow.
"Yeah," Dean says distantly. "Well. It's pretty creepy. Makes me think of Snow White and how she ran through the woods, and all those eyes were out in there in the darkness watching her."
"Snow White?" Sam stares at him, contemplative. "Are you sure you're okay, Dean?"
"Fucktard. You loved that movie."
They tramp on for a few yards.
"The eyes all turned out to be cute little woodland dwellers, Dean," Sam says. "Remember? Squirrels. Deer. Rabbits."
"Giant man-eating rabbits knowing our luck," Dean mutters. He reaches for his canteen, takes a gulp of water. "I'm just. You know. It's familiar."
It occurs to him that he hasn't really ever talked to Sam about the woods as an entity, and about all those weeks, about what they did, the three Benders. "It's - familiar. This." He sweeps his hand around. "Like coming home. But - unreal too. Like a dreamscape. You know, I woke up here and it was like a kind of birth, I guess. Reborn, as Gabe Bender. There was no Dean. There was nothing else for me except for little flashes, glimpses of before. Like before was the dream."
"Flashes of what?" Sam pushes carefully, as Bobby and Hudak walk up behind them.
"The car," Dean says. "Hunting. I could see hunts in my head, and you and dad were there but it was like you were shadows. All blurry. Couldn't see your faces, just knew I knew you. Somehow. Lee… he twisted that all up. Made me see them, see him. Instead of seeing you." He realizes he's shaking, that his voice sounds choked.
"Dean," Bobby says, putting his hand on his shoulder.
"Don't even know if he did it on purpose," Dean mutters. "Sometimes I think he was just as confused and messed up as me. Made me think I was his brother, and I think he really believed it too. It felt all wrong. But right too." His chest is tight, he's finding it hard to catch his breath. "I knew I had a brother. Inside me, in my heart, I just, I knew. And for a while, he was it. My brother. Family. Felt like family. For a while."
He looks up at Sam, sees his brother - his real brother, who would never hurt him - is pale, eyes shiny, sad. He shrugs helplessly. "They felt like family," he says again, and he can barely hear himself. "They took care of me. Only… not really." And Christ, he just can't, he can't do this. "I'm sorry… I don't. Don't think I can. I-"
"Dean," Hudak says suddenly, clearly, firmly. "Tell me again about this wendigo. Bobby's playing this pretty close to his chest. I need to know exactly what we're dealing with here."
Dean is sure the gratitude must be written all over his face as Bobby drapes an arm around his silent brother's shoulder and leads him ahead.
"Uh, wendigos," he husks, clears his throat, steadies his voice as they walk along behind. "They're a sort of woods spirit, if you like…"
"Spirit?" Hudak broaches. "Like, walk through walls? I thought these things were, you know, solid?"
"Corporeal!" Dean calls out impulsively, loud enough for his brother to hear, and Sam glance back and flashes a white-toothed grin.
"The Algonquian tribes - the Chippewa, the Cree - used to say it was a gigantic spirit, so thin it could only be seen sideways on," Dean continues, warming to the topic now. "It was transformed into a spirit by magic into a spirit of the lonely places, with a heart of ice. An evil spirit that devours mankind."
Hudak shudders. "A cannibal."
"Come on down, Kathleen Hudak," Dean sing-songs, and it's like a switch flips inside him, and suddenly he can feel the sharp thrill electrify his nerve endings, the tension gnaw at his gut, the hairs rise on the back of his neck. It's visceral. It's the hunt. "The indians said it was never satisfied," he breathes. "It was ferocious. Ruthless. Bloodthirsty. Because no matter how much it fed it could never be full, and it always starved and craved…"
Hudak glances over at him, seems enthralled, and he knows his eyes are blazing incandescent with his own ferocity, and ruthlessness, and thirst for blood, and craving to hunt that mother down and end it. "Its eyes," he says, and he stares, unblinking, right into hers, "its eyes glowed yellow and red out of its skull, and its teeth were jagged needles, and it had no lips because it was so hungry it chewed them off… its bones showed through its skin, and it ran so fast it burned off its own feet, and still it ran on stumps until new feet formed-"
"Most likely they were woodsmen and trappers cut off by snow and ice and forced to eat each other when game ran out," Bobby throws back over his shoulder, his voice matter-of-fact. "Don't scare the woman with the Stephen King version, son."
Dean sniggers, sidestepping nimbly around Hudak so she's forced to stop in her tracks. "Seeing the wendigo was like a portent, a death omen," he continues. "A signal to watch out because it was on the hunt for human flesh…" He widens his eyes in emphasis, sees her eyes mimic his. "It doesn't kill you," he breathes, his voice a low rasp. "It takes you, and it hangs you up in its lair and keeps you alive, and then it eats you piece by piece, a bite at a time… and the thing it craves most is the soft skin and flesh of a woman. So be afraid, Kathleen… be very afraid…"
"Jerk," she snaps.
He starts to reply automatically. "Bi-"
"Dean!" Sam yelps, in the fuckin' nick of, and Dean nods at his brother, winks.
He can handle this.
All of it.
He can do this.
But Christ, he needs a drink.
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