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ratherastory) wrote2010-07-09 12:14 am
ratherastory) wrote2010-07-09 12:14 am
Entry tags:
Nihil Inherit, Chapter 1: The New Lazarus
Master Post
Chapter 1: The New Lazarus
It's dark where he is. For a hopeful moment he thinks it might be because his eyes are closed, but opening them doesn't provide sudden illumination. It's dark, and too hot. Stifling. His ribcage hurts where his heart is trying to beat its way through. He shifts, feels the first unwelcome stab of pain in his back, coughs drily. He blinks as what feels like dust or fine dirt sifts down into his eyes. His questing hand encounters a rough surface, instantly acquires several splinters. Wood. Pine, by the smell. He wriggles in place, ignores the second and even the third stab of pain. At the fourth he allows himself a small whimper, but he manages to search all his pockets for a lighter, a match, anything. He finds a switchblade, tucked into his boot, but nothing with which to shed light on his situation.
He tries to swallow, but his mouth is too dry, his tongue so swollen it feels like it's cleaving to his palate. Screaming for help is futile, he discovers. His voice won't carry, vocal cords just as dry as the rest of him. He's buried alive, and the knowledge doesn't surprise him, the certainty doesn't frighten him. He'd been warned this would happen, he remembers dimly. Nothing for it now but get himself out of this pine box, and hope it's not buried so deep that he'll suffocate before breaching the surface.
There's an Uma Thurman joke in here somewhere, he thinks as he starts methodically carving at the wood just above his head. It's not ideal: his arms ache, his left shoulder on fire; the switchblade is dull before an hour has gone past, and sawdust and wood shavings drift onto his face, get into his eyes and nose. A few times he coughs so hard he nearly passes out, white and red fireworks sparking behind his eyes. He keeps going, scrapes his knuckles and fingertips bloody as he works, and shoves all thoughts of his oxygen running low to the back of his mind. He feels the wood start to give way, starts prying and worrying at it with his fingertips, loses a couple of fingernails as his tugging grows more frantic. He can taste the copper tang of fear on his tongue, his breathing harsh in his ears, echoing in the coffin.
Not gonna die here not gonna die here not gonna die here.
The wood splinters over his head, and earth cascades down through the hole he's made, rich and loamy and smothering. He flails, panicking as the world flip-flops and the earth heaves and tries to swallow him whole. He loses two more fingernails, brings up an arm in front of his face, kicks free of the coffin and into the vice-grip of the grave dirt, his lungs burning and screaming, until somehow he's free of it, sprawled face-first in the tall grass, coughing and choking and sobbing. He flips over onto his back, almost blinded by the white light reflecting off the roiling grey clouds in the sky, digs his bleeding fingers into the sod, anchors his heels, spits more dirt out of his mouth.
Can't stay here.
He has no idea where here is, but he can't stay. He knows this with a certainty that applies to nothing else right now. He rolls onto his knees, bites back a whimper of pain and another distant emotion he can't quite figure out. There's a grave marker but no name on it, just a rough-hewn piece of wood, not even a cross. He recognizes his initials, scratched in crudely with what was probably the tip of a Bowie knife: S.W. He uses the marker to push himself to his feet, braces himself when one leg buckles, tingling unpleasantly, as though insects are creeping just beneath his skin and nibbling at the muscles underneath. He forces himself to take a deep breath, then another, to breathe through the pain. Part of the deal, he tells himself, although he's not sure what the deal was, exactly.
His mouth fills with an acrid taste, and he grimaces at the smell of burnt rubber in the air. What is that? He turns on himself, trying to locate the source of the odour, then bends double, clutching at his head as he feels a stabbing pain lance through him. There's a flash of white light, then nothing.
When he comes to he's lying in the middle of a clearing. He pushes himself to a sitting position, feeling as though he's been tied in a sack and beaten to within an inch of his life. He can't tell how long he's been unconscious, but right now that appears to be the least of his worries. His head still aches, even the sickly light pricking at his eyes as he takes in his surroundings for the first time. His makeshift grave looks like it was the epicentre of a hell of an explosion: what few small trees were standing nearby have been torn up by their roots and have fallen away from the grave site, encasing it in a ring of dead and dying limbs. The tall grass has turned yellow, dry and brittle, crumbles to dust at his touch. He coughs, trying to dislodge the taste of dirt from his mouth, his tongue feeling as though it's swelled to twice its size in his mouth. He thinks he should remember why it looks as though a small nuke went off here, but his head feels as though it's stuffed with cotton wool, everything muzzy and hazy. There's something important he should be doing, he knows, if only he could remember what it was.
Dean.
He has to find Dean. That's the reason he's here ―wherever here is. He looks up at the sky, as if he might glean something from the swirling grey clouds, but they offer no insight at all. He doesn't know how close he still is to Cold Oak. He doesn't know how long he's been gone, although the blistering heat makes him think it must be high summer. He doesn't even know what time it is. Shaking his head, he tugs on the sleeve of his left wrist to check his watch, but predictably enough, it's stopped, at 02:37. He wonders if that's the exact time he died, and a shudder runs through him. His cell phone is long gone. He searches through his pockets, wincing as something in his back pulls the wrong way, sending pain lancing through him again. He tries to feel for the injury with one hand, but can't quite reach it: it's in an awkward spot, at the small of his back. He gives up quickly as each attempt threatens to make his legs give way, takes several deep breaths to steady himself. Whatever's wrong with him, it's going to have to wait until he can find Dean.
Once he's sure he can stand and walk without falling over, he takes one shaky step, then another, and sets out in earnest. He finds a road not too far away. It stands to reason that Dean wouldn't have wanted him too far out of the way. He doesn't know whether to be grateful or sad that Dean didn't burn his body when he had the chance. It's the same decision he would have made, something tells him, the kind of terrible devotion that has destroyed them over and over again.
*
The road looks like any of the other thousands of roads he and his brother have travelled down over the years, all black asphalt shimmering and hazy in the heat. He's not sure which way to go. He has nothing on him except his dull switchblade and, incongruously, a gas station receipt from 2006 with a fake signature scrawled at the bottom: D. Hasselhof. It's kind of hard to explain, he remembers. He wonders if Andy is still dead. Probably. He's still wearing the same jeans and jacket, but the weather has turned a bit too warm for them. His watch is not only stopped, but broken, the glass shattered. He looks up at the clouds, tries to gauge which way the sun was going, eventually heads in the direction he thinks might be west.
Without a working watch and without a clear view of the sun, it's impossible to tell how long he's been walking. He doesn't think he's getting very far. His eyes burn in his head, and he can hear his breathing turn ragged and harsh. The worst of the pain comes from his back, each step sending bursts of agony up his spine and down into his legs. Twice he stumbles when his knees give out, sending him sprawling on all fours on the shoulder of the road, scraping his knees and his palms bloody. The third time it happens, he hears a car cresting the hill behind him just as he falls face-first onto the asphalt. He stays there for a moment, stunned and unmoving, blinking in a vain attempt to get the fog to lift.
The car motor grumbles closer, and he thinks he can hear the sound of the engine change as it shifts into a different gear, then stops entirely. Two distinct doors slam, and voices pierce through the fog.
“... wrong with him?” A girl's voice, by the sound of it.
“I don't know,” another girl's voice, a little deeper, maybe older. “Hey, sir? Sir, can you hear me?”
Footsteps approach. He senses rather than sees someone kneel next to him and put a hand gently on his shoulder. “Sir?” It's the second voice. He tries to push himself up, can't quite bite back a groan of pain. “He's hurt. Chrissy, go get the first aid kit from the car.”
“But―”
“Chrissy, it's fine. It's not like he's in any shape to just jump up and mug me.”
“We should just call 911.”
“And we will. Hey, take it easy,” the second voice, not-Chrissy, turns gentle as he manages to struggle to a sitting position, and he feels hands reach out and steady him. “Can you tell me what happened? Were you in an accident?”
He shakes his head, coughs. “Don't remember,” he rasps, and it's sort of true. He doesn't remember much from before. “Dean?”
“Who's Dean?”
He shakes his head, starts coughing harder, and she pats his arm.
“Wait, I've got a bottle of water in the car. Hang on, okay?”
He can't help but think that he doesn't have much choice in the matter. His legs won't hold him up, and his vision is still so blurred that he can barely make out her silhouette when she comes back and squats next to him. He feels a bottle of water being pressed into his hand.
“There you go. It's a bit warm, but it's all we have. Go slow, okay? Can you tell me your name?”
It takes all his self control not to gulp down all the water as fast as he can. It's tepid and stale, but it feels like the most delicious stuff ever to pass his lips. He chokes on a mouthful, and feels it dribble down his chin and soak the front of his shirt.
“Sam. I'm Sam,” he puts his head down, still coughing.
“Okay, Sam. My name's Amanda. My friend's going to call 911, but until we can get someone here I want to look at where you're hurt, is that okay? I'm certified in first aid.”
He shakes his head, still waiting for his vision to clear. “No. No, I... no hospital. Please. I'm okay. I have to find Dean.”
“We can find him after we get you checked out.”
He looks up, blinking, and her face finally swims into focus. He gets an impression of soft brown eyes and a wide smile, of smooth-looking dark skin. His first thought is that she's beautiful, and the next is that it's not her face that's beautiful. He shakes his head again.
“No. I can't... I'm okay.”
“Okay, Sam? Bleeding, dehydrated and passed out on the side of the road is pretty much the opposite of okay.”
“I-I'm bleeding?” he can hear the confusion in his own voice. He doesn't think he should be bleeding.
Amanda gives him a sympathetic look. “Yes, you are. You want to let me have a look?” She doesn't wait for him to answer, just scoots around behind him and pulls up his shirt. He hears her hiss in sympathy, so whatever is wrong with him, it must look bad. “Well, it could be worse. Looks like an old injury that just got reopened, not that I'm an expert. Were you in a car accident? Was anyone with you? Do you remember anything?”
“Uh... I was ―I was with Dean. I was looking for him.” He looks up and sees a blond girl standing a few paces away, cell phone in hand. “Please don't call anyone. I'm okay. I just have to find him.”
“Who's Dean?”
“He's my brother.”
“Does he have a cell phone?”
He stops to think about it. Dean must have a cell, he concludes. They've each had one for years. “Yeah.”
“What's his number?”
Sam scrunches up his face in concentration. “Uh...”
“Okay, wait. Why don't we get you seated in the car, so you're not in the middle of the road? You think you can walk?”
“Yeah, I think.” He lets Amanda pull him to his feet, tries not to lean on her too hard as his knees threaten to buckle. She nudges open the back door, eases him onto the back seat, then hands him her cell phone.
“Try just dialling the number. Sometimes letting your fingers do the walking works.”
He takes the phone, finds his fingers moving automatically, the way she said they would, stops just short of pressing 'send.' He looks around. “Do you smell that?” he asks. Maybe they braked harder than he thought, because the whole car smells of burned rubber.
“Smell what, honey?”
Another flash of white, and whatever else she was going to say is lost as his thoughts shatter into a hundred thousand pieces.
*
Jake has dozed off by the side of his small campfire in the woods outside of Cold Oak. He looks smaller than Sam remembers, weaker, more vulnerable in the flickering shadows. He comes awake with a jolt, to find the Yellow-Eyed Demon lounging on the other side of the fire, his habitual smirk already in place.
“Howdy, Jake.”
“I'm ―I'm dreaming,” Jake stammers.
“I've got a genius on my hands,” the demon remarks to the universe at large, rolling his eyes. “Well, congratulations, Jake, you're it: last man standing. The American Idol. I have to admit, you weren't the horse I was betting on, but still, I gotta give it to you,” he gestures significantly.
Jake tries to make a brave show, but it's obvious he's terrified. “Go... to hell.”
The demon just smirks again. “Been there, done that.” He's just jerking Jake around, waiting for the outcome he obviously thinks is inevitable.
“Everything you put me through... dragging me to that place, making me kill those people...”
“All part of the beauty pageant, Jake. I needed the strongest, and that's you.”
“Needed me for what?”
“Oh, I got a laundry list of tasty things for you.”
Jake is on his feet in a flash, anger smouldering in his eyes. Up until a day ago, he was a soldier, a killer maybe, but never a murderer. “The only thing I am going to do is wake up, hunt you down, and kill you myself.” It's the promise he made to Sam, before he killed him, before he severed his spinal cord with a knife.
The demon is unfazed. “You know, others have tried. It's not easy. Trust me, Jake, you want to be a good little soldier, here.” The threat is thinly veiled.
“And if I'm not?”
“If you're a bad little soldier, well, that dear old mom of yours, that adorable little sister, I'll make certain that they both live long enough to know the chewy taste of their own intestines. No, Jake. I'm not bluffing.” Demons don't bluff, not like this. They thrive on hurting others, and it's obvious Jake understands this, because his voice shakes, and his shoulders slump almost imperceptibly in defeat.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Like I said: genius.”
*
“He's coming around. Sam? Can you hear me?”
His mouth is dry, and his head still aches. He doesn't remember it not hurting, although he knows that can't be right. His eyes feel like they've been glued shut. He tries to raise a hand to scrub at them, but his body feels weak and rubbery and not-quite-there.
“Sam?” He doesn't recognize the voice, but there's a hand resting lightly on his shoulder. He forces his eyes open, waits for the world to swim back into focus, but it doesn't, not entirely. There's a man leaning over him, older, very white, with that unmistakeable air of authority that seems to come with wearing a white lab coat. Doctor, then. The man smiles, which is a good sign, he thinks. “You back with us?”
“Uh...” is all he can manage at first. He swallows, wishes he had saliva left, tries to figure out how words fit together in sentences again. “I... I think so?”
“Good. I'm Dr. Vogel. Do you know where you are?”
“Hospital, I guess?” He tries to sit up, fees something tug gently at his arm, and barely has time to register it as an IV before Dr. Vogel exerts just enough pressure on his shoulder to keep him lying down.
“Easy, there. You're in no shape to be doing anything except let the IV do its thing. You're at the Sanford Medical Centre. You were found by the side of the road, and you're suffering from severe dehydration on top of half-a-dozen various injuries. Do you remember any of that?”
“A bit. I was walking... looking for Dean.” He glances around, but his bed is surrounded by a drawn curtain, plain white, or more off-white, really. Dean would be disappointed: he has no idea where the exits are. His left arm is in a sling, he notes idly, his hand strapped tightly to his shoulder. Dislocated, maybe, although he doesn't remember it being that bad. His fingers have been bandaged, too, where he tore them open digging himself out of his grave.
The doctor starts taking notes. “What else do you remember?”
“Not much. I just felt... bad. Where is this?”
“The hospital?” Sam nods gingerly, and the doctor scribbles another note before answering. “In Sioux Falls.”
A wave of relief washes over him. “I'm still in South Dakota.”
“That's right. Can you tell me where you were before you were found?”
He shakes his head. “A cemetery, I think. Before that... I don't know. It's blurry. The last thing I remember clearly is stopping at a diner with Dean.” He doesn't think it's a good idea to tell the good doctor about the demon's little cage match in Cold Oak.
“Dean is your brother?”
He nods. “I should... I need to find him.”
“Don't worry about that just yet. I have to ask a few more questions first. Do you feel up to that?”
“I guess.”
“Good. You have an injury to your back that's... perplexing, to say the least. Do you remember hurting yourself?”
He shakes his head. It's not a lie, technically. All he remembers is the stabbing, white-hot pain of the knife entering his back, twisting, cutting through bone and sinew and nerve. Everything after that is a blank, until he woke up in the ground. There has to be more. “No. I kind of... kind of remember there was pain, but nothing else. How come I don't remember anything?”
“There could be a number of explanations, frankly, and I'm not sure which one it is just yet. You could simply have suppressed the memory: it happens a lot in cases of severe trauma. Do you remember hitting your head at all?”
“No. I don't think I did.”
“Sam, have you ever suffered from seizures before? Any history of epilepsy?”
He shakes his head, immediately regrets it. “No. Why?”
“You had a seizure before you were brought here. It could be a one-time thing, of course, but I'd like to run some more tests.”
The fog has almost completely cleared. “How long have I been here?”
“Several hours. I'd like to keep you overnight for observation, at the very least.”
“I can't... I have to find Dean.” Not to mention he has no insurance, no money, nothing on him except... well, nothing, now that he looks. He's dressed in nothing but an ill-fitting hospital gown. “Where are my clothes?”
“They've been put aside for you. And don't worry about your brother, he's right outside. He's been kicking up a fuss for hours, and it's only your uncle who's keeping a lid on him. Otherwise, you and I probably wouldn't be having a civilised conversation at this moment in time,” the doctor looks amused. “To say he was worried would be an understatement, I think.”
“Dean's here?” Sam sits up this time, his heart hammering painfully in his chest, and the whole room lurches drunkenly before the doctor catches him by his good arm to steady him. “Can I see him?”
“I think he may tear down the door if I don't let him in. I'm going to have more questions later.”
Sam swallows hard, nods, his excitement at the prospect of seeing Dean again replaced by knots of anxiety. The last time he saw Dean was in Cold Oak, just before... he doesn't know how Dean is going to react to seeing him now, but whatever happens, it's not likely to be good. The doctor pats his arm and gives him a significant look that has him easing himself back onto the bed, then slips past the curtains. Sam can hear his footsteps retreating, and a few moments later more footsteps approach ―more than one person, two by the sound of it. The curtain twitches back, barely, and then Dean is standing at the foot of his bed, Bobby standing just behind his shoulder.
It's hard to tell which of the two men looks more grim, but Dean looks like he hasn't slept in days, his face filthy, drawn and haggard, and there's several days' beard growth on his jaw. Sam isn't sure, but he thinks he might still be wearing the same clothes as he was outside the diner. He opens his mouth, but before he so much as has the time to say a single word, Dean clears the bed in a single, fluid motion and straddles him, pinning him where he is, and Sam feels the cold edge of a blade just scraping at his Adam's apple.
“All right, fucker,” Dean says, his tone so flat it sends a chill through Sam. “You have some nerve, pulling a stunt like this. You have exactly fifteen seconds to explain yourself before I end you.”
Sam's back is on fire, his shoulder throbbing where Dean is leaning on it, but he clamps down on his tongue so as not to cry out in pain. The last thing any of them needs is for civilians to get involved. He takes a careful breath, mindful of the knife at his throat. There's alcohol on Dean's breath, but his hand is as steady as ever. “Dean, it's me. It's me, I swear. Test me. Anything you can think of. Please,” he keeps his voice quiet, tries to catch Dean's gaze in his own, and is frightened by the terrible, empty, desperate look he sees there. It's one he hoped never to see again.
The knife retracts, barely. “Fine,” Dean tilts his head in assent. “Bobby, you got a flask handy?”
Bobby is looking at Sam as though he's something he scraped off the bottom of his boots. He digs in a pocket, pulls out a familiar-looking silver flask, and unscrews the top. From another pocket he produces a small container of salt, and pours in a considerable quantity.
“Just hedging my bets,” he says meaningfully, and hands the flask to Dean.
“Drink.”
Sam keeps his movements slow, careful, reaches up with his good hand to take the flask, and tilts the contents into his mouth. The salt is rough against his tongue, but he tries to keep his face neutral as he swallows. It doesn't help the parched feeling in his throat, but it's reasonably conclusive, he thinks. Dean pulls back a little, knife still drawn, and Sam swallows again, reflexively. It's a silver knife, and he knows what's coming next.
“Wait. Just... do it somewhere they won't notice right away. Otherwise, they'll ask questions.”
Dean nods once, brusquely, grabs him roughly by the leg and digs the point in above his left ankle. Sam winces at the sharp pain, but it's quickly gone, mingles in with all the other aches and pains. Dean steps back from the bed, and Sam can see he's breathing hard, his knuckles white on the knife hilt.
“It's me, Dean.”
Dean's face contorts. Bobby reaches for his shoulder, but Dean is already moving, and the next thing Sam knows, he's being gathered in his big brother's arms in a hug that threatens to crack his ribs. Dean's breath hitches in a wordless sob that's too quiet for anyone else to hear, and instinctively Sam wraps his good arm around him too, holds him as tightly as he can until the pain in his back gets too strong to ignore, and he hisses in spite of himself.
“Dean...”
“Sorry,” his brother pulls back, cuffs at his eyes with the back of his wrist. “I'm just... you okay?”
“Honestly? I don't know.” Sam rubs absently at his temple as the headache he's been nursing all day suddenly spikes. He can smell burning rubber again, and this time he's sure it's not coming from the hospital. He looks around anyway, feeling like everything's fuzzy around him. “Can you smell that?”
“Smell what, Sammy?” Dean is suddenly on edge again.
His thoughts are coming apart at the seams again. “I dunno, exactly. It's like―” another flash of white.
*
It's dark, and Sam is floating.
“You are sure you want to do this?” There's a faint pressure on his wrist, but he can't see who's talking. The voice is familiar, reassuring.
“Yes.”
“You know what is likely to happen.”
“Just... just do it.”
*
“Look, I'm telling you, I don't know what happened. He just kind of... checked out for a minute or so, and the next thing I know he's fucking convulsing! What the hell is wrong with him? When's he gonna wake up? He's been out for a fucking long time.” There's a frantic note to Dean's voice, as though he's barely holding himself together, and it's the desire to reassure his brother more than anything that pulls Sam out of the fog that's trying to pull him back in. He's damned tired ―exhausted, more like― but he forces himself awake as Dr. Vogel takes Dean aside a few paces.
“We'll have to perform more tests, but once he's awake we might be able to get to the bottom of this. Look, Dean is it? Your brother has some short-term memory loss, which isn't abnormal in cases of trauma, but it also means he can't give me much useful information about the last few days. Do you know if he hit his head?”
“What? No. No, I don't. I wasn't with him the whole time, I suppose he could have...”
“Easy, boy,” Bobby's gruff voice is calming, and Sam feels his own heartbeat slow down a little. Bobby looks over at Sam, sees he's awake, and puts a hand on Dean's shoulder. “Your brother's awake.”
Dean is at his side in a flash, the doctor forgotten. “Hey, Sammy. What the hell, dude? You scared the crap out of me.”
He swallows with difficulty. “Wha' happened?” He feels heavy, as though the air is pressing down on him. It's not unpleasant, just weird.
“You don't remember?” He shakes his head, sees Dean throw a worried look at the doctor. “You had a seizure or something. One minute we're talking, and the next you've got a thousand-yard-stare going on, and then you went full-on Exorcist on me.”
“Pea soup?” he jokes weakly, and is rewarded with a surprised grin.
“Practically.” It looks as though it's taking all of Dean's self-control not to grab onto Sam and never let go again.
“Can you give us a couple of minutes?” Dr. Vogel interjects, although Sam notes he's careful not to step into Dean's personal space. He's probably afraid of getting clocked. At a look from Sam, Dean retreats, grudgingly.
There are countless questions after that, some of them downright weird, even by Winchester standards. It's when Dr. Vogel asks about strange smells or tastes, though, that Sam decides that he's officially stepped into the Twilight Zone.
“How'd you know?”
“It was more of an educated guess. We'll bring in a neurologist to consult, just for an official diagnosis, but it sounds to me like you're experiencing temporal lobe seizures ―the strange smells, the white flashes, the fact you can't remember having a seizure at all, it points to that. What's a bit more worrisome is that it's not limited to a complex partial seizure: what your brother termed as 'checked out.' So far today you've had two generalized seizures―”
“Three.”
“Sorry?”
All Sam wants to do is go back to sleep, but he figures the doctor will just wake him up until he's got all his information. “I didn't know what it was, but the same thing happened this morning, too. Burnt rubber, killer headache, white flash, and I woke up on the ground.”
Dr. Vogel is taking notes again. “You said you had a headache?”
“Yeah. Is that usual?”
“No, not really. The neurologist will have to go over that with you. As I said, though, the fact that you've had this many seizures in so short a time with no prior history is worrisome. We'll have to run tests to see what's happening in that brain of yours, and you'll probably...”
The doctor's voice fades out, in spite of Sam's best efforts. He manages to stay half-awake for a few moments longer, but the pull of sleep is too strong, and eventually the whole world fades to black. When he opens his eyes again, Dean is sitting by his bed, elbows on his knees, his hands clasped loosely between his legs, staring at him.
“Dean, that's kind of creepy,” Sam says with a smile, just as Dean gets to his feet, and Sam sees him waver, ever so slightly. “You look like crap, by the way. You been sleeping?”
“Some,” is the evasive answer, which he knows really means 'not at all.' He sighs, lets it go.
“We're going to have to bail, you know. Sooner rather than later. Before they start asking too many questions. Besides, we need to talk, and we can't do it here.”
Dean rubs a hand over his mouth, which is what he always does when he's feeling uncertain or guilty or anxious or all three. Tension is rolling off him in waves, has been since Sam first saw him. “Yeah, I know. Look, the doc said they already did a couple of the important tests this morning when you came in, so I think maybe we should wait a bit more, see what's up with the seizures.”
Sam lets out a small huff of laughter. “Believe it or not, I think they're visions.”
Dean flinches. “What? You sure?”
He shrugs, regrets it as pain flares in his shoulder. “I saw him. The demon. And I get headaches before the seizures, and apparently that's not normal.”
“Shit,” Dean rubs a hand over his mouth. “I thought maybe you were done with those.”
“Yellow-eyed demon is still out there. Why would anything change?” Sam's eyes threaten to slip shut, and he forces himself to keep them open. “I mean, they started out as nightmares, remember?I figure it's just a... I don't know, a natural progression maybe?”
“Nothing natural about it,” Dean mutters darkly. “I still don't like it. Headaches was one thing, but this? This is some screwed-up shit, Sam. It's messing with that giant brain of yours. The doc said he'd set you up with a prescription, and I at least want to wait until then. Then we'll book. Okay?”
By 'okay,' Dean really means that there's no room for discussion, and Sam is too damned tired to argue, so he just acquiesces. Dealing with Dean on a regular basis has taught him to pick his battles, and this isn't one he wants to fight. “Okay, fine.”
Of course, waiting for doctors in a hospital always takes longer than they think it will, and it's almost nightfall by the time Dean and Bobby manage to sneak Sam out of there. He leans heavily on Dean, his legs shaky, and not for the first time he finds himself wishing they led the kind of life that didn't require them to artificially shorten hospital stays. This time in particular the idea of staying in a hospital bed sounds kind of appealing, but there's really no choice. He lets Dean ease him into the back seat of one of Bobby's trucks, and leans back, letting his head rest against the window.
“You didn't take your car?” It hasn't been that long, but he already misses the Impala's comforting interior, the smell of leather and oil mixed in with take-out food, Dean's aftershave, and the faint tang of gunpowder residue.
“Car's not running just now. Got the part in today, but we didn't have time to finish the installation before we got called here. Besides, I thought it'd be better if I drove,” Bobby says, his voice and expression carefully neutral, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that Dean was probably too sauced to be trusted behind the wheel of the car. If he weren't so tired, Sam would be worried that Dean was drunk that early in the morning. Then again, he's been dead, and he thinks that, if their positions were reversed, he might have wanted to lose himself at the bottom of a bottle too. There's a thought nagging at the back of his mind, lingering just out of reach, something important that he's supposed to know, or maybe ask about. About Dean.
“Can't put my finger on it,” he mutters to himself, when it continues to elude him.
“What, Sammy?”
“Dunno yet. Everything's fuzzy. Hoping it'll come to me.”
“You're not making much sense,” Dean twists in his seat to look at him, the same worried look on his face that he's had ever since Sam managed to convince him he wasn't some sort of evil doppelgänger.
“Welcome to my world.” His whole body is throbbing, but he manages to doze off anyway, waking only when the truck hits the gravel of Bobby's driveway. His muscles have stiffened by then, and he winces and hisses in pain when Dean hauls him to his feet, but after he's hobbled a few paces like an eighty-year-old man, the muscles loosen up enough to let him walk unassisted.
He's about halfway to the house when he hears an odd scratching sound coming from behind one of the piles of scrap metal, and he stops, nudging Dean. “Someone's here,” he says quietly.
Dean is instantly alert, and produces his Glock seemingly out of nowhere. Sam doesn't remember him having it at the hospital. “Go in the house,” he says quietly, and Sam nods.
“Just, don't shoot too fast, okay? I don't think it's anyone you need to worry about.”
“How'd you know?”
Sam shakes his head. “Just a feeling.”
“Okay. Go inside, would you?”
What Sam really wants to do is stay outside and make sure Dean is safe, but the situation is the same as ever. He'll be more of a liability out here, especially if Dean is distracted trying to keep an eye on him. He grabs the railing for support, lets himself in through Bobby's front door, careful not to disturb the line of salt across the threshold. Obviously at least Bobby was expecting trouble of some kind, after the events in Cold Oak. He sits carefully in one of the wooden chairs in Bobby's study, ignoring the sofa; if he lies down, he'll be out for the count, and he can't shake the feeling that he needs to be awake for this. Even so, he catches his eyelids closing of their own accord, and so he shoves himself to his feet and shuffles into Bobby's kitchen to make a pot of coffee.
The front door scrapes open as he's scooping coffee grounds into a paper filter, and he turns in time to see Dean and Bobby flanking a familiar figure.
“Ellen!”
*
“Bobby, is this really necessary?”
Ellen is seated across the table from Bobby, catches the shot glass of clear liquid he's slid across to her with practised ease. Bobby quirks an eyebrow at her.
“Just a belt of holy water. Shouldn't hurt.”
“If it's any consolation, they made me drink some too,” Sam volunteers from where Dean has forced him to sit on the sofa after all. “Standard operating procedure for people who're meant to be dead.”
“Not funny, Sam,” Dean's grip tightens on his shoulder. He's half-sitting on the arm of the sofa, watching Ellen carefully.
Ellen rolls her eyes, drinks the water without so much as batting an eye. “Whiskey now, please,” she slides the shot glass back, and Bobby turns to Dean.
“Why don't you get the bottle of Jack's out of the cabinet?”
Dean's reluctant to let go of Sam's shoulder, to go much further than a foot or so away, but arguing with Bobby is never a good idea at the best of times. Besides, Sam knows better than most that it's reassuring for Dean to be able to follow the orders of an authority figure. Bobby might not be Dad, but he's the closest thing they've got to a father now. Sam shakes his head when Bobby offers him a glass of whiskey too.
“No thanks. I'm feeling light-headed enough as it is. I'm fine with water.”
“Besides, he's off booze for the foreseeable future anyway,” Dean adds firmly.
“You sure you don't want to lie down? We can fill you in later.”
Another head shake. “No. I have to be awake for this. I don't know how to explain it, but we're short on time. The demon's plans aren't going to wait for me.”
Bobby raps on the table, and refills the glass Ellen has just emptied. “All right. Ellen, I got a feeling your story's going to be quicker, so why don't we start with you?”
“So what happened?” Dean settles next to Sam on the sofa, having helped himself to a very large glass of Bobby's Jack Daniels. His leg presses up against Sam's, keeping them both grounded, and he nudges him reassuringly with his shoulder. “How did you get out, Ellen?”
The Roadhouse is gone. Learning about it felt like having all the air sucked out of Sam's lungs. Ash is dead, burned alive, at least a half-dozen other hunters, all the regulars who were inside. The Roadhouse has been a fixture for nearly two decades, a figurative crossroads for hunters, a sanctuary. Having it violated like this... Sam can barely bring himself to contemplate it.
“I wasn't supposed to. I was supposed to be in there with everybody else. But we ran out of pretzels, of all things,” Ellen shakes her head. “It was just dumb luck,” she exhales sharply, empties her glass again, shutting her eyes against the onslaught of memory. “Ash called, panic in his voice. He told me to check in the safe, and before I could ask him what was going on, the call cut out. By the time I got back, the flames were sky-high, and everyone inside was dead. I couldn't have been gone more than fifteen minutes.” Her voice falters, on the verge of breaking. “You want to know the worst part? When I got there, the only thing I could think was 'Thank God Jo's not in there.' A lot of good people died in there, but I got to live. Lucky me.”
There's nothing to say to that. Bobby just gives her another refill, squeezes her hand in his large paw briefly. They all drink in silence. It's Ellen who breaks it first.
“Sam, honey, don't think I didn't catch what you said about people who're supposed to be dead. You feel like explaining that?”
Sam nods, inexplicably feeling even more tired. They never seem to be able to catch a break. He leans on his elbows, ducks his head for a moment as he tries to collect his thoughts. “I don't really know where to start.”
“What the hell happened in that place, anyway?” Bobby breaks in. “There were bodies everywhere by the time we got there.”
“What place?” Ellen's confused, her voice betraying her anxiety.
“Cold Oak,” Sam supplies quietly, and sees her stiffen as she recognizes the name. “It was the Yellow-Eyed Demon. He gathered all the psychic kids there, in groups, over the past few months. Set up a kind of psychic cage match, made them kill each other. Said he was looking for the strongest one to come out on top. Last one left wins the grand prize, whatever that is.”
The colour has drained from Ellen's face. “And that was you?”
He shakes his head, wishing it didn't throb so badly. “No. That's where the 'supposed to be dead' part comes in. There was a kid there, Jake Tully... he and I were the last ones left. Ava was there,” he turns to Dean, “and Andy. Ava killed him, and then Jake killed her before she could kill me.” He swallows a sudden lump in his throat at the thought of the astonished look on Andy's face, the blood staining his teeth.
“That the guy who stabbed you?” Dean doesn't seem as upset by Andy and Ava's deaths, but then he barely knew Andy and never got to meet Ava, doesn't share Sam's connection to them. It's unreasonable to expect him to be as affected by this.
He nods. “I guess, yeah. It must have been Jake. All I remember is this terrible pain in my back, like burning.”
“Tall black guy.”
“Yeah, that's him.”
“Now hold on just a minute,” Ellen is out of her chair, her face grey. “What are you saying?”
Sam just shakes his head. He can't see the expression on Dean's face, but he knows that his brother is like an open book for anyone who knows how to read him.
“Oh my God,” Ellen breathes. “Oh my God. How are ―how did you―” she breaks off, both hands clutching the back of her chair, white-knuckled.
“We buried him three days ago,” Bobby confirms, pouring himself another shot of whiskey. The bottle is starting to empty at an alarming rate.
For the first time that day, a light bulb seems to go off in Dean's mind, and he reaches for Sam's hand where the torn fingers have been carefully bandaged. He doesn't say anything, just turns it over in his own to hands, inspecting the damage, and swallows hard.
“It's okay,” Sam murmurs.
“No, it's not. It's not even close,” Dean chokes.
“You died,” Ellen says flatly. “So how the hell are you here?”
“I don't know, exactly,” Sam can feel the memories lurking just out of reach. “I feel like I should... like it's just there, but I can't... I don't know. I think maybe something changed.”
“No kidding,” Ellen snorts, only to get a quelling look from Bobby.
“No, I mean, I think something else was supposed to...” his breath catches, and for a moment he thinks he might pass out, or throw up. Dean must feel him falter, because he lets go of his hand to prop him up.
“What is it?”
He can't breathe. “I have to talk to you. Now.”
Dean is staring at him, wide-eyed, frightened. “Okay. Okay, Sammy. Sure.”
He struggles to compose himself, succeeds only partially. “Sorry, guys. Just... just give me a minute with my brother.” He has to let Dean pull him to his feet, feeling as though the floor might just give way under him at any moment. Dean takes him outside, shuts the door, and Sam holds onto his arm, gripping him so tightly he knows his fingers are bound to leave bruises.
“Did you do it?” he asks breathlessly. “Tell me you didn't do it. Please tell me you didn't.”
“Do what, Sammy?”
“Make a deal. Tell me you didn't make a deal to bring me back, Dean.”
He didn't think it was possible for Dean's eyes to get any wider, but they do. Sam can barely make out a ring of hazel around the pupils. Shock, he thinks distantly. Dean swallows hard, shakes his head.
“How did you―”
“Just tell me!” It's all he can do not to shake Dean until his teeth rattle, and maybe Dean can sense his frustration, because he pulls back, runs a hand through his hair, doesn't meet his gaze.
“I tried, okay? I was going to―”
“So what stopped you?”
Dean lets out a mirthless laugh. “Would you believe the damn car wouldn't start? I couldn't go anywhere. Then Bobby came back... practically twisted my arm until I did the right thing. Except I couldn't... I had to bury you. I didn't want... not like Dad. I couldn't.”
“So... you didn't―?”
“No. No, I swear.”
The clenching feeling around his heart that he never even knew was there is suddenly gone. Sam feels his eyes sting, and before he can stop them the tears spill down his face. Relief courses through him so fast it's dizzying, and a hysterical laugh wells up in his chest. “Well, thank God for that,” is all he can manage before his knees buckle. He feels Dean catch him under the arms before everything goes dark.
*
Jake is standing in a phone booth, his back leaning against one of the glass panels. His shoulders are slumped, his entire attitude one of defeat. The receiver is wedged between his ear and his shoulder, his hands clasped in front of him, as though he's praying, or penitent. His eyes are bright with unshed tears.
“Mama, Mama, please ―you gotta stop crying. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Mama. I never meant for any of this... Mama, you're not making any sense. No, this isn't your fault, stop saying that! Just make sure Jessie doesn't know about any of this... Mama, I'm taking care of this. Please... just trust me. I'll make sure you're taken care of, all right? … I gotta go. I love you, Mama.”
He hangs up, turns, presses his forehead against the wall of the booth, his breath misting against the glass.
*
Sam is getting tired of waking up confused and in the dark. “This is getting old,” he mutters, forcing his eyes open. He's back on Bobby's sofa, and Dean's anxious face swims into focus above him.
“You're telling me,” his brother says drily. “I take it you're back among the living?”
“Literally.”
“Okay, poor choice of words.”
“It wasn't a seizure, was it? How long was I out?” He doesn't think so, doesn't think there were weird smells or anything, but right now he's not sure of anything at all except maybe his own name and the fact that Dean hasn't sold his soul, which is making his heart sing and race in his chest.
“Too long, as far as I'm concerned. Five, ten minutes, maybe? No, it wasn't a seizure. You just went down like a sack of bricks.”
“You weren't lying to me, were you?” He knows his brother well enough, but he can't help wanting to be absolutely sure.
“No, I wasn't lying, asshole,” Dean snaps. “I wouldn't lie about something like that,” he adds defensively.
Yes, you would, Sam thinks. His head still aches.
“Hold still.”
In spite of the warning, Sam jerks his head back in surprise as Dean wipes his face with a wet cloth. When he pulls back, Sam can see splotches of red on the material.
“What the―”
“Your nose started to bleed. Seriously, Sammy, I don't think we should have left the hospital.”
“It's Sam. And what would we have told them? 'You see, doctor, I was recently raised from the dead. Do you think all these symptoms are normal?” he asks harshly, and Dean flinches at his tone.
“Sam...” Dean's expression is pained, and Sam holds up a hand in a placating gesture.
“Never mind. I'm sorry, I'm just... I feel like crap, and we're running out of time. Ellen and Bobby around?”
“Kitchen.”
“I gotta talk to Ellen.”
It doesn't take long to reconvene the tiny war council. Ellen straddles one of Bobby's chairs, glancing over at Sam every so often as though she expects him to collapse at any moment, or snap, or spontaneously combust, or something. Not that he can blame her. It wouldn't surprise him if any or all of the above happened, given the kind of day he's having. He rubs gently at his nose, grimaces when one knuckle comes away smeared with the last traces of blood.
“Ellen, you mentioned a safe.”
“Yeah. A hidden safe we keep in the basement. Only people who knew about it were me, Ash and Jo.”
“Did the demons get what was inside?”
“No,” she looks up, startled. “I'd clean forgotten, what with everything else that's happened.” She pulls a folded paper from her jacket pocket, spreads it out over the table top.
“Is that a map?” Dean goes to look over her shoulder.
She nods. “Southern Wyoming.”
“Isn't that where you said all the demon signs stopped, Bobby?” Sam shuffles over to the table, doing his best to ignore the twinges of pain that seem to be spiking unpredictably. Apparently, being raised from the dead sucks, no matter how it happens.
“That's right,” Bobby says slowly, turning to look at him, “but I never said that, kid. How'd you know?”
Sam stops in his tracks, stares. “But... I remember you... we were standing there―” he half-turns, feels his stomach churn as the memory slips away from him. “I don't... it didn't happen that way before. I...” he shakes his head quickly, trying to clear it, like a dog. He can't dwell on this now. “Look at the map,” he says instead, tapping his finger at the 'X'es that Ash marked in black felt pen. “Look at the points, the churches. The railroads. See it?”
“Wait,” Bobby stares for a moment, then goes to pull a book from his library, lays it flat on the table next to the map, careful not to break the spine. “I don't believe it.”
“What? What? Would someone please fill in the clueless guy, here?” Dean is exasperated. “Come on, share with the class!”
“Untwist your shorts, boy,” Bobby rolls his eyes, and Sam interrupts before Dean's head explodes.
“The places Ash marked, they're all churches,” he explains.
“All built at the same time, in the mid-nineteenth century, by Samuel Colt himself,” Bobby continues, glaring at Sam for interrupting, and Sam wisely clamps his mouth shut before he finds himself on Bobby's wrong side yet again.
“Samuel Colt ―the demon-killing, gun-making Samuel Colt?” Dean asks.
“How many Samuel Colts do you think there were in the nineteenth century, boy?”
Dean looks sheepish. “Just asking.”
“Anyway, there's more. He built private railway lines connecting church to church,” Bobby turns back to the map, but Sam is ahead of him, tracing the lines between the points to make a five-pointed star.
“Tell me that's not what I think it is,” Dean says.
“It's a Devil's Trap,” Sam confirms. “A 100-square-mile Devil's Trap.”
“That's brilliant!” Dean looks like it's Christmas in July. “Iron lines demons can't cross.”
Ellen is staring with the same impressed look on her face as the rest of them are sporting. “I've never heard of anything that massive.”
“No one has,” Bobby says quietly.
Dean leans over the map. “And after all these years none of the lines are broken? I mean, it still works?”
“Definitely,” Sam nods.
“How do you know?”
Because I've seen it all before. Sam doesn't voice the thought. “All those omens Bobby found,” he says instead. It's what he said before. “I mean, the demons. They must be circling, and they can't get in.”
“Yeah, well... they're tryin',” Bobby says ominously.
“What for?”
“There's something inside they want,” Sam says quietly. “The Devil's Trap isn't meant to keep things out, it's there to keep something in.”
“Think the demons can get at it? Can they do it, Bobby?”
“No way. This thing's so powerful, you'd practically need an A-bomb to destroy it. No way any full-blooded demon can cross it.”
“But I know who can,” Sam says, his headache returning with a vengeance. He looks up at Dean, who's biting his lip, staring at the map with a look on his face that suggests he's hoping it'll spontaneously morph into something else. A beer, maybe, or a slice of pie. “We have to go to Wyoming.”
*
Chapter 2
Chapter 1: The New Lazarus
It's dark where he is. For a hopeful moment he thinks it might be because his eyes are closed, but opening them doesn't provide sudden illumination. It's dark, and too hot. Stifling. His ribcage hurts where his heart is trying to beat its way through. He shifts, feels the first unwelcome stab of pain in his back, coughs drily. He blinks as what feels like dust or fine dirt sifts down into his eyes. His questing hand encounters a rough surface, instantly acquires several splinters. Wood. Pine, by the smell. He wriggles in place, ignores the second and even the third stab of pain. At the fourth he allows himself a small whimper, but he manages to search all his pockets for a lighter, a match, anything. He finds a switchblade, tucked into his boot, but nothing with which to shed light on his situation.
He tries to swallow, but his mouth is too dry, his tongue so swollen it feels like it's cleaving to his palate. Screaming for help is futile, he discovers. His voice won't carry, vocal cords just as dry as the rest of him. He's buried alive, and the knowledge doesn't surprise him, the certainty doesn't frighten him. He'd been warned this would happen, he remembers dimly. Nothing for it now but get himself out of this pine box, and hope it's not buried so deep that he'll suffocate before breaching the surface.
There's an Uma Thurman joke in here somewhere, he thinks as he starts methodically carving at the wood just above his head. It's not ideal: his arms ache, his left shoulder on fire; the switchblade is dull before an hour has gone past, and sawdust and wood shavings drift onto his face, get into his eyes and nose. A few times he coughs so hard he nearly passes out, white and red fireworks sparking behind his eyes. He keeps going, scrapes his knuckles and fingertips bloody as he works, and shoves all thoughts of his oxygen running low to the back of his mind. He feels the wood start to give way, starts prying and worrying at it with his fingertips, loses a couple of fingernails as his tugging grows more frantic. He can taste the copper tang of fear on his tongue, his breathing harsh in his ears, echoing in the coffin.
Not gonna die here not gonna die here not gonna die here.
The wood splinters over his head, and earth cascades down through the hole he's made, rich and loamy and smothering. He flails, panicking as the world flip-flops and the earth heaves and tries to swallow him whole. He loses two more fingernails, brings up an arm in front of his face, kicks free of the coffin and into the vice-grip of the grave dirt, his lungs burning and screaming, until somehow he's free of it, sprawled face-first in the tall grass, coughing and choking and sobbing. He flips over onto his back, almost blinded by the white light reflecting off the roiling grey clouds in the sky, digs his bleeding fingers into the sod, anchors his heels, spits more dirt out of his mouth.
Can't stay here.
He has no idea where here is, but he can't stay. He knows this with a certainty that applies to nothing else right now. He rolls onto his knees, bites back a whimper of pain and another distant emotion he can't quite figure out. There's a grave marker but no name on it, just a rough-hewn piece of wood, not even a cross. He recognizes his initials, scratched in crudely with what was probably the tip of a Bowie knife: S.W. He uses the marker to push himself to his feet, braces himself when one leg buckles, tingling unpleasantly, as though insects are creeping just beneath his skin and nibbling at the muscles underneath. He forces himself to take a deep breath, then another, to breathe through the pain. Part of the deal, he tells himself, although he's not sure what the deal was, exactly.
His mouth fills with an acrid taste, and he grimaces at the smell of burnt rubber in the air. What is that? He turns on himself, trying to locate the source of the odour, then bends double, clutching at his head as he feels a stabbing pain lance through him. There's a flash of white light, then nothing.
When he comes to he's lying in the middle of a clearing. He pushes himself to a sitting position, feeling as though he's been tied in a sack and beaten to within an inch of his life. He can't tell how long he's been unconscious, but right now that appears to be the least of his worries. His head still aches, even the sickly light pricking at his eyes as he takes in his surroundings for the first time. His makeshift grave looks like it was the epicentre of a hell of an explosion: what few small trees were standing nearby have been torn up by their roots and have fallen away from the grave site, encasing it in a ring of dead and dying limbs. The tall grass has turned yellow, dry and brittle, crumbles to dust at his touch. He coughs, trying to dislodge the taste of dirt from his mouth, his tongue feeling as though it's swelled to twice its size in his mouth. He thinks he should remember why it looks as though a small nuke went off here, but his head feels as though it's stuffed with cotton wool, everything muzzy and hazy. There's something important he should be doing, he knows, if only he could remember what it was.
Dean.
He has to find Dean. That's the reason he's here ―wherever here is. He looks up at the sky, as if he might glean something from the swirling grey clouds, but they offer no insight at all. He doesn't know how close he still is to Cold Oak. He doesn't know how long he's been gone, although the blistering heat makes him think it must be high summer. He doesn't even know what time it is. Shaking his head, he tugs on the sleeve of his left wrist to check his watch, but predictably enough, it's stopped, at 02:37. He wonders if that's the exact time he died, and a shudder runs through him. His cell phone is long gone. He searches through his pockets, wincing as something in his back pulls the wrong way, sending pain lancing through him again. He tries to feel for the injury with one hand, but can't quite reach it: it's in an awkward spot, at the small of his back. He gives up quickly as each attempt threatens to make his legs give way, takes several deep breaths to steady himself. Whatever's wrong with him, it's going to have to wait until he can find Dean.
Once he's sure he can stand and walk without falling over, he takes one shaky step, then another, and sets out in earnest. He finds a road not too far away. It stands to reason that Dean wouldn't have wanted him too far out of the way. He doesn't know whether to be grateful or sad that Dean didn't burn his body when he had the chance. It's the same decision he would have made, something tells him, the kind of terrible devotion that has destroyed them over and over again.
*
The road looks like any of the other thousands of roads he and his brother have travelled down over the years, all black asphalt shimmering and hazy in the heat. He's not sure which way to go. He has nothing on him except his dull switchblade and, incongruously, a gas station receipt from 2006 with a fake signature scrawled at the bottom: D. Hasselhof. It's kind of hard to explain, he remembers. He wonders if Andy is still dead. Probably. He's still wearing the same jeans and jacket, but the weather has turned a bit too warm for them. His watch is not only stopped, but broken, the glass shattered. He looks up at the clouds, tries to gauge which way the sun was going, eventually heads in the direction he thinks might be west.
Without a working watch and without a clear view of the sun, it's impossible to tell how long he's been walking. He doesn't think he's getting very far. His eyes burn in his head, and he can hear his breathing turn ragged and harsh. The worst of the pain comes from his back, each step sending bursts of agony up his spine and down into his legs. Twice he stumbles when his knees give out, sending him sprawling on all fours on the shoulder of the road, scraping his knees and his palms bloody. The third time it happens, he hears a car cresting the hill behind him just as he falls face-first onto the asphalt. He stays there for a moment, stunned and unmoving, blinking in a vain attempt to get the fog to lift.
The car motor grumbles closer, and he thinks he can hear the sound of the engine change as it shifts into a different gear, then stops entirely. Two distinct doors slam, and voices pierce through the fog.
“... wrong with him?” A girl's voice, by the sound of it.
“I don't know,” another girl's voice, a little deeper, maybe older. “Hey, sir? Sir, can you hear me?”
Footsteps approach. He senses rather than sees someone kneel next to him and put a hand gently on his shoulder. “Sir?” It's the second voice. He tries to push himself up, can't quite bite back a groan of pain. “He's hurt. Chrissy, go get the first aid kit from the car.”
“But―”
“Chrissy, it's fine. It's not like he's in any shape to just jump up and mug me.”
“We should just call 911.”
“And we will. Hey, take it easy,” the second voice, not-Chrissy, turns gentle as he manages to struggle to a sitting position, and he feels hands reach out and steady him. “Can you tell me what happened? Were you in an accident?”
He shakes his head, coughs. “Don't remember,” he rasps, and it's sort of true. He doesn't remember much from before. “Dean?”
“Who's Dean?”
He shakes his head, starts coughing harder, and she pats his arm.
“Wait, I've got a bottle of water in the car. Hang on, okay?”
He can't help but think that he doesn't have much choice in the matter. His legs won't hold him up, and his vision is still so blurred that he can barely make out her silhouette when she comes back and squats next to him. He feels a bottle of water being pressed into his hand.
“There you go. It's a bit warm, but it's all we have. Go slow, okay? Can you tell me your name?”
It takes all his self control not to gulp down all the water as fast as he can. It's tepid and stale, but it feels like the most delicious stuff ever to pass his lips. He chokes on a mouthful, and feels it dribble down his chin and soak the front of his shirt.
“Sam. I'm Sam,” he puts his head down, still coughing.
“Okay, Sam. My name's Amanda. My friend's going to call 911, but until we can get someone here I want to look at where you're hurt, is that okay? I'm certified in first aid.”
He shakes his head, still waiting for his vision to clear. “No. No, I... no hospital. Please. I'm okay. I have to find Dean.”
“We can find him after we get you checked out.”
He looks up, blinking, and her face finally swims into focus. He gets an impression of soft brown eyes and a wide smile, of smooth-looking dark skin. His first thought is that she's beautiful, and the next is that it's not her face that's beautiful. He shakes his head again.
“No. I can't... I'm okay.”
“Okay, Sam? Bleeding, dehydrated and passed out on the side of the road is pretty much the opposite of okay.”
“I-I'm bleeding?” he can hear the confusion in his own voice. He doesn't think he should be bleeding.
Amanda gives him a sympathetic look. “Yes, you are. You want to let me have a look?” She doesn't wait for him to answer, just scoots around behind him and pulls up his shirt. He hears her hiss in sympathy, so whatever is wrong with him, it must look bad. “Well, it could be worse. Looks like an old injury that just got reopened, not that I'm an expert. Were you in a car accident? Was anyone with you? Do you remember anything?”
“Uh... I was ―I was with Dean. I was looking for him.” He looks up and sees a blond girl standing a few paces away, cell phone in hand. “Please don't call anyone. I'm okay. I just have to find him.”
“Who's Dean?”
“He's my brother.”
“Does he have a cell phone?”
He stops to think about it. Dean must have a cell, he concludes. They've each had one for years. “Yeah.”
“What's his number?”
Sam scrunches up his face in concentration. “Uh...”
“Okay, wait. Why don't we get you seated in the car, so you're not in the middle of the road? You think you can walk?”
“Yeah, I think.” He lets Amanda pull him to his feet, tries not to lean on her too hard as his knees threaten to buckle. She nudges open the back door, eases him onto the back seat, then hands him her cell phone.
“Try just dialling the number. Sometimes letting your fingers do the walking works.”
He takes the phone, finds his fingers moving automatically, the way she said they would, stops just short of pressing 'send.' He looks around. “Do you smell that?” he asks. Maybe they braked harder than he thought, because the whole car smells of burned rubber.
“Smell what, honey?”
Another flash of white, and whatever else she was going to say is lost as his thoughts shatter into a hundred thousand pieces.
*
Jake has dozed off by the side of his small campfire in the woods outside of Cold Oak. He looks smaller than Sam remembers, weaker, more vulnerable in the flickering shadows. He comes awake with a jolt, to find the Yellow-Eyed Demon lounging on the other side of the fire, his habitual smirk already in place.
“Howdy, Jake.”
“I'm ―I'm dreaming,” Jake stammers.
“I've got a genius on my hands,” the demon remarks to the universe at large, rolling his eyes. “Well, congratulations, Jake, you're it: last man standing. The American Idol. I have to admit, you weren't the horse I was betting on, but still, I gotta give it to you,” he gestures significantly.
Jake tries to make a brave show, but it's obvious he's terrified. “Go... to hell.”
The demon just smirks again. “Been there, done that.” He's just jerking Jake around, waiting for the outcome he obviously thinks is inevitable.
“Everything you put me through... dragging me to that place, making me kill those people...”
“All part of the beauty pageant, Jake. I needed the strongest, and that's you.”
“Needed me for what?”
“Oh, I got a laundry list of tasty things for you.”
Jake is on his feet in a flash, anger smouldering in his eyes. Up until a day ago, he was a soldier, a killer maybe, but never a murderer. “The only thing I am going to do is wake up, hunt you down, and kill you myself.” It's the promise he made to Sam, before he killed him, before he severed his spinal cord with a knife.
The demon is unfazed. “You know, others have tried. It's not easy. Trust me, Jake, you want to be a good little soldier, here.” The threat is thinly veiled.
“And if I'm not?”
“If you're a bad little soldier, well, that dear old mom of yours, that adorable little sister, I'll make certain that they both live long enough to know the chewy taste of their own intestines. No, Jake. I'm not bluffing.” Demons don't bluff, not like this. They thrive on hurting others, and it's obvious Jake understands this, because his voice shakes, and his shoulders slump almost imperceptibly in defeat.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Like I said: genius.”
*
“He's coming around. Sam? Can you hear me?”
His mouth is dry, and his head still aches. He doesn't remember it not hurting, although he knows that can't be right. His eyes feel like they've been glued shut. He tries to raise a hand to scrub at them, but his body feels weak and rubbery and not-quite-there.
“Sam?” He doesn't recognize the voice, but there's a hand resting lightly on his shoulder. He forces his eyes open, waits for the world to swim back into focus, but it doesn't, not entirely. There's a man leaning over him, older, very white, with that unmistakeable air of authority that seems to come with wearing a white lab coat. Doctor, then. The man smiles, which is a good sign, he thinks. “You back with us?”
“Uh...” is all he can manage at first. He swallows, wishes he had saliva left, tries to figure out how words fit together in sentences again. “I... I think so?”
“Good. I'm Dr. Vogel. Do you know where you are?”
“Hospital, I guess?” He tries to sit up, fees something tug gently at his arm, and barely has time to register it as an IV before Dr. Vogel exerts just enough pressure on his shoulder to keep him lying down.
“Easy, there. You're in no shape to be doing anything except let the IV do its thing. You're at the Sanford Medical Centre. You were found by the side of the road, and you're suffering from severe dehydration on top of half-a-dozen various injuries. Do you remember any of that?”
“A bit. I was walking... looking for Dean.” He glances around, but his bed is surrounded by a drawn curtain, plain white, or more off-white, really. Dean would be disappointed: he has no idea where the exits are. His left arm is in a sling, he notes idly, his hand strapped tightly to his shoulder. Dislocated, maybe, although he doesn't remember it being that bad. His fingers have been bandaged, too, where he tore them open digging himself out of his grave.
The doctor starts taking notes. “What else do you remember?”
“Not much. I just felt... bad. Where is this?”
“The hospital?” Sam nods gingerly, and the doctor scribbles another note before answering. “In Sioux Falls.”
A wave of relief washes over him. “I'm still in South Dakota.”
“That's right. Can you tell me where you were before you were found?”
He shakes his head. “A cemetery, I think. Before that... I don't know. It's blurry. The last thing I remember clearly is stopping at a diner with Dean.” He doesn't think it's a good idea to tell the good doctor about the demon's little cage match in Cold Oak.
“Dean is your brother?”
He nods. “I should... I need to find him.”
“Don't worry about that just yet. I have to ask a few more questions first. Do you feel up to that?”
“I guess.”
“Good. You have an injury to your back that's... perplexing, to say the least. Do you remember hurting yourself?”
He shakes his head. It's not a lie, technically. All he remembers is the stabbing, white-hot pain of the knife entering his back, twisting, cutting through bone and sinew and nerve. Everything after that is a blank, until he woke up in the ground. There has to be more. “No. I kind of... kind of remember there was pain, but nothing else. How come I don't remember anything?”
“There could be a number of explanations, frankly, and I'm not sure which one it is just yet. You could simply have suppressed the memory: it happens a lot in cases of severe trauma. Do you remember hitting your head at all?”
“No. I don't think I did.”
“Sam, have you ever suffered from seizures before? Any history of epilepsy?”
He shakes his head, immediately regrets it. “No. Why?”
“You had a seizure before you were brought here. It could be a one-time thing, of course, but I'd like to run some more tests.”
The fog has almost completely cleared. “How long have I been here?”
“Several hours. I'd like to keep you overnight for observation, at the very least.”
“I can't... I have to find Dean.” Not to mention he has no insurance, no money, nothing on him except... well, nothing, now that he looks. He's dressed in nothing but an ill-fitting hospital gown. “Where are my clothes?”
“They've been put aside for you. And don't worry about your brother, he's right outside. He's been kicking up a fuss for hours, and it's only your uncle who's keeping a lid on him. Otherwise, you and I probably wouldn't be having a civilised conversation at this moment in time,” the doctor looks amused. “To say he was worried would be an understatement, I think.”
“Dean's here?” Sam sits up this time, his heart hammering painfully in his chest, and the whole room lurches drunkenly before the doctor catches him by his good arm to steady him. “Can I see him?”
“I think he may tear down the door if I don't let him in. I'm going to have more questions later.”
Sam swallows hard, nods, his excitement at the prospect of seeing Dean again replaced by knots of anxiety. The last time he saw Dean was in Cold Oak, just before... he doesn't know how Dean is going to react to seeing him now, but whatever happens, it's not likely to be good. The doctor pats his arm and gives him a significant look that has him easing himself back onto the bed, then slips past the curtains. Sam can hear his footsteps retreating, and a few moments later more footsteps approach ―more than one person, two by the sound of it. The curtain twitches back, barely, and then Dean is standing at the foot of his bed, Bobby standing just behind his shoulder.
It's hard to tell which of the two men looks more grim, but Dean looks like he hasn't slept in days, his face filthy, drawn and haggard, and there's several days' beard growth on his jaw. Sam isn't sure, but he thinks he might still be wearing the same clothes as he was outside the diner. He opens his mouth, but before he so much as has the time to say a single word, Dean clears the bed in a single, fluid motion and straddles him, pinning him where he is, and Sam feels the cold edge of a blade just scraping at his Adam's apple.
“All right, fucker,” Dean says, his tone so flat it sends a chill through Sam. “You have some nerve, pulling a stunt like this. You have exactly fifteen seconds to explain yourself before I end you.”
Sam's back is on fire, his shoulder throbbing where Dean is leaning on it, but he clamps down on his tongue so as not to cry out in pain. The last thing any of them needs is for civilians to get involved. He takes a careful breath, mindful of the knife at his throat. There's alcohol on Dean's breath, but his hand is as steady as ever. “Dean, it's me. It's me, I swear. Test me. Anything you can think of. Please,” he keeps his voice quiet, tries to catch Dean's gaze in his own, and is frightened by the terrible, empty, desperate look he sees there. It's one he hoped never to see again.
The knife retracts, barely. “Fine,” Dean tilts his head in assent. “Bobby, you got a flask handy?”
Bobby is looking at Sam as though he's something he scraped off the bottom of his boots. He digs in a pocket, pulls out a familiar-looking silver flask, and unscrews the top. From another pocket he produces a small container of salt, and pours in a considerable quantity.
“Just hedging my bets,” he says meaningfully, and hands the flask to Dean.
“Drink.”
Sam keeps his movements slow, careful, reaches up with his good hand to take the flask, and tilts the contents into his mouth. The salt is rough against his tongue, but he tries to keep his face neutral as he swallows. It doesn't help the parched feeling in his throat, but it's reasonably conclusive, he thinks. Dean pulls back a little, knife still drawn, and Sam swallows again, reflexively. It's a silver knife, and he knows what's coming next.
“Wait. Just... do it somewhere they won't notice right away. Otherwise, they'll ask questions.”
Dean nods once, brusquely, grabs him roughly by the leg and digs the point in above his left ankle. Sam winces at the sharp pain, but it's quickly gone, mingles in with all the other aches and pains. Dean steps back from the bed, and Sam can see he's breathing hard, his knuckles white on the knife hilt.
“It's me, Dean.”
Dean's face contorts. Bobby reaches for his shoulder, but Dean is already moving, and the next thing Sam knows, he's being gathered in his big brother's arms in a hug that threatens to crack his ribs. Dean's breath hitches in a wordless sob that's too quiet for anyone else to hear, and instinctively Sam wraps his good arm around him too, holds him as tightly as he can until the pain in his back gets too strong to ignore, and he hisses in spite of himself.
“Dean...”
“Sorry,” his brother pulls back, cuffs at his eyes with the back of his wrist. “I'm just... you okay?”
“Honestly? I don't know.” Sam rubs absently at his temple as the headache he's been nursing all day suddenly spikes. He can smell burning rubber again, and this time he's sure it's not coming from the hospital. He looks around anyway, feeling like everything's fuzzy around him. “Can you smell that?”
“Smell what, Sammy?” Dean is suddenly on edge again.
His thoughts are coming apart at the seams again. “I dunno, exactly. It's like―” another flash of white.
*
It's dark, and Sam is floating.
“You are sure you want to do this?” There's a faint pressure on his wrist, but he can't see who's talking. The voice is familiar, reassuring.
“Yes.”
“You know what is likely to happen.”
“Just... just do it.”
*
“Look, I'm telling you, I don't know what happened. He just kind of... checked out for a minute or so, and the next thing I know he's fucking convulsing! What the hell is wrong with him? When's he gonna wake up? He's been out for a fucking long time.” There's a frantic note to Dean's voice, as though he's barely holding himself together, and it's the desire to reassure his brother more than anything that pulls Sam out of the fog that's trying to pull him back in. He's damned tired ―exhausted, more like― but he forces himself awake as Dr. Vogel takes Dean aside a few paces.
“We'll have to perform more tests, but once he's awake we might be able to get to the bottom of this. Look, Dean is it? Your brother has some short-term memory loss, which isn't abnormal in cases of trauma, but it also means he can't give me much useful information about the last few days. Do you know if he hit his head?”
“What? No. No, I don't. I wasn't with him the whole time, I suppose he could have...”
“Easy, boy,” Bobby's gruff voice is calming, and Sam feels his own heartbeat slow down a little. Bobby looks over at Sam, sees he's awake, and puts a hand on Dean's shoulder. “Your brother's awake.”
Dean is at his side in a flash, the doctor forgotten. “Hey, Sammy. What the hell, dude? You scared the crap out of me.”
He swallows with difficulty. “Wha' happened?” He feels heavy, as though the air is pressing down on him. It's not unpleasant, just weird.
“You don't remember?” He shakes his head, sees Dean throw a worried look at the doctor. “You had a seizure or something. One minute we're talking, and the next you've got a thousand-yard-stare going on, and then you went full-on Exorcist on me.”
“Pea soup?” he jokes weakly, and is rewarded with a surprised grin.
“Practically.” It looks as though it's taking all of Dean's self-control not to grab onto Sam and never let go again.
“Can you give us a couple of minutes?” Dr. Vogel interjects, although Sam notes he's careful not to step into Dean's personal space. He's probably afraid of getting clocked. At a look from Sam, Dean retreats, grudgingly.
There are countless questions after that, some of them downright weird, even by Winchester standards. It's when Dr. Vogel asks about strange smells or tastes, though, that Sam decides that he's officially stepped into the Twilight Zone.
“How'd you know?”
“It was more of an educated guess. We'll bring in a neurologist to consult, just for an official diagnosis, but it sounds to me like you're experiencing temporal lobe seizures ―the strange smells, the white flashes, the fact you can't remember having a seizure at all, it points to that. What's a bit more worrisome is that it's not limited to a complex partial seizure: what your brother termed as 'checked out.' So far today you've had two generalized seizures―”
“Three.”
“Sorry?”
All Sam wants to do is go back to sleep, but he figures the doctor will just wake him up until he's got all his information. “I didn't know what it was, but the same thing happened this morning, too. Burnt rubber, killer headache, white flash, and I woke up on the ground.”
Dr. Vogel is taking notes again. “You said you had a headache?”
“Yeah. Is that usual?”
“No, not really. The neurologist will have to go over that with you. As I said, though, the fact that you've had this many seizures in so short a time with no prior history is worrisome. We'll have to run tests to see what's happening in that brain of yours, and you'll probably...”
The doctor's voice fades out, in spite of Sam's best efforts. He manages to stay half-awake for a few moments longer, but the pull of sleep is too strong, and eventually the whole world fades to black. When he opens his eyes again, Dean is sitting by his bed, elbows on his knees, his hands clasped loosely between his legs, staring at him.
“Dean, that's kind of creepy,” Sam says with a smile, just as Dean gets to his feet, and Sam sees him waver, ever so slightly. “You look like crap, by the way. You been sleeping?”
“Some,” is the evasive answer, which he knows really means 'not at all.' He sighs, lets it go.
“We're going to have to bail, you know. Sooner rather than later. Before they start asking too many questions. Besides, we need to talk, and we can't do it here.”
Dean rubs a hand over his mouth, which is what he always does when he's feeling uncertain or guilty or anxious or all three. Tension is rolling off him in waves, has been since Sam first saw him. “Yeah, I know. Look, the doc said they already did a couple of the important tests this morning when you came in, so I think maybe we should wait a bit more, see what's up with the seizures.”
Sam lets out a small huff of laughter. “Believe it or not, I think they're visions.”
Dean flinches. “What? You sure?”
He shrugs, regrets it as pain flares in his shoulder. “I saw him. The demon. And I get headaches before the seizures, and apparently that's not normal.”
“Shit,” Dean rubs a hand over his mouth. “I thought maybe you were done with those.”
“Yellow-eyed demon is still out there. Why would anything change?” Sam's eyes threaten to slip shut, and he forces himself to keep them open. “I mean, they started out as nightmares, remember?I figure it's just a... I don't know, a natural progression maybe?”
“Nothing natural about it,” Dean mutters darkly. “I still don't like it. Headaches was one thing, but this? This is some screwed-up shit, Sam. It's messing with that giant brain of yours. The doc said he'd set you up with a prescription, and I at least want to wait until then. Then we'll book. Okay?”
By 'okay,' Dean really means that there's no room for discussion, and Sam is too damned tired to argue, so he just acquiesces. Dealing with Dean on a regular basis has taught him to pick his battles, and this isn't one he wants to fight. “Okay, fine.”
Of course, waiting for doctors in a hospital always takes longer than they think it will, and it's almost nightfall by the time Dean and Bobby manage to sneak Sam out of there. He leans heavily on Dean, his legs shaky, and not for the first time he finds himself wishing they led the kind of life that didn't require them to artificially shorten hospital stays. This time in particular the idea of staying in a hospital bed sounds kind of appealing, but there's really no choice. He lets Dean ease him into the back seat of one of Bobby's trucks, and leans back, letting his head rest against the window.
“You didn't take your car?” It hasn't been that long, but he already misses the Impala's comforting interior, the smell of leather and oil mixed in with take-out food, Dean's aftershave, and the faint tang of gunpowder residue.
“Car's not running just now. Got the part in today, but we didn't have time to finish the installation before we got called here. Besides, I thought it'd be better if I drove,” Bobby says, his voice and expression carefully neutral, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that Dean was probably too sauced to be trusted behind the wheel of the car. If he weren't so tired, Sam would be worried that Dean was drunk that early in the morning. Then again, he's been dead, and he thinks that, if their positions were reversed, he might have wanted to lose himself at the bottom of a bottle too. There's a thought nagging at the back of his mind, lingering just out of reach, something important that he's supposed to know, or maybe ask about. About Dean.
“Can't put my finger on it,” he mutters to himself, when it continues to elude him.
“What, Sammy?”
“Dunno yet. Everything's fuzzy. Hoping it'll come to me.”
“You're not making much sense,” Dean twists in his seat to look at him, the same worried look on his face that he's had ever since Sam managed to convince him he wasn't some sort of evil doppelgänger.
“Welcome to my world.” His whole body is throbbing, but he manages to doze off anyway, waking only when the truck hits the gravel of Bobby's driveway. His muscles have stiffened by then, and he winces and hisses in pain when Dean hauls him to his feet, but after he's hobbled a few paces like an eighty-year-old man, the muscles loosen up enough to let him walk unassisted.
He's about halfway to the house when he hears an odd scratching sound coming from behind one of the piles of scrap metal, and he stops, nudging Dean. “Someone's here,” he says quietly.
Dean is instantly alert, and produces his Glock seemingly out of nowhere. Sam doesn't remember him having it at the hospital. “Go in the house,” he says quietly, and Sam nods.
“Just, don't shoot too fast, okay? I don't think it's anyone you need to worry about.”
“How'd you know?”
Sam shakes his head. “Just a feeling.”
“Okay. Go inside, would you?”
What Sam really wants to do is stay outside and make sure Dean is safe, but the situation is the same as ever. He'll be more of a liability out here, especially if Dean is distracted trying to keep an eye on him. He grabs the railing for support, lets himself in through Bobby's front door, careful not to disturb the line of salt across the threshold. Obviously at least Bobby was expecting trouble of some kind, after the events in Cold Oak. He sits carefully in one of the wooden chairs in Bobby's study, ignoring the sofa; if he lies down, he'll be out for the count, and he can't shake the feeling that he needs to be awake for this. Even so, he catches his eyelids closing of their own accord, and so he shoves himself to his feet and shuffles into Bobby's kitchen to make a pot of coffee.
The front door scrapes open as he's scooping coffee grounds into a paper filter, and he turns in time to see Dean and Bobby flanking a familiar figure.
“Ellen!”
*
“Bobby, is this really necessary?”
Ellen is seated across the table from Bobby, catches the shot glass of clear liquid he's slid across to her with practised ease. Bobby quirks an eyebrow at her.
“Just a belt of holy water. Shouldn't hurt.”
“If it's any consolation, they made me drink some too,” Sam volunteers from where Dean has forced him to sit on the sofa after all. “Standard operating procedure for people who're meant to be dead.”
“Not funny, Sam,” Dean's grip tightens on his shoulder. He's half-sitting on the arm of the sofa, watching Ellen carefully.
Ellen rolls her eyes, drinks the water without so much as batting an eye. “Whiskey now, please,” she slides the shot glass back, and Bobby turns to Dean.
“Why don't you get the bottle of Jack's out of the cabinet?”
Dean's reluctant to let go of Sam's shoulder, to go much further than a foot or so away, but arguing with Bobby is never a good idea at the best of times. Besides, Sam knows better than most that it's reassuring for Dean to be able to follow the orders of an authority figure. Bobby might not be Dad, but he's the closest thing they've got to a father now. Sam shakes his head when Bobby offers him a glass of whiskey too.
“No thanks. I'm feeling light-headed enough as it is. I'm fine with water.”
“Besides, he's off booze for the foreseeable future anyway,” Dean adds firmly.
“You sure you don't want to lie down? We can fill you in later.”
Another head shake. “No. I have to be awake for this. I don't know how to explain it, but we're short on time. The demon's plans aren't going to wait for me.”
Bobby raps on the table, and refills the glass Ellen has just emptied. “All right. Ellen, I got a feeling your story's going to be quicker, so why don't we start with you?”
“So what happened?” Dean settles next to Sam on the sofa, having helped himself to a very large glass of Bobby's Jack Daniels. His leg presses up against Sam's, keeping them both grounded, and he nudges him reassuringly with his shoulder. “How did you get out, Ellen?”
The Roadhouse is gone. Learning about it felt like having all the air sucked out of Sam's lungs. Ash is dead, burned alive, at least a half-dozen other hunters, all the regulars who were inside. The Roadhouse has been a fixture for nearly two decades, a figurative crossroads for hunters, a sanctuary. Having it violated like this... Sam can barely bring himself to contemplate it.
“I wasn't supposed to. I was supposed to be in there with everybody else. But we ran out of pretzels, of all things,” Ellen shakes her head. “It was just dumb luck,” she exhales sharply, empties her glass again, shutting her eyes against the onslaught of memory. “Ash called, panic in his voice. He told me to check in the safe, and before I could ask him what was going on, the call cut out. By the time I got back, the flames were sky-high, and everyone inside was dead. I couldn't have been gone more than fifteen minutes.” Her voice falters, on the verge of breaking. “You want to know the worst part? When I got there, the only thing I could think was 'Thank God Jo's not in there.' A lot of good people died in there, but I got to live. Lucky me.”
There's nothing to say to that. Bobby just gives her another refill, squeezes her hand in his large paw briefly. They all drink in silence. It's Ellen who breaks it first.
“Sam, honey, don't think I didn't catch what you said about people who're supposed to be dead. You feel like explaining that?”
Sam nods, inexplicably feeling even more tired. They never seem to be able to catch a break. He leans on his elbows, ducks his head for a moment as he tries to collect his thoughts. “I don't really know where to start.”
“What the hell happened in that place, anyway?” Bobby breaks in. “There were bodies everywhere by the time we got there.”
“What place?” Ellen's confused, her voice betraying her anxiety.
“Cold Oak,” Sam supplies quietly, and sees her stiffen as she recognizes the name. “It was the Yellow-Eyed Demon. He gathered all the psychic kids there, in groups, over the past few months. Set up a kind of psychic cage match, made them kill each other. Said he was looking for the strongest one to come out on top. Last one left wins the grand prize, whatever that is.”
The colour has drained from Ellen's face. “And that was you?”
He shakes his head, wishing it didn't throb so badly. “No. That's where the 'supposed to be dead' part comes in. There was a kid there, Jake Tully... he and I were the last ones left. Ava was there,” he turns to Dean, “and Andy. Ava killed him, and then Jake killed her before she could kill me.” He swallows a sudden lump in his throat at the thought of the astonished look on Andy's face, the blood staining his teeth.
“That the guy who stabbed you?” Dean doesn't seem as upset by Andy and Ava's deaths, but then he barely knew Andy and never got to meet Ava, doesn't share Sam's connection to them. It's unreasonable to expect him to be as affected by this.
He nods. “I guess, yeah. It must have been Jake. All I remember is this terrible pain in my back, like burning.”
“Tall black guy.”
“Yeah, that's him.”
“Now hold on just a minute,” Ellen is out of her chair, her face grey. “What are you saying?”
Sam just shakes his head. He can't see the expression on Dean's face, but he knows that his brother is like an open book for anyone who knows how to read him.
“Oh my God,” Ellen breathes. “Oh my God. How are ―how did you―” she breaks off, both hands clutching the back of her chair, white-knuckled.
“We buried him three days ago,” Bobby confirms, pouring himself another shot of whiskey. The bottle is starting to empty at an alarming rate.
For the first time that day, a light bulb seems to go off in Dean's mind, and he reaches for Sam's hand where the torn fingers have been carefully bandaged. He doesn't say anything, just turns it over in his own to hands, inspecting the damage, and swallows hard.
“It's okay,” Sam murmurs.
“No, it's not. It's not even close,” Dean chokes.
“You died,” Ellen says flatly. “So how the hell are you here?”
“I don't know, exactly,” Sam can feel the memories lurking just out of reach. “I feel like I should... like it's just there, but I can't... I don't know. I think maybe something changed.”
“No kidding,” Ellen snorts, only to get a quelling look from Bobby.
“No, I mean, I think something else was supposed to...” his breath catches, and for a moment he thinks he might pass out, or throw up. Dean must feel him falter, because he lets go of his hand to prop him up.
“What is it?”
He can't breathe. “I have to talk to you. Now.”
Dean is staring at him, wide-eyed, frightened. “Okay. Okay, Sammy. Sure.”
He struggles to compose himself, succeeds only partially. “Sorry, guys. Just... just give me a minute with my brother.” He has to let Dean pull him to his feet, feeling as though the floor might just give way under him at any moment. Dean takes him outside, shuts the door, and Sam holds onto his arm, gripping him so tightly he knows his fingers are bound to leave bruises.
“Did you do it?” he asks breathlessly. “Tell me you didn't do it. Please tell me you didn't.”
“Do what, Sammy?”
“Make a deal. Tell me you didn't make a deal to bring me back, Dean.”
He didn't think it was possible for Dean's eyes to get any wider, but they do. Sam can barely make out a ring of hazel around the pupils. Shock, he thinks distantly. Dean swallows hard, shakes his head.
“How did you―”
“Just tell me!” It's all he can do not to shake Dean until his teeth rattle, and maybe Dean can sense his frustration, because he pulls back, runs a hand through his hair, doesn't meet his gaze.
“I tried, okay? I was going to―”
“So what stopped you?”
Dean lets out a mirthless laugh. “Would you believe the damn car wouldn't start? I couldn't go anywhere. Then Bobby came back... practically twisted my arm until I did the right thing. Except I couldn't... I had to bury you. I didn't want... not like Dad. I couldn't.”
“So... you didn't―?”
“No. No, I swear.”
The clenching feeling around his heart that he never even knew was there is suddenly gone. Sam feels his eyes sting, and before he can stop them the tears spill down his face. Relief courses through him so fast it's dizzying, and a hysterical laugh wells up in his chest. “Well, thank God for that,” is all he can manage before his knees buckle. He feels Dean catch him under the arms before everything goes dark.
*
Jake is standing in a phone booth, his back leaning against one of the glass panels. His shoulders are slumped, his entire attitude one of defeat. The receiver is wedged between his ear and his shoulder, his hands clasped in front of him, as though he's praying, or penitent. His eyes are bright with unshed tears.
“Mama, Mama, please ―you gotta stop crying. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Mama. I never meant for any of this... Mama, you're not making any sense. No, this isn't your fault, stop saying that! Just make sure Jessie doesn't know about any of this... Mama, I'm taking care of this. Please... just trust me. I'll make sure you're taken care of, all right? … I gotta go. I love you, Mama.”
He hangs up, turns, presses his forehead against the wall of the booth, his breath misting against the glass.
*
Sam is getting tired of waking up confused and in the dark. “This is getting old,” he mutters, forcing his eyes open. He's back on Bobby's sofa, and Dean's anxious face swims into focus above him.
“You're telling me,” his brother says drily. “I take it you're back among the living?”
“Literally.”
“Okay, poor choice of words.”
“It wasn't a seizure, was it? How long was I out?” He doesn't think so, doesn't think there were weird smells or anything, but right now he's not sure of anything at all except maybe his own name and the fact that Dean hasn't sold his soul, which is making his heart sing and race in his chest.
“Too long, as far as I'm concerned. Five, ten minutes, maybe? No, it wasn't a seizure. You just went down like a sack of bricks.”
“You weren't lying to me, were you?” He knows his brother well enough, but he can't help wanting to be absolutely sure.
“No, I wasn't lying, asshole,” Dean snaps. “I wouldn't lie about something like that,” he adds defensively.
Yes, you would, Sam thinks. His head still aches.
“Hold still.”
In spite of the warning, Sam jerks his head back in surprise as Dean wipes his face with a wet cloth. When he pulls back, Sam can see splotches of red on the material.
“What the―”
“Your nose started to bleed. Seriously, Sammy, I don't think we should have left the hospital.”
“It's Sam. And what would we have told them? 'You see, doctor, I was recently raised from the dead. Do you think all these symptoms are normal?” he asks harshly, and Dean flinches at his tone.
“Sam...” Dean's expression is pained, and Sam holds up a hand in a placating gesture.
“Never mind. I'm sorry, I'm just... I feel like crap, and we're running out of time. Ellen and Bobby around?”
“Kitchen.”
“I gotta talk to Ellen.”
It doesn't take long to reconvene the tiny war council. Ellen straddles one of Bobby's chairs, glancing over at Sam every so often as though she expects him to collapse at any moment, or snap, or spontaneously combust, or something. Not that he can blame her. It wouldn't surprise him if any or all of the above happened, given the kind of day he's having. He rubs gently at his nose, grimaces when one knuckle comes away smeared with the last traces of blood.
“Ellen, you mentioned a safe.”
“Yeah. A hidden safe we keep in the basement. Only people who knew about it were me, Ash and Jo.”
“Did the demons get what was inside?”
“No,” she looks up, startled. “I'd clean forgotten, what with everything else that's happened.” She pulls a folded paper from her jacket pocket, spreads it out over the table top.
“Is that a map?” Dean goes to look over her shoulder.
She nods. “Southern Wyoming.”
“Isn't that where you said all the demon signs stopped, Bobby?” Sam shuffles over to the table, doing his best to ignore the twinges of pain that seem to be spiking unpredictably. Apparently, being raised from the dead sucks, no matter how it happens.
“That's right,” Bobby says slowly, turning to look at him, “but I never said that, kid. How'd you know?”
Sam stops in his tracks, stares. “But... I remember you... we were standing there―” he half-turns, feels his stomach churn as the memory slips away from him. “I don't... it didn't happen that way before. I...” he shakes his head quickly, trying to clear it, like a dog. He can't dwell on this now. “Look at the map,” he says instead, tapping his finger at the 'X'es that Ash marked in black felt pen. “Look at the points, the churches. The railroads. See it?”
“Wait,” Bobby stares for a moment, then goes to pull a book from his library, lays it flat on the table next to the map, careful not to break the spine. “I don't believe it.”
“What? What? Would someone please fill in the clueless guy, here?” Dean is exasperated. “Come on, share with the class!”
“Untwist your shorts, boy,” Bobby rolls his eyes, and Sam interrupts before Dean's head explodes.
“The places Ash marked, they're all churches,” he explains.
“All built at the same time, in the mid-nineteenth century, by Samuel Colt himself,” Bobby continues, glaring at Sam for interrupting, and Sam wisely clamps his mouth shut before he finds himself on Bobby's wrong side yet again.
“Samuel Colt ―the demon-killing, gun-making Samuel Colt?” Dean asks.
“How many Samuel Colts do you think there were in the nineteenth century, boy?”
Dean looks sheepish. “Just asking.”
“Anyway, there's more. He built private railway lines connecting church to church,” Bobby turns back to the map, but Sam is ahead of him, tracing the lines between the points to make a five-pointed star.
“Tell me that's not what I think it is,” Dean says.
“It's a Devil's Trap,” Sam confirms. “A 100-square-mile Devil's Trap.”
“That's brilliant!” Dean looks like it's Christmas in July. “Iron lines demons can't cross.”
Ellen is staring with the same impressed look on her face as the rest of them are sporting. “I've never heard of anything that massive.”
“No one has,” Bobby says quietly.
Dean leans over the map. “And after all these years none of the lines are broken? I mean, it still works?”
“Definitely,” Sam nods.
“How do you know?”
Because I've seen it all before. Sam doesn't voice the thought. “All those omens Bobby found,” he says instead. It's what he said before. “I mean, the demons. They must be circling, and they can't get in.”
“Yeah, well... they're tryin',” Bobby says ominously.
“What for?”
“There's something inside they want,” Sam says quietly. “The Devil's Trap isn't meant to keep things out, it's there to keep something in.”
“Think the demons can get at it? Can they do it, Bobby?”
“No way. This thing's so powerful, you'd practically need an A-bomb to destroy it. No way any full-blooded demon can cross it.”
“But I know who can,” Sam says, his headache returning with a vengeance. He looks up at Dean, who's biting his lip, staring at the map with a look on his face that suggests he's hoping it'll spontaneously morph into something else. A beer, maybe, or a slice of pie. “We have to go to Wyoming.”
*
Chapter 2
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I'm loving this. Won't get to finish it before work, but it's great. You have no idea how long I've been looking forward to your post.
Thanks for this!
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You have no idea how long I've been looking forward to your post.
*blushes crimson*
You totally made my day. \o/
I hope the rest of the story doesn't disappoint...
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Love these bits of memory Sam has, of what could have, might have, DID happen. And Dean'a sudden realization that Sam had to dig himself out of his own grave. It's the same decision he would have made, something tells him, the kind of terrible devotion that has destroyed them over and over again. Yes indeed.
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Glad you're enjoying it! :)
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Thank you so much for commenting right away! I am intrigued to see what you'll think by the end.
I love Sam! I have no idea what's up with him, but it's wonderful.
LOL Poor Sam. He has no idea what's up with him either, but it'll all get sorted out.
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First of all, amazing start. Buried alive, yikes! I kinda felt claustrophobic reading it (but that’s a good thing). And you hurt Sam so wonderfully:) I’m definitely digging the Sam whumpage.
Also, one of the little things that I really liked is when Sam’s sitting on the couch, and Dean’s holding on to his shoulder, and then keeping close and in contact when they’re sitting next to each other.
I love the fact that Dean didn’t make the deal because the car didn’t start… Awesome first chapter. Your writing and your story are both incredible!
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This story is pretty much all about the Sam!whump. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea as result, but I'm glad it worked for you.
I kind of wanted to rebuild the brothers' relationship, even if it turns out a little differently than before. Seasons 4 and 5 broke my heart, and this was my chance to mend my broken heart again. :)
I love the fact that Dean didn’t make the deal because the car didn’t start…
Heh. It's all in the details...