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klove0511 · 5 days
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Y’know, I was thinking about wincest the other day (as I often do), and scrolling through some posts on tumblr, and something that really struck me is how little the ship revolves around subtext. Like, don’t get me wrong, there’s loads of subtext—but comparatively, the vast majority of Sam and Dean’s relationship is text. It’s canon. It’s all actual stuff they’ve said out loud (whether it’s to each other or a third party) or decisions we’ve seen them make on-screen. And that’s referring to their actual, weirdly close fraternal relationship in-show, yes, but also to the more fanon romantic/sexual take on their relationship.
The soulmates reveal in 5x16 might be the biggest one, but even more than that: Dean’s recently talked about how pretty he thinks Sam is [14x04], Sam’s mentioned how physically attractive he thinks Dean is [6x22], Dean literally said he wanted to get off to watching Sam have sex in front of him [12x11], Sam was willing to spend the rest of their lives as undead corpse-monsters as long as they could be together [3x15], Dean told Sam he never has and never will love anyone more than him [8x23], Sam (while having his memories erased, and thus having no knowledge of them being related) asked Dean to run away with him to spend their lives together [4x17], Dean—of his own volition—has referred to them as a married couple more than once [10x03 & 12x14], they’ve both doomed the entire world and everyone in it in favor of keeping the other one safe (something they’ve never exclusively done for anyone else) [8x23 & 10x23 & 12x23], they’ve both attempted to sell their souls for each other (something they’ve never done for anyone else) [2x22 & 4x09], they entered into a suicide pact with a reaper solely because they couldn’t stand being separated from each other for like 6 weeks [12x09], Dean’s siren—as admitted by the siren herself—was a copy of Sam [4x14], Sam’s completely given up all pretense of wanting a relationship with a woman and is fully intent on spending his entire life (and afterlife) with Dean [11x04 & 11x11 & 13x20], Dean literally described their relationship as a “deep, abiding love for each other” [8x01], Sam admitted he only formed a relationship with Ruby (which later turned into a sexual relationship, mind you) because she reminded him of Dean [4x09], Dean laid down an ultimatum and made Sam choose between him and a romantic/sexual relationship with Amelia [8x10], Sam immediately assumed Dean was under a magic spell when he said he was in love with another woman and referred to her as his soulmate [13x12], Dean literally fisted his brother in the ass on-screen [5x08], and that’s not even counting the multiple times complete strangers sincerely assumed they were a couple [1x08 & 1x18 & 2x11 & 3x08 & 9x13 & 10x06 & 11x05 & 11x08], etc, etc.
Like, that’s all canon. Mostly from Sam and Dean’s own mouths (not just some antagonist taunting them to get a rise out of them—although that’s happened plenty of times too). Plus, there’s tons more that I haven’t even mentioned. The hair-stroking and face-stroking and thigh-stroking and all the other way-innapropriately romantic ways for brothers to touch each other. The flirty, teasing, sexually-charged jokes. Dean getting all jealous and snippy about Sam with other women. Them freaking out anytime they’re separated by a door. Them losing their fucking shit when the other one dies or is taken away.
None of the above is subtext. None of it is relying on symbolism, or character parallels, or looks, or moments when they’re probably thinking about each other even though it isn’t stated in the actual text (of which there are all many).
I know it isn’t news or anything, but for some reason I just really got fixated on this thought. Most fanon ships are like 90% subtext, 10% text. Wincest is the other way around.
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klove0511 · 8 days
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i was asked to return to the possum!dean universe so of course i did. plus a bonus wombat!sam
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klove0511 · 8 days
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the one where dean is cursed into an australian possum. happy birthday @cowboyified ✨
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klove0511 · 1 month
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Last Song: It was the theme song from Outlander, but now it's "Moses Supposes." Thanks, @missroserose lol
Favorite Color: Something in the blue/green/purple family. If I have to commit to one, Sapphire Blue
Last Movie/TV Show: Outlander Season 1
Sweet/Spicy/Savory: All of the above
Relationship Status: single and enjoying it after a 20 year relationship ended very badly last year. just starting to toy with the idea of dating again, but really not enthusiastic about figuring out how to do that as an adult
Last Thing I Googled: Panera's menu
Current Obsession: Horizon Zero Dawn and yelling at my brain for giving me fic scenarios and then promptly abandoning them as soon as I try to think of a plot
Last Book: Just finished Voyager, currently reading Stilleto and Drums of Autumn
Looking Forward To: actually writing something again someday. Also my work's post-holiday holiday party in March, which is a murder mystery dinner thing
Tagging (zero pressure, seriously): @inkandpaperqwerty, @posingasme, @hello-starlingfics, @rodiniaorzetalthepenquin, @midnightsilver, @imnot-evenhere, @compo67, @zoycitem, @ani-coolgirl
nine people you want to know better tag game
tagged by @rottencanines and @lovetransaction ty <3
Last Song: the dresden dolls - 672
Favorite Color: pink. particularly hot trashy pornstar pink.
Last Movie/TV Show: i'm rewatching house atm!
Sweet/Spicy/Savory: sweet but i like spicy and savoury too. my ibs doesn't like spicy but it can fuck off tbh.
Relationship Status: single and loving it, who knew how good life could be without picking up after someone and their crusty boxer shorts
Last Thing I Googled: i dont want to say lmao
Current Obsession: skinny whip bars, fluffy sockies, indie sleaze makeup, oat milk hot chocolates from costa. and john winchester. that's static tho.
Last Book: still reading plain bad heroines between lots of fic
Looking Forward To: my trip to budapest in may, ami coming to visit in june, and various gigs and parties i have coming up <3
trying to tag who i haven't seen tagged err @zombiejunk @wodkapudding @hook-excho-squall-bankfull @boywifesammy @theangiediary @missmisdemeanor @beautyandthebestiality @missroserose @thosehawkeyes
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klove0511 · 2 months
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2024 Schedule
February 1st Sign Ups Open March 31st Author's Sign Ups Close April 1st 1st Author's Check In May 1st 2nd Author's Check In June 1st 3rd Author's Check In Summaries, warnings, and Rough Drafts are due ((Rough Draft must be at least half of your word count for the size of the bang you chose. This is to ensure you will finish once you are paired with an artist.)) June 5th Summary Previews June 8th Story Claims June 15th 1st Author/Artist's Check In August 1st 2nd Author/Artist's Check In September 1st 3rd Author/Artist's Check In October 1st 4th Author/Artist's Check In Post Date Infomation will be collected at this time October 9th Posting Announcement October 23rd Posting Starts
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klove0511 · 2 months
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Title: Put My Feet On The Ground (AO3)
Rated: Explicit
Word count: 18,876
Warnings: Discussion of past rape and its trauma, one homophobic slur
Tags: Sam Winchester-centric, Curtain Fic, Retired Hunter Winchesters, Brother/Brother Incest, Discussion of Rape Trauma, Oral Sex, Mutual Masturbation, Intercrural Sex, Incest Kink, Post-Episode AU: s15e19 Inherit the Earth (Supernatural), PTSD, Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester First Time Having Sex, Scars, Cute Dates With Your Brother, Sam Winchester Has Trauma From Lucifer's Cage, Dean Winchester Has Trauma From Hell
Author's note: Written for the @spnproshipbang. The beautiful artwork within is by the super-talented @thegoodthebadandtheart — please show your appreciation for their incredible creations here!
Summary: In the wake of the defeat of Chuck, Sam takes a chance with Dean that puts them both on a different path. While navigating a sexual relationship after years of trauma, they build a new life together.
Thanks go to @catnipster69 and @klove0511 for their amazing beta work on this. You have both made this fic immeasurably better 💜
Many thanks also to the mods of this event and the wonderful people of the event Discord for the mutually supportive environment.
As always, thanks to @fahre for acting as a sounding board and above and beyond encouragement, especially when they don’t even go here 💜
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klove0511 · 2 months
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My art for @klove0511's absolutely amazing It's Rest I Want written for the @spnproshipbang event. After Sam dies (early season 2), Dean is left to pick up the pieces. But is Sam really gone? Rated T, ~26K words. Please go read it, it's fantastic. More info here!
Most of the full art is under the cut to avoid spoilers, so look at your own risk ✨
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The pyre
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Sam the ghost
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Another view of possession
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John and the knife
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Pyre (II)
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klove0511 · 2 months
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It's Rest I Want Masterpost
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Title: It's Rest I Want
Rating: T
Word count: 26,978
Pairing: Dean/Sam, Dean/Ruby (mentioned)
Warnings: Major Character Death
Additional tags: Grief/Mourning, Temporary Character Death, Pre-Slash, ghost!sam, Heavy Angst, Suicidal Ideation (mentioned), Alcohol as a Coping Mechanism, Season 2 AU, the Winchesters use their words (eventually), Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Happy Ending
Author's note : At long last, the sequel is here! I had a blast writing this, and I am SO excited to finally get to post it. Thank you to the mods of the @spnproshipbang, because without your encouragement and this event this fic would still just be an idea. A huge thank you to my artist @imnot-evenhere. Their art is amazing, and you should go check it out. And finally, thank you to my betas @hello-starlingfics, @missroserose, and @samanddean76. Any mistakes left are all mine.
Summary: After John's betrayal results in Sam's death, Dean follows in the Winchester family tradition and swears vengeance on his father. The question is: is Sam really gone?
Link to AO3
Chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Epilogue
Link to art post
Link to The Only Way Out AO3 | Tumblr
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klove0511 · 2 months
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It's Rest I Want Epilogue
John Winchester lay on the rack, trying to catch his breath. He'd lost track of how long it had been. Too long. His vocal chords had been shredded from screaming ages ago; but it didn't stop him from shrieking with every new cut. 
“What do you say, John?” Alistair purred. “This can all stop. All I need is one little word.”
It had been so long. All he wanted was for the pain to stop. To rest, just for a little while.
“Last chance, John. Will you? Hmm?” It wasn’t. The demon would ask again tomorrow. Always tomorrow. 
All he had to do was hold out one more day. One more hour, one more cut. Except he didn’t think he could. Not anymore. “You'll stop?” he rasped. “You— you promise?”
“Of course. All you have to do is pick up the knife.” The satisfaction in the demon’s voice made him sick.
He stared at the knife sitting on the table next to him. The ebony handle gleamed, slick with his blood. He was already intimately familiar with that knife and what it could do. Just one little word, and he could rest. He swallowed. He was a broken man, and Alistair knew it. Then he said, “Yes,” and closed his hand on the blade.
Dean stretched his back, enjoying the warmth from the sun. Early May in Sioux Falls was pleasant, and today the sky was a clear blue. Nature was happier than he was, but it wasn't so bad. He had one more car to finish, then he'd head over to Bobby's for a drink. The old hunter had made him promise that he wouldn't spend Sam's birthday alone, and Dean didn’t particularly want to spend the evening with anyone who hadn’t known Sam. 
“Winchester! You coming to happy hour tonight?” Mike called from across the shop.
Dean looked over at his boss, grimy as the rest of them, and waved him off. He'd told them no already, but they hadn't known why. All they knew was that he was quieter than usual. They'd been trying to get him to go drinking with them all day, speculating that he was nursing a broken heart. They were closer than they knew, but he wasn't going to tell them that, either.
Mike shrugged, exchanging a concerned look with one of the other guys. “See you tomorrow, then?”
“You know it. Hey, you coming to Dave's place Saturday for the barbeque?” Dean said, intending to offer a ride. Mike's house was on the way, and it wouldn't be the first time they'd carpooled. 
“Nah, the kids have a soccer game. I'll be at the next one.” 
Dean finished up his last job and cleaned up. It wasn't hunting, but it was satisfying work, repairing broken machines. Mike was a good boss. He went straight to Bobby's, knowing he wouldn't care if Dean showed up a little grungy. Better than going back to his place first. He was doing better these days, but he also knew that if he went home first he wouldn't want to leave again. Not today.
“Good to see you, kid. It's been too long,” Bobby said, moving aside so Dean could enter. 
It hadn't been that long. He'd stopped by, what, last month? Maybe March. “Work's keeping me busy. You know how it goes.”
Bobby leveled a stare at him. “Work, or work?”
“Just the shop, I swear. We've been slammed; Mike's talking about hiring an extra guy or two. Not that I know how that's going to help when we don't have any spare bays.”
“No kidding. You were his first new hire in ten years. Now he wants more?” Bobby led them to the kitchen where Dean could smell something good cooking. He grabbed two glasses and plates while Bobby pulled out a bottle of whiskey. 
Dean set the table and said, “What can I say? Word must have gotten out about his awesome new mechanic.”
“Well, he's lucky to have you, and I'm sure he knows it.” Bobby served up the pot roast, and they sat down.
Mostly they made small talk over dinner. Dean filled Bobby in on the shop gossip, and Bobby picked Dean's brain on some hunts he was researching. Later in the study, Dean flipped through one of Bobby's books, trying to find a match for the monster one of Bobby's contacts was hunting. He had to laugh. “I never figured I'd turn into you.”
“How's that now?” Bobby grumbled, paging through a book of his own.
“I don't know. Figured this sort of thing was more Sam's gig. I always expected to go out on the job.” 
Bobby's hands stilled. He watched Dean carefully, which annoyed the hell out of Dean.
“I'm not going to break. Seriously, Bobby, I'm ok. I mean. I'm not, right? I'm never going to be ok with the fact that— But it's not like it was.” He didn't know how to say it in a way that Bobby would understand. 
Bobby sighed. “I know you are. I guess I just didn't expect to hear you talk like that.”
“Like what?”
Bobby cocked his head and smiled a little. “Like you're retired from the job. Semi-retired, anyway. I know about that shifter you got back in April.”
Dean shrugged. “It was causing problems in my neighborhood, so I took care of it. It's not like I'm going looking for trouble.”
“I know you ain't.” Bobby paused, debating whether or not to say this next part. “I'm real proud of you, Dean. And I know Sam would be, too.”
There wasn't anything to say to that. He was pretty sure Bobby was right: Sam would be proud. He'd always been the one who insisted there was a life outside of hunting. 
“How’s that girl you been seeing?” Bobby asked after a bit.
Dean grunted in surprise. “Ruby? I don’t know. Think I might break it off.” He squirmed under Bobby’s parental gaze. “It’s weird, ok? She reminds me of Sam.”
Bobby guffawed. “Shit. I would’ve thought that would be a point in her favor.” Horror gripped him, and it must have shown because Bobby said, gentler, “It ain’t no secret how you felt. I got eyes, don’t I?”
“Bobby, no. You gotta know I would never–”
Bobby cut him off. “Course I know. I ain’t saying you molested the kid. Just that every time I caught you with a girl it was some know-it-all, lanky brunette who didn’t like being told no. I ain’t an idjit.”
Dean slumped in his chair, relieved but still uncomfortable. “Still think I might call it off.“
Bobby grunted. “It’s ok to move on, too. He’d want you to be happy.”
Wincing, Dean said, “Not sure happy is in the cards. But you’re right. I don’t think he’d want me to be alone.”
“Ruby ain’t the one, though?”
Dean shrugged and gestured helplessly. “I can’t put my finger on it, but something isn’t working.” Dean finished the book he was working through and yawned. “This guy need his information tonight?”
“You got work in the morning?” Bobby said.
Dean nodded but added, “I can stay if it's urgent.”
“Get out of here, boy. I got this. Whatever it is hunts in 6 day cycles, and we got 4 more days before it kills again. You go on home; take care of yourself.”
It felt bad, leaving Bobby hanging, but he hadn't actually asked Dean for help. Dean had been looking for an excuse to stay away from his empty apartment a little longer and offered to help a while. If it was really urgent, or Bobby was really lost, he would have pulled Dean in earlier. It didn't happen much, and he remembered how scared Bobby had been of asking at all. Like Dean was going to load up and hit the road at the reminder that monsters existed. But no; he'd done his time, and he was starting to accept that. The parts of it he missed weren't the parts he could get back, anyway.
He yawned again. Being a respectable member of society sucked. “If you're sure. You'll call if you need me?”
“Course I will. See you around, Dean.”
His apartment was dark and quiet when he got back. The secondhand couch was worn and soft, and just a little bit saggy in the middle. On the whole, the place was spartan, like he was waiting for something before he could move in. He wondered if it would ever feel like home. Tossing his keys on the counter, he bypassed the kitchen and went straight to getting ready for bed. Going through the motions by rote, he brushed his teeth, changed his clothes. In the bedroom he kept a—well, he wasn't sure what to call it. Almost like a shrine to Sammy. Sam's favorite knife, an old book Dean had found in the Impala, a soccer trophy he'd uncovered in one of their dad's storage lockers, all arranged neatly on his desk next to the photos he had of Sam. There weren't very many. He thumbed the worn photo of him and Sam that was on top, the one Bobby had snapped, catching Sam with his head tipped back in a belly laugh. “Happy birthday, Sammy,” he murmured, turning off the lamp and climbing into bed.
A minute or two later, there was a knock on his door. Confused and annoyed, he flicked the light back on and went to the door, fully intending to chew out anyone who thought a social call at midnight was a good idea. He threw open the door, freezing when he saw who was on the other side.
“Hi, Dean,” Sam said. He looked exactly like he had the last time Dean had seen him, only this time he was solid, real. Alive. “We've got work to do.”
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klove0511 · 2 months
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It's Rest I Want Chapter 5
Dean got to go look for salt or iron, while John babysat. It wasn't even that bad of a job. He didn't particularly want to be stuck in a bar with a murderous psychic, limited weapons, and no alcohol. He was just pissed that John didn't trust him, even though the lack of trust went both ways.
He found some old bags of rock salt miraculously untouched by the elements. Muttering to himself about the likelihood of finding something that useful in a place like this, he turned to go and jumped a foot back. “Damn it, Sam! What did I say?” He took a couple deep breaths and let his heart rate return to normal. “You find any other chatty ghosts?”
Sam nodded, though he looked distracted. “Where's Dad and the others?”
“I haven’t seen Bobby since we split up. Everyone else is in the tavern. Why?”
“There's a lot of dead people here, Dean. At least a dozen psychics. This has been going on for months.” Sam kept glancing around nervously.
“Dude, what's going on?” Dean waved at Sam, trying to bring his focus back.
Sam just dodged around him and poked his head out the door. “I think I found the most recent victims. Is one of the people named Ava?”
Before Dean could answer, a shotgun blast boomed in the distance. Dean took off running in the direction of the tavern, lugging the salt bag with him while Sam vanished. Inside was chaos. The Acheri demon from the outskirts of town had made another appearance, and it was currently tearing into Mark. After a moment, Dean saw John laying to the side, unconscious and bleeding with Leah crouched over him. 
Dean dropped the bag of salt, aimed his shotgun, and blasted the demon all in one smooth motion. The bag exploded and salt spilled everywhere, but at least the demon was gone for the moment. One threat dealt with, Dean quickly reassessed, clocking everyone else in the room. Ava was missing. So was Vaughn, but that was less of a concern at the moment. “Where is she?” he barked, looking at Leah and Tony. 
They didn't know. Which meant she had left. A quick assessment showed him the only exit was the door he’d just come through, which meant she was behind him. He spun, and there she was. She wore a maniacal grin and a bloody nose. They moved at the same time, but Dean was faster. He pulled his knife, catching her just under her ribs. There was a moment to realize that she'd been unarmed and wonder what she'd been planning to do to him before Dean spotted the older guy leaning against the door jamb. He was closer to John's age, with a smug, satisfied smile and yellow eyes. 
Dean's eyes widened. “You,” he breathed.
He froze for a sliver of a second, then threw himself toward John, looking for the Colt. It felt like he was moving in slow motion and the world took on an unreal clarity. His hand closed over the gun, and he saw Sam pop into view just behind the Yellow Eyed Demon. 
The demon laughed, making a ‘who, me?’ gesture. Then he waved a hand, and Dean flew across the room. Stars exploded across his vision, but he managed to keep his grip on the Colt.
His brother snarled and gripped the demon, his ghostly form able to touch the smoke and hang on. Surprised, the demon writhed, smoke wreathing its meatsuit as it struggled to get away. Sam held on, his eyes wild and desperate as he yelled, “Dean, shoot!” Their forms mixed and swirled, until it was impossible to tell for sure where Sam ended and the demon began.
Dean took aim, shouting, “Move, Sam!”
“I've got him! Shoot!”
Panicked, Dean spared a glance at his dad, hoping irrationally for guidance. John's still form gave him none, but Dean got a brief, horrible look at the extent of his injuries. The blood pooling under him dropped a pit of worry into Dean's stomach, but he'd have to deal with that later. Sam still struggled with the Yellow Eyed Demon, the cause of all the pain his family had dealt with over the last two decades.
The demon laughed. “You think you can hold me, Sam? Long enough for Dean to overcome a lifetime of guilt over wanting to put his dick in his little brother? He already feels guilty for letting you die. Eternity wouldn't be enough time for him to come to grips with killing you himself.”
Sam grunted with effort, tendrils of smoke escaping from his grip. “Dean!”
Time slowed to a crawl as Dean squeezed the trigger. Even as he did it, he wanted to take it back, to change his mind. He couldn't let Sam go. Not like this. They didn't even know what the Colt would do to a ghost. He didn't want to find out. His aim was true, and the bullet caught the demon in the heart. Sam vanished, and Dean hoped fervently that it was by choice. The demon pulsed with orange light, the crackle of lightning filling the room. He collapsed, a lifeless shell. 
Dean panted, desperately searching the room for Sam. There he was, crouching near John. Leah had ducked away, taking cover near Tony at some point during the fighting. Dean sighed in relief, then moved to join them and check on his dad. The pooling blood was sticky, already cold and coagulated. He grimaced, then felt for a pulse. John's skin was cold to the touch, but it was freezing out. Dean's hands weren't much better. There was nothing under his fingers though, no thump of life under the skin. Dean closed his eyes, not sure if he should call what he was feeling grief. It felt like grief, but more complicated. Like love, and loss, and regret. Regret he hadn't done it himself? Maybe. And maybe regret they hadn't gotten to a good enough place for forgiveness too.
He didn't say anything, just looked up at Sam and saw a similarly mixed expression on his brother's face. 
“Is it over?” a timid voice asked from behind him.
Dean turned, startled. He'd nearly forgotten anyone else was there. Leah and Tony were huddled together in the corner of the room, crying softly. “Yeah,” he said. “It's over. She's dead, the demon's dead, and we've got three cars parked about a mile up the road. You can go home and pretend this nightmare never even happened.”
“What about the bodies?” the girl asked. She sounded timid, but determined. Dean figured she'd be fine, eventually. 
“I'll take care of the bodies. There's...” he hesitated, not sure he wanted to freak them out more than they already were. “I'll take care of it.”
They nodded, though she looked like she wanted to protest. Maybe offer to help. Instead Tony piped up and asked, “What about Vaughn? He left with Ava before that thing showed up.”
“Come on,” he said. “I'll take you to the cars. We’ll look for Vaughn on the way.” He dug for John's keys, grimacing at the task. He'd have to empty the weapons cache into the Impala before he sent them on their way. 
As it happened, Bobby had found Vaughn first, which is why he hadn’t come running at the sound of fighting. The kid was hurt bad but surprisingly wasn’t dead. Dean wondered if any psychic abilities related to super-healing and then figured why not. 
It took a couple hours to get the two of them on the road to Sioux Falls. They had Dean's number, and he'd given them Bobby's number too, just as a precaution. Hopefully they'd never have to use them. The Impala was just about full to bursting with everything John had stashed in the truck bed. Weapons, a variety of spell ingredients, books and his duffel. Bobby offered to help him take care of John, Ava, and the others, but Dean waved him off and told Bobby to make sure Vaughn made it to a hospital. Dean needed to put John to rest himself. When he hiked back to the town, he carried a bag with an axe, lighter fuel, and all the salt they had. In his other hand was a shovel. He had an awful lot of ghosts to deal with, and he had no idea what Ava had done with all the bodies. 
“Dean, we have to talk.” Sam was trailing him, intentionally hanging a few steps back.
“Yeah? What exactly is there to talk about?” Dean was exhausted. He'd been up all night already, and he still had an absurd amount of work to do. Dawn was just starting to break, a hint of light on the eastern horizon. Already he was making a list in his head of tasks, trying to make sure there was nothing forgotten. He didn't want to leave this to chance.
“I think you know.”
Dean stopped. He sighed. “I don't want to talk about it.” He silently begged Sam to let it go. The last thing he wanted was to talk about what the demon had said.
Sam stepped up beside him. “Come on. We can talk while you work.”
Sam vanished and let Dean work in silence for a blessedly long time, though. Apparently, he'd been talking to the ghosts, getting locations of as many bodies as possible. They'd give this town as much rest as they could.
“Where do you want to start?” Sam asked.
Dean didn't answer, just kept chopping. It was lucky this place was surrounded by forest because the ground was far too hard for a mass grave. He’d be cutting down trees all day to get enough wood.
Sam rolled his eyes. “Fine. I'll pick. Dad never told you everything he knew about the demon.”
“That's not news, Sam. So? You don’t want to talk about what the demon said?”
“Nothing to talk about.” Sam's voice was neutral, and his expression was too. Dean hadn't thought his brother's poker face was that good.
He scoffed, tried to elbow Sam in the ribs and winced when it went through him instead. “Come on. I know you want to.”
“What good is it going to do? I already knew how you felt. I'm dead either way, so it's not like—” Sam shut his mouth with an audible click. Dean wondered how that worked, considering his teeth were made of air now.
“You knew?” Dean straightened and faced Sam. Panicked thoughts were starting to crowd out all other thoughts. How had Sam known? Hadn’t Dean hidden it well enough?
Sam scuffed his shoes in the dirt. “I could tell, when I possessed you.” Sam's face crumpled. “Why?”
Ouch. Dean licked his lips, regretting it in the biting wind. “I don't know. I'd have given just about anything to not want this.”
His brother laughed wetly. “God, no. Why didn't you say something before now?” Then he shook his head. “Never mind. I get it. I— I wasn't ever going to tell you either. It's not exactly the sort of thing that ever feels safe to admit.”
Oh.
Dean thought he felt his heart break just a little bit more. They could have—only they couldn't have. Sam was right. Neither of them would have made the first move, not when the consequences of being wrong were so severe. He figured they could have lived their entire lives dancing around each other and never known for sure.
Sam wiped at his face, pushed his hair back. “You wanted to know why I didn’t hate Dad for what he did. It matters. Because he told me. Granted, he didn't know I could hear him, so I don't know if it counts as an apology. But you wanted to know how I could forgive him.” And then Sam told the story.
John sat next to Sam in the hospital. Sam wasn't sure he'd ever get used to seeing his own body laid out like that, and it didn't help that he barely looked like himself. His hair was short and uneven, just starting to grow in where they'd shaved it, covering the scars from when they'd removed part of his skull. It had relieved the pressure on his brain, but the damage had already been done. His dad was quiet, and he looked smaller than Sam had ever seen him. John Winchester had always been larger than life. He'd been confident, even arrogant, and that was one of the things that so often sparked fights between the two of them. Sam wanted them to be more careful, John was sure enough of his abilities that he didn't think he had to be. Seeing his dad hunched over, gently holding Sam's hand, was jarring.
“I'm so sorry, Sam.” His voice was quiet, almost inaudible. “I never wanted this for you. I know what I said when you left, and I know I meant it at the time. But.” He breathed, tried again. “I wanted you to be safe. If you were going to leave the life, then I wanted you to be all the way out. I—” His breath shuddered, and Sam realized with a start that John was crying. “Too little, too late, huh? The doctor tells me you're gone. He said you can't really hear me, that there's—” He sniffed. “That you aren't there to hear, anymore. And I know Dean doesn't believe it. That he thinks there's a spell or hoodoo or something that can bring you back.”
John clenched his fingers around Sam's hand and took a minute, obviously struggling to get the next part out. Sam hadn't heard anything surprising, yet. The doctors had been telling Dean for weeks that this was it. This was as good as it was going to get for Sam. He'd been hoping someone would be able to talk some sense into his brother because being stuck in this hospital room was getting boring.
“He's not wrong. I'm sure there's something out there that could heal you. So I have to apologize, Sam, because I'm not going to let him do it. There's a lot of reasons. Most of them are even good ones. But there's only one that matters. See, when that son of a bitch possessed me, I got a front row seat to his mind too. I could see what he was planning. God, Sam. I had heard rumors that the demons were planning a war. I'd heard talk of that for years, but they're so rare that it never seemed like a credible threat. Last year, I thought I knew more. That the kids like you were chosen to be his soldiers.” John looked away. “So I thought I knew the plan. I was wrong. Azazel isn't planning a war, he's planning the war. He's doing all of this to start the Apocalypse, and the babies—the chosen kids—he's looking for a vessel for the Devil.”
John shook his head like he still couldn't believe it. Sam didn't understand. He'd been intended as a vessel for Satan? Why him?
“I don't know how he planned to make you agree, Sammy. He wasn't thinking about that yet. All I know is that he liked you best. More than all the others–and there are a lot of others–he wanted it to be you. And I know you're a good person. So the things he would have done— I don't know. He's not going to give up. If I let Dean bring you back, then that puts you back in his sights. I won't let them use you, Sam. I won't. You deserve rest. It's not enough. Not nearly enough. But it's the last thing I can offer you. All I've ever wanted is to keep you safe, and you are finally out of that bastard's reach.” His breath hitched. “I hope you can hear this, wherever you are. I don't expect either of you to understand, and I don't expect forgiveness. God knows I'm never going to forgive myself.”
Dean didn't look at Sam for a long time. “He said all that?”
Sam nodded, chuckling lightly. “It was the longest speech I'd ever heard him give.”
“You believe him?”
Sam heaved a sigh, considering this. “I don't see why he'd lie. He didn't know I was there, watching. I mean, you saw how surprised he looked last night when I showed up. So, yeah. I guess I believe him.” 
“And that's why you wouldn't let me make that deal.”
“Fuck you. Dean, I didn't let you make that deal because I don't want you to go to Hell, not because I'm worried about some nefarious plans a demon made for me when I was a baby.” There was something in Sam's tone that made Dean hope, even though he had no right. Hope was useless, anyway, since Sam was dead and planned to stay dead.
The pyre for Ava and the demon—Azazel, he guessed—was almost ready. “I don't forgive him.” Dean paused his work, sweat starting to drip into his eyes despite the cold air. “But. I guess I can understand why he did it. Sort of. That was pretty messed up shit.”
Sam laughed. “I can't argue with that. I think he felt like he didn't have a choice. You're just as stubborn as the two of us when you want to be.”
“Nah,” Dean said. “I was only like that because it was you. He was probably right, anyway. I wouldn't have backed down, even if he'd told me all that. I'm not saying I'm ok with it. It was a dick move. But I can see why you aren't as pissed at him as I was.”
“Do you?” There was that tone again. The one that made Dean's heart flutter. “It doesn't really have anything to do with Lucifer. I mean, I get it too, why he made the choice to let me go, why he chose to trick you and Bobby. I think it was the wrong way to do it; he should have trusted you enough to tell you the truth. None of that has to do with why I forgave him, though. Or it does, but it's not the biggest part.”
“Yeah?” 
“He did it to protect you as much as me. He knew you were bound and determined to destroy yourself to save me, and he would rather you hate him forever than let you do that.” Sam shrugged, sheepish. “I could never be mad at him for that.”
Dean heaved the bodies onto the pile of wood. “So you think he made the right call, taking you off the ventilator.”
“I didn't want to die. I don't particularly like being dead. But the doctors were right, and I could tell that I wasn't going to get better weeks before they said it to you. It was like there was this tether to my body before that, and then it was gone. I don't know how to explain it, because I was definitely still tied to my body's location until you burned it. After a certain point, it was just meat, though. It wasn't me anymore.” Sam's eyebrows wrinkled, making the little crease between them that Dean had always loved. 
“So,” he said, his voice rough. He coughed, clearing his throat. “What now?”
Sam looked down, then away. “You aren't going to like it.”
“Sam, I haven't liked much of anything for the last five months. Spit it out.”
His brother chewed his bottom lip, hesitating. Shit, Dean really wasn't going to like this. The sorrow was written in every line of Sam's body, and Dean knew what he was going to say before he ever opened his mouth. Sam's brow furrowed as he found his words. “I need you to let me go.”
“Sam?”
“I.” He sniffed, his mouth doing a complicated frown/smile thing like he couldn't decide what he was feeling. “After what happened with Dad? I’m only going to get worse, and I don’t want to hurt you. But I can't let go myself. So I'm asking you to do it for me.”
Dean's fingers brushed the amulet Sam had given him when they were kids, and he saw Sam shudder. His throat closed up as he realized what Sam meant. He looked at the finished pyres, considering. “Not here. Ok?”
Sam cocked his head in question.
“Let me finish up here. Get all these people taken care of. Then I'll go back to Bobby's, and we'll do it there.” He swallowed, met Sam's eyes and let all his love for his little brother show. “I just need a little more time, ok? Just a little.”
Sam nodded, and Dean got back to work. It took the rest of the day before everything was done. The ground was too hard to dig up most of the bodies, so he made markers for any that weren't in the town cemetery, with plans to come back in the spring with Bobby.
Dean didn't go to the woods this time. Didn’t trust himself to leave Bobby’s, so instead he  just went to the back of the lot and built a bonfire. Sam joined him, and they watched the fire burn for a bit while Dean held the amulet in his hand. He wasn't ready. He was never going to be ready. What he wanted didn't matter in this case, though, because Sam was asking him to do it anyway.
“You ready?” Dean asked.
“Are you going to be ok?” Sam said instead of answering the question.
He thought about lying, trying to make it easier on Sam. The thing was that his brother would know anyway, and he didn't want their last conversation to be like that. “No. I'm not.”
Sam studied him for a long minute before he said, “You want to be, though. That's why we came back here.”
Dean's jaw worked. “Yeah.”
“Are you going to keep hunting?”
“I don't know,” he answered honestly. “There's still stuff out there, people to save. Doesn't feel right knowing what I know and not doing anything about it.”
“But?”
“But I'm no good to those people if I'm dead.” He looked at Sam then, open and honest. “You asked me to let you go, not to join you. And I hate you for that a little.” He dropped his gaze to the amulet in his hand. “The way I see it, if I'm going to make an honest effort to keep that promise, then I can't hunt. Not right now. Maybe Bobby needs a mechanic or something.”
Sam grinned, though he still looked sad and worried. “You'd be good at that.”
“Maybe someday I'll— Anyway. Not until I can do it with my head in the game, right?” Their eyes met, and Dean fought to keep his composure.
“Stay safe, Dean.”
Not trusting himself to say anything more, he gently tossed the necklace onto the fire. It started to melt within moments, and his last sight of Sam was of his brother smiling at him as he faded in a shower of sparks.
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klove0511 · 2 months
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It's Rest I Want Chapter 4
“Just like that.”
The demon grinned, and Dean hated her. She had played on his one weakness, and she knew it. But hate or not, he couldn't be mad about it, not if it gave him Sam. 
He opened his mouth to accept the deal when cold washed over him. Suddenly he was a passenger in his own body, completely frozen in place while something else took control.
No, he thought, struggling to move, to speak, to do anything at all.
Sorry, Dean.
The words blindsided him. Sam was possessing him? He knew ghosts could if they were powerful enough, but he'd never expected this. For a moment, just the smallest moment, he was happy. Dean had spent his whole life protecting Sam, and more than once he'd wished Sam didn't have to exist separate from himself. It was out there that could hurt him. He'd once heard a mother lamenting giving birth because now her baby wasn't safe in her body, and he'd understood exactly how she felt. The moment faded as soon as he heard Sam speak. His little brother, his beautiful, intelligent, stubborn asshole of a brother, was telling the demon no. That he would rather stay dead. Dean howled in fury, throwing everything he had at Sam in a vain attempt to reclaim control. 
Then it was too late. The demon was gone and the summoning materials burned. Dean would have cried if he had control of his tear ducts. Since he didn't, he let his consciousness fall back into something like sleep.
He was alone in his body when he woke up in a strange motel room.
Sunlight filtered through the curtains, letting him see the ugly orange and olive décor. Some place still stuck in the 70s, then. There was a new bottle of whiskey on the table by the window, and next to it was a piece of paper folded in half. From the bed he could read his name, written in Sam's neat handwriting.
He crawled out of bed, reaching for the note.
Dean,
I’m sorry. I know you're pissed, and I get it. I shouldn't have done that to you. But please, you've got to understand, I couldn't let you make that deal. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if you went to Hell for me. Please try to understand. 
Please. Let me go.
Sam
With a snarl he crumpled the paper, throwing it across the room. Rage boiled up, needing to be released. He flipped the table, hardly caring that the whiskey bottle shattered when it landed. For the next few minutes he was barely aware of what he was doing, just needing to break whatever was closest to him. Needing to feel the pain in his hand when he punched the wall. 
By the time the fury was spent, the room was trashed. Dean sagged to the floor, drained of the anger that he'd been wearing like a shield these last few months. Fuck Sam. He— His breath hitched. He closed his eyes, fighting down the sobs that were threatening. Slowly he took one deep breath, then another. When he had a sliver of control he said, “You still here, Sam?”
Silence. He waited for a breeze or a cold spot. The room was as empty as it had been when he woke up. His restraint crumbled, and he mourned with deep, gasping sobs. He hated it. Hated that he couldn't stop, hated that even this didn't feel like enough. There was nothing he could do. Nothing to save Sam. Nothing to let this feeling out. 
He'd had one moment where he was as close to Sam as he could possibly be, and Sam had— Sam had used Dean's body to make sure they would never— It was impossible. Unthinkable. They'd never share another meal. Never fight over laundry day. Never bitch at each other over who cleaned the guns or wanted terrible snacks for movie night. He’d never again feel Sam’s hands on him while tending Dean’s wounds. He couldn't be. He. 
God, Dean had been an idiot. He'd thought he was doing ok, considering. He'd thought he was getting by, dealing with it. Yeah, ok, maybe he was drinking too much and barely eating or sleeping, but he'd been out there. He'd been hunting, and he hadn't even gotten himself killed yet. So, yeah. Considering the circumstances, he'd thought he was doing pretty good. He was a fucking idiot.
John was tucked into one of the back booths of the Roadhouse, nursing a beer while he pored over his research. Ash had told him to come, but he hadn’t specified why. He’d been passed out drunk in the trailer behind the bar when John had arrived two hours ago. Ellen had told John to just be patient. Ash didn’t live on the same schedule as the rest of the world.
When Ash did stagger into the main room, he was rumpled and hungover, which did nothing to deter him from starting his day with a beer. He was in another hideous sleeveless shirt, flannel this time, with the shoulders fraying where the sleeves had been cut off. At least this time he had a shirt on underneath it. “Yo, Papa Winchester! You made it!” he said by way of greeting.
John struggled not to glare. The man had proven his talents already, so it did John no favors to alienate him. “What have you got?”
Ash flopped into the seat across from him. “I,” he started dramatically, “have got a lead.”
John cocked his head expectantly.
Ash rolled his eyes and guzzled his beer. “Winchesters. No flair for theatrics.” He shook his head in disapproval. “Fine. All right, did Ellen catch you up?”
John grumbled low. “No. She didn’t. What is the lead.”
“Fine. Shit, dude. So, you know Dean has been working this case. Well, he managed to find out that the mothers—not always the moms, actually, but mostly them—all encountered our Yellow Eyed friend before the night of the fires.”
John thought of the list in his journal, names and dates where the demon had appeared prior to coming to their home. “What do you mean ‘encountered?’”
“I mean encountered. Ran into. Met. But I also mean made a deal with.”
John’s blood ran cold. “Mary wouldn’t.”
Ash winced and ran a hand through his mullet. “Sorry, my man. Unless you did, then it’s safe to say it was her.”
“What does that mean though? Made a deal for what?”
“That part ain’t real clear. This guy wasn’t making deals like a regular demon. Said he didn’t have any interest in their souls. Just wanted permission. But anyhow. That’s not the lead. All that did was give me more people to look for. It took some doing, mind, but I’ve found like a dozen of these people so far. And get this: most of ‘em have gone missing in the last month.”
Permission. He thought of the demon coming into their home, into Sammy’s nursery. Given what he knew of Azazel’s plans, this information just cemented his certainty that he’d made the right call letting Sam go.  He swallowed back bile. “You figure out where they’ve been going?”
Ash beamed at him. “Ding ding ding! Give the man a medal. Now, understand that I haven’t actually found these kids, right? But I have found demonic omens that line up with the patterns you’ve observed. It stands to reason that the missing people that this demon has previously targeted just might be in the place with all the demonic signs.”
The guy looked so damn proud of himself. John clenched his jaw, trying to keep his patience. “Ash. Where.”
John had just about finished planning his route when Dean came through the door. Dean hadn't looked good when John had last seen him, half-crazed researching for weeks while he tried to save Sam, but he was barely recognizable now. His son looked gaunt, like he hadn't remembered to stop for food enough since they'd parted ways. He was unshaven, unwashed, and the smell of booze reached John from fifty feet away. 
Ellen greeted Dean, who asked for Ash. Ash had disappeared into the back rooms again, doing whatever it was he did most of the time. It didn't take long for Dean to emerge from the back with a new look of determination. He was headed toward the bar when he caught sight of John, his eyes widening in surprise. His poker face was good though, and that was the only sign of recognition John saw. They watched each other a moment, John studying his son's changed appearance. He obviously wasn't sleeping enough either, judging from the dark circles under his eyes. It hurt, seeing Dean look so— He searched for an adequate word. So broken.
It reminded him of himself in those early days. Trying to care for two young boys while he grieved Mary, trying to process what he'd witnessed the night she died. He'd barely survived.
Learning about the supernatural from Missouri had been the only thing he could hold on to, a reason to keep going. His quest for revenge. Like Ellen had said, he did understand that. He just hadn't understood what she'd meant when she'd been talking about Dean, not until now, at least. He’d never suspected things between them had been like that.
Of course, he'd known the boys were close. He'd encouraged it their whole lives. They relied on each other, trusted each other. Sam had worked with Dean far better than he'd ever worked with John, and Dean had blossomed in the year the boys had hunted together without John commanding them. Seeing Dean now, John understood that he had done this to his son. That closeness, such a boon on a hunt where a good partner meant life or death, was only a source of pain. It was a wonder Dean hadn't gotten himself killed yet. 
Dean obviously wasn't going to make the first move, so John tilted his head in a “come here” gesture. Dean hesitated a moment more, then set his jaw and moved. He didn't say anything as he slid into the booth, didn't even look at John. 
John sighed and said, “You coming with me?”
Dean's face contorted, some subtle fight between pissed and darkly amused. But he said, “I'll meet you there, and I’ll call Bobby, have him join us. Don’t forget to bring the Colt.”
“Dean—”
“I'm not debating this with you.”
That hadn't been what he was going to do, but it didn't matter. Apologies could wait. 
Dean drove 20 over the speed limit the whole way, letting the roar of Baby's engine soothe him. Seeing John had been a surprise, and he'd have words with Ellen later about that. For now, he had to concentrate on not getting himself killed long enough to get his revenge. The demon, then John. Or John, then the demon? He saw advantages to both, but trying to play out each scenario made him feel hollow and numb. The anger was protecting him right now, and he needed that if he was going to stay functional long enough to get this done. Fuck planning. He'd play this by ear. 
The radio crackled, and he reached for it, intending to slot a tape in. He was going fast enough that it wasn't worth finding another radio station. Too soon he'd be out of range and have to try again. At least South Dakota wasn't far, relatively speaking. Another hour or two and he'd be there. Before he could get the tape in the player, he recognized the voice breaking through the static, and it wasn't the latest DJ. It was Sam.
Relief flooded him, followed closely by shame and more anger. It took him a minute to even recognize what Sam was trying to say. 
“Slow.... down....” 
Dean rolled his eyes and pressed harder on the gas. 
“Dean...” Sam sounded pissed, and Dean had no trouble imagining the bitch face Sam was shooting at him. He glanced at the passenger seat, a grin on his face before he remembered. 
He refocused on the road, glaring into the night. “Where have you been? I thought you might have moved on or something.”
“Tired.... Work....”
Dean tried to work that out. “Possession wears you out?”
“Yeah...”
“The things you learn.” The air was cooling rapidly, but he didn't slow down. “You doing ok, otherwise?”
It took longer for Sam to respond this time, and Dean wondered if it was because he was choosing his words or because talking like this was hard too. “…Worried...”
“What do you have to be worried about?” It came out incredulous and harsher than he intended, but things often did when he was angry.
“You.” Just one word, and the only one so far that had been crystal clear. Well then.
“You don't need to be worried about me. I'm fine.”
“Not...” The temperature dropped a couple more degrees, and Dean turned the heater up.
Sam wasn't wrong, and he wasn't the first to express concern. Ellen had said as much, and so had Bobby. The way John had looked at him had spoken volumes. Even Ash had said he looked like crap, which was more social than the guy normally was. “I'm fine enough.”
“Don't... kill... Dad...”
Dean furrowed his brow. “What? Why? How do you even know about that? I haven't told anyone.”
“Not... mad...”
“How the hell aren't you mad at him? Huh? He killed you. His own son.” 
“Already.... dead...”
Dean shook his head in denial. The road in front of him was blurring, and he had to let the car slow a little. No way was he dying in a car crash right before— before he finished things.
“Yes...” There was a longer pause, and then Sam's voice came through softer, pleading. “Please...”
“How can you ask me that?” He pulled in a shuddering breath. “You already— You want me to let you stay dead. Ok. Fine. I haven't summoned any demons, have I? But you weren't dead. Not yet. Not until he pulled the plug. So that's on him.”
“Dean...”
“I can't let him walk, Sam. I just can't. He's the one who taught us that family is everything. I don't— How can you be ok with this?”
“Not... ... fault...” Sam's voice was fading, and it sparked panic in Dean’s gut. He wasn’t ready to lose this again already. 
“Hey, now. Don't do that. Ok? Just. You don't have to talk.” He drummed his hands on the steering wheel. “It doesn't make any sense to me, is all. After the way we were raised. He loved you most, you know? And I knew it, and I never even was mad about it because I loved you most too. It was just how the world worked, as far as I could tell. Not saying I never got pissed at you. Hell, we both got pissed at you. But that didn't fucking matter. You were the one we were protecting.” He grimaced. “I always kind of wondered if it was because of Mom. She died protecting you, so we spent the next 23 years trying to do it too. So, to have him do what he did, just doesn't make sense to me. I’m sure he had his reasons.” Dean chewed his bottom lip. “But I trusted him to look after you the way I would, and I lost you. So screw him and his reasons.”
Dean drove in silence for a long time after that. Eventually the temperature in the car returned to normal, and the static faded to normal levels. He pushed the Metallica tape into the player but kept the volume low. Sam stayed quiet, though whether or not that was by choice Dean had no way to know. He didn't even know if Sam was still listening. Some time after he crossed the border into South Dakota, Dean said, “I won't kill him, if that's really what you want.”
The words hung in the air, and Dean regretted saying them. But then the radio crackled again, and Sam's voice clearly said, “Yes... Thank you.”
“I can't promise to forgive him. That's not— It's unforgivable.” 
Sam didn't respond again, so Dean took it for agreement. At the least, it seemed Sam didn't want (or didn't have the energy) to argue the point.
Bobby was the first to arrive. He met John at the end of the dirt road that led to the town. It had fallen into disrepair over the last several decades, and the surrounding forest had reclaimed it. They’d have to hike the rest of the way.
John thought back to that voicemail he still had saved and wondered if Bobby was going to follow through on his threat. Neither of them spoke, just nodded acknowledgement into the stony silence. Dean couldn’t be that far behind, and John felt the need to settle things with Bobby first. However Dean felt, he trusted his son to have his eye on the prize. He wouldn’t stab John in the back until the demon was dead. Bobby had no such motivation, and he’d made it perfectly clear that he thought he’d make a better father to John’s boys than John did.
Eyeing Bobby’s shotgun carefully, he was prepared to dodge out of the way at a moment’s notice. “Bobby.”
Bobby grunted in response.
It wasn’t fear that had settled in John’s belly. Resignation, maybe. Low level grief that had nothing to do with Sam or Mary’s loss. He and Bobby had been good friends, once. It had been years since that was true, but the man had put their differences aside not that long ago. John didn’t expect him to be able to do it again.
He opted for blunt honesty. In truth, he didn’t know another way. “How worried do I need to be about you using that on me?” John asked.
Bobby clenched his jaw and gripped the gun a little tighter. “I’m here to make sure Dean don’t end up like his brother. That’s all.” Don’t risk Dean, and you have nothing to worry about went unsaid.
That was fair enough, he supposed. It was good, even, because if Bobby was watching Dean’s back then John could focus on making sure Azazel got put in the ground. He wouldn’t have to split his attention. 
Dean arrived in Cold Oak, South Dakota just before midnight. Bobby hiked ahead, acting as scout. Dean privately thought it was just to get away from John for a while. The tension between the two of them had been palpable when he arrived. 
John broke the silence after only a minute or two. “Are you ready for this?”
“What's that supposed to mean?” Dean said. He was tired and pissed off. Sam had to be somewhere close, and Dean didn't particularly want to think about how it would go if John found out about that. Besides, he hadn't had enough sleep in the last four months. At this point he figured he was allowed to be a little crabby.
“Just making sure your head's in the game.” 
Dean side-eyed his father. “Of course it is. We've been preparing for this fight my whole life. I'm not about to fuck it up now.”
“Good.”
“Good.” Dean let that be it for maybe a minute, but he couldn't stop his mind from thinking about it. “Why do you think my head isn't in the game?”
John shrugged minutely, barely visible in the moonlight. “You look like shit, Dean. It's obvious you haven't been taking care of yourself lately. I don't know how far that goes.”
“Why do you care?” 
John faltered a step, turning to actually look at Dean. “Because I'm your father.”
That was the last thing he should have said. Fury boiled up past all of Dean's exhaustion, and he struggled to remember that an hour ago he'd promised Sam not to murder John. “You're my father? Is that like how you were Sam's father when you told me to let him die? Or how about when you gave me a fake spell that was supposed to heal him? Or were you his father when you took him off life support? God, with parenting like that, who needs monsters?” 
John stilled. The tension in the air was palpable. “Sam was already dead, Dean.”
“No. He wasn't. That's the whole point of life support. There was time to save him. What's the point of knowing about all this shit if Sam was going to die anyway?” He shook his head and started forward. 
To his credit, John didn't raise his voice. If it had been Sam arguing with him, it probably would have already devolved into a shouting match. “It's not our place to mess with the natural order. That's part of what we do.”
Dean groaned and turned to face John. “Right. The natural order. Like you would’ve made the same choice if it was Mom.”
“Don’t bring your mother into this,” John growled.
Dean stepped up into John’s space. “Am I wrong? You let Sam die because of the demon and its fucking plans, and you’re too much of a coward to admit you were scared of your own son.” Dean snarled. “Did you know Mom made a deal with the thing?”
John ignored the distraction. “I wasn't scared of your brother; I was scared for him! The demon was going to use him.”
“How? Have you even met Sam? He's not an idiot. No way he'd let a demon use him to fight a war.”
Sam's voice rippled out of the darkness to Dean's left. “If you wanted Dean to listen to you, why didn't you just tell him what you learned? You didn't have a problem telling me. Except, oh right, I was in a coma.” Sam chuckled, dark anger lacing his voice.
John's expression was a mix of horror and grief. “Sam? What are you— Damn it, Dean, what the hell did you do? Didn't I teach you better than this?”
“Fuck you. I gave him a hunter’s funeral.”
“And it didn't concern you that he's a ghost anyway?”
Sam rolled his eyes and threw his arms wide. “What, you want him to burn the Impala? After giving him crap about it needing a wash? Give him a break.”
“I don't need you to defend me, Sam.” John and Sam fighting raised his peacekeeper instincts. He wanted to grab Sam's shoulder and push him back, to physically insert himself between the two of them. Only it wouldn't have worked anyway. Doing that had only ever made them shout louder.
John ignored Dean's statement completely. “Yes, if that's what it takes. What's dead should stay dead. You both know that.”
Sam snarled and reached for John, throwing him against a tree. He moved to follow John's trajectory, luckily not stutter stopping forward like most ghosts, and Dean scrambled to get in front of him. 
“Woah, dude, chill out. What happened to not holding a grudge?” He was still livid, furious with John, but Sam needed him to be a voice of reason. Throwing people was serious vengeful spirit territory, and they needed to get a lid on this, right now.
Sam stopped moving, but he was still seething. “Why do you let him say shit like that? You—”
Sam didn't get to finish his sentence because a demon interrupted them. It was shaped like a little girl but sported long, wicked looking claws. Dean blasted it with rock salt, and it vanished into smoke. “Come on, we need to move. It knows we're here,” Dean said, helping John to his feet. “We must be close.” John looked a little dazed, but he moved ok. Dean hoped Sam hadn't managed to do too much damage.
Bobby broke through the trees then, out of breath and wild-eyed. “The Hell are you idiots doing back here?”
Dean filled him in tersely, and Bobby led all of them the last few yards to the town. Sure enough they had been close, and they broke through the woods into the town after just another 100 yards. The place looked empty, but it didn't feel empty. Standing by the tree line was enough to make Dean's hair stand on end. The buildings were in various states of disrepair. Some seemed largely intact, just a broken window or two. Others, like the house nearest them, had entire walls that had caved in, the wood rotting with time and neglect. 
“Cheery place,” Dean murmured. 
John glared at him, then motioned for them to split up and search the town. Dean silently groaned, rolling his eyes. They'd all been shouting at each other not ten minutes ago, and the Acheri demon suggested they'd already lost their element of surprise. John took the right while Bobby moved toward the center of town. Dean moved to the left, toward the collapsing house. A breath of wind on his neck made him look, and Sam was there, following. 
“It's creepy when you do that,” he said.
“Do what?”
“Spooky ghost shit.” They moved cautiously. Well. Dean moved cautiously, and Sam moved silently. He had the same posture as Dean, though it probably didn't matter.
“Sorry I can't do creepy werewolf shit instead,” he deadpanned. “This place sucks. Seriously, why do you let him talk to you like that?”
Dean ignored the question. He hadn’t been letting John do anything. They walked in silence a few minutes while they searched the small town. “Does it hurt?”
Sam frowned, confused. “Does what hurt?”
Dean clenched his jaw a couple times before he managed to bite out, “Dying.”
The question surprised Sam, and he stopped walking while he considered his answer. The longer he took, the more certain Dean was that whatever he said was going to be a sanitized lie. 
“If you mean after the spell, then no. I got kicked out of my body in the first couple hours after the crash, I think, and I didn’t feel anything after that.”
Dean swallowed thickly. “Good. That’s good.” The way Sam had phrased it, though. “You remember the accident?”
Sam chewed the side of his lip. “Yeah. You and Dad were knocked out, but I wasn’t. It was a demon possessing the truck driver.” Sam breathed a laugh. “I threatened it with the Colt. God. Dad really would have killed me if I’d used the last bullet on Stunt Demon #5.”
“I thought you weren’t pissed at him.”
Sam rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah. Uh. I don’t know. I’m not. Not like you are.”
“So what the hell was that back there, huh? Throwing people?” Dean cleared the next building. Nothing there but some battered and rotting furniture. They turned toward the center of town.
Sam didn’t answer. “Dude, are you seeing all these ghosts?”
“Most haunted town in America, or so the stories say. You can see them?”
“You can't? This place is full of spirits.” Sam grimaced and sidestepped an invisible object. Dean gave him an “Oh really?” look, and Sam elaborated. “I think— Most of them look old, but pretty normal. Like they just got sick or something. But some of them died bloody.”
“How can you tell?” He glanced at Sam, body restored in his spirit form.
Sam shrugged, stopping to study one. Dean wished it didn't look like thin air to him. “Some of them don't fit.”
“Don't fit how? Come on, Sam, stop being cryptic.” 
“They're newer. Younger looking.”
Dean shifted, keeping an eye out for threats he could actually see. “So people have been coming here for years because of the stories. Some of them had to have been killed.”
“Well, yeah, some. That guy over there in the bell bottoms probably died back in the 70s. But her—” Sam pointed off to his right, toward the tavern where John had gone. “She looks modern. I mean, her clothes, but not just that. She looks,” he paused searching for the right word, “I don't know, fresher somehow. I can't really explain it.”
That seemed important and really fucking ominous. The demon was supposed to be here somewhere, though they couldn't figure out why. Ash had started finding other likely psychic kids somehow (the dude worked magic, seriously), and there'd been a half dozen so far that also had missing persons reports. If they had also been showing up here, and at least one was a ghost, then... Dean tried to fit the pieces together. He couldn't yet, but the picture that was forming was grim. He found himself half-grateful that Sam was already dead. He couldn't imagine what he'd do if Sam went missing and turned up here. Worse, if Dean found him too late. He shuddered, then pushed the thought from his mind.
While he'd been thinking, Sam had vanished. “Sam?” he called. “Come on, man, don't wander off.” Dean glanced around anxiously, wondering where his brother had gone. He had to keep moving, though. Sam would have to take care of himself.
Dean had cleared two buildings by the time Sam reappeared, blinking into the periphery of Dean's vision and making him jump. “Don't do that,” he barked. “I almost shot you.”
“It's just rock salt,” Sam said, brushing it off.
“And you're just a ghost, remember?”
Sam considered that a moment, then seemed to remember why he'd come back. “Dude, you need to find Dad and Bobby.  One of the psychics is killing the others.”
Dean looked at him sharply. “It's not the demon?”
“No. Some girl is controlling the demons guarding the town. The ghost I talked to said this is some sort of Battle Royale, fight to the death sort of thing. Only the winner doesn't get to leave.”
Dean furrowed his brow. “That's messed up. Did he know why?”
“She didn't. But it sounds like there's a new 'round' every few weeks, so maybe it just isn't over.” The two of them started heading in the direction John had gone.
“That's a comforting thought. So the girl killing people, how long has she been here?”
“No idea. Sounds like she's won at least a few rounds though. Look, over there.” They could hear someone talking in the distance, and as Dean rounded the corner, he spotted John talking to a group of young adults who all looked around Sam's age. 
Dean clenched his jaw. “That must be the newest crop. Lucky we got here before she picked them all off.” Drawing closer, he called out, “Dad!”
John looked over at Dean, then turned back to the group of kids he’d found. They’d all told him similar stories about blacking out and waking up in the ghost town. None of them seemed to know why they were there, but they’d just arrived earlier that day. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay put.”
Jogging over to Dean, he asked, “What?”
Dean filled him in on the supposed killer amongst them.
John was skeptical. Ghosts weren’t a reliable source of information. Their perspectives were always skewed; they saw what they wanted to see. It was part of what made them dangerous. “Even if that’s true, it’s not one of those kids. All their stories match.”
Dean pursed his lips, but he didn’t protest. Together they walked back to the group, and John introduced him to Tony, Ava, Leah, Vaughn, and Mark. All the kids were about Sam’s age, but they were otherwise a pretty diverse crowd. Mark looked like he would have been more at home on the beaches of California, toned and solid and definitely not dressed for a South Dakota winter, while Vaughn was taller than all of them and beanpole thin, though in the dim light of his flashlight John couldn’t tell if the boy was also wiry like Sam had been for a while after his last growth spurts. Tony’s dark skin highlighted the whites of his eyes, and it made him look more scared than the others, and his glasses and chubby build spoke of a more sedate life than the other guys. Maybe he’d be more at home in a library than a haunted town. Ava and Leah stuck together, though he didn’t have the impression that they had known each other before today. Then again, they were both slim and of medium height, and they looked similar enough that they could have been sisters. 
Ignoring the guys, Dean plastered on his best cocky grin and said, “Hello, ladies.”
John murmured at him, “Keep it in your pants, boy.”
Ava ducked her head, flattered. Leah just shifted uncomfortably. 
“Have either of you seen anything? Any idea what might have brought you here?” Dean had turned the charm up to 11. It had been long enough since they’d worked together that John had forgotten that Dean sometimes did this, used his sex appeal like a girl, charming witnesses and victims into spilling their secrets. He was good at it, too. 
The temperature was continuing to drop, though, and they needed to get everyone inside. “All right, everyone,” John said, voice pitched to carry over the wind that had just picked up. “There’s a tavern over there that’s still in decent shape. Let’s get there, get inside. Dean, you see if you can find anything useful.” He shot Dean a look to communicate that by ‘useful’ he meant ‘weapons.’ With luck, he’d also find Bobby and fill him in.
Dean nodded and trotted off the way he’d come, leaving John to babysit five young adults. He herded them toward the intact building he’d seen, not trying to make small talk. There was always the chance that they would let something slip when they thought he wasn’t listening, and it was a good chance to observe them. If Dean and Sam turned out to be right, then they needed to figure out who was killing the kids. His money was still on the demon, or at least a demon. Azazel was supposed to be here, but the signs could have been wrong. He had the guys work on barricading the door while he checked the windows. 
“Everyone, stay close,” he said.
Ava hugged herself tighter. “Who are you guys? Did you bring us here?”
He glanced at her sharply. “We’re hunting the thing that did.” 
“Thing?” Tony chimed in. “What the hell does that mean?”
He’d hoped to get out of this without giving them all the Talk. The less they knew about the supernatural the better. No one needed a bunch of kids deciding they wanted to be hunters and getting themselves killed for it. All five of them were approaching him now, arranged in a semi-circle, and he sighed, resigned to it. The version he gave was abridged, limited to ghosts and demons. 
“You’re insane,” Leah said, backing away. “You and that other guy are going to kill us, aren’t you?”
“None of you are dying tonight,” John said. “Dean is looking for salt and anything else we can use against this thing. We didn’t expect to find all of you here.”
She was shaking her head though, refusing to believe him. When she bolted for the door she was already well out of reach. He could chase her, but that would mean abandoning the other four. He swore but let her go.
“I’ll go after her,” Ava said. 
“No!” Mark whisper-shouted. “What if the thing finds you? We’re safer here.”
Vaughn raised an eyebrow at him. “You actually believe this? No way is this guy telling the truth. I’ll go with you, Ava. Stay here if you want, man.”
“At least it’s warmer in here! I’m going to freeze to death in that wind.” Mark rubbed at his arms and grumbled in frustration. “Fine. Do what you want. Try not to get killed.”
“All of you should stay inside,” John said. “It’s safer as a group.” 
Ava and Vaughn ignored him and left through the only door. He growled, but let them go. When Dean got back with supplies one of them could chase after the others. In the meantime, he’d make sure this place was boarded up as tight as he could make it. 
Leah came back on her own a minute later, complaining of the cold. “Sorry. It’s just—” She shrugged. He understood. She wasn’t taking back her words, but she was at least allowing the possibility that something was happening to her that she couldn’t explain. He figured she’d come around to ghosts and demons if and when any of them showed up. 
Any of them, like Sam. How could Dean have fucked that up? Sam was supposed to be at peace. He was supposed to be gone, far beyond Azazel’s reach. John didn’t know if he believed in Heaven, exactly, but he wanted to. If Hell was real, then why not the other place? If it was real, then that’s where Sam should be. Not here in this ghost-filled wasteland. Definitely not in the one place where Azazel would be. 
That was going to have to be Dean’s problem, though, because the demon from the woods was back. It appeared just behind Leah, and John had enough time to shove her roughly to the side before its claws stabbed out. It caught him square in the stomach, going right through the space she had occupied a moment before. Grunting, he aimed his shotgun and blasted the demon. It dissipated in a cloud of smoke with a shriek. 
“Oh my God!” Leah crouched near him. Her eyes were wide, but she exuded competence as she pressed her hands to his wound. “Sorry. It’s too cold to lose a shirt. Everything’s filthy anyway.”
“Doctor?” he mumbled. The tingling in his fingers felt like blood loss more than hypothermia.
She shook her head and pressed harder. “ER nurse. I could probably get you stabilized if we weren’t in the middle of fucking nowhere with fucking demons. How is this real? I mean, I must be hallucinating. Except you’re really bleeding and that thing really attacked us.”
He felt lethargy pulling at him. “Hey. Tell Dean. Tell him—” He couldn’t get the words out; his throat wasn’t working right. Neither was his head, really. Everything was getting fuzzy, and there was a ringing in his ears. Just over Leah’s shoulder he thought he saw Sam flicker into view. Next to him was a stranger. Well. Damn it.
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klove0511 · 2 months
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It's Rest I Want Chapter 3
Ellen sat a beer in front of John. He reached for it, then realized she was waiting for something. He raised an eyebrow in question. She rolled her eyes, then said, “When was the last time you talked to Dean?”
John glared at her. “None of your business, Ellen. How’s Jo doing?”
“Winchesters.” She said it like a swear. “Jo’s fine. Sent me a postcard last week. Says she’s found herself a hunting partner.”
He pursed his lips but didn’t address the accusation in her tone. “Dean’s pissed at me, and I can’t blame him.”
She sighed and moved to wipe down the far side of the bar. “All the more reason to talk to him. You two need to work this out between you before you run into each other on a hunt.”
John picked at the label on his beer. “Did he tell you what happened?”
“He said you pulled life support without telling him.”
John winced. “That's true, but it's not the half of it.” When she didn't answer he plowed on, “I tricked Dean. Made a fake spell, then stole his research into ways to save Sam. I can't blame him for hating me. It's no more than I deserve.”
She looked horrified. “Why? How could you do that?”
“Sam was—” The room felt too hot. He couldn't meet her eyes. “He was gone. Brain dead. Dean wouldn't hear it, kept insisting we find something supernatural that would help.” He swallowed down his grief as best he could. “I know it might have been possible. I do. Dean is never going to forgive me, either, and I hate that. But Sam was already gone.” He looked up at Ellen then, blinking back tears as he said, “So help me, my little boy was dead, and all I could think was 'at least he's safe now.' And I couldn't let Dean take that away.”
Her eyes shone with unshed tears. “Then you know what the demon's plans are?” 
John closed his eyes and nodded. “Have you told him you're helping me?” he said. 
She grimaced. “Not yet. I didn't think it would go over well. You know he's not actually hunting the demon, right?”
That was news to him. “Then what is he hunting?”
“You. He's tracking the damn thing to find you.”
Lloyd’s bar was a little thing in the middle of nowhere. It was empty at 3 in the afternoon except for Dean and the bartender, but that wasn’t surprising. Dean was getting used to being the first patron of the night. It had been a week since he’d confirmed that the mothers of the psychic kids had been making deals with the demon. Ash still didn’t have shit for him, so he was left spinning his wheels. 
He didn’t do well without something to do. Over the last few days he had barely managed two or three hours of sleep a night, and he knew he was drinking too much. Seeing Sam had thrown him more than he’d expected. The worst part was that Sam had been conspicuously quiet ever since he’d shown up in the motel parking lot for all of fifteen seconds. The temperature in the Impala had dropped a couple of times, but nothing that Dean couldn’t explain away as a mechanical issue. If the heater had taken more damage in the crash than he’d realized, then he wouldn’t have been at all surprised. So maybe it wasn’t seeing Sam that had thrown him so much as it was only seeing Sam once.
In any case, Dean knew he looked rough, and he ignored the looks the bartender was sending him as he poured Dean’s third whiskey. He sipped it, considering switching to beer or maybe just worse whiskey. He was running low on cash, and he needed to keep a clear enough head to be able to hustle some pool later. Then again, it was early. He’d have time to sober up before the crowds arrived.
Crowds. He huffed a sad laugh. This place was so small he’d be shocked as hell if the evening crowd was more than ten people. If he wanted to hustle then he ought to go find a bigger roadhouse.
The bartender replaced the bottle on the shelf and went back to slicing lemons, but he couldn’t keep his opinions to himself anymore. “Guess this place really does have a type.”
Dean glared at him for the implication, but said, “And what type is that?”
“You know. People looking to drown in a bottle.” He kept his eyes on his work, tone back to a conversational neutrality. “Every bar has some, but not like I’ve seen here. Damn place is cursed.”
Dean frowned. “You call a bar that attracts heavy drinkers cursed? You allergic to making money or something?”
The bartender scoffed. “Hell no. A week ago I would have said it was great. Seen a lot of those sad sacks turn their lives around over the years, too. Like magic, one day things just went their way.”
Curiosity piqued, Dean barely minded that this guy was calling him one of those sad sacks. “What changed? I’m Dean, by the way.”
“Rob. They started dying, about a week ago. Two of ‘em, out of the blue.”
“Dying how?” Couldn’t have been murdered, not with an obvious connection like that. This place would have been shut down already. 
Rob finished his stack of lemons and started wiping down the cutting board. “Paper said animal attacks. But—” he paused, awkward, “I don’t know how a wild dog got into a hotel room.”
Dean pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d just wanted to kill some time while he waited for Ash to crunch the numbers or whatever he did. That was all. This was a goddamn case, though, and it went against his nature to ignore it, no matter how much he wanted to. Fishing out his fake FBI badge, he flashed it at Rob and said, “Tell me everything.”
Dean had a list of names and a bad feeling. Cool air brushed the back of his neck, and he muttered, “Quit it.” He didn’t know it was Sam, but it was cool enough outside he didn’t think the air conditioning would be on. The thought that it might be Sam made his stomach swoop dangerously. He needed to lock that shit down and not get his freaking hopes up.
The library was quiet, thankfully, because he didn't think the place would take kindly to him. He was pretty sure patrons were discouraged from using the delicate microfiche machines while reeking of alcohol. But even drunk it wasn't difficult to find the victims, and his initial research suggested it was a black dog. Ok, ‘suggested’ was putting it mildly. Between the bar being at a literal crossroads and being a symbolic crossroads for these people, combined with the doctor's call to animal control complaining of a large black dog, well. It didn't take a genius like Sam to figure it out.
The list of names was more of a problem, though. Because Rob the bartender was right. Lloyd's bar had a fucking weird track record. Over a dozen people that he could think of off the top of his head had pulled a 180 on their lives over the last several years. He said there were more, and Dean believed him. The thing was, they weren't going to AA or finding Jesus or any new age crap that people liked to talk about. They were winning lotteries. Getting sudden and major promotions. Marrying wealthy widows. Not all of them made the papers, but Rob told Dean as many of their stories as he knew. Two people had been sick, like terminal, and they'd experienced miracle cures. Another had lost a boyfriend in a car accident, but it turned out he was an abusive son of a bitch. She'd been too afraid to leave him.
Why would a black dog target these people? And who was next? Especially if this wasn't a complete list, Dean couldn't track the damn thing without more information.
His sight blurred and his head throbbed. Research fucking sucked. A glance at the clock told him it was after 9, and he thought now was an excellent time to go back to Lloyd's. Maybe someone there would know something.
The Impala swung into the parking lot of the bar, and Sam tried to stifle his frustration. He knew Dean was calling this trip “research,” even though it was just an excuse to get more wasted. He couldn't even be that pissed though, because he'd seen the same information as Dean. The difference was that he thought it meant they weren't hunting a black dog at all.
Black dogs were omens, or possibly the ghost of some pissed off dog. The lore wasn't exactly clear. But the pattern of victims didn't fit, and Sam needed to figure out why. Of course, seeing the bar surrounded by fields of yellow flowers, situated at a crossroads, made it all click. Yarrow, for summoning. Crossroads for deals. A bar for a convenient victim pool. And animal attacks starting with the first people to experience a lucky break. This wasn't a black dog at all; it was a hellhound collecting debts. 
“Dean.”
Dean kept walking toward the bar, oblivious.
“Dean!” Sam's voice should have reverberated around him, but it didn't. Shouting into the Veil was fucking weird, and it made everything feel that much more gray and dull. Fuck being a ghost. This shit was getting old.
He followed Dean into the bar, doing his best to interact with the gravel under his feet. He saw Dean's breath fog in front of him and knew he was affecting the temperature too. “Come on, Dean. Listen to me. It's not a black dog. You can't take this thing on; you're gonna get killed.”
Dean pulled open the door.
“Seriously. If you won't— If you can't hear me, then please be smart. For once in your life look at the piece that doesn't fit and ask why. Try to make it fit before you go after this thing with the wrong damn ammo. It's not a black dog. Ok? Not a fucking black dog.”
Dean settled at the bar and ordered a beer, striking up conversation with Rob again.
Sam growled, frustrated. He knew how this worked. The reaper had been perfectly clear, and he'd arrogantly assumed that it didn't apply to him because he was a hunter. He knew about ghosts. He had been sure he would be able to talk and interact like a normal goddamn person, and he and Dean would go on hunting monsters like before. Only now Sam would have the advantage because he could walk through walls and monsters couldn't hurt him. He hadn't signed up for this, for watching Dean swear vengeance on their Dad while drinking himself into an early grave. “Damn it,” he murmured. Then, with an arm sweep that caught a shot of tequila from the person next to Dean, he shouted, “Damn it!”
The sound of breaking glass stalled all conversation in the bar for a moment. The silence only lasted a couple seconds, then most people went back to their conversations. Dean however, didn't. He was staring at the broken shot glass, same as the guy it had belonged to. The guy looked confused, but Dean didn't. He was looking around, eyes a little wild, obviously looking for Sam. His hand came up to rub at his amulet, an unconscious act that Sam had only seen him do a few times before. But weirdly, Sam could feel it. It was like when they were kids, and he'd had a nightmare. When he was still young enough that Dean would let him crawl into bed with him after. The frustration melted away, leaving calm, warm comfort in its wake. Like nothing bad could happen as long as Dean was around.
Dean's hand dropped, but the calm remained. For a moment, fear flashed through Sam at the idea that Dean could control him somehow, but it passed almost before it began. This wasn't control, it was reassurance.
Dean, however, didn't look reassured at all. He watched Rob pick up the glass, gaze wary. That's when Sam noticed the condensation forming on Dean's beer, which appeared to have been frozen solid. 
Oh shit.
Sam half expected Dean to leave after that. To go back to the motel, try to talk to Sam in private, something. He didn't, but he also didn't drink much. Far less than he had been lately, anyway. He did hustle some pool, but mostly he talked to people, working the case. It was refreshing to see. Sam had almost forgotten just how good at this his brother was.
Mostly the conversations went nowhere, like always. It was one of the worst parts of any case: digging for information and hitting nothing but dead ends. The evening wasn't a complete wash, though. A small group of friends, all middle-aged women, remembered the first victim, the doctor. Ten years ago, according to them, there had been a woman who liked to talk. She’d asked weird questions for a stranger, like what you wanted more than anything in the world. What you'd be willing to sell your soul for. No one knew her name or where she'd come from, just that the doctor had told the woman she'd do anything to be Chief of Surgery. One woman confided that the strange woman had been back more than once. She'd done a lot of talking over the years. Sam knew it had clicked for Dean when he pulled out the list of names. The women didn't know any of them, but they did confirm the bartender's story of people's lives changing suddenly.
It was after midnight when Dean finally cleared out. The bar had emptied significantly, and the patrons who were left were mostly too drunk to be helpful. Instead of getting in the car, though, he stopped by the road, gently touching the flowers. He looked contemplative, and then he retrieved a shovel from the trunk. He didn't care if anyone could see him, just went to the center of the crossroads and dug. The box was buried maybe a foot down. Inside was an assortment of items, including a photo ID.
The ID led Dean to a rundown apartment the next day, with a man who didn't want to be saved. But he had a new name to add to the list, someone from the first round of deals. Someone who hadn’t gotten famous, who was probably next to die.
Sam could tell Dean was considering skipping town. After all, these people had made deals with demons. They were dying because their contracts were up and it was time to pay their bills. They weren’t exactly innocent victims here. Even so, they hadn’t summoned the thing. They probably would have gone on to live long, ordinary lives if not for one person’s mistake. So they may not have been wholly innocent, but they were still victims as far as Sam was concerned. Dean wouldn’t see it that way, though. So, Sam was surprised when they went to check on Evan Hudson anyway.
And this guy? He did deserve saving. Sure he’d walked into the deal with eyes wide open, but he’d done it to save his wife’s life. Sam remembered last year when Dean was dying. He’d been willing to do anything to save him, and if a demon had made him an offer? Well, hunter or not he sure as hell would have considered it.
When Dean handed over the bag of goofer dust, Sam got nervous. Why leave the guy alone to fend off the hellhounds? When they arrived at Lloyd’s Bar well after dark, the nervousness turned to dread. Watching Dean make devil's traps allayed some of that fear, but it wasn't gone.
“What the hell is your plan, Dean?” he said, watching his brother summon a demon. Presumably the plan would be to trap the demon and, what, threaten it until it let Evan go?
Nothing happened when Dean finished the summoning, but there she was when they turned around. It was wearing a woman, maybe 5’8” in heels and a strappy black dress. Her long chestnut hair tumbled down her back, and when she smiled, her eyes flashed garnet. Sam hadn't expected the demon to be pretty. He didn't know why, exactly, considering their reputation for seducing people, but it surprised him anyway. Worse, he hadn’t expected it to look exactly like his brother’s type.
“Dean Winchester,” she purred, stalking around him like a predator sizing up her prey. “We expected a call from you ages ago.”
What? Sam thought.
“What?” Dean said.
“You're telling me you aren't here to make a deal for Sam's life?” She scoffed. “Why else would you summon me?”
Shit. Fuck. No. No, Dean. Sam stared at his brother, hating his impotence. If he could just make himself heard he could tell Dean no. He didn't want this. Never this.
Dean composed his face into a sneer, pulling his confident swagger back on like armor. “I'm here about getting Evan Hudson out of his contract.”
She looked surprised. “Well aren't you the noble one. You'd take the place of some stranger and not even get anything out of it yourself? How do you think Sam would feel about being stuck in the Veil while you burn in Hell for someone else?”
Dean circled the demon, slowly leading her to the hidden demon traps. “See, that's not exactly what I had in mind.”
“No? What was your plan?” She sneered at him. “You thought you'd ask nicely and Evan’s contract would just go away? That's not how the world works. He made a deal, and it's time he held up his end of it.”
Dean kept moving; she kept following. Finally she was in the trap, and Dean grinned at her disbelief and indignation. “Asking nicely was only my first option. How about this: you let him go, free and clear, or I send your ass straight back to Hell where it belongs. You've had a lot of years up here, making deals with people in that bar. I'm only asking for one of them.”
She shook her head, tsking at him. “Dean, Dean, Dean. Why this one? Hm? Why not the girl with the abusive boyfriend? Or the cancer survivor? They deserve to go to Hell, but this guy doesn't?”
“I didn't say that.”
“You didn't have to. You aren't asking me to let them go, are you?” She bit her lip. “Tell me, what makes this guy special?”
Dean chuckled darkly. “You really want to know? This guy asked for something for someone else. He chose to sacrifice himself so she'd be ok.”
“Ah,” she said, a satisfied smile playing on her lips. “You would know all about that, wouldn't you? Don't you know? Sacrifices like this are never pure and noble. He's as selfish as all the rest. He saved her for himself, so he wouldn't have to live without her.”
Dean shrugged. “Maybe. But he cared more about her life than his own. I can understand that.”
Sam watched the exchange, wondering if it would work. It didn't seem likely. Even trapped, the demon didn't seem intimidated. If anything, she was enjoying herself.
“I'm sure you do, Dean,” she purred. “How about a counter offer? I let him go, and I bring Sam back?”
Dean narrowed his eyes, recognizing a trap. “In exchange for?”
“For your soul, of course. I won't even come to collect you for five whole years. Imagine that: five more years with your precious Sammy.”
Sam looked at her, then stared at his brother, horrified. Dean wouldn't. He couldn't be considering it. The nervousness in his posture and the way he was chewing his lip had to be an act.
“I could just send you back to Hell,” Dean countered.
“You could, but they'll both be dead. And really, Dean, do you think you're going anywhere else if you actually succeed in your revenge quest? Patricide is frowned upon upstairs.” She grinned.
Sam saw the moment Dean made his decision. His eyes took on a lost, hopeful madness even as he stood tall and confident. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Dean's breath ghosted in front of him as the temperature plummeted. Sam couldn't let this happen.
“If I say yes, then what?” Dean said, though there was only certainty in his voice.
“No. No, Dean,” Sam said. He moved to face his brother, angry that he couldn't touch him, couldn't shake some sense into him. 
“Then we seal it with a kiss. I'll call the hellhounds off, and Sam will be restored.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.” The satisfaction in her voice pissed Sam off. She knew she'd won.
Dean opened his mouth to speak, and Sam reached out, desperate to stop him. The next thing he knew, his perspective shifted, and he was facing the demon. He felt heavy and solid like he hadn't in weeks. He hadn't even realized how insubstantial his ghost form was until he was in a body again, feeling the cold air on his face. The world had been muted before, and now it came back in full color, a riot of noise and sensation that threatened to overwhelm him. He needed to get a grip on himself, though. He couldn't stay in this body. There'd been a purpose. A reason for taking it, and he needed to fucking think. It would be easier if he didn't feel so incredibly sad. And kind of woozy, like he was drunk. Only a little drunk. Only—
With a jolt he knew where he was and whose body he was borrowing. Sorry, Dean, he thought. Out loud, he said, “No deal. You let Evan go, and I'll break the trap. Otherwise I'll send you back to Hell. What do you say?”
“Oh, Sammy. Negotiating on big brother's behalf? It won’t work. He wants this, and as soon as you let him go he'll summon me right back here to make that deal.”
“It's Sam.” Sam wanted to argue with her, but he felt how Dean was clawing at him, fighting to regain control and sell his soul. “Going once.”
“You wouldn't let an innocent guy die.”
“You said yourself he's not innocent. Going twice.”
She was the one with the wild eyes now. Sam sort of hoped she called his bluff. He didn't really want Evan to die, but he didn't like the idea of letting this demon walk free to make more deals. “You can’t do this. Sam, we need you.”
That was interesting, and it was almost enough to make him waver. If Dean hadn't been fighting him so hard, Sam would have probed for information. As it was, Sam could feel his control slipping. “And gone. Hope you like Hell, bitch.” He recited the shortest exorcism he knew, ignoring her protests and offers. Her threats. She didn't have anything to say that he wanted to hear.
When it was over, the woman sagged to the ground, empty. Sam checked for a pulse, and he was relieved to find one. The bar was close enough that she could call for a ride home. Time to get them the hell out of there. 
Well, almost. There was one more thing he needed to do before he let Dean have his body back. It only took a few minutes to uncover the box of summoning items and set them alight. Normally they kept shit like this because occult items could be hard to come by or involved acts they'd rather not do. But Sam needed it to be difficult. He couldn't risk Dean calling up a different demon. He wouldn't let Dean sacrifice himself like that.
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klove0511 · 2 months
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It's Rest I Want Chapter 2
Dean rolled over, glaring at the red numbers on the radio clock. 5:32 AM. He should just accept that he wasn’t sleeping tonight and get up, but that sounded like too much work. Sam’s apparition had thrown him badly, even though it had only lasted a few seconds. Not even long enough for Sam to say anything. Still. So much for whatever he’d been trying to tell himself. Sam had obviously been haunting him for weeks now. 
He flipped onto his back, kicking at the comforter that was now twisting around his legs. Sam was here. Sam had, presumably, been at Bobby’s and in the woods by the pyre too. The last one made some sense, but the others didn’t. Dean rolled the problem around his mind, not really trying to figure out the answer but unable to stop thinking about the fact that Sam was a ghost and all the implications of that. Sam was attached to something, and it was something that had come with Dean from Bobby’s. The car, maybe. Dean winced at the thought. Not that he planned to, but if it came to it, he wasn’t sure he could stand to burn the Impala to lay Sam to rest for good. No. He could. He would, if he had to. But maybe he wouldn’t have to. Sam hadn’t been acting like a vengeful spirit so far. Maybe it would stay that way. 
Tossing his arm over his eyes to block out the light from the parking lot, Dean groaned in frustration. He wasn’t going to dig into it, but he knew he was lying to himself. No ghost stayed peaceful indefinitely. 
Sam didn’t make any more appearances that day, and Dean was both relieved and bothered by it. Did it mean he couldn’t? Or could he just appear at night? That was common enough.  What about other ghost stuff, like moving things or EVP? He tried not to think about it, with limited success.
He was here to do a job, though, and he needed to focus. Andy Gallagher was an unknown quantity, but people had been killed. Maybe he was dangerous like Max Miller had been, or maybe he was unlucky like Sam, but either way Dean needed to watch himself. 
The first thing he did was hit the police station. All the news articles Dean had managed to dig up surrounding the deaths had conspicuously avoided mentioning Andy, even James Gallagher’s obituary. The other people, ok maybe. Dean could see no one making the connection between an old coworker and the guy’s pediatrician. But when he was omitted from his own dad’s obit, Dean’s spidey senses tingled. 
Luckily, the police reports were more useful. Dean had to dig through them for an hour before he found what he was looking for, though. The finished reports had been scrubbed clean too, but the files still contained some of the preliminary notes. From there, he headed to county records and between the two managed to discover links between Andy and every victim. Tracy had been more than a coworker, she was his ex. The doctor who shot up the gun store had arranged Andy’s adoption. The woman who torched herself was his birth mother. And the guy who had been stabbed breaking and entering James Gallagher’s house had been Andy’s twin, separated at birth. This guy was bad news, no doubt about it. 
Dean pulled Andy’s plates and registration information from the police database and did his best to prepare for a confrontation.
Andy's van was parked just two blocks from the police station. It was a hell of a sight, with a polar bear and a barbarian queen painted on the side. He watched it for a couple hours with no activity, which just served to remind him why he hated stakeouts. If there wasn’t a good chance Andy had killed half a dozen people, he would have gone over and pounded on the back door. Anything to get this moving along. But he wasn’t looking to die today.
That realization alone surprised him, because it had been weeks since he felt that way. His first reaction was horror that he was coming to terms with Sam being dead. Moving on, or whatever. But no, when he probed the aching pit in his soul he realized he wasn’t moving on at all. Sam’s loss hurt every bit as badly as it had the day he died, and if Dean was spending more time marginally functional that was just his liver adapting. The thing that had changed, really, was that Sam wasn’t gone anymore. Not in the same way. It wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, and he wasn’t dumb enough to think there wouldn’t be any consequences down the road. But for now, looking at the empty passenger seat didn’t make him want to leap into moving traffic because it maybe wasn’t empty. Maybe, just now, it was filled by an invisible little brother.
After too many hours spent in a car, the back of the van cracked open and a dweeby looking guy poked his head out. He looked like shit. His beard was overgrown; his eyes were red. Dean thought Andy maybe looked like himself lately. Andy disappeared into the convenience store he had parked in front of, then reappeared not five minutes later with a bag of food. The guy didn’t look like a killer, at least not one who felt good about what he’d done and knew he’d gotten away with it. Dean decided it was worth the risk to talk to him, and he went and knocked on the back door. A breath of cold air on the back of his neck made him think Sam might disapprove, but he pounded the door again anyway.
It cracked open, and Dean was slammed with the smell of weed. Beyond the weed smell there was the scent of unwashed dude and alcohol. Andy blinked at Dean in his fed suit, looked like he thought of doing something for about half a second then thought better of it. “You here to arrest me?” he said, resigned.
“You done something worth getting arrested?” Dean replied.
Andy shrugged, clearly tired and depressed to the point where emoting was too much work.
“Why do you think I’m here to arrest you?” He hoped playing dumb would work. Something had made the police and reporters omit Andy from their stories, and Dean didn’t want to find out firsthand what that was.
Andy fiddled with his sleeve.
“Andy?” Dean pressed.
He fidgeted some more, but Dean saw him check out the surrounding area surreptitiously. Looking for witnesses, he thought. “I only killed Weber.”
Confession out of the gate. That was surprising, but it made Dean want to believe him. The guy just looked so broken up over it. Dean mentally ran down the list of victims. “The guy that broke into your dad's place? What happened to the others?”
Andy winced. “He was insane. Said we were brothers, that we were chosen. He said he'd killed everyone that had come between us.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Who does that? Who finds out they have a twin brother and starts killing people?” 
“You did,” Dean said pointedly. 
“He wanted me to go with him. To, to... I don't even know. To hurt people.” Andy's voice cracked. “He killed everyone. I couldn't— He had to be stopped.”
Dean clenched his jaw, let that statement stew for a bit.
Andy continued, “He killed my dad. He killed Tracy. He wasn't going to accept no for an answer.”
“The police report said those people killed themselves.”
Andy looked away, fidgeting. “I know.”
“And the reports don't mention you at all, Andy.” Dean ducked his head to meet the guy's eyes. “Care to explain?”
Andy rubbed a hand down his face. “You wouldn’t believe me.”
“I’d believe a lot of things. Try me.” 
Andy tugged at his sleeves then shoved a finger in his mouth, gnawing a ragged cuticle. All his nails were bitten down and raw. “I told them to.”
Dean didn’t follow. “Told them to what?”
“To forget about me. To write me out of their stories, out of the police reports.”
Dean frowned. “And they just did it?”
Andy narrowed his eyes to slits and looked from Dean to the Impala behind him. “That your car?” When Dean nodded, Andy said, voice distorted, “Give me your keys.” 
It was like the words were heavy in his brain. Without thinking why it was a bad idea, Dean pulled out his keys and handed them over. As soon as they left his hand, the fog lifted and he stared at his car keys in horror.
Andy grimaced and held them out to Dean, palm flat. “Easier than explaining.”
“Mind control? Seriously?” Son of a bitch. He was so in over his head on this one. Andy could do whatever he wanted, and Dean wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing about it. The only bright spot in this shithole assignment was that the guy was still talking. “That guy, Weber, he could do that too? That how he killed those people?”
Andy slumped against the door, nodding forlornly. “It didn’t work on me.”
“He tried?”
“Yeah. And I did too, on him. I, uh, I was there when—”
Oh. Shit. He thought back a couple months to that night in the cabin, watching Sam aim the Colt at John. Dean had begged him not to do it. He regretted that, now, but only because of how things played out. If Sam had gone through with it, Dean would have never forgiven Sam. Briefly, he tried to imagine how that would have felt, watching Sam kill John. “I'm sorry,” he said. It didn't sound right, too stiff, too... something. Too broken, maybe. He tried to get back to the reason he was there in the first place. “You think it didn't work because you were brothers? Or because you were both psychics?”
“I don't know. I don't have any other brothers. Who are you, anyway? You aren’t a cop.”
“If I’m not a cop, why did you think I was here to arrest you?” Dean pointed out the obvious. With luck, Andy would make the assumption that Dean was, in fact, a cop and not use his power to get at the truth.
Andy sized him up. “I figure you’re something like the Men in Black. Or X-Files. Special cops. Except you’re just talking to me and not arresting me for killing Weber. So what gives?” Dean hesitated a moment too long so Andy added, “Dude, you might as well be honest. If I think you’re lying then I’ll just use the Voice.”
 Dean swallowed hard and grit his teeth. Spilling his guts under a truth compulsion was not his idea of a good time. So he talked. He told Andy the truth about who he was and why he was there, at least in broad terms. Honest enough but hopefully less overwhelming. 
The kid still looked shell-shocked when he was done. “Demons killed my mom?”
“One demon. But, yeah, I think so. Do you know if Weber—?” Dean suspected no, both to whether or not there had been a nursery fire and to the question of if Andy knew. Ansem Weems should have come up in Ash’s search, and he hadn’t. There had been a surprisingly small number of kids that matched Sam’s profile.
It was no surprise, then, when Andy shook his head no. “What happens next?” he asked. “What are you going to do to me?”
That was the question. He made Andy tell the whole story, beginning to end, and Dean had to admit that Weber/Weems had needed stopping. Andy seemed like a good guy, overall, and he admitted that the experience had been a…disincentive to using his powers much. 
“Be good, Andy. If you go dark, I’ll be back. But, uh, call if you need anything. Help. I’ll come for that, too.” He hoped it would be enough.
The Roadhouse was largely how John remembered it, and Ellen looked exactly the same. Jo, on the other hand, he barely recognized. She was a woman now, though still so small compared to his boys. She gave him a wary glance from behind the bar while Ellen cracked open a beer and set it in front of him. 
“Let me go grab Ash,” Ellen said, then disappeared into the back rooms. 
Jo wandered closer.
He didn't say anything, just quirked an eyebrow.
“I remember you,” she said. “You used to come by a lot.”
He nodded, took a pull from the beer. Ellen had given it to him without asking. She'd remembered his favorite back in the day and assumed it was the same now. He still liked the beer, just wished it was something stronger. 
Growing bolder, Jo leaned on the bar near him. “Why'd you stop?”
“Things change,” he said. If she didn't know, he wasn't going to tell her. That could be Ellen's job.
She grinned, suddenly reminding him of Dean's swaggering charm, and he wondered why she'd seemed shy earlier. “Mom told me you're hunting a demon.”
“Jo, go grab another case of beer for me, will you?” Ellen cut in. 
Jo rolled her eyes and huffed, but she obliged her mom.
“Hard to believe she's all grown up,” John said. 
“You stay away from her,” Ellen said, voice harsher than he'd expected. He hadn't planned on— Oh. This was about Bill.
He studied his beer. “She hunts?”
“No, and I intend to keep it that way.” Ellen sighed. “Ash'll be out in a minute.”
He looked at her, noted her tense posture, her folded arms. “She doesn’t hunt, and you don’t want her to, but you’ve got her working in a hunter’s bar? She doesn’t get curious?”
Ellen shook her head. She murmured, “Of course she does. Thinks of hunting as a way to connect to her dad. But I can’t lose her too, John. So don’t go putting any ideas into her head.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Ash emerged from the back wearing a sleeveless denim shirt and combing his fingers through his mullet, and John tried to understand how this person could possibly help him. The man was obviously still a little drunk from the night before—or had gotten a very early start today—and was one of the strangest people he’d ever met. That was saying something, considering he saw an awful lot of strange in his job. Once they got into the research John had brought, though, he got it. Ash was a genius who hadn’t fit the traditional molds of society, so he found himself on the fringes, just like a hunter. John didn’t have to explain anything twice, barely had to explain some of it once. Ash took the pile of notes and observations and started drawing conclusions that had taken John years to make. 
“This is brilliant,” Ash said. “You’ve been tracking the demon like this?”
John nodded, surprisingly gratified to get the compliment. “It’s slow going, and I’m not usually in time to do anything but clean up the mess. Couple months ago I got lucky and saw the signs early enough.”
“But it got away. Dean told me about that.” Ash was dismissive, as though that botched job hardly mattered. “This is good work.” He looked up, earnest. “I can make a program that’ll ping me anytime these signs crop up. It’s not as much lead time as being able to predict where it’ll go next and who it’ll target, but it’s better than nothing. I’ll look into the data going back too, see if I can find a pattern with its appearances and targets. Not all the families had nursery fires, and finding out how many others are out there is going to be like finding stars with Goldilocks planets.”
That was news to him. “What do you mean, about the fires?”
Ash grunted, flipping through pieces of paper. “Dean found that one. There was a psychic out in Oklahoma, turned out to be two people. Twin boys, separated at birth. One had a fire, the other didn’t.” He pulled his computer into typing range. “Both had the same ability, and the one without the fire definitely had contact with Yellow Eyes.” 
“That breaks the pattern,” John said, confused and a little angry. “Why would it do that?”
“No idea. That’s what we’re trying to figure out. Your data is going to help, though.” Ash continued typing, mostly ignoring John now. “I’ll call you when I get something.”
John was two states away when Ellen called. “I thought Ash was going to be the one calling me,” he said.
“Have you seen Jo?” she barked.
He saw Jo in his mind’s eye, young and pretty, surrounded day after day by hardened, miserable, lonely hunters. He went a little cold. “No, I haven’t. What happened?”
“She’s just gone.” He could hear her cursing under her breath. “Her credit cards say she’s in Vegas.”
“But?”
“There was a case she was researching, some missing girls in Philadelphia. I—” 
“I can be there in twelve hours,” he said.
“John, you don’t have to do that. Ash can watch the bar for a while.” 
John thought of Ash running the Roadhouse for any length of time and shuddered. “The man may be smart, but he’d drink you bankrupt before you got back. If you think she’s in Philadelphia, then I’ll head there. I’m closer than you are.”
“I can get a flight out, be there in the same amount of time. I ain’t some damsel in distress needing you to rescue me.” 
He grinned. For all that she sounded pissed off, she sounded fond, too, and he knew she was glad he’d offered. “Let me. Watch the bar, keep Ash in line. Hell, see if he knows something. No offense to your girl, but he seems like the one more capable of faking a credit trail. I’ll bring her home.” He swallowed, hoping to hell he would be able to keep that promise.
She called again a few hours later, letting him know Ash had caved. He had, in fact, helped Jo fake a trail to Vegas and confirmed she’d been headed to Philly instead. John had her put Ash on the phone and proceeded to grill him for information on the case. It took a while; Jo had apparently done her homework. 
He was impressed by the case that she’d put together, even though all she’d really done was eliminate options. He was less impressed by the fact that she’d set out without backup or any real clue about what she was hunting. When he caught up to her, she was squatting in one of the victim’s apartments waiting for the thing to appear. He arrived in time to blast the ghost with rock salt as it tried to drag her unconscious form into the air ducts.
“I’m taking you home,” he growled as soon as she woke up. 
She was still groggy but aware enough that her voice carried venom. “The hell you are! You aren’t my boss, and you aren’t my mom. I don’t have to—”
“Stow it, kid,” he grumbled. “Your mom is worried sick, and you nearly got yourself killed playing bait with no backup.” Without waiting for her response he gathered her bags and headed for the door. He didn’t much care if she followed or not, but either way she was done with this hunt without her gear. 
“I’m not a kid!” she said, whining creeping into her voice as she stomped after him. It made her sound even younger than she was. “Besides, Dean was hunting when he was 16.” 
He rolled his eyes before slowing down enough that she could catch up and walk beside him. “He was trained. If you want to hunt, then learn how to do it right. Otherwise you’re just going to be upping the body count of whatever you’re hunting.”
Her shoulders slumped. “That would be a lot easier if my mom didn’t shut down the conversation every time I brought it up.”
John considered his response. Ellen didn’t want her hunting, which he understood. Just because his instinct was to train his sons for their own protection didn’t mean Ellen’s feelings were so different from his own. “Maybe someday you’ll have kids of your own, and then you’ll understand that every parent just wants their kid to be safe. What we do to achieve that may be different, but that’s all. She doesn’t want you hunting because she doesn’t want you hurt.”
She slowed down to walk beside him. “And you trained Sam and Dean in the life because?”
“Because I wanted them to be able to protect themselves from whatever might hurt them.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes, finally reaching his truck. “I heard what happened to Sam.” He didn’t answer, and she continued. “I’m sorry.”
He grunted. 
“So, what do I do? I get that she wants me to be safe, but I can’t just know what’s out there and not do anything about it. You understand that, right?” She looked up at him, hopeful. He remembered being that young, seeing the world with the optimism that good people just needed to take a stand and eventually bad things wouldn’t happen anymore. 
He knew better now. “I get that hunting does a lot of good for a lot of people. But that’s not why I hunt. That’s not why most people hunt. Most of us, we lost someone to one of the things that crawls in the dark. And we hunt to get rid of that thing. Some of them get their revenge and keep going, damned determined that no one else is going to get hurt if they can help it. I respect that. Maybe someday I’ll be one of them, but I don’t think so. This was never supposed to be forever. I want to get the demon, and then I’ll be done.”
“You’d really walk away from the life?” she asked, incredulous. “After everything you’ve seen.”
“I would. This fight has already cost me too much. Once it’s done, I’m done.” He didn’t care to elaborate. She wouldn’t understand anyway. “If you’re going to live this life anyway, at least find yourself a partner willing to show you the ropes. Someone to have your back until you know how to stay alive.”
Dean wasn't sure what he was doing in Indiana. Ash had sent him there, saying it was the last person to match the original search criteria. Of course, thanks to Andy they knew that there were more psychics out there who didn't fit the pattern. An unknown, unknowable number. It fucking sucked. But he was here, chasing his last lead while Ash searched for a pattern. Anything to link Weber, aka Ansem Weems, to Andy, Sam and the others. He hoped there was enough data, not that he really understood what it was Ash did. Tracking, he understood. All hunters did. But Ash worked magic on his computer, and Dean wondered, not for the first time, if Sam would have been like that someday. So, technically, he knew what he was doing here. He was gathering data for Ash. It was just that neither of them knew what data he needed.
In truth, it wasn't that different from a regular hunt. They never knew what was relevant until they saw the pattern, heard the keywords. This was just learning new keywords. He'd talk to this Scott guy and see what came up.
He'd considered going to the guy's house, posing as a reporter or new neighbor, but he couldn't quite settle on a ruse that felt right. They all itched under the skin, felt one size too small. He still wasn't used to doing this alone again. Instead, he tracked the guy to a bar, waiting a few minutes before following him in.
It was busy but not crowded. Dean snagged a seat a few down the bar from Scott and ordered a beer. There was music playing off to his right, and he could hear the crack of someone breaking a game of pool. This was his kind of bar, and he felt himself relaxing in spite of himself. He made casual small talk with the bartender for a bit, watching Scott order a double Scotch and then refuse to touch it. He sat silent, staring at his full drink, and Dean figured this was his opening.
“Change your mind?” he said, gesturing at the full glass.
Scott shrugged, pushing the glass an inch further away. “I'm not really supposed to drink.”
Dean eyed the double, almost said it would have been cheaper to stare at a beer, but didn't. “So, bad day?”
Scott huffed a quiet laugh. “Bad year. Feels like it's coming to a head though, and I don't know what to do about that.”
Nodding seriously, he said, “What do you want to do about it?”
“Drink myself stupid and hope that it shuts up the voice inside my head screaming that I'm special. That there's a, a plan for me.” Scott growled and took a big swallow of his drink, wincing as he set it down.
“Plans, huh?” Dean played dumb. “Overbearing parents on you about college?”
“I wish.” Scott rubbed the rim of his glass aimlessly. He glanced at Dean, obviously considering the anonymity of strangers. “I- I have dreams.”
“What kind of dreams?” He kept his voice neutral. Sam's visions had started as dreams. 
“Dreams about yellow eyes. Stupid shit, mostly. But the eyes—” Scott shuddered. 
“The eyes have plans for you?” Dean said, hoping he sounded curious. Interested, but not too much. Didn't want to scare the guy off.
Scott laughed. “It sounds so stupid when you put it like that.”
“Hey, people dream about weird shit all the time. Doesn't mean they aren't true.”
The guy looked at him then. “True?” He stared a moment, then went back to studying his drink. “I hope they aren't. The eyes want me to fight a war.”
They drank in silence for a bit, then Dean said, “My brother—” He hadn’t talked this way about Sam yet. Telling Ash was different. That guy didn’t give two shits about who Sam had been, just how his data fit the patterns. Scott seemed like the sort of guy to get overly invested in someone else’s dead brother.
He paused so long that Scott prompted, “Your brother?”
Dean coughed, surprised he felt awkward, more surprised that he wanted to share. “He had dreams too. Dreams that came true.”
“Had? Did they stop?” No disbelief in his voice, only curiosity. Like Sam's dreams might hold answers about himself. 
Dean shook his head, throat feeling thick with the words he needed to say. “He died. Couple months ago.”
“Oh.” And Dean couldn't blame the guy for the awkward silence that followed. How was he supposed to respond to that? “I'm sorry.”
The whiskey burned, and Dean focused on that. He didn't want this guy's pity. Hadn't brought Sam up to talk about how he was gone. “It wasn't because of the dreams,” he offered. It hadn't not been, either, but he couldn't explain the mess of visions and demons and how they caused a semi to wreck the car. How they made John decide to give up on Sam.
“Oh. Ok.” Scott didn't know what to say, and Dean didn't care.
The silence stretched on a while longer, and the bar around them started filling up in earnest. Dean wanted to get Scott talking. He didn't want to talk about the disaster of his life, but he knew too well that showing his soft underbelly helped. It made others trust him. “He hated the dreams. Visions. They'd happen during the day, sometimes. He thought—” Dean exhaled sharply. “He thought he was cursed. That anything bad that happened was his fault. All because our mom died in his nursery.” He glanced at Scott, saw the awkwardness of a stranger oversharing had turned to rapt attention. So, he added, “Faulty wiring. It sparked a fire. How could that be his fault, right? He was just a baby.”
Scott put the pieces together almost as fast as Sam had back when they'd met Max Miller. “But that's— No. How?”
Dean raised an eyebrow. He knew, but he needed Scott to start sharing.
“That's how my mom died.”
Bingo. “Really? What happened?”
“Fire, in my nursery. Dad said—well. He said a lot of things that didn't make sense, but. He said there was someone else there. Someone with yellow eyes, like in my dreams.”
Dean was surprised. Not that the demon had been there—it had been standing over that baby’s crib in Salvation, after all, and they already knew it was causing the nursery fires. No, he was surprised that Scott’s dad had seen the demon. Seen it and lived to talk about it. “They get the guy?”
Scott shook his head. “He vanished. Dad said into thin air, but I guess he took off. No evidence of arson, so they ruled it an accident.”
“He let your dad go?” That was the piece Dean needed an answer to. If both parents were there, then why only kill the mother?
But Scott just shrugged. “I guess. He doesn't talk much about that night.”
Dean grunted. “Neither does my dad.”
Scott swallowed hard, then looked over at Dean. “Did yours— Did your mom—” He sighed, frustrated with himself. “Was it weird, too?”
“Weird how?” They were close, Dean could tell. There was something more here, and Scott wanted to tell him. Wanted someone else to know. Dean recognized the look from countless victims and witnesses. People desperate to be believed, needing to share with someone who wouldn't brush them off.
“He said she knew the guy. That she was mad, and yelling, but— But not like she was surprised.” He threw back the last of his drink. “I never believed him.”
A cold shiver ran down Dean's spine. If the pattern held—if they were really all linked, all chosen— If they were the same— No. Oh fuck no. She wouldn't have— Except the demon was there, in their house. Coming for his brother. Psychic ability ran in families and there were no psychic Winchesters. Not Campbells either that he knew of. Pieces of the puzzle were fucking launching themselves together, and he needed to get out of here. He needed to talk to Bobby, to Ash. Maybe that lady he and Sam had saved in Iowa. He wanted to talk to John, even, for the first time since Sam.
If the mothers knew the demon, then it wasn't about the babies at all.
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klove0511 · 2 months
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It's Rest I Want Chapter 1
The late August air was chilly, unseasonably so. The bright sunlight had grown golden as afternoon stretched into evening, and still Dean didn’t move. He felt like he was frozen to the spot, watching the flames dance on his brother’s pyre. They had burned low a while ago, and it wouldn’t be much longer before they were glowing embers, then cold and dead like the body they’d taken with them. Dean took a swig from the whiskey bottle in his hand, dully noting that it was nearly empty. There might be another in the car; he couldn’t remember if he’d drunk it yet.
Fucking piece of shit car. It was a loaner from Bobby, a hunk of junk that barely worked. It got the job done well enough, he supposed, but it wasn’t his Baby. Baby was torn up and broken too, still a twisted wreck from the semi. He had managed to fix some of the damage while— Dean blinked his vision clear, swallowed past the lump in his throat. Best not to think about the car. 
At some point he would have to move. Have to leave. He couldn’t let himself die of exposure in the woods next to Sam, not yet. Not when there was work to do. Work. He took another swig of whiskey, hoping it would push down the nausea. He'd hunted alone before, of course, but this would be different. Sam wasn't away at college this time, and Dean wasn't hunting ghosts and werewolves.
Dean shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut and tightening his grip on the neck of the bottle. “I promise I'll get him for you, Sam. Both of them. I don't—” He swallowed hard, fighting to control his face, his voice. “I don't know why he did it. All our lives, you were the one we had to protect. I know you didn't see it, not like I did, but he loved you.” He chuckled bleakly. “Loved you more than me. It's why he got so pissed about you leaving. He only ever got that mad when you got hurt. When I didn't do my job keeping you safe. So this—” His mouth worked, trying to find words for this impossible situation. “I don't know why. But I promise, Sam. I promise I will make him pay. And then I'll get the demon, for his part in this. For Jess, for Mom.” He finished the whiskey and ignored how blurry the fire was. “I'm so sorry I failed you, Sam.”
Dean could have sworn he felt a soft thump on his shoulder.
Dusk had fully settled in by the time the pyre was burned down to embers. It was time to go.
John replayed the voicemail from Bobby for the third time. His friend—well, former friend—was drunk, furious. He didn't blame Bobby. Hell, John knew he deserved every word directed at him and then some. He replayed the message a fourth time.
“Damn it, John. What the hell were you thinking? A fake spell? You'd do that to Dean? I knew you were a stubborn, selfish son of a bitch, but I didn't think you were capable of— of murdering your own kid. Sam's dead, by the way, though I'm sure you know that considering how much work you put into orchestrating it. I suppose it wasn't enough to kill Sam, though. You had to use me, too. Get Dean's hopes up, when you knew damn well it wasn't going to work. He's out there burning his brother right now. You damn Winchesters.” Bobby took a shuddering breath. “Lose my number, John. And if you know what's good for you, you'll stay the hell away from South Dakota from now on.”
John pressed the edge of his phone into his forehead. He'd known Bobby wouldn't understand. Dean either. They didn't have to. He didn't regret what he'd done because Sam was safely out of Azazel's reach. Let them be angry.
He replayed the message for the fifth time.
The house was silent when Dean got back. It was mid-morning, and he'd expected Bobby to be up and about already. Maybe he was already in the shop, working. Dean wandered the first floor, trying to decide if he cared that it was too early to start drinking. Bobby turned out to be in the study, making the same decision. Well. It looked like Bobby had already decided he didn't care, judging from the whiskey he was reaching for when Dean walked in.
Dean grabbed himself a glass, flopped into the chair across from Bobby, and held it out. Bobby only hesitated a moment before pouring Dean a drink too. Bobby's expression was unreadable, but Dean thought his shoulders seemed to relax a little. They drank in silence for a while.
Later, Dean would go out, continue working on the Impala. It was still in pieces, and repairs had been slow while Sam was in the hospital. Doing something with his hands would be a good way to shut his brain up. He kept replaying the last few days, wondering if he could have changed anything. Of course he could have. Should have. Would have, if he'd only listened to Sam. Dean's loyalty to John had blinded him, and Sam had paid the price. 
Dean went to take a gulp of his whiskey, found the glass empty. He frowned at it, then reached for the bottle. Bobby's eyebrows raised, but he didn't say anything.
Good, Dean thought. Not like the old man had room to talk. He had believed the spell was real too. Fuck John. Dean stewed on that thought a while, letting the righteous anger fill the Sam-shaped hole in him. He drained his glass, reaching again for the bottle.
Bobby's look was harder this time. Dean glared back, daring him to challenge how he chose to cope. Bobby frowned and drained his own glass, then poured another and said, “When you didn't come back last night, I figured you was fixing to do something stupid.”
Dean narrowed his eyes at Bobby over his glass. “Stupid how?”
Bobby just shook his head. “Don't matter. Just glad you made it back safe.”  They drank in silence a few more minutes, and Dean was considering if he was too drunk to make it upstairs to the shower when Bobby said, “What're you going to do?”
It took a minute to process that Bobby was asking what Dean was going to do next week, next month, for the rest of his life now that Sam was dead. He didn't answer. He didn't know. It was hard to consider life past this drink. Dean shrugged minutely and said, “Fix the car. Can't stand that loaner, no offense.” He'd fix the car, sure, but after that he had no plan. Swearing vengeance in front of Sam's pyre was one thing, figuring out how to do it was something else entirely. Hunting, regular old hunting, was a bad idea. If he took a job right now then the odds were good that there'd be no vengeance at all. None of that was something he could tell Bobby. He didn't think he'd understand about John, would understand too well about hunting. No need to further burden the guy. 
Bobby's gaze was calculating. He said carefully, “You let me know if you need any help,” then he downed the rest of his glass and headed outside, taking the bottle with him.
Three days later, John came to in a motel room that looked rather worse for wear. Empty bottles littered the floor, explaining the piercing headache that pounded behind his eyes. It took a lot to get him drunk, had for a long time, but he'd managed it. He rubbed grit from his eyes, noting dimly that they still felt swollen and dry, and fumbled for the clock. 2:38. Light filtered through the shut curtains, so it must be afternoon. He needed water and pain meds. The last time he'd gone on a bender this bad had been... Right. The memories from ’83 floated up, and he pushed them away again. It was in the past, now, and couldn't be changed. The best he could do was continue his hunt for Azazel and make sure no other families had to go through this too. 
First things first. He rolled out of bed, head throbbing. Food was a good idea, but it would have to wait as he lurched toward the bathroom, barely making it before his stomach emptied itself. When he finally felt mostly human again several hours later, he loaded up the truck and set out. The last several weeks he’d stayed close to South Dakota, not willing to go too far while Sam was in the hospital. There was nothing keeping him close now, so he drove until he started to nod off. Then he pulled over, slept, and when he woke, he drove again. His only goal was to put distance between himself and Bobby. Demons could be summoned anywhere, and he didn't yet have any leads on where Azazel might be next. There were isolated safe houses out west that he could use, close enough to cities that he could stay connected, far enough away that the risk to civilians was minimal. 
Time passed in a blur for a while after that. One day was largely the same as the next. Drive to town to get a paper and resupply. Back to the cabin, summon a demon. Interrogate the demon. Evaluate the intel. Sleep.
Dean slumped against the steel frame of the Impala, a half empty bottle of Jack in his hand. He was supposed to be fitting the doors today. He’d tried. But the rear door had been missing the green army man, and it had looked so wrong he’d had to stop. It was stupid, he thought, to be hung up on it. It was just a toy, and something that had annoyed John for years. It had annoyed Dean by proxy for almost as long. Now, though, he couldn’t imagine the car without it. He vividly remembered the day Sam had wedged it in there, and how mad John had gotten. The anger had lasted all of five minutes, but Sam had to make do with one less soldier from then on. When they were playing in the car, the one stuck in the ashtray became a scout or a prisoner to be rescued, depending on Sam’s mood. The point was that it belonged. Years of play and annoyance and everything else had made that dumb little toy a part of the Impala, and it felt wrong to replace the door with one that was missing it. The original wasn’t salvageable. It had crumpled along with the rest, but maybe the ashtray was intact. He’d have to find it and check. 
Later. For now, he was going to finish his whiskey. Except when he went to take a drink, the bottle was already empty. Huh. He didn’t remember finishing the second half of the bottle, but it had been that kind of month.  Shrugging, he hauled himself to his feet and tossed the bottle at the overfilled trash can in the corner of the shop. He should empty that sometime. Bobby would get on his case if he saw. Mostly for the drinking, but also just for letting it get that full. Broken glass was a hazard, and Dean knew better. Once he was upright, he felt like he could manage the rest of the doors, maybe. 
Gravel crunched behind him. 
“Damn it, Bobby, I told you I was fine. Can’t I get one goddamn minute to myse—” Dean trailed off as he turned around. No one was there. Glancing around himself, he looked for an obvious source of the noise. He didn’t find one, not even one of the strays that liked to frequent the junkyard, and his stomach swooped in fear. Or was that a thrill of hope? 
“Bobby? That you?” A beat, no answer. Swallowing, he tentatively called out, “Sam?”
His eyes scanned the junkers, the shop, the half-wrecked Impala. No sounds, no answer. It couldn’t be Sam. He’d burned Sam’s body. Whatever he’d thought he’d felt as the pyre burned had been his imagination.
The EMF was useless. Dean didn’t know if the meter was busted or if there was some sort of interference at Bobby’s place that he didn’t know about, but every time he turned it on the damn thing flared to life. It didn’t matter if he was out in the garage, the junkyard, or up in Bobby’s spare room. Same reaction, every damn time. He’d been hopeful, the first time. Proof that he wasn’t going crazy and that there was something there. Now, not so much. He glared at it, chirping and wailing on the counter across the shop while he put the last touches on the car. If the high signals corresponded to any activity, then he’d be less skeptical, but it didn’t. Phantom footsteps didn’t cause a spike more reliably than standing next to it did. 
Frustrated and finally accepting that it was broken, he flicked the off switch and cleaned up. With the Impala road ready, Dean was at a loss. Finding John had proven to be an impossible task so far. The whole country was in the search radius at this point, and Dean didn't have a clue where to even start. He'd been thinking lately that tracking John was an exercise in futility. Better, maybe, to try and track the thing he was hunting. Dean was sure he was still chasing the demon, probably blaming it for Sam's death instead of taking responsibility himself. The problem with that plan was that Dean was playing catch up and John had a 22-year lead.  He didn't need to know everything John did about the demon, but he needed more information than he currently had.
What did he know? The thing went after kids. 6-month-old babies, specifically. The two targets he knew about were both psychic. The demon had “plans” for these kids, and he'd said it like there were a lot of them. The thing was powerful. It loved to set fires. That, unfortunately, made up the sum total of his knowledge. Targeted babies and liked arson. It wasn’t enough to go on.
Bobby was hanging up the phone when Dean came down the stairs after his shower. The hunter huffed in frustration, removing his ballcap and scratching at his forehead. 
“Something I can help with?” Dean asked.
Bobby frowned, then looked up like he was surprised to see Dean. It seemed like he was always a little surprised to see Dean these days. “No, no. Garth is just a damn idjit. Not our kind of thing, though, so nothing he can’t handle. You done for the day?” He glanced at the clock.
“Finished her up an hour ago.” Dean wandered into the study, touching every book he got close to on his way to the alcohol cabinet. He poured himself a glass and settled into one of the chairs, tugging one of the fragile tomes close. It didn’t matter which one it was. Everything on the desk was about demons these days.
Bobby took the bottle of whiskey Dean had brought over with him and paced the room a couple times, obviously working himself up to saying something. Finally he said, “All right, listen up. I got something to say, and now your car’s done it needs saying before you go haring off in the middle of the night.” Bobby sucked in a breath, steadying himself. “Stop this.” He shook the whiskey bottle.
Dean opened his mouth to protest, but Bobby held up a hand to stop him.
“Let me finish. I know I set a bad example. But you know Sam wouldn’t want this for you.”
“Sam doesn’t get a vote,” Dean said. Even as he said it, he felt a chill on the back of his neck and wondered. Maybe Sam did get a vote, if it turned out he was haunting Dean. And maybe Dean would keep drinking, just for a chance to piss his brother off.
“Fine, if you won’t do it for him, then do it for me. Dean, I already lost one of you boys. Don’t make me lose you both.” Bobby turned away, looking out the grimy window. “I don’t just mean the whiskey. Hell. I know you ain’t going to hear this—had this same damn conversation with your dad once and he couldn’t hear it either.” He sighed, muttered something under his breath. Louder, he said, “Revenge ain’t going to bring them back. So, before you get yourself killed, stop. Let it go. Find yourself a girl or a job or something. Hell, stay here and work for me if you want. Just stay outta the game until you ain’t fixing to join Sam on that pyre.”
Dean’s chest felt tight. There was a reason he hated chick flick moments, and this had definitely qualified. He wanted to turtle up, hide behind his cocky bravado and say something to piss Bobby off. If he were a little drunker he might. The thing that stopped him—the only thing—was that chance, that stupid, slim chance, that Sam was here, watching. The weight of that possibility cracked him open. “I hear you.”
Bobby scoffed, already hearing Dean’s denial before he even got the words out. 
“I do. I hear what you’re saying. But, Bobby, I can’t walk away from this. What that demon did to my family—to me—I can’t let that go.” He chewed his lip and glanced away from the only family he had left. “After what John did to Sam, well. I can’t let that go either.”
Bobby cursed softly and moved to put the bottle back in the cabinet. After a pause long enough that Dean thought the conversation was over, Bobby said, “If you’re going to do this, then you’ll need help. Let me call Ellen.”
Dean pulled up to Harvelle's Roadhouse and looked it over dubiously. It was run down, didn't look like much in the daylight, but the best bars rarely did. Bobby said it was a hunter's bar, and Ellen ran it with her daughter. Under different circumstances, this could have become a favorite haunt for him. He could imagine it, him and Sam pulling in after dark, on their way to Bobby’s after a good hunt. Sam, laughing with Dean over some stupid story while they nursed a couple of beers. In his head, the atmosphere was his kind of cozy: loud enough that you couldn't hear individual conversations, crowded enough that everyone blended into the crowd. A place to find company if you wanted it, but could be left to your own devices just as easily.
When he walked through the door, it smelled exactly how he'd imagined it. Dust, beer, bar food, and sweat. It lingered, the smell of people, even when the bar was empty. This place must be packed once the sun went down.
No one was behind the bar when he walked in, but it didn't take long for a woman to come out from the back room. She was average height, maybe somewhere in her forties. Her long brown hair was worn loose, and she had a no-nonsense air about her that told Dean enough about how she managed to run a hunter's bar on her own. This had to be Ellen.
She looked him over. “You must be Dean. Bobby said you’d be by.”
Dean nodded, shifting his weight awkwardly. He wasn't used to asking for help. “Bobby told me you might know my— I'm John Winchester's son.” Mentioning John was iffy with other hunters. It seemed like the man had bad blood with nearly all of them, something Dean understood intimately now. 
She stilled. “Yeah, I know John. How's he doing?”
Dean shrugged, aiming for nonchalance. “Wouldn't know. Haven't seen him in a month at least.”
“I see. Well, next time you talk, tell him to return my damn calls.” She crossed her arms. “Are you hunting the demon too?”
Dean said, “Yeah. A demon with yellow eyes. Bobby said you could help.”
“Not me. Let me introduce you to Ash. How's your brother doing by the way? He still in school?” Dean stiffened, watched her notice. It only took her a moment to make an educated guess or two. “He's ok, right?” He could tell from her tone that she knew he wasn't.
It was all he could do to croak, “No.” He tried not to wince at how broken he sounded. “He died, about a month ago.” She was the first person he'd had to tell. He'd had a month to sit with it, to think the words Sam is dead; my brother is dead. But he hadn't had to say them yet. Hadn't honestly expected to meet anyone who knew Sam (or knew of him, anyway) but didn't know what had happened. He silently cursed Bobby for not warning her, for making him do this. 
“I'm so sorry. I haven't talked to your dad in a long time, but he would always talk about how close you and your brother were.” She mercifully didn't ask for details. Maybe she'd ask Bobby later. Would serve him right.
He cleared his throat. “So, the demon. Who’s Ash?”
She shook herself, schooled her expression back to a professional mask. “Let me go find him.”
Ash was a genius. Dean told him everything he knew, even the part about Sam's psychic abilities. There didn't seem to be a point in hiding it. Not like hunters could kill him twice. Together they made a plan. Ash would start by finding any other kids like Sam from '83, and Dean would talk to as many of them as possible. With luck, one of them might have more information on the Yellow Eyed Demon's plans. And if not, then they were building a network. Meanwhile, Ash would look for any patterns that heralded the demon's arrival, and then he'd use that to predict where he'd show up next. The more information Dean could get, the better the prediction would be, or so Ash said.
Dean had no idea if the software could beat his dad's instincts, but he didn't have a lot of options. He nursed a beer while waiting for Ash to finish the first part of his search.
“You got somewhere to stay tonight?” Ellen asked, wiping at nonexistent spills on the bar.
Dean wasn’t sure where she was going with that considering they’d just met an hour ago. He hedged. “I'll head out as soon as Ash is done. Find a place on the road.”
She grunted in acknowledgement, didn't push the issue. “Does your dad know?”
It was so blunt and unexpected that it startled a laugh out of Dean. It sounded so harsh and angry in the quiet bar that Ellen actually flinched a little. Dean tried to pull back some of his composure and took a long pull of his beer before saying, “Yeah. He knows.” He didn't dare look at her when he said it. 
She didn't say anything right away. He could imagine her chewing her lip, trying to navigate the minefield she'd just stepped into. He could tell she wanted to know more, had been close enough to John that she felt entitled to it. He wondered if she'd guess, if she'd be close enough he wouldn't have to correct her or lie. Instead, she went with, “What happened?”
Dean stewed on it a while. Drained his beer and didn't stop her putting another one in its place, took a long pull on that too. There were easy answers. 'The demon' or 'a semi.' The first sort of explained his current mission, the second sufficiently brutal to stop further questions. But talking about it at all hurt, and it made him want to hurt her in return for asking about it. “I don't remember much of it, but I'm told there was a semi. He—John—decided to 'let nature take its course.'” Dean scoffed. “And then he took Sam off life support without even telling me.”
When he looked back at her, her mouth was set in a hard line and tension radiated from her. He didn't know, or care much, if she was pissed at him or John. He could tell her the rest of it. Might, someday. But he liked her, and he didn't want to completely shatter her idea of the kind of man John was. Maybe she already knew, though, since the two weren't talking. 
“You're not really hunting the demon, are you?”
He let his silence be his answer.
John was sure there would be something. Some low-level demon would know something, or let something slip while they gloated about Mary or Sam, or whatever else took their fancy that day. But they didn't. Demon after demon, day after day and week after week. Summer bled into fall, and the weather cooled and days shortened. He'd spent 22 years chasing dead ends, and one horrible year getting close enough that he could taste the revenge. He was not prepared to spend another 22 years like this, not after what the last year had cost. Especially now that he knew the plan. Something had to give, and it turned out that thing was his pride.
Opening his cell, he replayed his saved messages. One from Bobby, which he listened to almost out of habit. Another from Ellen, offering help. She'd called months before, and he didn't know if the offer would still be good given everything. He knew, vaguely, how word got around in the hunting community. Knew that both she and Bobby shared connections, and that the odds were good that she'd heard about how things had gone with Sam. He thought about her little girl—Josephine? Georgia? Joanna, that was it— still so young the last time he'd seen her. Younger than Sam, if he remembered right, though not by much. If Ellen had heard the news, then she'd be as likely to shoot him on sight as Bobby. 
That said, he didn't have a lot of options. He'd burned a lot of bridges over the years, and there weren't many hunters willing to give him the time of day. Most of the ones he could have counted on had been killed this year just for knowing him. If there was a chance Ellen could help—and given her network, he figured she could—and there was a chance she would help, then he had to try. If she could reach out to him after what happened to Bill, then maybe she wouldn't turn him away now. 
Without waiting to talk himself out of it, he dialed the number and heard it ring through. 
“Harvelle's.”
She picked up. Of course she picked up, he thought. It was a landline. She had no idea who was calling her. “Ellen,” he said. 
The silence dragged on a beat, two. He didn’t know if it'd been too long and she just didn’t recognize his voice or if she was choosing words to tear him a new one. “John?”
Relief flooded through him because she sounded surprised and confused, not angry. “Yeah. I got your message.”
“My message?” She started a word, stumbled, paused and tried again. “I left you a voicemail five months ago offering to help, and you don't even have the decency to call until now? Christ, Winchester.”
He grinned. She hadn't changed at all. “Sorry. I didn't want to get anyone else involved. I thought it would be safer for everyone.”
“So what changed?”
“It wasn't.” He shrugged, though she couldn’t see it. Either she knew about Jim and Caleb, about Sam, or she didn’t. “The demon doesn't care if you're involved or not. Just knowing me puts you at risk.” He sighed. “Seems to me there isn't much point keeping you at arm's length.”
“As it happens, Ash is already working on it.”
Worry and confusion flared in him, edging his voice harder, angrier. “Who's Ash?”
“Don't you pull that crap with me, John Winchester. Ash is the help you need. He's better at this than any of us, and he's willing to help. Dean's already got him working on tracking the demon, but I know you kept him in the dark. Anything you can give us will help.”
“Dean is— Damn it, Ellen.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don't want Dean involved in this.”
“Then you should have thought about that before you raised him to be a hunter,” she snapped. “He's doing this, with or without our help.” Then, quieter, like she didn't intend it to carry over the phone, “For someone so hell bent on revenge, you'd think you'd understand where he's coming from.”
John winced. He did understand; he just didn't like it. It wasn't the same for Dean as it had been for him and Sam. Mary was Dean's mother, but he'd only been four when she died. His fight with the demon was—not less personal, since Mary's death had changed everything for all of them—less intimate. Dean hadn't had the love of his life taken by the thing. Even so, Winchesters were stubborn by nature, and if Dean was hunting the demon there would be no stopping him. He wondered if he could talk Ellen into diverting Dean, throwing him red herrings, but he dismissed the thought. She didn't work that way. “I’ll think about it.”
She sounded exasperated. “Get your ass over here. And bring your research.”
Bobby’s words continued to ring through his head as Dean drove through the night to Oklahoma. Ash was sending him after some guy named Andy Gallagher, whose mother had died in a house fire back in ’83. A few weeks back, Guthrie had experienced a string of bizarre suicides, all people tied to Gallagher. Ash’s research hadn’t been able to pin the deaths on the guy, but Dean wouldn’t have bet against it. If this guy was the killer, and if he was psychic like Sam and Max, then Dean wasn’t loving the picture that painted. He was only supposed to be doing recon for Ash, gathering information on the demon and its plans based on the kids it had contacted, but this felt like he was walking into a trap.
The silence in the car felt loud, and the worn Zeppelin tape and hum of the tires on asphalt did little to dispel it. He thought back to the junkyard and the crunching gravel, the faulty EMF. That damn shoulder bump in the woods while Sam burned. Gripping the steering wheel tight enough that his hands ached, he steadied his voice and said, “Sam?” He waited, glancing around the interior only dimly lit by street lights. “You there?”
Still nothing. He sighed, annoyed with himself. What had he been expecting? Even if Sam were around, he’d have to be at Bobby’s, wouldn’t he? Spirits were tied to a place; they couldn’t go wherever they wanted. Immediately, his mind offered up half a dozen counterexamples just from the last year: Bloody Mary’s mirror and that hideous haunted painting, the Hookman, the haunted truck, and who knew how many others. Thinking Sam would be tied to Bobby’s house seemed naïve at best. But if he were here, wouldn’t he have done something by now? Showed Dean that he was around, and not in this half-assed maybe-maybe not spooky shit way. 
Maybe not. He’d only been gone—Dean shut that thought down, redirected himself to easier thoughts. Most ghosts they encountered had been dead a long time. Decades, at least. Maybe it took time. 
The thought of Sam being stuck as a ghost and unable to speak or interact with anyone for decades was too painful to consider. Never mind the thought of Sam being that close, like he was just outside the periphery of Dean’s vision, for that long and not being able to see him, not know how he was handling being dead or even know for certain that he was really, actually there. No. Sam was gone because Dean needed him to be gone. He needed him to be alive more than that, but that wasn’t exactly an option. Sam being a ghost was not a possibility he was going to entertain anymore. 
Hours later, he pulled into a motel on the outskirts of Guthrie. Darkness still cloaked the parking lot, and the place was too cheap to have more than a few lights. The one nearest the Impala flickered and sputtered sadly, and he barely paid it a second glance as he entered the lobby. 
“Checking in?” the tired clerk monotoned. He hardly looked at Dean, just started typing on the computer. 
The lobby was particularly grimy, even for a cheap motel, and he mentally grimaced at the state the rooms were probably going to be in. Hopefully this trip wasn’t going to take more than a day. “Yeah, just a single.”
The clerk grunted his acknowledgement, then slid a key across the desk. “You’re in 13, down at the end.”
Dean’s brow furrowed. He wasn’t particularly superstitious, but 13 was an unusual number of rooms for a place like this just because so many other people were. 12 or 15 were more common in a place this small. Shrugging slightly, he thanked the clerk and headed out the door to the car. 
As soon as he stepped outside, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end and every instinct he had screamed that he was being watched. He froze, glancing around for an obvious threat. When he didn't find one, he slowly drew his gun and made his way to the car. His tension ramped higher. There was nothing there. He felt silly, but he'd also been doing this long enough to trust his instincts. Too many things hunted in the dark.
His breath ghosted in front of him as the temperature plummeted. That was his only warning before the whole parking lot went black, except that one flickering light. He strained his senses at the darkness and almost missed the figure now standing under the sputtering streetlight.
Sam.
Dean felt his breath stop, his pulse thundering in his ears. Sam. How? He took a hard look at his brother. Sam didn't look the same. Or rather, he did, but how he'd looked before the accident. How he'd looked when he slammed Dean into the wall in Salvation, vibrant and alive and angry. His hair still curled over his ears and at the back of his neck. His body was still packed with muscle, his skin unmarred. It was nothing like the last time Dean had seen him: head shaved, scars from the accident, from surgeries, his muscles wasting from being comatose for weeks.
It was a miracle. Sam was here. He was. He was here. Dean's throat felt tight as he took a step forward.
And then Sam stuttered, flicking out of existence and back in so fast Dean could have imagined it. He froze. No.
No.
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klove0511 · 3 months
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its the last month of 2023 so i’m just gonna say it: what the absolute fuck was that
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klove0511 · 3 months
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how many languages do you speak?
(i’m counting languages where you took one class for a semester if you retained any of it congrats you are a little multilingual)
(reblog for bigger sample size!)
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klove0511 · 3 months
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Approximately 7566 years. I used 2 minutes and exactly a week for the math.
So at the end of 6x13, Sam falls unconscious because he scratched the wall on his Hell memories. The next episode, Dean says Sam was down 2-3 minutes but according to Sam, it felt like he was out "about week, give or take." How fucked would it be to measure Sam's time in Hell based off of that time dilation scale? Someone do the math on this because I'm not so good with the number science.
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