ten thousand miles [spn][five]
Jul. 5th, 2009 12:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mimblexwimble
On a warm, breezy spring Tuesday, Dean pulls Sam’s duffel out from under the bed and roots around in it for the manila envelope he’d found while searching it a couple of months ago.
It’s an envelope full of not-so-much secrets; you don’t say anything and neither will I, full of rituals and black magic and how to get your brother out of a deal that’s iron strong, full of impossibilities and lies and false comforts and hopelessness. It’s all of Sam’s research, everything he’s ever looked into, some of the pages still clean, fresh, some bleeding the blue and black ink of Sam’s pens, lacerated with his handwriting, stained by coffee rings and beer drops and who knows what else. There are red marks on the corners of a handful, and Dean guesses these are debunked theories, though he hopes they weren’t made so by trial and error.
When he fans through the stack a second time, he notices Sam’s familiar little corrections, the ones he does to anything he’s printed out and been staring at for three hours straight, grammar and spelling and redundancies, everything precise and perfect and it’s so real and so normal that Dean’s throat aches.
He sits down at the table, takes half of the pages into his lap and begins to read.
It’s March 25th.
-
Trying to get yourself out of Hell is pathetic, Dean thinks. It helps to berate himself, because there’s other stuff he’d rather not think about. He’s read every single piece of research that Sam’s collected, page by painstaking page, deciphering Sam’s messy scribbles, sarcastic comments and scholarly additions.
It scares Dean, sometimes, how much work Sam’s done, how far he was willing to go, the things he was prepared to try. It scares him that there are things in the printouts and handwritten passages that make Dean’s blood run cold, that make him swallow hard and look away from the page and around the room to remind himself that he’s still on Earth.
On the corner of one loose-leaf college-lined page is a four lettered word that’s been traced over so many times, it’s a wonder the page didn’t rip. The blue ink is hard, the lines of every pen stroke discernable.
It says Dean.
For a long time, Dean can only look at it.
When he shakes out of his stupor, he wonders if it was supposed to say Dean is going to die or something to that extent, and if Sam sat there for hours, trying to force himself to go all the way, or if it was just involuntary, like breathing. Or if it was Sam’s anchor, something to keep him from slipping into the lands of devils and black magic and death on the dark, lonely nights, when he sat up and tried to find a way to do the impossible.
Dean thinks about Sam’s last few months with Dean, how he lived in the library when they weren’t on a gig, how he glued himself to his laptop when they were in the car, until his head started aching and he had to close it up. How there was a lot less talking, a lot more reading. Dean remembers their Christmas celebrations and his throat closes up, suddenly, ferociously.
He remembers wondering what changed Sam’s mind about it, all those months ago, and he wonders again now. Did Sam know what was about to happen? Had he decided to give Dean one last happy memory before he left? They’d been under an umbrella that day, a rare occurrence, just the two of them, separated from the rest of the world, momentarily safe and warm and dry. Outside, things had been stirring. Had Sam known?
Dean closes his eyes. He can’t think about this. He doesn’t know what happened. He starts if and maybe-ing, and it won’t be too long before he loses his mind completely. He glances at the papers strewn across the table in front of him, and catches sight of a small, blue slip that’s sticking out from underneath research about soul-stealing kitsunes.
It’s a piece of motel stationary which says Dad’s lockup and Dean wonders if Sam ever visited it alone. They’d been in that area twice after the rabbit’s foot fiasco, and yeah, they weren’t attached at the hip all the time, took moments for themselves, sometimes for the peace and the quiet and the winding down, but mostly so they wouldn’t have to waste precious time searching for a fratricide convention. But they never left each other alone for too long; and Dean didn’t think Sam had ever been out of his sight for more than a couple of hours when they’d been in that area. There wasn’t enough time to go to the lockup, searching through it and then come back.
But Dean doesn’t know everything about Sam, does he? Sam was always determined to the point of obsessive. If he had wanted to check out Dad’s lockup, he would have found a way, right?
It makes something burn inside Dean, to think that there are things about Sam he doesn’t know, that he didn’t know.
Things he may never know, now.
-
The dreams change. It takes him a while to notice, and for some time after he does, the part of him that’s been disconnected from reality thinks that it’s the dream growing, getting older. That each time he dreams of that river and Sam, it’s a different day. Eventually he realizes that it’s not the dream that’s changing but him. He listens and looks harder when he’s on that riverbank, tries to squeeze every detail into his mind. He hears Sam’s voice, actually hears it, every syllable drenched in emotion. It hits him hardest when he hears sadness there, fathoms deep, not even censored or kept under cover as a form of protection. Dream-Sam doesn’t try to hide these things; maybe he can’t. Maybe there’s no point.
There’s always that question-command-order, though: You need to ask me something. Sometimes there are so many things tripping off Dean’s tongue that he can’t pick just one; and sometimes his mind is blank and empty.
He doesn’t know what Sam wants from him. It’s something of a first.
-
Then, one day, Sam changes tact. You need to know something, he says. You have a question.
Dean starts awake and stares up at the ceiling; it’s too dark to see but he can imagine its stucco appearance.
What does he want to ask Sam? There are so many things: Where did you go? What happened to you? Who was on the phone? Why didn’t you call me for help? What does Ruby know about you that I don’t? But he can’t see those questions leading anywhere but to more questions and he doesn’t know if Sam would be willing to answer more than one. You have a question, he said. Not questions.
He wonders when he started thinking of the dream as something more than just a dream.
Dean rolls onto his side and gazes at the empty bed next to him.
There is no comforting sound of breathing to lull him back to sleep.
-
Dean breaks one day. Wakes up at the crack of dawn, tells Bill the receptionist that he’ll be back, and gets into the Impala and just starts driving. He has no destination in mind, no hunt, no plan. He turns onto the highway and pushes down on the accelerator as soon as he hits a clear stretch of road, pushes too hard and too fast, fingers trying to turn the steering wheel into jelly. He slows down every once in a while, not in the mood to be ticketed, strains the brakes. He turns the music all the way up, but can never decide on a song, switches cassettes six times in the first hour, flips from station to station on the radio. The passenger seat screams its emptiness at him, a gaping, bleeding hole.
He stops at some shit-hole motel around six, eats, drinks and hustles some pool before going to bed.
He does the same thing for three straight days before finally turning around and driving all the way back. His stomach churns violently at the sight of the motel that’s become home to him in the past few months.
Patch up that hole in your bag of marbles? asks Bill when he walks in. Dean brushes past him.
Nothing’s changed.
All he’s gotten from his brief encounter with insanity is the realization that the world is an endless sprawl. Sam’s just one person in the whole fucked-up thing.
-
There are locked files on Sam’s laptop, ones that request a password, and when Dean opens them, he’s not entirely sure what to do. He stares at the little dialog box for a long time, fingers hovering over the keyboard.
He never realized Sam might have things that he didn’t want Dean to see. Even his Hell-research was kept out in the open, and Dean had never touched it while Sam was around, but there wasn’t any rule stating that he couldn’t. It was Dean’s choice not to. This is something new. It piques Dean’s curiosity. Makes him wonder what Sam felt the need to hide on a laptop that was technically Sam’s, but that they both used – it was where they documented their hunts, and Dean was the one who typed the entries up most often. Sam was the researcher, Dean the cataloguer. It was how they worked. Sam must have known that Dean would find these, right?
It wasn’t like he’d think bad of his brother if it was some sort of porn stash, which Dean didn’t think it was, but hey, there was always a chance that his habits had rubbed off on Sam.
And then Dean remembers Daniel Elkins and his If you’re reading this, I’m already dead letter and could Sam have done that? Kept password locked files on his laptop knowing that Dean would stumble upon them someday? It wasn’t like passwords would protect them from Dean – Sam is the one who’d taught him to hack into things, after all.
Could this be the answer? Could Sam’s final letter be here, ten symbols away?
What will he find out? That Sam left? That the search is over, there’s no point in going on? That Sam’s dead?
In the background, the television is running. Dean can hear the sounds of pots and pans clinking over the rush of blood in his ears, and the muffled voice of Nigella Lawson explaining techniques.
He puts his finger on the touch pad and guides the cursor to the little red X at the top right hand of the screen.
He’s not ready yet.
-
Around the three month mark, Dean realizes that the voice in his head, the one that usually takes John’s tone, has transformed itself into Sam’s.
And for the first time in his life, he starts talking back to it.
He catches himself doing it the fifth time and decides that he’s gone batshit insane.
-
On April 12th, Dean calls Ellen.
I was thinking about taking a hunt, he says into the phone. He can hear the sounds of hunters in the background, muffled chatter, the crack of billiard balls.
Getting back on the circuit, he continues. You got anything interesting?
There’s a brief pause, but to her credit, Ellen recovers quickly. Well, sure, honey. I’m sure I could rustle something up for you if you’re set on this.
I’m set, says Dean.
Well, she says, and Dean hears the rustling of paper. There’s a possible case down in Wyoming. A father says he saw his children die slow in a dream, wakes up and shoots them both in their beds to save them the torment. Happened again a week later, wife shot her husband, after seeing him get ripped apart in a dream. How’s that sound?
It… it sounds like bad shit, says Dean.
Yeah. Jo thinks it’s probably demon giving folks visions, but who can say without getting in the thick of things.
Why hasn’t she taken the case?
She’s working on something in Nashville, replies Ellen. She’s long since accepted that her daughter’s a hunter, and their relationship has improved. At least, they’re back to fighting about normal things, like Jo’s boyfriends – or the lack of them. Jo eats Dean ear off each time she visits, bringing him up-to-date on their latest argument.
Okay, well, you got anything else? asks Dean.
Let me see… got a poltergeist in Amherst, but I think one of the guys here might be heading over soon. And there have been wolf attacks near Macon, Tennessee. Three in the past month.
Black Dog? asks Dean.
Looks like it.
Dean closes his eyes, lets his breath out slow so Ellen won’t hear. He wants to ask if there’s anything else, but doesn’t.
I’ll take it, he says.
-
He makes it to Macon County in record time, heading out an hour after his phone call to Ellen and getting there just as the sun’s rising the next morning. It’s not the first time ever that he’s driven straight through the night, stopping only to use the bathroom and drink some orange juice to get his brain sparking again, but it’s the first time in long time.
It’s the first time in a long time with an empty passenger seat. The first time in a long time he’s not had someone at his arm, ready to nudge him awake or offer to drive.
The clouds are turning pink on the horizon as Dean drives past acre after acre of open fields. Macon County is a countryside kind of place, and Dean remembers hearing stories about the Black Dogs that roam the hills here. There are tales about a cruel farmer who owned two black puppies and was so evil that the devil wouldn’t allow him to enter Hell, instead, giving him the job of hunting down unwary travelers after midnight.
Dean’s pretty sure that story’s all kinds of bullshit; as far as he knows, black dogs are avengers. They’re spirits, ghosts, in another form, avenging the deaths they are borne of, usually murders and suicides. They can take the form of humans, but tend to stick to their dog-shapes for the kill. To kill them, you have to make sure they’re corporeal, and they’re only very corporeal in dog form.
Which basically means that Dean going to have to get the damned thing to attack him. After that, all he has to do is stick an iron knife in its chest.
Easy peasy.
-
It takes a day of investigating, prying and coaxing people to talk, but eventually Dean is able to see the bodies of the last three victims, talk to the victims’ families and figure out exactly where the dog likes to hunt.
He can’t help thinking that with someone else the work might have gone faster. People don’t seem to like him very much in this town. It bugs him throughout the day, the odd looks he gets. They’re definitely not gazes full of admiration. He skips lunch, eats dinner at Hardees, and goes to the convenience store for some beer, just making the cut-off time. The only person who doesn’t stare at him for longer than necessary is the cashier who rings up his beer.
When Dean finally books a room in a nearby motel for the night, and gets a look at himself in the bathroom mirror, he decides he can’t blame them.
He washes his face and brushes his teeth in the dark, strips to his boxers (leaving the clothes scattered on the second bed) and gets under the covers. He doesn’t want to sleep (doesn’t want to dream) and isn’t entirely sure he can. His insomnia is record-breaking; he’s ready to bet the Impala that it’s worse than Sam’s was two years ago. But he’s been awake for more than twenty-four hours straight, and spent twelve of those hours driving, and another eight trekking the town. His head feels too large, his mind too full.
He’s sinking into the lumpy mattress, the covers settled around him like he’s been tucked in.
He wonders if he should call Peter Mendel and ask if they’ve gotten anywhere with the jacket.
He wonders where Sam is.
He wonders what Sam’s thinking.
He wonders.
-
Underwood Cemetery.
Black Dog Ground Zero.
He visits it in the morning after breakfast, to get a feel of the place, check out possible hiding places, make sure he knows where he’s going to be attacked before, you know, he’s actually attacked.
It’s not a big cemetery, situated behind a small church that’s embedded into a hillside. The grave markers surround it like a halo, white against the bright green grass. Dean thinks there are about a hundred, as he trudges up the hill. He hears the sounds of sheep behind him, a long way off, looks over his shoulder to see a herd of black and white, huddled together.
The graveyard is exposed, but there’s a dirt road close by that winds into a bunch of trees, and Dean’s pretty sure that that’s where the dog’s going to come at him from. The key here is to stay in the open, where he can see everything around him, he decides. Better chance that he’ll get to make a hit before he dies if he actually sees the thing coming for him.
He pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket. He had gone to the library earlier, looked up the names of murdered people buried here, picking out the more gruesome deaths. Black Dogs got particularly pissy if you desecrated the graves of the people they were avenging and Dean wants to make absolutely sure that he leaves town only after he’s gotten rid of this thing, preferably tonight. He walks the rows until he finds the name Amelia Bones.
Sorry Amelia Bones, but this is for a good cause, he says, pulling out a small glow-in-the-dark sticker out of his pocket and sticking it to the headstone. He’ll dig it up when he returns tonight.
And that’s it. He’s done here.
He can leave now.
He turns back the way he came, but doesn’t move, feels the graveyard whispering to him over his shoulder. He turns around again, hears the soft rustling off grass blades under his shoes, the crunch of a stray dead leaf. It’s very quiet. There are birds singing in the distance, softly, their calls echoing in the openness. Dean gazes at the headstones, blazing white, almost heavenly.
His phone is out of his pocket and in his hand before he knows it. He presses the number one, speed dialing. Sam’s voice in his ear and Dean hardly hears it, a protective buzz starting up in his mind.
He takes a breath in the silence, and looks into the horizon, the sky still a cool blue, the sun only as warm as a breath.
I’m, um… I’m pretty sure you’re –, he starts, swallows hard and looks down at the grass, kicking at a pebble before beginning again, voice rushed this time around.
I’m pretty sure you’re dead. I’m… yeah. I think you’re dead.
He jabs at the little red phone on the keypad with more force than necessary.
His head is pounding fit to burst.
-
Dean digs up Amelia Bones’ grave after midnight, salts and burns her remains mostly because it might help attract the Black Dog, but also because he feels like a dick, digging up a grave when he’s not getting rid of a spirit, and at least this’ll ensure that he’ll never have to interrupt Amelia Bones’ rest again.
He sits in the cemetery then, shovel on his lap, leaning against the back of one of the headstones. There’s a gun in his right hand (salt rounds), a knife with an iron blade in his left. Salt for the incorporeal form, iron for the corporeal one. His knees are bobbing up and down, even though he’s sitting cross-legged.
He’s as ready as he can be.
Now if only the fucking dog would appear.
Dean rubs his eyes and stretches his legs out in front of him. He stares up at the half-moon for a moment; he can see the dark side of it too, overshadowed by the light, but still there. It blurs together with its brighter half for a moment and Dean blinks, shakes his head.
Fucking typical that his insomnia would short out at a time like this.
The voice in his head tells him he should have taken a nap in the afternoon when he was doing nothing but watching cheesy soap operas and reruns of Oprah on the television, but Dean ignores it. He flexes his hands and hears his knuckles crack.
He’s thinking that maybe the attacks really are wolves, and he’s come all this way for nothing, slipping into that warm haze that promises forgetfulness, when he hears a twig snap behind him. The sound sends a shiver racing up Dean’s spine, the hairs on his neck standing on end in its wake.
But the dog has had more time that Dean, watching, preparing for the kill, while Dean’s been half-dozing. He jumps to his feet but it’s already too late, and the dog leaps at him, paws on Dean’s chest. He has a moment to think how the fuck did it get in front of him, when he heard it coming up from behind before his breath is knocked clean out of him.
He falls backwards, feels hot breath on his neck as the dog’s claws sink into the skin and sinew between his ribs, and he thinks through the sharp pain, Okay, okay, this is part of the plan, because it is, technically. It’s attacking, it’s corporeal – all he has to do is stick his knife in its chest.
The knife he doesn’t have in his hand anymore.
The dog’s momentum carries it over Dean, its nails scrabbling for purchase, slicing through the skin on Dean’s neck, leaving a gash that extends to the area behind his ear.
Dean’s up as soon as the weight is off his chest. Free hand on neck, he hoists himself to his knees and twists around, gun up.
The dog rolls off of its back, fangs bared and Dean shoots. It lets out a choked whine as the salt hits, and vanishes, just as Dean lunges for his knife, fingers sticky and red. His hand curls around it and he’s hit from the back.
Goddammit! he growls into the night, not caring who hears him. The dog’s jaw clamps around the back of his neck and Dean jabs his elbow backwards, hits it just below the sternum and it topples off of him. Dean stands, then, and right there in front of him is the dog, saliva dripping from its jaw.
But he can still hear the wheezing of the dog behind him.
Dean doesn’t have to turn to realize it - there are two of them.
Obviously he hasn’t done enough research. The voice in his head is bitching at the top of its lungs.
Oh, shut the fuck up, mutters Dean, and shoots at the dog in front of him, just as it charges forward. It vanishes into a wisp, and Dean has no idea how he’s going to take two of these down. He looks over his shoulder but the other dog has disappeared too, so he starts moving, head up, looking around. The dogs can only remain incorporeal for a handful of seconds when they’re on the hunt, and Dean will see them before he hears them – if he sees them at all.
Jesus fuck, he thinks, meandering between headstones. He shouldn’t have taken this gig – not alone. He needs backup, an extra set of hands and eyes, he needs—
The dog appears in front of him, dodges under Dean’s gun and grabs his leg between its teeth. The pain is unbearable, as it yanks Dean’s feet out from under him, and for a moment, Dean thinks he can feel the bone splintering. He sucks in a breath and stabs at the thing with his left hand. The knife sinks into its back, twice, and it howls, stumbles backwards. Dean springs forward and embeds the iron tip in its chest.
He doesn’t have time to check if it’s dead, because out of the corner of his eyes he catches a flash of black. His left leg refuses to support him when he tries to stand, but it turns out that he’s fine where he is. The dog screams its rage and leaps at him, just as Dean brings the knife forward. It sinks up to its hilt.
Dean throws the dog back, holds it down and stabs it, again and again and again, until it’s not even twitching, and for a moment, in between its dying breaths, Dean feels more alive than he has in months.
The growl in his ear comes too late, and Dean can’t even turn. He’s launched into an adjacent headstone, cracks his head on it and sees white for a moment. Thing One apparently has some punch left. Dean blinks, sees blood dripping off the fur on its chest, sliding down blades of grass, just before it has his neck. Dean grits his teeth and tries to push it off, scrabbles for his knife when that doesn’t work.
He can’t see anything except black fur and death (and this is how he’s going to die in two months, alone and helpless, fighting pathetically against the inevitable) and this is why the Black Dogs are so dangerous - because until they’re dead, they can kill you in fifteen hundred different ways. Injuries are trivialities to them.
Dean can’t breathe and he can’t find his knife and he thinks, of all the stupid things he’s done, this case is the stupidest, he’s not ready to hunt yet, can’t take care of a simple Black Dog attack.
Suddenly his fingers feel warm wood, and he brings his arm up and he stabs for all he’s worth, using all his reservoirs of energy, putting grief and fear and anger into each hit, until the dog is a dead weight on his chest, the rancidity of Hell coming from its fur.
He lies there, not even having the strength to push the monster off, gasping for breath that won’t come. His heart beats a violent tattoo against his ribs, and he shivers as the adrenaline wears off, leaves him in acute pain. His head is pounding. He can feel blood pouring from his neck, can’t even bring up a hand to stem the flow, apply pressure.
He can’t get enough air.
So he thinks, this is how it’s going to end: on the ground, bleeding slowly, with all the time in the world to think about where he went wrong. No one nearby to heave him up and carry him away. No one to shake his shoulder, tell him to stay awake, man, look at him with concern flooding their eyes.
No one to hold his hand when he dies.
They’ll find his body in the morning, and he’ll be cold and stiff and a handful of people from town will think, if they ever hear, I talked to that man. But that man will have no name and no remembrance and no one to claim him as theirs.
A cool breeze brushes past and he sucks in air.
Sam’s voice in his head. Jo’s working a case in Nashville, it says.
Dean pushes a hand into his pocket and presses a button and feels dignity leaking out of him along with the blood.
-
You’re so fucked up, says Jo as she stitches him up, both of them squeezed into the backseat of the Impala, her hands shaking.
You’re so fucking fucked up. You need to pull yourself together.
Dean doesn’t say a word, just motions for the bottle of whiskey again and drinks himself into oblivion.
-
You have something to ask me, says Sam.
Dean goes out and buys some sleeping pills the next morning.
He’s had enough.
-
He’s not trying to escape. There is no escape.
Sam is everywhere, now. Sam is everything, everyone.
Sam is the man at the magazine stand, who slouches in just the right way. He’s the college student who analyses the latest headlines to death after the morning news bulletin comes on the diner’s one grainy TV set. He’s the five-year-old who displays spectacular pouting abilities when his dad refuses to buy him candy at the grocer’s one Sunday. He’s the teenager at the bus stop who flicks his brown bangs out of his eyes. He’s the perplexing not-green, not-brown, not-hazel, kinda-something-in-between eyes on the cologne model, the solemn voice on the late night radio show, the furrowed brows that peer above the evening paper, the catching laugh that rises from the midst of a crowd. He’s the dimpled grins that Dean sees occasionally, the too-tall basketball players returning from a game, the little brothers chasing butterflies in the park.
He’s a wish, a dream, a hope. He’s a memory, fast fluttering out of reach.
Sam’s everything and everyone and all that’s in between.
-
On April 21st, Dean succumbs.
He fires up Sam’s laptop and finds the locked folders he’d come across a couple of weeks ago.
It takes him three hours to crack the password, the longest ever, which basically proves that Sam was obsessive-compulsive. Dean has absolutely no idea how Sam even remembered the thing. The thought occurs to him that maybe Sam didn’t need to remember it, that he never went back to this folder, but Dean forgets about that as soon as the folder opens.
It’s full of video files and photographs. There are too many to count, the scroll down tab thin in its bar, and they’re all titles by dates.
The first one says January 24th, 2004.
It’s a video of Jessica, and Dean’s heart immediately clenches in his chest. He leans forward involuntarily, watching the grainy film.
It’s Jess’s birthday. January 24th. Jess’s birthday.
Dean never knew they shared birthdays. The people in the background are singing as the cake is brought into the small apartment – Sam and Jess’s apartment.
Whoever’s holding the camera says, Make a wish and Dean’s blood runs cold.
It’s Sam.
He feels gutted, for a moment. Nauseous. Wishes he’d had some warning before hearing Sam’s voice, not in a dream or on a recorded, robotic voicemail message, but actually talking. Sounding warm and happy. Sounding alive.
Dean swallows, his head pounding, his eyes prickling painfully. Jess blows out the candles in one go.
Dean closes the file, chooses a random one from early 2005 and opens it. This time it’s Sam in the video and before Dean can stop himself, he’s closed the window.
He sits there, in the silence of the motel room, and puts a hand to his head. The wind is blowing through the open window and it’s making him cold, so he gets up and shuts it.
Takes a couple of breaths and then starts the video again.
Sam’s sitting on a bed, back against the headboard with a book in his lap and a thin crease between his eyebrows. Jess is behind the camera, trying to cajole Sam into looking up. She snatches the book out of his lap, and he looks straight into the camera, says, C’mon, Jess – I have finals!
Not until you give me a smile, says Jess.
Sam manages to hold onto his glare for a full five seconds before a smile breaks through, and Jess cheers.
Dean presses pause.
He scrolls through the pictures. A lot of are Sam and Jess, some people Dean’s never seen, three with Rebecca and Zach in them, including the one they’d seen on Rebecca’s refrigerator in St. Louis.
And then there’s one of Dean himself.
He’s reading a book by flashlight, splayed out as well as possible on the Impala’s backseat. Dean’s never seen this picture before, doesn’t know how Sam had taken it without his realizing. Doesn’t know what it’s doing in here, in this folder, where there are only happy memories.
There are more like it, candids of Dean, and then shots of Sam that Dean remembers catching with his camera phone to irritate Sam. There are videos dated 2006 and 2007.
Dean doesn’t open them, thinks Someday else and goes back to the video he has opened, presses resume on the little bar at the bottom.
You have finals too, you know, says Sam to Jess.
Sam, has anyone ever told you you’re no fun? asks Jess, voice full of laughter.
Sam rolls his eyes and swings his legs over the bed’s edge, getting closer to the camera.
Book, please? he says, hand out. The camera turns to face a closed window, and Jess’s hand comes out to open it. The camera turns back to Sam again. There’s the sound of flapping pages and Sam looks instantly, ridiculously outraged.
Jess, my book! The camera follows him to the window, where he sticks his head out.
Whoops, says Jess. Whatever will you do now?
Sam pulls his head back in, his disgruntled expression suddenly amused, eyes glittering, and Dean presses the little x on the window.
He pulls the laptop’s lid down and sits there quietly for a moment. Then he gets up for a glass of water.
He wipes his face on his sleeve on his way to the bathroom.
-
I got a call from Bela, says Bobby over the phone.
When? asks Dean.
Been a while. She wanted help. Apparently there were Hellhounds on her tail.
You gotta be kidding me, says Dean.
Nope. It’s why she needed the Colt, apparently. It didn’t work and she phoned me about ten minutes before midnight.
Ten minutes before the Hellhounds came? What the fuck did she expect you to do then?
Nothin’, I guess, says Bobby and Dean can imagine his shrug. But she gave me a name – demon who holds her contract. She said the same demon holds yours too.
And you believed her, Bobby? When has that bitch ever told us the truth?
I don’t see why she’d lie, Dean. She said she thought you might be able to kill her.
Her?
Name’s Lilith.
Ruby’s voice sounds in his head: I got whiff of a demon, Lilith, who wants his pretty little head on a stick…
Lilith, huh?
A name is a powerful weapon, Dean, says Bobby. We can use it, track the bitch down and go after it. Try to kill it.
Kill it? With what, Bobby? The Colt?
You could summon Ruby, she has that knife—
No fucking way. Just – no.
Dean—
It won’t work anyway, Bobby and you know it. Lilith’ll kill us before we get to her, and you’re not dying on my account.
Then what the hell do you suggest we do? says Bobby, sounding weary, like he’d like to sleep and never get up again.
Dean’s silent. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s gone through every page of research Sam’s done and found nothing worth trying. Nothing he’d hand over to Bobby and say, Let’s do this. Most of its crap and that bit that isn’t, is so dangerous that Dean would have killed Sam for even reading it, if he’d know way back when.
There’s nothing left to read, nothing to try.
There’s nothing.
Dean? says Bobby.
Can I – can I come to your place? asks Dean.
There’s a long silence, and it acts as a vacuum, sucking away everything but pain.
Sure, Dean. Sure, kid, says Bobby eventually. You come on over.
His voice cracks on the last word and Dean pretends not to hear.
It’s April 29th.
-
After that, there’s nothing to do but wait.
There are brief moments, when he lets himself think about finding Sam again, when the despair is so fucking crushing that he doesn’t care about hoping too much. He’s going to die anyway. Nothing matters now. It’s easier, sometimes, to lull himself to sleep with images of Sam instead of images of fire and brimstone and the sound of barking dogs.
He thinks about seeing Sam for the first time, in months, and thinks about reaching out and touching him and hugging him. And he thinks the first thing they’ll do is go to diner, because eating with Sam is what Dean misses most. And Sam will talk, while they chew and savor, and Dean will listen and drink up every word like an elixir and not stop looking at Sam for even a moment. And then they’ll find a motel room, and for once, the other bed won’t be empty and there’ll be someone clattering around in the bathroom, and Dean’ll shout to Sam to save me some hot water. And then they’ll sleep and Dean will wait to hear the soft, regular sounds of Sam’s breathing before dropping off himself. And when he wakes in the morning, he’ll roll over and stare at the occupied bed across the divide, and he’ll get up and strip Sam’s covers off and make as much noise as he possibly can in the bathroom, and when he gets back, Sam still won’t be awake, so he’ll throw balled up socks at Sam’s head and turn the TV on. He’ll switch to Good Morning, America, and Sam will peer out from under his recovered blankets and watch, while Dean tries to find a clean pair of pants, before stealing one of Sam’s and folding up the legs and complaining about laundry.
And they’ll go out for breakfast, and they’ll go out for lunch, and they’ll pop open beer bottles on the roadside and they won’t need to talk because they already know what the other’s thinking, because they have a separate world and it’s fucked up as hell and they both hate it at times, though for different reasons, but it just doesn’t matter what’s wrong sometimes because it’s their world and they’re both in it and that makes it alright and bearable and that’s why they’re still on the road, still hunting down evil things, still waking up in the morning with their sanities intact – because there is another, who understands, not everything – never everything – but almost. Enough.
And everything, every single fucking thing that’s been so wrong in Dean’s life for the past few months – everything… will be right again.
He spends his final days like that, letting useless, torturous hope suffocate him when he’s not trying to have a conversation with Bobby or imaging exactly how it’ll happen.
The hallucinations don’t take long to start, and they’re quickly followed by dreams that don’t stay away, even with his sleeping pills. Dean spends the night gasping into wakefulness.
On May 1st, Bobby cooks lunch; Dean’s final meal.
He doesn’t know how, but he manages to choke it down. After, Bobby disappears for a while, and Dean sits in the living room, television off. He rocks slightly, side to side, without knowing it. He waits for the sounds of howling.
He hasn’t heard from any sort of demon in months, and for one infinitesimal second, he wonders if Sam found a way to get him out, and if that was why he left, and the hope that blooms at that forbidden thought is crippling. It's like a wave's unfurled inside him, and it pulses in his chest, hot and heavy; maybe Sam stopped it, maybe Sam broke the contract, maybe there is no deal, maybe Dean won't have to die, won't have to go to hell - maybe Sam did it. And then, then the heat turns to ice, because maybe Sam didn't. Probably Sam didn't. Probably - nothing. He's not going to start expecting miracles now, not now, not for himself, not when none came through for Sam. No.
Bobby reappears as the sun begins to set and sits with Dean. There’s no thought of dinner.
They don’t talk.
At 12:02 AM, on May 2nd, 2008, it ends.
It’s an envelope full of not-so-much secrets; you don’t say anything and neither will I, full of rituals and black magic and how to get your brother out of a deal that’s iron strong, full of impossibilities and lies and false comforts and hopelessness. It’s all of Sam’s research, everything he’s ever looked into, some of the pages still clean, fresh, some bleeding the blue and black ink of Sam’s pens, lacerated with his handwriting, stained by coffee rings and beer drops and who knows what else. There are red marks on the corners of a handful, and Dean guesses these are debunked theories, though he hopes they weren’t made so by trial and error.
When he fans through the stack a second time, he notices Sam’s familiar little corrections, the ones he does to anything he’s printed out and been staring at for three hours straight, grammar and spelling and redundancies, everything precise and perfect and it’s so real and so normal that Dean’s throat aches.
He sits down at the table, takes half of the pages into his lap and begins to read.
It’s March 25th.
Trying to get yourself out of Hell is pathetic, Dean thinks. It helps to berate himself, because there’s other stuff he’d rather not think about. He’s read every single piece of research that Sam’s collected, page by painstaking page, deciphering Sam’s messy scribbles, sarcastic comments and scholarly additions.
It scares Dean, sometimes, how much work Sam’s done, how far he was willing to go, the things he was prepared to try. It scares him that there are things in the printouts and handwritten passages that make Dean’s blood run cold, that make him swallow hard and look away from the page and around the room to remind himself that he’s still on Earth.
On the corner of one loose-leaf college-lined page is a four lettered word that’s been traced over so many times, it’s a wonder the page didn’t rip. The blue ink is hard, the lines of every pen stroke discernable.
It says Dean.
For a long time, Dean can only look at it.
When he shakes out of his stupor, he wonders if it was supposed to say Dean is going to die or something to that extent, and if Sam sat there for hours, trying to force himself to go all the way, or if it was just involuntary, like breathing. Or if it was Sam’s anchor, something to keep him from slipping into the lands of devils and black magic and death on the dark, lonely nights, when he sat up and tried to find a way to do the impossible.
Dean thinks about Sam’s last few months with Dean, how he lived in the library when they weren’t on a gig, how he glued himself to his laptop when they were in the car, until his head started aching and he had to close it up. How there was a lot less talking, a lot more reading. Dean remembers their Christmas celebrations and his throat closes up, suddenly, ferociously.
He remembers wondering what changed Sam’s mind about it, all those months ago, and he wonders again now. Did Sam know what was about to happen? Had he decided to give Dean one last happy memory before he left? They’d been under an umbrella that day, a rare occurrence, just the two of them, separated from the rest of the world, momentarily safe and warm and dry. Outside, things had been stirring. Had Sam known?
Dean closes his eyes. He can’t think about this. He doesn’t know what happened. He starts if and maybe-ing, and it won’t be too long before he loses his mind completely. He glances at the papers strewn across the table in front of him, and catches sight of a small, blue slip that’s sticking out from underneath research about soul-stealing kitsunes.
It’s a piece of motel stationary which says Dad’s lockup and Dean wonders if Sam ever visited it alone. They’d been in that area twice after the rabbit’s foot fiasco, and yeah, they weren’t attached at the hip all the time, took moments for themselves, sometimes for the peace and the quiet and the winding down, but mostly so they wouldn’t have to waste precious time searching for a fratricide convention. But they never left each other alone for too long; and Dean didn’t think Sam had ever been out of his sight for more than a couple of hours when they’d been in that area. There wasn’t enough time to go to the lockup, searching through it and then come back.
But Dean doesn’t know everything about Sam, does he? Sam was always determined to the point of obsessive. If he had wanted to check out Dad’s lockup, he would have found a way, right?
It makes something burn inside Dean, to think that there are things about Sam he doesn’t know, that he didn’t know.
Things he may never know, now.
The dreams change. It takes him a while to notice, and for some time after he does, the part of him that’s been disconnected from reality thinks that it’s the dream growing, getting older. That each time he dreams of that river and Sam, it’s a different day. Eventually he realizes that it’s not the dream that’s changing but him. He listens and looks harder when he’s on that riverbank, tries to squeeze every detail into his mind. He hears Sam’s voice, actually hears it, every syllable drenched in emotion. It hits him hardest when he hears sadness there, fathoms deep, not even censored or kept under cover as a form of protection. Dream-Sam doesn’t try to hide these things; maybe he can’t. Maybe there’s no point.
There’s always that question-command-order, though: You need to ask me something. Sometimes there are so many things tripping off Dean’s tongue that he can’t pick just one; and sometimes his mind is blank and empty.
He doesn’t know what Sam wants from him. It’s something of a first.
Then, one day, Sam changes tact. You need to know something, he says. You have a question.
Dean starts awake and stares up at the ceiling; it’s too dark to see but he can imagine its stucco appearance.
What does he want to ask Sam? There are so many things: Where did you go? What happened to you? Who was on the phone? Why didn’t you call me for help? What does Ruby know about you that I don’t? But he can’t see those questions leading anywhere but to more questions and he doesn’t know if Sam would be willing to answer more than one. You have a question, he said. Not questions.
He wonders when he started thinking of the dream as something more than just a dream.
Dean rolls onto his side and gazes at the empty bed next to him.
There is no comforting sound of breathing to lull him back to sleep.
Dean breaks one day. Wakes up at the crack of dawn, tells Bill the receptionist that he’ll be back, and gets into the Impala and just starts driving. He has no destination in mind, no hunt, no plan. He turns onto the highway and pushes down on the accelerator as soon as he hits a clear stretch of road, pushes too hard and too fast, fingers trying to turn the steering wheel into jelly. He slows down every once in a while, not in the mood to be ticketed, strains the brakes. He turns the music all the way up, but can never decide on a song, switches cassettes six times in the first hour, flips from station to station on the radio. The passenger seat screams its emptiness at him, a gaping, bleeding hole.
He stops at some shit-hole motel around six, eats, drinks and hustles some pool before going to bed.
He does the same thing for three straight days before finally turning around and driving all the way back. His stomach churns violently at the sight of the motel that’s become home to him in the past few months.
Patch up that hole in your bag of marbles? asks Bill when he walks in. Dean brushes past him.
Nothing’s changed.
All he’s gotten from his brief encounter with insanity is the realization that the world is an endless sprawl. Sam’s just one person in the whole fucked-up thing.
There are locked files on Sam’s laptop, ones that request a password, and when Dean opens them, he’s not entirely sure what to do. He stares at the little dialog box for a long time, fingers hovering over the keyboard.
He never realized Sam might have things that he didn’t want Dean to see. Even his Hell-research was kept out in the open, and Dean had never touched it while Sam was around, but there wasn’t any rule stating that he couldn’t. It was Dean’s choice not to. This is something new. It piques Dean’s curiosity. Makes him wonder what Sam felt the need to hide on a laptop that was technically Sam’s, but that they both used – it was where they documented their hunts, and Dean was the one who typed the entries up most often. Sam was the researcher, Dean the cataloguer. It was how they worked. Sam must have known that Dean would find these, right?
It wasn’t like he’d think bad of his brother if it was some sort of porn stash, which Dean didn’t think it was, but hey, there was always a chance that his habits had rubbed off on Sam.
And then Dean remembers Daniel Elkins and his If you’re reading this, I’m already dead letter and could Sam have done that? Kept password locked files on his laptop knowing that Dean would stumble upon them someday? It wasn’t like passwords would protect them from Dean – Sam is the one who’d taught him to hack into things, after all.
Could this be the answer? Could Sam’s final letter be here, ten symbols away?
What will he find out? That Sam left? That the search is over, there’s no point in going on? That Sam’s dead?
In the background, the television is running. Dean can hear the sounds of pots and pans clinking over the rush of blood in his ears, and the muffled voice of Nigella Lawson explaining techniques.
He puts his finger on the touch pad and guides the cursor to the little red X at the top right hand of the screen.
He’s not ready yet.
Around the three month mark, Dean realizes that the voice in his head, the one that usually takes John’s tone, has transformed itself into Sam’s.
And for the first time in his life, he starts talking back to it.
He catches himself doing it the fifth time and decides that he’s gone batshit insane.
On April 12th, Dean calls Ellen.
I was thinking about taking a hunt, he says into the phone. He can hear the sounds of hunters in the background, muffled chatter, the crack of billiard balls.
Getting back on the circuit, he continues. You got anything interesting?
There’s a brief pause, but to her credit, Ellen recovers quickly. Well, sure, honey. I’m sure I could rustle something up for you if you’re set on this.
I’m set, says Dean.
Well, she says, and Dean hears the rustling of paper. There’s a possible case down in Wyoming. A father says he saw his children die slow in a dream, wakes up and shoots them both in their beds to save them the torment. Happened again a week later, wife shot her husband, after seeing him get ripped apart in a dream. How’s that sound?
It… it sounds like bad shit, says Dean.
Yeah. Jo thinks it’s probably demon giving folks visions, but who can say without getting in the thick of things.
Why hasn’t she taken the case?
She’s working on something in Nashville, replies Ellen. She’s long since accepted that her daughter’s a hunter, and their relationship has improved. At least, they’re back to fighting about normal things, like Jo’s boyfriends – or the lack of them. Jo eats Dean ear off each time she visits, bringing him up-to-date on their latest argument.
Okay, well, you got anything else? asks Dean.
Let me see… got a poltergeist in Amherst, but I think one of the guys here might be heading over soon. And there have been wolf attacks near Macon, Tennessee. Three in the past month.
Black Dog? asks Dean.
Looks like it.
Dean closes his eyes, lets his breath out slow so Ellen won’t hear. He wants to ask if there’s anything else, but doesn’t.
I’ll take it, he says.
He makes it to Macon County in record time, heading out an hour after his phone call to Ellen and getting there just as the sun’s rising the next morning. It’s not the first time ever that he’s driven straight through the night, stopping only to use the bathroom and drink some orange juice to get his brain sparking again, but it’s the first time in long time.
It’s the first time in a long time with an empty passenger seat. The first time in a long time he’s not had someone at his arm, ready to nudge him awake or offer to drive.
The clouds are turning pink on the horizon as Dean drives past acre after acre of open fields. Macon County is a countryside kind of place, and Dean remembers hearing stories about the Black Dogs that roam the hills here. There are tales about a cruel farmer who owned two black puppies and was so evil that the devil wouldn’t allow him to enter Hell, instead, giving him the job of hunting down unwary travelers after midnight.
Dean’s pretty sure that story’s all kinds of bullshit; as far as he knows, black dogs are avengers. They’re spirits, ghosts, in another form, avenging the deaths they are borne of, usually murders and suicides. They can take the form of humans, but tend to stick to their dog-shapes for the kill. To kill them, you have to make sure they’re corporeal, and they’re only very corporeal in dog form.
Which basically means that Dean going to have to get the damned thing to attack him. After that, all he has to do is stick an iron knife in its chest.
Easy peasy.
It takes a day of investigating, prying and coaxing people to talk, but eventually Dean is able to see the bodies of the last three victims, talk to the victims’ families and figure out exactly where the dog likes to hunt.
He can’t help thinking that with someone else the work might have gone faster. People don’t seem to like him very much in this town. It bugs him throughout the day, the odd looks he gets. They’re definitely not gazes full of admiration. He skips lunch, eats dinner at Hardees, and goes to the convenience store for some beer, just making the cut-off time. The only person who doesn’t stare at him for longer than necessary is the cashier who rings up his beer.
When Dean finally books a room in a nearby motel for the night, and gets a look at himself in the bathroom mirror, he decides he can’t blame them.
He washes his face and brushes his teeth in the dark, strips to his boxers (leaving the clothes scattered on the second bed) and gets under the covers. He doesn’t want to sleep (doesn’t want to dream) and isn’t entirely sure he can. His insomnia is record-breaking; he’s ready to bet the Impala that it’s worse than Sam’s was two years ago. But he’s been awake for more than twenty-four hours straight, and spent twelve of those hours driving, and another eight trekking the town. His head feels too large, his mind too full.
He’s sinking into the lumpy mattress, the covers settled around him like he’s been tucked in.
He wonders if he should call Peter Mendel and ask if they’ve gotten anywhere with the jacket.
He wonders where Sam is.
He wonders what Sam’s thinking.
He wonders.
Underwood Cemetery.
Black Dog Ground Zero.
He visits it in the morning after breakfast, to get a feel of the place, check out possible hiding places, make sure he knows where he’s going to be attacked before, you know, he’s actually attacked.
It’s not a big cemetery, situated behind a small church that’s embedded into a hillside. The grave markers surround it like a halo, white against the bright green grass. Dean thinks there are about a hundred, as he trudges up the hill. He hears the sounds of sheep behind him, a long way off, looks over his shoulder to see a herd of black and white, huddled together.
The graveyard is exposed, but there’s a dirt road close by that winds into a bunch of trees, and Dean’s pretty sure that that’s where the dog’s going to come at him from. The key here is to stay in the open, where he can see everything around him, he decides. Better chance that he’ll get to make a hit before he dies if he actually sees the thing coming for him.
He pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket. He had gone to the library earlier, looked up the names of murdered people buried here, picking out the more gruesome deaths. Black Dogs got particularly pissy if you desecrated the graves of the people they were avenging and Dean wants to make absolutely sure that he leaves town only after he’s gotten rid of this thing, preferably tonight. He walks the rows until he finds the name Amelia Bones.
Sorry Amelia Bones, but this is for a good cause, he says, pulling out a small glow-in-the-dark sticker out of his pocket and sticking it to the headstone. He’ll dig it up when he returns tonight.
And that’s it. He’s done here.
He can leave now.
He turns back the way he came, but doesn’t move, feels the graveyard whispering to him over his shoulder. He turns around again, hears the soft rustling off grass blades under his shoes, the crunch of a stray dead leaf. It’s very quiet. There are birds singing in the distance, softly, their calls echoing in the openness. Dean gazes at the headstones, blazing white, almost heavenly.
His phone is out of his pocket and in his hand before he knows it. He presses the number one, speed dialing. Sam’s voice in his ear and Dean hardly hears it, a protective buzz starting up in his mind.
He takes a breath in the silence, and looks into the horizon, the sky still a cool blue, the sun only as warm as a breath.
I’m, um… I’m pretty sure you’re –, he starts, swallows hard and looks down at the grass, kicking at a pebble before beginning again, voice rushed this time around.
I’m pretty sure you’re dead. I’m… yeah. I think you’re dead.
He jabs at the little red phone on the keypad with more force than necessary.
His head is pounding fit to burst.
Dean digs up Amelia Bones’ grave after midnight, salts and burns her remains mostly because it might help attract the Black Dog, but also because he feels like a dick, digging up a grave when he’s not getting rid of a spirit, and at least this’ll ensure that he’ll never have to interrupt Amelia Bones’ rest again.
He sits in the cemetery then, shovel on his lap, leaning against the back of one of the headstones. There’s a gun in his right hand (salt rounds), a knife with an iron blade in his left. Salt for the incorporeal form, iron for the corporeal one. His knees are bobbing up and down, even though he’s sitting cross-legged.
He’s as ready as he can be.
Now if only the fucking dog would appear.
Dean rubs his eyes and stretches his legs out in front of him. He stares up at the half-moon for a moment; he can see the dark side of it too, overshadowed by the light, but still there. It blurs together with its brighter half for a moment and Dean blinks, shakes his head.
Fucking typical that his insomnia would short out at a time like this.
The voice in his head tells him he should have taken a nap in the afternoon when he was doing nothing but watching cheesy soap operas and reruns of Oprah on the television, but Dean ignores it. He flexes his hands and hears his knuckles crack.
He’s thinking that maybe the attacks really are wolves, and he’s come all this way for nothing, slipping into that warm haze that promises forgetfulness, when he hears a twig snap behind him. The sound sends a shiver racing up Dean’s spine, the hairs on his neck standing on end in its wake.
But the dog has had more time that Dean, watching, preparing for the kill, while Dean’s been half-dozing. He jumps to his feet but it’s already too late, and the dog leaps at him, paws on Dean’s chest. He has a moment to think how the fuck did it get in front of him, when he heard it coming up from behind before his breath is knocked clean out of him.
He falls backwards, feels hot breath on his neck as the dog’s claws sink into the skin and sinew between his ribs, and he thinks through the sharp pain, Okay, okay, this is part of the plan, because it is, technically. It’s attacking, it’s corporeal – all he has to do is stick his knife in its chest.
The knife he doesn’t have in his hand anymore.
The dog’s momentum carries it over Dean, its nails scrabbling for purchase, slicing through the skin on Dean’s neck, leaving a gash that extends to the area behind his ear.
Dean’s up as soon as the weight is off his chest. Free hand on neck, he hoists himself to his knees and twists around, gun up.
The dog rolls off of its back, fangs bared and Dean shoots. It lets out a choked whine as the salt hits, and vanishes, just as Dean lunges for his knife, fingers sticky and red. His hand curls around it and he’s hit from the back.
Goddammit! he growls into the night, not caring who hears him. The dog’s jaw clamps around the back of his neck and Dean jabs his elbow backwards, hits it just below the sternum and it topples off of him. Dean stands, then, and right there in front of him is the dog, saliva dripping from its jaw.
But he can still hear the wheezing of the dog behind him.
Dean doesn’t have to turn to realize it - there are two of them.
Obviously he hasn’t done enough research. The voice in his head is bitching at the top of its lungs.
Oh, shut the fuck up, mutters Dean, and shoots at the dog in front of him, just as it charges forward. It vanishes into a wisp, and Dean has no idea how he’s going to take two of these down. He looks over his shoulder but the other dog has disappeared too, so he starts moving, head up, looking around. The dogs can only remain incorporeal for a handful of seconds when they’re on the hunt, and Dean will see them before he hears them – if he sees them at all.
Jesus fuck, he thinks, meandering between headstones. He shouldn’t have taken this gig – not alone. He needs backup, an extra set of hands and eyes, he needs—
The dog appears in front of him, dodges under Dean’s gun and grabs his leg between its teeth. The pain is unbearable, as it yanks Dean’s feet out from under him, and for a moment, Dean thinks he can feel the bone splintering. He sucks in a breath and stabs at the thing with his left hand. The knife sinks into its back, twice, and it howls, stumbles backwards. Dean springs forward and embeds the iron tip in its chest.
He doesn’t have time to check if it’s dead, because out of the corner of his eyes he catches a flash of black. His left leg refuses to support him when he tries to stand, but it turns out that he’s fine where he is. The dog screams its rage and leaps at him, just as Dean brings the knife forward. It sinks up to its hilt.
Dean throws the dog back, holds it down and stabs it, again and again and again, until it’s not even twitching, and for a moment, in between its dying breaths, Dean feels more alive than he has in months.
The growl in his ear comes too late, and Dean can’t even turn. He’s launched into an adjacent headstone, cracks his head on it and sees white for a moment. Thing One apparently has some punch left. Dean blinks, sees blood dripping off the fur on its chest, sliding down blades of grass, just before it has his neck. Dean grits his teeth and tries to push it off, scrabbles for his knife when that doesn’t work.
He can’t see anything except black fur and death (and this is how he’s going to die in two months, alone and helpless, fighting pathetically against the inevitable) and this is why the Black Dogs are so dangerous - because until they’re dead, they can kill you in fifteen hundred different ways. Injuries are trivialities to them.
Dean can’t breathe and he can’t find his knife and he thinks, of all the stupid things he’s done, this case is the stupidest, he’s not ready to hunt yet, can’t take care of a simple Black Dog attack.
Suddenly his fingers feel warm wood, and he brings his arm up and he stabs for all he’s worth, using all his reservoirs of energy, putting grief and fear and anger into each hit, until the dog is a dead weight on his chest, the rancidity of Hell coming from its fur.
He lies there, not even having the strength to push the monster off, gasping for breath that won’t come. His heart beats a violent tattoo against his ribs, and he shivers as the adrenaline wears off, leaves him in acute pain. His head is pounding. He can feel blood pouring from his neck, can’t even bring up a hand to stem the flow, apply pressure.
He can’t get enough air.
So he thinks, this is how it’s going to end: on the ground, bleeding slowly, with all the time in the world to think about where he went wrong. No one nearby to heave him up and carry him away. No one to shake his shoulder, tell him to stay awake, man, look at him with concern flooding their eyes.
No one to hold his hand when he dies.
They’ll find his body in the morning, and he’ll be cold and stiff and a handful of people from town will think, if they ever hear, I talked to that man. But that man will have no name and no remembrance and no one to claim him as theirs.
A cool breeze brushes past and he sucks in air.
Sam’s voice in his head. Jo’s working a case in Nashville, it says.
Dean pushes a hand into his pocket and presses a button and feels dignity leaking out of him along with the blood.
You’re so fucked up, says Jo as she stitches him up, both of them squeezed into the backseat of the Impala, her hands shaking.
You’re so fucking fucked up. You need to pull yourself together.
Dean doesn’t say a word, just motions for the bottle of whiskey again and drinks himself into oblivion.
You have something to ask me, says Sam.
Dean goes out and buys some sleeping pills the next morning.
He’s had enough.
He’s not trying to escape. There is no escape.
Sam is everywhere, now. Sam is everything, everyone.
Sam is the man at the magazine stand, who slouches in just the right way. He’s the college student who analyses the latest headlines to death after the morning news bulletin comes on the diner’s one grainy TV set. He’s the five-year-old who displays spectacular pouting abilities when his dad refuses to buy him candy at the grocer’s one Sunday. He’s the teenager at the bus stop who flicks his brown bangs out of his eyes. He’s the perplexing not-green, not-brown, not-hazel, kinda-something-in-between eyes on the cologne model, the solemn voice on the late night radio show, the furrowed brows that peer above the evening paper, the catching laugh that rises from the midst of a crowd. He’s the dimpled grins that Dean sees occasionally, the too-tall basketball players returning from a game, the little brothers chasing butterflies in the park.
He’s a wish, a dream, a hope. He’s a memory, fast fluttering out of reach.
Sam’s everything and everyone and all that’s in between.
On April 21st, Dean succumbs.
He fires up Sam’s laptop and finds the locked folders he’d come across a couple of weeks ago.
It takes him three hours to crack the password, the longest ever, which basically proves that Sam was obsessive-compulsive. Dean has absolutely no idea how Sam even remembered the thing. The thought occurs to him that maybe Sam didn’t need to remember it, that he never went back to this folder, but Dean forgets about that as soon as the folder opens.
It’s full of video files and photographs. There are too many to count, the scroll down tab thin in its bar, and they’re all titles by dates.
The first one says January 24th, 2004.
It’s a video of Jessica, and Dean’s heart immediately clenches in his chest. He leans forward involuntarily, watching the grainy film.
It’s Jess’s birthday. January 24th. Jess’s birthday.
Dean never knew they shared birthdays. The people in the background are singing as the cake is brought into the small apartment – Sam and Jess’s apartment.
Whoever’s holding the camera says, Make a wish and Dean’s blood runs cold.
It’s Sam.
He feels gutted, for a moment. Nauseous. Wishes he’d had some warning before hearing Sam’s voice, not in a dream or on a recorded, robotic voicemail message, but actually talking. Sounding warm and happy. Sounding alive.
Dean swallows, his head pounding, his eyes prickling painfully. Jess blows out the candles in one go.
Dean closes the file, chooses a random one from early 2005 and opens it. This time it’s Sam in the video and before Dean can stop himself, he’s closed the window.
He sits there, in the silence of the motel room, and puts a hand to his head. The wind is blowing through the open window and it’s making him cold, so he gets up and shuts it.
Takes a couple of breaths and then starts the video again.
Sam’s sitting on a bed, back against the headboard with a book in his lap and a thin crease between his eyebrows. Jess is behind the camera, trying to cajole Sam into looking up. She snatches the book out of his lap, and he looks straight into the camera, says, C’mon, Jess – I have finals!
Not until you give me a smile, says Jess.
Sam manages to hold onto his glare for a full five seconds before a smile breaks through, and Jess cheers.
Dean presses pause.
He scrolls through the pictures. A lot of are Sam and Jess, some people Dean’s never seen, three with Rebecca and Zach in them, including the one they’d seen on Rebecca’s refrigerator in St. Louis.
And then there’s one of Dean himself.
He’s reading a book by flashlight, splayed out as well as possible on the Impala’s backseat. Dean’s never seen this picture before, doesn’t know how Sam had taken it without his realizing. Doesn’t know what it’s doing in here, in this folder, where there are only happy memories.
There are more like it, candids of Dean, and then shots of Sam that Dean remembers catching with his camera phone to irritate Sam. There are videos dated 2006 and 2007.
Dean doesn’t open them, thinks Someday else and goes back to the video he has opened, presses resume on the little bar at the bottom.
You have finals too, you know, says Sam to Jess.
Sam, has anyone ever told you you’re no fun? asks Jess, voice full of laughter.
Sam rolls his eyes and swings his legs over the bed’s edge, getting closer to the camera.
Book, please? he says, hand out. The camera turns to face a closed window, and Jess’s hand comes out to open it. The camera turns back to Sam again. There’s the sound of flapping pages and Sam looks instantly, ridiculously outraged.
Jess, my book! The camera follows him to the window, where he sticks his head out.
Whoops, says Jess. Whatever will you do now?
Sam pulls his head back in, his disgruntled expression suddenly amused, eyes glittering, and Dean presses the little x on the window.
He pulls the laptop’s lid down and sits there quietly for a moment. Then he gets up for a glass of water.
He wipes his face on his sleeve on his way to the bathroom.
I got a call from Bela, says Bobby over the phone.
When? asks Dean.
Been a while. She wanted help. Apparently there were Hellhounds on her tail.
You gotta be kidding me, says Dean.
Nope. It’s why she needed the Colt, apparently. It didn’t work and she phoned me about ten minutes before midnight.
Ten minutes before the Hellhounds came? What the fuck did she expect you to do then?
Nothin’, I guess, says Bobby and Dean can imagine his shrug. But she gave me a name – demon who holds her contract. She said the same demon holds yours too.
And you believed her, Bobby? When has that bitch ever told us the truth?
I don’t see why she’d lie, Dean. She said she thought you might be able to kill her.
Her?
Name’s Lilith.
Ruby’s voice sounds in his head: I got whiff of a demon, Lilith, who wants his pretty little head on a stick…
Lilith, huh?
A name is a powerful weapon, Dean, says Bobby. We can use it, track the bitch down and go after it. Try to kill it.
Kill it? With what, Bobby? The Colt?
You could summon Ruby, she has that knife—
No fucking way. Just – no.
Dean—
It won’t work anyway, Bobby and you know it. Lilith’ll kill us before we get to her, and you’re not dying on my account.
Then what the hell do you suggest we do? says Bobby, sounding weary, like he’d like to sleep and never get up again.
Dean’s silent. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s gone through every page of research Sam’s done and found nothing worth trying. Nothing he’d hand over to Bobby and say, Let’s do this. Most of its crap and that bit that isn’t, is so dangerous that Dean would have killed Sam for even reading it, if he’d know way back when.
There’s nothing left to read, nothing to try.
There’s nothing.
Dean? says Bobby.
Can I – can I come to your place? asks Dean.
There’s a long silence, and it acts as a vacuum, sucking away everything but pain.
Sure, Dean. Sure, kid, says Bobby eventually. You come on over.
His voice cracks on the last word and Dean pretends not to hear.
It’s April 29th.
After that, there’s nothing to do but wait.
There are brief moments, when he lets himself think about finding Sam again, when the despair is so fucking crushing that he doesn’t care about hoping too much. He’s going to die anyway. Nothing matters now. It’s easier, sometimes, to lull himself to sleep with images of Sam instead of images of fire and brimstone and the sound of barking dogs.
He thinks about seeing Sam for the first time, in months, and thinks about reaching out and touching him and hugging him. And he thinks the first thing they’ll do is go to diner, because eating with Sam is what Dean misses most. And Sam will talk, while they chew and savor, and Dean will listen and drink up every word like an elixir and not stop looking at Sam for even a moment. And then they’ll find a motel room, and for once, the other bed won’t be empty and there’ll be someone clattering around in the bathroom, and Dean’ll shout to Sam to save me some hot water. And then they’ll sleep and Dean will wait to hear the soft, regular sounds of Sam’s breathing before dropping off himself. And when he wakes in the morning, he’ll roll over and stare at the occupied bed across the divide, and he’ll get up and strip Sam’s covers off and make as much noise as he possibly can in the bathroom, and when he gets back, Sam still won’t be awake, so he’ll throw balled up socks at Sam’s head and turn the TV on. He’ll switch to Good Morning, America, and Sam will peer out from under his recovered blankets and watch, while Dean tries to find a clean pair of pants, before stealing one of Sam’s and folding up the legs and complaining about laundry.
And they’ll go out for breakfast, and they’ll go out for lunch, and they’ll pop open beer bottles on the roadside and they won’t need to talk because they already know what the other’s thinking, because they have a separate world and it’s fucked up as hell and they both hate it at times, though for different reasons, but it just doesn’t matter what’s wrong sometimes because it’s their world and they’re both in it and that makes it alright and bearable and that’s why they’re still on the road, still hunting down evil things, still waking up in the morning with their sanities intact – because there is another, who understands, not everything – never everything – but almost. Enough.
And everything, every single fucking thing that’s been so wrong in Dean’s life for the past few months – everything… will be right again.
He spends his final days like that, letting useless, torturous hope suffocate him when he’s not trying to have a conversation with Bobby or imaging exactly how it’ll happen.
The hallucinations don’t take long to start, and they’re quickly followed by dreams that don’t stay away, even with his sleeping pills. Dean spends the night gasping into wakefulness.
On May 1st, Bobby cooks lunch; Dean’s final meal.
He doesn’t know how, but he manages to choke it down. After, Bobby disappears for a while, and Dean sits in the living room, television off. He rocks slightly, side to side, without knowing it. He waits for the sounds of howling.
He hasn’t heard from any sort of demon in months, and for one infinitesimal second, he wonders if Sam found a way to get him out, and if that was why he left, and the hope that blooms at that forbidden thought is crippling. It's like a wave's unfurled inside him, and it pulses in his chest, hot and heavy; maybe Sam stopped it, maybe Sam broke the contract, maybe there is no deal, maybe Dean won't have to die, won't have to go to hell - maybe Sam did it. And then, then the heat turns to ice, because maybe Sam didn't. Probably Sam didn't. Probably - nothing. He's not going to start expecting miracles now, not now, not for himself, not when none came through for Sam. No.
Bobby reappears as the sun begins to set and sits with Dean. There’s no thought of dinner.
They don’t talk.
At 12:02 AM, on May 2nd, 2008, it ends.
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Date: 2009-07-06 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
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