Author's Notes: This is my second round with the Big Bang and it's been just as much fun this time as it was the first time. If you want to read the entire story at one go, or see the gorgeous art by seleneheart, it's all on my fic journal.

For help with the story, much gratitude goes to my very patient beta Cheryl, who was my sounding-board, put up with sudden plot changes, and was generally awesome, and to SandyDee84 who (as always) listened to my rambling about Sam and Dean and iconic ghosts and was responsible for one important plot twist.

And so apparently I have a thing for semi-historical ghosts from literature. Who'd've guessed? This time the unlucky writer is Washington Irving, and I sohope he'll forgive me for taking his wonderful, creepy story and turning it into… well, this. Dear Mr. Irving, I'm terribly sorry. Please don't haunt me.

Story Rating: PG13 for violence. Gen, SPN, no pairings.

Summary: A chance encounter leads Sam and Dean to a hunt for the legendary Headless Horseman. Things go wrong quickly. After an encounter with the ghost Dean loses first his sight and then his hearing, and Sam's racing against the clock to end the Horseman and save his brother's life. A mysterious man shows up, claiming to be Ichabod Crane and offering his help. Sam's desperate enough to accept. But the ghost isn't necessarily malicious, Ichabod has a plan of his own, and the world is reverting to the 1700s. Healing Dean doesn't solve the other problems. When Dean's back in action and Sam's in danger, there's only one way big brother is going to react.

Spoilers: Only for the premise of the show.

Story Warnings: Minor language, horror elements and violence, and very mild innuendo. Nothing worse than what's on the show.

Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural, or Sam and Dean, or the works of Washington Irving.

Part I: I Saw the Headless Horseman

Sam studied the pool table, mentally measuring the angles.

He was good at pool. Not so much at poker – Dean always said his eyes gave everything away – but he was good at pool. He could even beat Dean, now.

This wasn't about winning, though. This was about losing four games in a row to Dean, while Dean smirked and laughed at his fumbling just enough to make the other bar patrons take notice. This was about letting people think his height made him clumsy. This was about watching Dean goad them into joining and then into putting money on the table.

This was about –

Sam ducked his head, letting his hair fall into his eyes. He didn't think what Dean called his startled puppy expression would work on this particular opponent, who was all masculine posturing and cocky attitude.

– aiming for an easy shot that anybody could make –

Sam eyed the striped ball. It was right next to the pocket; the gentlest tap would send it in.

– but missing it –

Sam hit the cue ball just a tiny bit off-centre, just a smidgeon too hard, just enough that it rolled past the striped ball and almost into the pocket. The other guy – Jed, Sam thought his name was – held his breath.

– and accidentally –

The cue ball just missed the pocket, ricocheting off the edge and away to the opposite side of the table, neatly pocketing two striped balls on the way.

– pulling off a much harder one.

Sam sensed Dean's sudden tension, and bit his lip. Had he gone too far? Just the wrong side of believable?

He looked up through his hair, eyes as bewildered as he could make them. Dean would have given him anything he wanted in response to that look, but Jed clearly wasn't his pushover big brother, and he scowled at Sam.

"Was… was that OK?"

Jed's scowl deepened, but all he said was, "Most incredible run of beginner's luck I've ever seen." He indicated Sam's nearly empty beer bottle. "Next round's on me."

He was trying to get Sam drunk enough to screw up, probably.

Sam nodded. Another beer wouldn't hurt; he'd only had one all evening. Jed went to get the drinks from the redheaded bartender – Dean had already got her phone number; Sam was pretty sure he'd be going back to their motel room alone – and Sam took the opportunity to exchange a quick glance with Dean. Sam just needed to clean up this round and then they could leave. No sense pissing people off more than they had to.

"Here," Jed grunted, shoving a beer at Sam.

Sam took it, nodding his thanks, and took a long drink while he watched Jed pocket one ball and then muff an easy shot.

Dean smirked at that, but he didn't say anything.

Sam made two shots. Then he deliberately missed an easy one to take the suspicious look off Jed's face. The bar had gone quiet, half the patrons gathered around the pool table.

Sam felt Dean drawing closer behind him and hoped things wouldn't get ugly.

He took another drink of beer, and regretted drinking so quickly when it was his turn again and his vision suddenly swam. It took him a good two minutes to line up his shot, and he barely made it. He missed the next one, and that wasn't deliberate.

Sam heard a laugh, and relaxed as a couple of guys shook their heads and turned back to the bar. At least his drunkenness seemed to have defused some of the tension.

Coming to a silent agreement that it was time to go, Sam shook off the haze just enough to make his last shot and pocket the eight – which, luckily, was already lined up nicely enough that he didn't have to pull off any 'accidental' ricochets. Sam didn't think he could've done anyway.

"Huh," Jed muttered, shaking his head. "All right kid, I'm done. Your luck holds out and I won't be able to take my girl out for a month."

Sam felt suddenly guilty. Jed was a real person, and he had a girl and maybe a dog and he had to take the girl out and buy treats for the dog and it would suck if the dog didn't get treats because Sam hustled its human.

"Good game," Dean said lightly, interrupting Sam's thoughts. He scooped up the cash on the table and shoved it into Sam's hands. "Nice night, huh, kid?"

"Hmmm… oh. Yeah. Nice night." Sam lifted his bottle to his lips, drinking some more and grimacing at the bitterness.

"Yeah, I think you've had enough to drink," Dean said, still keeping his tone casual. The look in his eyes said he meant it, and Sam let him take away the bottle. "You know, you're not half bad, kid. I could give you some pointers sometime, maybe."

"That'd be nice," Sam agreed, wondering why they were having this bizarre conversation. Sure, they usually pretended to be strangers to each other when they were hustling, but that didn't include fake small talk.

Besides, shouldn't Dean be focusing on the redhead? She was practically hanging over the bar as she blatantly ogled Dean's ass. It wasn't like his brother to pass up on an opportunity like that… Unless there was something Sam had missed. Maybe the redhead was secretly a shifter?

It took a jab from the pool cue to make him look back at Dean.

"Umm, what, sorry?"

"Not from around here, are you?" Dean asked, rolling his eyes.

"Oh. No… no. I'm staying at –"

"Yeah, I don't think you should be driving. C'mon, I'll run you home."

"Uh… OK. Thanks."

Sam let Dean sling an arm around his shoulders and walk him out.

"Idiot," Dean hissed as soon as they were outside. "They all thought you were easy meat. You trying to get yourself knifed in some back alley, Sammy?"

"You told me to play it innocent," Sam protested, fumbling at the door handle for a moment until Dean rolled his eyes and opened it for him.

"Yeah," Dean said, slamming the door. "But I meant adult innocent, hunter innocent, not I'm-a-lost-puppy-take-me-home innocent."

"I could've taken him."

"You could've taken Jed, sure. What about his drinking buddies? One of them looked even bigger than you." Dean shut his own door and started the engine. "They were planning to follow you and take the money back. Would've done it if I'd let you leave alone."

Sam grinned. "Awww, Dean, you were worried about me."

"Not worried about you, bitch. You just have all the money we won off them tonight."

"Yeah, whatever. Jerk," Sam muttered as they pulled out of the parking lot.

"Hey, Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"You're getting pretty good at hustling pool."

Sam grinned at that, and kept smiling for the next five minutes. Then the already-shaky world startled to dissolve, and he just had time to reach for Dean before darkness descended.

"That son of a bitch," Dean growled. "I'm going to rip his lungs out."

Sam, sitting with his head tucked under Dean's chin and his arm held out to the nurse, was too woozy to say anything, but the doctor shot Dean a sympathetic glance.

"There are some real troublemakers in this town," he said. "If you know who drugged your brother, I can help you file a complaint."

"I don't need the police. They'll just waste time on crap about evidence and due process. I'm going to hunt Jed down and rip his lungs out. And then I'm going to make him eat them."

"Don't do that," Sam protested drowsily. "Who'll buy treats for his dog?"

Dean resisted the urge to hug Sam at that ridiculous but completely normal-for-Sammy statement, and settled instead for running a hand through his brother's hair.

"We don't even know if Jed has a dog," he pointed out, though he knew it wouldn't do any good to argue with Sam when he was like this. "But if he does, we'll take it to a shelter. It'll probably be happier there than with Jed anyway. I bet he doesn't feed it right. If it's lucky it might get adopted by some bleeding heart like you."

"A no-kill shelter?" Sam asked anxiously.

"Sure, kiddo."

Because Dean knew his brother well enough to know that, in his current drugged-up state, he'd burst into tears at the idea of even a hypothetical dog being put down.

Dean caught sight of the nurse's expression, a mixture of amusement and awww, and quickly wiped the fond smile off his face. She laughed at him, patting his shoulder before she undid the blood pressure cuff and released Sam's arm.

Sam promptly latched on to Dean's shirt.

"Yeah, OK," Dean soothed. "I've got you. Everything's going to be fine." He looked at the doctor, who was now examining the clipboard the nurse had given him. "Right, doc?"

The doctor studied the clipboard a moment more before he nodded. "Looks like it. Keep an eye on him tonight, give him plenty of fluids and let him sleep it off. He should be fine in the morning, though there might be a little residual dizziness or disorientation for a few hours. If that doesn't clear up by tomorrow night, bring him in again."

"Sure, thanks, doc."

"You need to fill in your forms," the nurse said.

Dean nodded. When he'd come in with a half-conscious Sam clinging to him and explained – maybe a little hysterically; sue him, he only had one little brother – that Sammy had been drugged, the nurse at the front desk had waved them straight through after asking a couple of questions about allergies and medical history.

But it was too much to hope that they could avoid the paperwork altogether, and Dean settled down in one of the hard plastic chairs in the waiting room, Sam propped against his shoulder, with a bunch of forms and a pen.

He was halfway through when the clinic door opened again and two people stumbled in.

One of them, a young man around Sam's age, was sobbing. His companion, the one holding him upright and hauling him to the nurse, looked a couple of years older. Dean's gut clenched in sympathy.

"Easy, Fred," the older guy said. "Calm down, OK, please calm down. We're going to get this fixed. We'll figure it out."

"What's wrong with him?" the duty nurse demanded.

"He can't see."

"You mean he's blind?"

Fred let out another sob, and his friend patted his back. "No. No, at least – he was fine until this afternoon. He's my cousin, we drove up to our grandfather's place in Vermont for a few days and we're on our way back now – anyway, we stopped for a break at a rest stop. We ended up napping a bit, with the heat, and – and when he woke up, he couldn't see."

"But you're fine?"

"Yes, absolutely. Please, I need you to help him."

Dean watched the nurse usher them inside, not even realizing that he'd wrapped a protective arm around Sam.

Sam was sleeping easily enough the next morning that Dean decided to leave him to rest while he did the breakfast run. The diner was just across the street, and going there on his own would let him make some discreet inquiries about where he could find Jed. Small town like this, everyone probably knew everyone, and everyone and their cousin would know the local troublemakers.

The waitress did know Jed; judging by the way she pursed her lips at the mention of his name, she didn't think much of him. Before she could say anything, she was interrupted by a voice asking about coffee and doughnuts.

It sounded vaguely familiar.

Dean turned, and saw the guy from the clinic. He looked pale and drawn, and Dean couldn't help himself.

"Hey. Your cousin OK now?"

The guy stiffened, eyeing Dean with a wary frown. "You… How do you know about Fred?"

"I was in the clinic when you came in. I guess you were too worried to notice." Dean could relate to that. When he'd first taken Sam in, with no idea just what that son of a bitch had slipped in his beer, he wouldn't have batted an eyelid if all the Busty Asian Beauties models had been standing in a line by the nurses' desk.

"Oh?"

The question was clear, and Dean answered. "My little brother." His eyes darkened. "Some son of a bitch slipped something in his beer. We were just passing through, but now…"

"Man, tell me about it. I think they prey on non-locals in these towns because they won't be around to press charges. Is he OK?"

"Sammy's fine. Sleeping it off now, he'll be back to his usual pain-in-the-ass self tomorrow."

The guy nodded. "Fred's still… Well. If you were there, I guess you know what the problem is. The doctors couldn't find anything wrong with him. They said his visual cortex seems to have just… shut down. No idea why."

"That sucks, man. So what are you going to do?"

"Take him to a specialist for a second opinion. I hope… God." He turned away. "I wish it had happened to me. Fred's just… It's tearing him up. And this was such a great weekend – you know, our Pop's getting along, and we've been wanting to spend some time with him and we did, just like when we were kids, and now…"

"They have no idea what caused it?"

"None. We've been eating in all the same places, so I don't even know… And he couldn't possibly have hurt himself without my knowing about it. We've been in each other's pockets all week."

"I know how that feels…" Dean said, senses tingling. There was no reason for this to be their kind of thing, and there was probably an actual medical reason for Fred's sudden blindness that had no supernatural angle at all, but he still felt like… "Maybe some sort of bug he caught on your drive? All these weird viruses going around these days…"

"I asked, but his blood work was clear. Man, this was just supposed to be a simply drive down from Vermont…" The guy sighed. "Anyway. You get back to your brother. And tell him not to take drinks from strangers."

"Oh, yeah. I can guarantee we'll be talking about that." After a moment's pause, Dean wrote his number on a napkin and handed it to his companion. "Just… I don't know how long we'll be around, depends on how Sammy feels, but… Look, my brother and I, we're sort of… Well. This is what we do. You know…"

"Freelance medical advice?"

"Just… Looking into weird stuff."

"Weird stuff? Man, you're not one of those UFO people are you? Because I can promise you Fred didn't get kidnapped by aliens –"

"No, that's not what I meant. At all. Just… give me a call if you need anything. Name's Dean."

"Uh… Sure, Dean. Thanks." The guy closed his fingers around the napkin. "I'm… Max. My name's Max."

Sam woke up with a splitting headache.

He tried opening his eyes, but shut them again promptly when the light filtering through the blinds made it worse.

"Hey. Too bright?" That was Dean's voice. Sam heard movement, and a moment later Dean spoke again. "OK, Sammy, try now."

Sam opened his eyes a crack. The room was darker, and he could just see the silhouette leaning over him.

"Dean?"

"Sleep well?" Without waiting for an answer, Dean palmed his forehead. "You don't feel feverish."

"I'm fine. Just…" Sam sat up, squeezing his eyes shut when the world spun around him. "Just a little…"

"The doctor said you might be a bit dizzy." There was a hand on his shoulder, and Sam leaned gratefully into his big brother. "Take a minute, and then you can go brush your teeth. You're not shaving yourself, and if you try I'm going to kick your ass."

"What happened?" Sam mumbled.

Dean sighed. "See, that's a long answer that involves you getting a lecture about not being a freaking idiot, so we're going to wait."

"Just give it to me now. Miserable anyway."

"Sammy."

"'Msorry," Sam said quietly, looking up at Dean through his hair.

There was a pause, and then Dean shook his head. "No. That isn't how this works."

Sam was startled, because in his experience that was how it worked. Sometimes Dean was just an ass, but sometimes Sam had done something stupid – like drinking beer given to him by a guy he was hustling – and even then Dean was supposed to cave when Sam made eyes at him.

"Not this time," Dean repeated. "This isn't about you doing something to piss me off and trying to get out of trouble. This is about you not getting yourself murdered by the town drunk, and I'm not letting you off the hook just because you do the puppy dog thing. What were you thinking, Sam?"

"I was thinking you take drinks from strangers all the time."

"I don't take drinks from guys I'm hustling." Dean grimaced and sat on the edge of the bed. "God, I should've stopped you. I didn't want to make him suspicious – didn't want to have to take him and his friends on. If I thought he really –"

"Dean. It's not your fault."

"Oh, no, it's your fault," Dean said. "And you're more than old enough to know better." Then he added, so softly Sam could barely hear him, "But it was my watch."

"Dean –"

"Don't, Sam. Just be careful. If I hadn't been there… You have to be careful. Promise me."

"All right. I'll be careful."

"Good. Now go brush your teeth and then you can eat some of the doughnuts your awesome big brother got you. And then we have a job."

"A job?"

Dean shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe it's a job. You'll have to figure it out. Research is your thing, not mine."

Dean wasn't really expecting anybody to call him, since they were between jobs, so it was a surprise when his phone rang while he was in the middle of bullying Sam into eating a second doughnut.

"Keep chewing," Dean ordered, pulling out his phone. "Yeah?"

"Hi… Is that Dean? This is Max. From this morning."

"Oh… Hey, Max." Dean scooted over next to Sam, tilting the phone so his brother could hear too. "What's up? Everything OK?"

"No… Well… This is going to sound crazy, but we need to talk. Umm, I think we're in the same motel – you drive the black Impala? We're in Room 215, can you…"

"Sure, we're on our way."

Sam was already on his feet by the time Dean ended the call. Dean kept an eye on him as they made their way up the stairs. Other than needing to clutch the banister occasionally, he seemed all right.

Max was waiting with the door open.

"You're here." He nodded at Sam. "I'm glad you're feeling better."

"Thanks. Sorry, I really don't remember you."

Max let out a sharp laugh. "Why would you? You were probably completely out of it." He stepped back to let them enter the room. "Look, I should warn you, this is going to sound completely crazy."

"Don't worry," Dean said. "We specialize in crazy." He gave Sam a light push towards a chair between the beds. "Sit before you fall, kiddo."

Once Sam was safely seated, Dean turned his attention to the other person in the room – Fred. He was sitting on the edge of one of the beds, staring off into nothing. He hadn't turned or acknowledged their presence in any way; he didn't even react when Dean dragged another chair across the room to sit by the bed.

"Is he…"

"His hearing's gone." Max sounded like he was at the end of his rope. "I don't – I have absolutely no idea what happened. He was just waking up when I got back from the diner with breakfast, and I think it took him a couple of seconds to figure it out. Then he started panicking and… Well, I just got him calmed down. But… God, I can't believe… Just… Wait a moment."

Max crouched in front of Fred and tapped his shoulder. That must have been some sort of signal, because Fred promptly raised his head.

"Are they here?" he asked, too loudly.

Max tapped his shoulder again.

"I've got something to say," Fred said, voice harsh and strident. "I told Max yesterday and he thought I was insane, but I think we can rule that out. I know who's doing this to me." He stopped for a moment, like he was giving them a chance to digest that, and then went on. "A couple of nights ago, Max and I stopped at this sort of colonial place on the highway. Cheap but had all those old-fashioned trimmings, you know the kind I mean? Max had been driving, so he was tired – out like a light and he slept for like fifteen hours straight. I was up early, because I'd been dozing in the car. I thought Max looked like he needed sleep, so I went for a drive."

He stopped again, voice a little hoarse. Dean wondered if he'd woken up screaming that morning.

Max pushed a bottle of water into his cousin's hand. Fred smiled up at him. Sam was wearing a ridiculously sappy expression as he watched them, and Dean would have rolled his eyes at him if Max hadn't been around.

"I drove for… I don't know, an hour, maybe. I turned onto this smaller road, figured it might lead to one of those lookout points or something. You know, something fun to see. I knew Max wouldn't be awake yet – he would've called me – so I figured I had time. But then this fog started coming down and I turned around. I heard a scream, someone sounding terrified, and a man – I think it was a man – darted in front of the car. I could barely see him, but I'm pretty sure I didn't hit him." Fred drew a long breath and took another drink of water. "I stopped, anyway, and called out, in case he'd fallen or – just in case. I didn't hear him again, but a moment later I heard hooves and then – and then he was there, right in front of me, and I couldn't look aside or turn away because it was like there was some kind of spell."

Max laid a hand on Fred's shoulder. Fred leaned back into it for a moment before he bent forward again, sightless gaze fixed somewhere between Sam and Dean, and said, "I saw the Headless Horseman."

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