Panama was hot and wet, but Sam hardly noticed. His back was bare and his feet hurt and he didn't care. He was in the middle of a screaming tumult of people, people laughing and talking, people crawling on their knees. They were in knots, groups of jostling families and friends, holding on to each other. Sam was alone in the mob; there was no one behind him.
Panama was Sam's last ditch Hail Mary prayer. He rubbed the water off the bridge of his nose every other second and tried to focus even though it was hard. So long since he'd last slept and his stomach was past the point of achingly empty. Not that it mattered.
He had enough money to supplement his hitching with the occasional ride on the refurbished into working order school buses that had been banished from American school districts for their utter lack of safety. The locals called them red devil buses, even though they weren't red. It was mostly because of their tendency to belch smoke and run right off the road-- get people killed, as far as Sam could tell. Send people straight to hell.
Other people, though, not Sam. Sam always lived through everything. He just clung to the worn front seat and closed his eyes the whole ride. The last bus he'd taken made him decide not to get on again anyway. The thing shook like the shocks were broken and a voice in his head that sounded too much like Dean laughed, gonna take you to hell and back, Sammy boy.
Sam was walking now.
Somewhere near him, someone else was laughing. A female pilgrim robed in purple and gold, talking so fast that Sam's rusty high school Spanish couldn't even begin to keep up. Her dark eyes shone when the boy next to her took her hand.
Somewhere else a child was screaming and there were the intermixed sounds of a thousand conversations. Sam kept walking. When he rubbed his eyes a second time, he could see the effigy on it's platform a little ways up ahead and the straight-backed men carrying it.
It was raining. No it was worse than raining. Long, sharp strings of wet pounded down, stinging Sam's eyes. Sam's sneakers, which had never been very solid to begin with, squished threateningly with every step.
He trudged on. It was still more miles from Portobelo than he wanted to think about.
From somewhere over his shoulder, Dean was laughing at him. "Dude, this is beyond lame," Dean's voice called at him, teasing. "That chick in the purple is hot though."
"They're all wearing purple," Sam muttered.
"Eh, they all look good to me," Dean said, bright and easy. "You have no idea how long it's been since I had a chance with a girl like that."
Sam snorted and rolled his eyes, and slogged on. The road was mostly mud now and he focused on his feet. One foot in front of the other foot. No one looked at him. Worn out jeans and even more worn duffel and too pale skin marked him out among the pilgrims, but there were a few backpackers out there and Sam knew he could pass for one of them easily enough.
"Say something to her, Sam, you're the one who took Spanish," Dean urged. Sam ignored him, but that just made Dean snicker. "Man, with that expression on your face you'd think I was the one who smelled like moldy sneakers not you."
"Excuse me for being in Panama in the rainy season," Sam muttered under his breath. He took a quick look around, but no one seemed to notice him talking to himself.
Dean sighed. "Yeah, well, it beats hell, dude," he whispered. "Come on, do you really think this wild goose chase shit is going to do me any good?" Sam finally spun around to look at him, to look at the place behind him where Dean's voice had been, but of course there was nothing. Just a confused looking mestizo boy who raised an eyebrow and smiled at Sam.
Sam gave a half wave back and turned his attention to the all consuming task of putting one foot in front of another.
He gotten this idea in Key West, inside the guts of what might have been the most pastel bar Sam had ever seen in his life. Dean had been at the pool table, cleaning up and grinning about it. Dean had still been-- had still been there.
Sam's head ached from smoke, the pounding of a local drummer, and a stomach full of cheap beer and the LCD screen on his laptop was definitely on its last legs. He had to squint to make out any of it. And there was this guy, an oldish guy, broad bellied and solid, like he'd been in the marines.
"I grew up in Panama," the guy said, not to Sam, but to someone else, a woman in a tight black shirt. He talked loud and drank a shot of neat amber liquid. "My people were engineers on the canal right up until the hand-over." He laughed and shook his head. "I'm going to go back."
Sam hadn't really been listening, Sam could only really hear one thing anymore, and Dean was all the way across the room. He hadn't been listening, not until the guy said, that steady looking guy, just like Bobby wearing a Panama hat instead of that battered trucker cap, "I don't care what anyone says, I walked every year for the Festival of the Black Christ. It's real, a real pilgrimage. I know it's real. It answers prayers."
Sam had brought up google on his browser. It was stupid, but he was running out of ideas.
Running out of ideas was the only excuse for it.
About nine hours into the march down to Portobelo a girl with yellow hair pushed a bottle of water into Sam's hands. For about ten seconds Sam wanted to call her Jess. It had been so long since that had happened, since he'd wanted to grab some blonde girl and call her name and demand her back.
"Thank you," Sam whispered to the girl who wasn't her. It had been a long time since he was battered down enough to need her back like this.
"You look like you could use it," she said in steady, Texas accented English and patted him on the shoulder.
"Thanks," Sam whispered. More water didn't really seem like the solution, but it tasted surprisingly good anyway.
"What are you going to ask for when we get there?" the girl asked. Her teeth were bright when she smiled and her eyes were blue and steady. "Something good?"
"Everything," Sam croaked and shrugged his shoulders. "Everything good."
She blinked. "What, like world peace or something?" she finally asked.
Sam shrugged. "Or something." He looked away and she didn't try to talk to him again for a while.
"Dude, you totally could have hit that," Dean hissed from somewhere in the distance. Sam choked back a laugh. Only Dean would have wanted him to get laid on a fucking pilgrimage.
Sam almost jumped out of his skin when the girl came back and pressed a hand on his shoulder. He flinched and then settled back down when he realized that her eyes weren't blue any more. They were inky blank.
The girl's white teeth looked sharkish when the thing inside her used them to make her smile. "You think that piece of lead and cloth is going to get poor Dean back for you, Sammy?" she said, light and easy. "I hate to be the one to tell you that the world don't work like that."
Sam was mostly only surprised that it had taken this long for them to catch up to him. "Let me guess, you have a better idea," he said from between gritted teeth.
"Sure thing, sugar," she cooed. "All you need to do is say the word, and I can bring him back to you." She sidled closer even as Sam twitched away. "Easy as snapping fingers." She snapped hers, sharp and crisp.
"Yeah, in exchange for my soul," Sam said. He looked away. He might… if this didn't work, he might. He probably would. She probably knew that.
She laughed, bright as bells ringing. "No, Sam. Your soul's going to be ours soon enough anyway." She pushed up close, faster than Sam could react and kissed his cheek, wet and sloppy, leaving a trail of spit behind. "Call me when you're ready to pay," she whispered. "And I'll tell you the price."
"Fuck you," Sam said. He pushed her away, hard, and ran up ahead, forgetting his blisters just long enough to get through the crowd and away.
When he looked back she wasn't there, but Dean was, like he was the thing that had pushed her away. Like he was still protecting Sam even now. "Dude," Dean said and shook his head. "You're like a magnet for demon chicks. You give off vibes or something."
Sam blinked. "Vibes?" Dean shrugged. Sam chewed on his lower lip. "You're there now, right?" he whispered. "In hell?"
"Could be. Or I am a figment of your overactive imagination and yesterday's burrito," Dean said cheerfully. "Why don't you give me a kiss and see?" Sam looked away to keep himself from doing just that.
Further down the road a couple of skinny kids in flip-flops tried to sell him something. Black beads on a string, or maybe beer. Sam wasn't sure which. He shrugged and turned out his empty pockets. One of the boys looked at him and tilted a small, pointy chin.
"What about for the lady?" he said and nodded to behind Sam. Sam swiveled around and almost fell. This time the yellow hair did belong to Jess. She was warm and smiling in her white dress, exactly like she was alive, except for the way the rain didn't touch her.
"Sam," she said. "I missed you, man. You look like you need a thousand years of sleep and sandwich, but I totally missed you."
"What are you doing here?" Sam whispered. He hadn't-- Dean he almost understood, but she was gone. She was gone. Sam hadn't even been looking for her, not anymore. Not outside of his thinnest, most hopelessly hallucinatory dreams. "You're not. You're not in hell." Please no.
She shrugged, bright and effortless, like a benediction. "It's okay. I've been looking for you," she murmured. When Sam reached out to touch her she wavered and disappeared. The little boy smiled at him when he turned back around, wet eyed and shaking.
"For the lady," he said and pressed a string of the beads into Sam's hands. "Beautiful lady, like the Madonna." Sam shivered and gave him a crumpled dollar bill in return. His second to last one. He pulled them over his neck and she was there every time he blinked, hooking her arm through his.
After that the other marchers didn't stand too close to Sam, like they could smell her even if they couldn't see her. Dean got closer though, just out of touching range.
"Dude," Dean told him right before he whistled. "That girl is so out of your league."
Jess just laughed and stuck out her tongue. "I'm out of your league. What are you doing lurking all the way back there? Get over here, Dean." She beckoned with the crook of one little finger until Dean was laughing right back.
Sam stopped and watched while Dean stepped closer until he and Jess were almost nose to nose. They were the same height, golden and beautiful. Sam watched, waited. They turned to look at him at the same time, two sets of eyes, green and blue. They smiled.
"You're right," Dean said. "Sleep and sandwich. Maybe a good hard fuck. That'll set you up, right, Sammy?"
With one of them on either side of him to keep him upright the rest of the walk didn't seem so bad. The rain let up just as they reached the outskirts of Portobelo. Sam rubbed his eyes dry and watched the dancing people and the screaming children for a while before he finally managed to swing a spot inside the church.
It was a white building, some peeling plaster, but pretty well kept up. It was not nearly big enough for all of the people, but no one seemed to mind.
"What are you going to ask him for?" Jess asked softly and nods at the effigy of Christ, crowned and shining. "For Dean?"
"For Jess," Dean said and smiled, rubbing lightly on Sam's arm.
Sam shook his head. "Everything," he whispered. "I'm going to ask for everything." He did, under his breath, eyes squeezed shut and fingers clenched white. Please god, just this once. Everything.
When he opened his eyes and got to his feet, he was alone again, just jostled by the pilgrims and the tourists and the vendors shouting out their wares. He stood up too fast and almost fell down again, but he managed to just clutch the black beads in his hand like they were food and keep going.
His feet felt swollen, soaked, and every step ached, but he kept going. He took his very last dollar and bought a banana in a shop down the street where the guy behind the counter mostly spoke Chinese. It was soft, ripe, and he swallowed it slowly while he eyed a paper with a lurid headline pasted in bold letters. He could almost piece together the Spanish out of the Latin he knew.
'Red devil bus sends twelve to hell!' the paper screamed. 'Who will be next?' Sam stared at the print until the words blurred.
The Chinese guy blinked twice before Sam had a chance to get outside. Then he grabbed Sam's arm and his eyes were black, demon ink black. "Well?" he said, and his English was just fine. "I can give you your brother back." He smiled. "Little Jessica too. All you have to do is say yes."
"Christo," Sam said and ran when it flinched. He almost fell on his ass right on the cobblestones. His sneakers squished in pigeon and dog shit, but he went.
Up ahead, beyond the screaming crowd, a red devil bus belched smoke as it barreled down the road like it was looking to be the one to send its passengers to hell next.
It was painted with lurid graffiti, wonder woman dancing with the incredible hulk all down one end. An Angel making out with a Devil in swirls of white and red on the other. It looked like the work of someone who'd smoked too many bongs and read too many comic books.
Dean would have loved it. Sam looked over his shoulder but Dean didn't appear to comment and neither did Jess.
"Please god," Sam whispered. He knew better. Of course he knew better. Pilgrimages didn't work. God didn't listen. Dean had taught him that.
Up ahead the red devil bus slowed down to a screeching halt at a place that didn't look like a stop. For just a second, the angel seemed to look up from its intense make-out session and wink at him. Sam blinked. Once, twice.
Someone got out of the bus, a boy with light hair, tall and familiar. He stopped on the curb and held out his hand to help a girl down. She had yellow hair, long enough to get caught in the breeze.
Sam was running before he had a chance to think, to scream. Sam ran, and forgot his feet, forgot his dizziness, forgot.
Sam forgot until he was there and two sets of arms wrapped around him, holding him hard and tight.
"Dean," Sam whispered and it sounded like begging. "Jess." Dean's eyes were green and steady and Jess smiled. They kissed him on the mouth; one after another until all he could taste was them. There they were-- Sam's everything good.
"Come on," Dean whispered in his ear while Jess stroked his cheek. "Let's get you home."