1
Ordinarily, Sam would've never made a wish anywhere near the presence of a powerful supernatural entity. To his defence, however, the thing did catch him off guard. Maybe if it had been any other day- not when he was still fresh from the last hunt, where the monster died but everyone else did too. Maybe if it wasn't three in the damn morning. Hell, maybe if he had actually had more experience with dream-walking, particularly with others walking into his dreams, he would be more careful. Maybe it was all because he wasn't heaven's golden boy, wasn't important enough to have an angel contact him by zapping into his head.
It'd didn't really matter why, though, but Sam didn't realize there was anything wrong with his dreams until the damage was done. He had dreamed he was sitting at one of the wooden tables at the library back at college. He used to sit there for hours, studying. He wasn't studying now: actually, he had a paintbrush in his hand and he was using it to draw a devil's trap on the table. He'd been using pastel red paint at the beginning of the dream, scooping it out of a plastic cup, but now the cup had blood in it, clear scarlet blood that spread unevenly over the wooden table as he smeared it on with the thick brush. The longer he painted, the thicker it became, until he could see little debris floating there, bits of organs and veins and dirt. He knew he had to finish the trap, but the longer he painted the smaller it became, painted walls collapsing on each other with that sort of logic that only made sense in dreams.
"Heya," Said a voice to his right.
He glanced up to locate the owner of that voice; a youngish man with grey eyes that sparkled jovially, plopping down in the chair next to his own.
"Hello." He said cautiously, putting down his plastic cup full of blood on the table.
"It's been a while, no?" The man asked, gesturing around them.
Sam raised an eyebrow, confused.
"Since you went here," The stranger shrugged, "Life was hella simpler then, yes?"
"Oh, yeah." Sam gave him a tight, uncertain smile. "Loads. Sometimes I wish I could go back. If heaven and hell left us alone, ever…"
"You want them to leave you alone, then?"
"Course I do," Sam was confused there'd be a different option.
"Power doesn't tempt you? You wouldn't want to find your own place in the chaos of armageddon, no? A profitable place?"
Sam must've looked a bit offended at the suggestion he'd want that, because the guy quickly backpedalled. "No? So you'd want heaven and hell gone, yes? All packed away."
"Well- I'd rather they'd just leave us alone. I guess I just want them to stop hurting our world."
"Harmless, then, no? You'd want them to be harmless?"
"Yeah, but, hey man, just dreams. Guess we're going to go with what they tell us to do. Not like they leave us much of a choice?"
But the man, the plastic cup, and the devil's trap were gone. Whatever. It was just a dream.
Sam woke up three hours later.
Dean was up already, grumpily making coffee. He said something like "good morning" and Dean mumbled back something that was probably some sort of curse word but he couldn't say which one. Sam snorted, amused. Maybe if they'd woken up a bit later, his brother would be his normal energetic self, but, as it was, Dean was definitely not a morning person. It was odd for him to wake up before Sam, but maybe that was simply the pressure of the looming apocalypse. Or maybe Sam was waking up later because of slipping out to meet with Ruby earlier that night. Which reminded him, where was Ruby? He really hasn't seen her in a while- sure she'd left him the flask of blood, but then she didn't pick up when he'd called and that was starting to scare him at this point. He'd tried to tell himself he was worried for his friend. Ruby was a big girl, though, and he knew her to be perfectly capable to take care of herself. If he was being perfectly honest, he wasn't sure if he'd be upset if something happened to her, if hadn't been for the blood. The last few days he has woken up craving it: he has rationed the blood in the flask very, very carefully, but it still wasn't enough, was never enough.
He's puzzled but also deeply grateful to discover that he doesn't feel that hunger right now. Any though of blood turned his stomach. He saved the half a sip in his flask until he mould need it, which he would happen.
Meanwhile, he microwaved a pack of crappy instant coffee and shoved a stale donut into his mouth. They were leftovers from yesterday's breakfast, when Dean had randomly decided he wanted donuts and driven out to buy some. Not the healthiest breakfast, but Sam was too lazy to look for something else. He decided he'd get a healthy lunch.
He pulled out his laptop to check on things before they set out to look for the demons. The previous day, they figured out who the demons were possessing, but tracking down and exorcising them was a different matter entirely.
He pulled up a news site on Chrome, checking for anything new in the "local" area or any signs of the apocalypse. The headline caught his eye, though.
"Holy…" He muttered, scrolling through the article.
Silently, Dean stomped over to look over his shoulder, his eyes widening as he began to read.
"So... hundreds of missing people randomly turn up, claiming remembering being possessed by demons, or consenting to angelic possession." Sam summed up.
"So what they're saying is, hundreds of angels and demons from all over just.. disappeared?" Dean asked, sounding as confused as Sam felt.
"And they left all of their meat suits totally unharmed. I mean, even the people that should be dead. Totally fine." Sam added.
"So I'm going to say, Andy and Melissa Walker are probably good now," Dean said, mentioning the possessed couple from the day before.
"Arnold and Melanie Watson."
"Whatever. All I'm saying is, we better go check this out."
"Police station?"
"Unless you've got a better idea,"
Sam didn't, so they made their way to the car and were at the station in about twenty minutes. Benefit of hunts in small towns, Sam supposed.
A scene was already unfolding when they arrived. A woman and man, both of them in their sixties, were being escorted in handcuffs into the back of the station.
"We're innocent," The man, a shorter guy with salt-and-pepper hair, kept saying, like a broken record, "Innocent, we didn't. Didn't do it. We're innocent. You have to listen to me."
"The black smoke," The woman, with dyed, curly blond hair and blue eyes that would have made her look like a grandma in a picture book if her purple dress and frilly white apron weren't stained with blood, added, "It did this. It took our bodies."
Sam and Dean shared a look, turning to leave. They had seen enough to know what was happening. Just then, though, another police car pulled up, and an officer came in. He was leading two children in. Both of them looked mutinous, and had the definite air of runaways about them.
That wasn't what caught Sam's eye, though. The older kid, a girl of maybe eight with dirty blond hair and baby blue eyes, glaring at them as though they were solely responsible for the police catching them, was dressed in a dress totally identical to the one the woman (Melinda?) wore as she was brought in, which by itself was really strange. As he moved his eyes to the second kid, though, a boy around seven years of age, he swore he could see the boy's eyes flash black.
"Christo," Dean muttered next to him. He must have seen it too. They watched the children, expecting some sort of reaction, at least a flinch if not an attack, but there was nothing.
Sam motioned towards the door. Leaving was probably the best course of action if they wanted to avoid getting noticed by anyone currently working at the police station.
He slipped into the shotgun seat of the impala, brain going a mile a minute. This didn't make very much sense. He wasn't sure if what they were seeing was just the effect or maybe parts of the cause too. He really wanted a piece of paper to sort everything in his head out, about then.
"Think this is a seal?" Dean asked from next to him.
"Doesn't feel like one," Sam shrugged, "I've looked through some of the seals I thought the demons might want to break, and this doesn't fit well. Besides, the angels should know all of them, and it one them made all of the angels vanish, they'd warn us, right? I think the children might have something to do with it. There was certainly something off about them. And, to think about it, I did see a lot more local news about children found, instead of missing… Oh."
It was suddenly all clear to Sam.
"Oh what?" Dean sounded annoyed that his brother reached the conclusion before him.
"The demons are the children, Dean. Something turned them. That's why the girl looked so much like the Melanie Watson- because she was. The demon must've possessed her last!"
"That makes no sense, Sammy. Why would that happen? Besides, how was the officer still alive after dealing demons? Why didn't it do anything when we said Christo?"
Sam sighed. He had liked his theory, but he supposed it probably extremely unlikely.
"Alright," He suggested, "Let's stop by the motel and grab my laptop and then go to the library to research?"
Dean huffed but complied, pulling into the motel parking lot. Sam suspected the sole reason his brother listened to him was because he was planning on snagging and finishing that last donut, but whatever.
As they turned into their hallway, Sam saw two kid-sized shapes in front of the door; a taller boy and shorter girl, talking animately about something or other.
Normally, he'd pay them no heed, but as the most recent wave of weird crap involved kids, he did, indeed, notice them. Especially the fact that the boy was leaning on their door and wearing a long, beige coat.
He hoped that they're are just a weird coincidence in the Winchesters' weird lives, but those hopes were shattered when the girl turned around to look at them. After a half a second, she grinned, waving her arms in the air in a way similar to how a cartoon character would do so.
"Hi, Sam!" She yelled at the top of her voice.
This was going to get very complicated very fast.
A/N; This is mainly a result of being unable to sleep at three A.M. and then editing the following couple of days. However, the plot bunnies are still bugging me, so this will likely be continued soon.