Little (big) Brother is Watching You
A hunt gone wrong sends Sam back in time to his childhood, showing him all the ways in which Dean was an awesome big brother. But with Dean's life in danger, can Sam save him in time to tell Dean he was the best big brother ever?
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Disclaimer: All characters appearing in Supernatural are copyright Kripke/CW/WB etc. No infringement of these copyrights is intended. This fanfic is my original work of fiction based on those character/that universe.
AN – No spoilers for any episodes, though one or two subtle and very minor nods to incidental conversations/moments that occurred now and then. However, no knowledge of those conversations or instances is needed to follow the thread of the fic, and I don't think anything in the fic will spoil your enjoyment of any episode/s you haven't yet seen.
Also, this fic is not set in any specific season, so can be read no matter where in the series you are, however Cas exists, and season specific angst/resentment is missing.
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Chapter 1: Time and Again
"Darona-Khab."
Those were not words a person would normally be greeted with when entering a room, so Sam figured he had a right to be baffled. Despite that however, the smug grin on Dean's face as he'd said them made Sam feel instantly foolish for his ignorance, as if he were missing something completely obvious. Dean had an annoying ability to somehow invoke that feeling in Sam, always had; to make him doubt his common sense and make him squirm a little inside. No matter how old he got, it always left him feeling as if he were a kid again trying to keep up with the older, cooler, brother, struggling to be aware of the latest in-thing that his older sibling seemed to innately know but that no one had bothered to clue Sam up about. Even now, at this age, it would take just one self-assured look from Dean to make Sam feel like he was floundering in a spotlight. Even his professors at Stanford hadn't managed to do that. At least not as well as Dean could.
He pushed that feeling down, slightly irritated, as he headed to where Dean sat grinning smugly.
"What?" Sam asked, handing Dean one of the beers he was carrying and not even bothering to hide his confusion as he settled across the table from him.
"Darona. Khab." Dean repeated glibly, as if enunciating the words made them self-explanatory. He sat back in his chair, closing the heavy leather-bound tome in front of him and taking a triumphant swig of beer as if to punctuate his point.
Sam's look of confusion only added to Dean's sense of smug self-satisfaction and he relished in it unashamedly, his grin widening.
Sam, in Dean's opinion, was definitely the brains in the family. He probably would be in any family. Not that he'd ever admit that out loud to Sammy, but internally he'd acknowledged this a long, long time ago. Even Stanford's full ride scholarship hadn't really surprised Dean. He'd been proud of his little brother of course, but not all that surprised. Sam was the smart one. Hands down, slam dunk, no contest, case closed.
Dean wouldn't debate that, except that by default it sometimes made him feel like the dumb one. He was the grunt, and no-one ever really expected anything from a grunt other than soldiering and smashing and killing. Why would anyone expect someone who was perceived as just a blunt hunting instrument to have any intelligence or knowledge retention abilities beyond where to hit and how hard? It didn't particularly bother Dean, most of the time.
But on occasions like this, when they'd both been struggling for days to identify the thing they were hunting, and it turned out that it was Dean, not Sam, who eventually figured it out? Well, he enjoyed milking and savouring these moments just a little. He took another mouthful of beer and waited.
"Okaaaaay…" Sam responded at last, hesitantly, sounding with every note like a man who knew he was walking into a baited trap. "So what's a… a Drona Carb?"
"Not carb, man. Khab. It's more guttural and elongated, see? Khhaab. Khhaaaab. Say it with me, khhhhaaaaaa–"
"Dude!"
"OK, OK." Dean relented, acknowledging the limits, a slight crooked grin still tugging at the corners of his mouth despite it all as he reopened the large book and pushed it towards Sam. "It's an ancient Asian Djinn-like creature responsible for nightmares. The name literally means 'scary dream'."
"And you think that's what's responsible for the comatose victims?"
"It all fits man. Look…" And Dean began rattling off a list of traits which Sam had to reluctantly admit, all fit the profile of their mystery monster of the week pretty accurately. Sam drank his own beer as he listened, quietly marvelling at how ingeniously Dean had managed to put it all together and figure it out.
Apart from the appearance of identical dull blue marks on each of the victims, there had been very little evidence to go on when they'd finished their initial investigation. Even that marks could rationally have been attributed as the trait of some new virus or disease or some other such normal and mundane thing, not something otherworldly. In fact at one point Sam had begun to question whether it wasn't all just coincidental and that in fact there wasn't anything supernatural there for them to hunt at all. If he was honest, he was hoping there wouldn't be; he'd had an unsettled feeling the moment they'd started this hunt. But Dean had been adamant that there was something untoward going on, and Sam had trusted his brother's instincts.
As it turned out, Dean had been right. But then, Sam wasn't really all too surprised by that. Dean's instincts were almost always right. And it wasn't just luck either, it was a higher level of mental functioning, and Sam believed in that enough to trust that when his older brother had a gut feeling, it meant he'd twigged on to something that no one else had caught up to yet, let alone figured out. Even if sometimes Dean wouldn't, or couldn't, explain himself, somewhere in that thick smug skull of his, the cogs were doing overtime, connections other people wouldn't even know to see were becoming visible, and the pieces were falling into place.
Dean was sharper than any other hunter Sam had ever known, including their father. As far as Sam was concerned, instincts were just another form of intelligence. And on that count alone, Dean was probably a genius in his own way, was definitely more intelligent than most people, even he himself, gave him credit for. When you mixed that with Dean's strategical mind and determination, Sam doubted if there was anything his older sibling couldn't do or anyone he couldn't outsmart.
Of course there was no way Sam would ever admit that out loud. It wasn't as if Dean needed any encouragement to be a smug jerk at times.
"… And that's why there's no sign of forced entry." Dean concluded, sitting back and draining the last dregs of beer.
"Okay so…" Sam began, thinking out loud as he took in all the information Dean had just unearthed and debriefed at him, "So this thing–"
"Darona-Khab." Dean interjected with a nod, remnants of smugness resurfacing.
"Whatever, this thing, it attacks people in their sleep. But the reason there's no sign of attack is that it's also marked them some time in the past, without them knowing, and then… what? Waits to attack them again? Like time travel or something?"
"Well best I can figure is, it marks its victims in their sleep when they're young, which is actually pretty smart in a sick twisted sort of way. I mean who's gonna take a kid seriously if a he complains about being attacked by monsters in his nightmares, right? Then once it's marked them, it waits until they're adults, and when they're fully grown, it tracks them down, reconnects with them in their sleep again and boom! One 30 year matured Happy Meal coming right up. This time however, the victims don't wake up like they did when they were kids, they fall into a coma instead, which is essentially like a sleep paralysis, while it feeds on their life energy or whatever. Then when they're drained, it just moves on. That explains why there's no sign of recent attacks, because they weren't attacked recently, they were originally attacked years, decades ago. It selected them and marked them and now it's collecting them…"
Sam nodded, impressed. "You're right." he conceded. "It all tracks."
"The only thing I haven't figured out is why it picked these people." Dean continued, all traces of smugness now gone as he tapped a finger on the manila folder marked 'vics'. "I mean apart from the married couple, the others don't seem to have anything else in common with each other, other than being similar ages and… and well, other than being vics."
Sam mulled this over, thinking about everything Dean had uncovered and something occurred to him. He got up to retrieve his laptop, talking over his shoulder as he went.
"You said this thing marks its victims when they're kids right? And then waits years till they grow up?"
"Yeah, but I don't know how it selects them. I mean you saw the list right? They were all over the place. It was just dumb luck that the married couple made the news. A husband and wife both falling into a coma in the same night? And for no reason anyone could come up with?" He shook his head. "That's gotta be an X-File right there."
Sam had returned and was pulling up files on the handful of victims, eyes intensely focussed as his fingers flew over the keyboard.
"There!" He said, swivelling the computer around so Dean could see the screen. "All of the victims, including the husband and wife, grew up in the same neighbourhood. And apart from the married couple, the others all obviously left home and moved away when they grew up which is why it looks as though the victims are all over the place. But we were seeing them when they were grown up, thinking this thing was going all over the country to select them. But it wasn't, not back when it actually selected them. Back then the victims were all in the same place. The husband and wife never left the town, but the others did, which is why they're far apart from each other when they fell into a coma, but they weren't when they were originally marked as kids. That must've been its feeding ground back then." Sam looked up at Dean expecting to find him looking begrudgingly impressed, but instead saw his brothers face screwed up in intense concentration, almost slight confusion, as he stared at the screen. "What?" Sam asked, curiosity piqued despite his mild annoyance that Dean wasn't looking appreciative.
"It's just… Camberville right? That's where all the victims grew up? That sounds familiar." He reached across the table to a pile of books and pulled their fathers journal out from under the stack. He rifled through the pages then pushed it over to Sam, pointing to an entry early on. "I knew I'd heard of that town before. We were there."
Sam was amazed, both at Dean's mental recall and at the odds of their father actually being on the same hunt. "You think dad was hunting this thing?" He wondered out loud as he quickly scanned the short entry. It was indeed the right town, or seemed to be, but there was no indication of any children with nightmares or victims in comas. In fact there were barely any details at all, other than the dates of when they were there. "Huh…" He mused out loud. "We were there for a few days… Do you remember this?" He asked looking up at his brother.
Dean shook his head, shrugging. "No. I don't at all. I just remembered seeing the town's name in Dad's journal. It might actually just be a coincidence." Dean conceded, sounding slightly deflated.
"Dude. It's a pretty big coincidence. It's the right sort of time, year wise." Sam countered, looking back at the entry and then catching Dean's gaze. "All the victims would still be kids. The dates match, see?" He turned the journal back towards Dean to show him.
Dean let out a sigh. "Yeah, maybe. But whatever it was, Dad clearly didn't figure it out because he doesn't mention anything like it. Besides why would he be investigating kid's having nightmares when nothing actually happened to those kids. I mean not back then anyway."
Sam mulled this over. "True… Okay maybe it is just a coincidence, but either way, we need to figure out how to stop this thing now."
"Yeah, that might be tricky on two counts. There's not that much lore about these things, it seems they're pretty rare and pretty ancient, but what I did find suggests it can be anywhere when it feeds. I mean anywhere. Since it already marked the victims' years in advance and attacks them in their sleep, it doesn't need to be physically near them when it feeds on them. It just tracks them like GPS or something."
"Okay, so maybe there's a locator spell we could use to find it. Like reverse tracking through one of the victims or something. What's the second problem?"
"You can only kill it with a silver blade dipped in goat's blood."
"What's so tricky about that?" Sam asked, not sure what he was missing.
"The blood has to come from a goat that's been sacrificed for Eid Al-Adha, which is an Islamic celebration." Sam opened his mouth to respond but Dean cut him off. "I already checked with the local mosque. There's only one Eid Al-Adha per year, and the next one isn't for another two months."
"Dean these people don't have two months."
"I know. But that seems to be the only way… unless…"
Sam waited expectantly, giving his brother space to formulate whatever it was that had just occurred to him.
"You mentioned spells… what if there was some kind of spell to trap it? We might not be able to kill it, but maybe we could trap it and hold it until we get the goat's blood. I mean it probably wouldn't kill it but at least it would stop it feeding. I'm not even sure we could but…"
"It's worth a try." Sam finished, as they both stood.
Fuelled by a renewed sense of energy and purpose, the routine mechanics of hunting roped them back to familiar ground. They had a plan, they had something to work towards. They could see a way to save those people. For the time being at least, it felt good to be back on track.
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The locator spell had worked and as luck would have it, the creature was holed up in a long since abandoned timber mill on the outskirts of town. That was where their luck had ended though, because in the time it had taken to collect the ingredients for the locator spell, and to find and modify a second incantation that could possibly trap the creature, one of the victims had died. The remaining were fading fast. In an ideal world they would have preferred to wait till they had a full days' worth of sunlight ahead of them, especially given that they were hunting a creature that neither of them had encountered before. But when had their lives ever been lived in an ideal world. And besides, with so many lives at stake, Dean had made it clear that waiting would not be an option. He'd had no argument from Sam.
As the Impala rumbled to a stop outside the sprawling boarded up structure of the mill, the sun had already slipped behind the mountainous tree lined horizon and a deep blue-grey darkness was creeping in, seemingly from all sides. Neither Sam nor Dean liked this. The structure was too large, the enemy unfamiliar, and they had no way of knowing if their incantation to trap the creature would even work. But for what it was worth, it was the two of them against the one of it.
As they stepped out of the car and headed towards the trunk to retrieve their weapons, Sam quietly reminded himself of this. Two Winchesters versus one monster. Those were good odds. They'd faced much, much worse.
Why, then, did he have this horrible feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach, weighing down his insides and leaving his mouth so dry that it hurt every time he swallowed. To say he had a bad feeling about this hunt would be a colossal understatement.
If Dean felt the same though, there was no indication of it in his features. All earlier traces of mockery and humour had left him now, and as Sam stole a glance towards his older brother, all he could see was a stone cold hunter, all hard sharp edges bristling with focussed energy.
His countenance and bearing were a million miles away from the grinning, mildly annoying smug-big-brother persona he'd been sporting earlier that day. Now, with a hunt imminent, Dean was all business, his movements precise and deliberate, every action economically efficient. Neither of them had exchanged many words on the drive out here, and while in that time Sam's mind had entertained a multitude of doubts about this hunt, for all outward appearances it seemed as if Dean had not even the one. As though his mind was somehow completely clear and honed to a singular purpose.
His lips were pursed, jaw set in rigid determination, and his eyes, focussed unwaveringly on the road ahead, held a dangerous, almost cold glint to them. Like a predator who had its prey in sight, and who would absolutely never stop until it won the hunt, as if nothing else existed. Not even failure.
If Sam hadn't known Dean his entire life, if he had only just met him today, then witnessing this change from cringe-worthy smug-addled fool to focussed, intimidating, flint-like hunter, would be a pretty unbelievable and a pretty terrifying thing to behold.
But as it was, knowing what he knew and knowing so little else of what they were heading in for, Dean's unwavering self-possessed confidence was a reassuring buoy, and Sam drew strength from it.
The two of them.
Good odds.
Just another hunt.
Just another monster.
Just the two of them…
"Hey Dean, wait. Maybe we should give Cas a call. Ask him to join us on this one." He didn't know why they didn't do that more often.
"What? Why? No!" Dean hissed, almost offended, his irritation palpable, and Sam winced a little.
"Look all I'm saying is we've got barely any idea what we're up against here. Besides, it can't hurt to have back up right?"
"Sam we're not calling Cas every time we go monster hunting. It's not…." He struggled to find the words, getting visibly more exasperated in the process. "It's just not practical all right! Now come on!"
"What the hell does that mean?" Sam rounded, his own irritation suddenly flaring at his brothers nonsensical logic. "How can it be impractical?"
"It just means what it means Sam! What the hell's wrong with you? It's just one monster! We're hunters, we've dealt with worse."
"But–"
"No. We don't need Cas on this. End of."
And with that Dean slammed the trunk shut and stomped towards the mill. Sam waited a few seconds, taking deep breaths to calm his own irritation at the bull headed stubbornness of his brother. He knew it had something to do with Dean's pride; not wanting to rely on anyone other than themselves, not feeling this hunt necessarily warranted lugging in a big gun in the form of an angel in tow. If he was being completely honest, Sam could understand that. If they relied on Cas for everything then there was a danger that maybe they would get complacent and lose their edge. And in the long run, he knew Dean was right; for a hunter that could end up being the ultimate downfall.
But in this instance, what would be the harm of having Cas along, just this once? Dean should have at least given Sam a chance to make his case, instead of shutting him down, and that thought irritated Sam afresh.
He took another deep breath to regain his composure and tried to stop himself from being reminded just how stubborn and close minded Dean could be, and at just how frustrating that made him to be around at times.
He could see Dean's silhouette crouched down against the barbed fence at the mills perimeter, probably already working with the bolt cutters to give them their way in. Sam took a final breath of cold night air before jogging up to join him, ignoring the deadweight in his gut that seemed to have gnarled and twisted it's way to doubling in size.
The quicker they managed to get this hunt over and done with, the better.
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A.N.
- To the best of my knowledge, 'Camberville' doesn't exist. It's a fictitious place I made up, derived from the Americanisation of Camberwell, a place in the UK where I live.
- Darona Khab is pronounced as Dean glibly suggests. It's a phrase from Urdu which literally means scary (Darona) dream (Khab), or in other words, 'nightmare'. There is no such demon or creature in Pakistani/Asian culture or in Islam etc. It's just the two individual words we (Urdu speakers) use to mean nightmare.
