He and Jessica rented Groundhog Day once, and enjoyed watching Bill Murray live a single day over and over and over again. When the movie finally ended, Jess turned to him and asked him if he could have one day to do over, what day would that be? In attempt to be romantic he had said something very banal about the day they'd met. It had satisfied Jessica though and things had gotten very romantic afterward.
If posed with the same question in the present time, Sam would have been tempted to say he'd like to relive his first few days in the womb and have the wherewithal to change his mind about being born at all. Nah, I'll just hang around here and be reabsorbed thank you very much. Things would be better all around if Sam had never seen the light of day. His second choice would have been the night the Demon came and the chance to pull Samuel Colt's pistol out of his onesie to shoot the fucker.
In the Hunting business truth was often stranger than fiction, so when Sam woke up and once again found himself lying on the ground in the middle of a ghost town, he immediately thought about Bill Murray. He was, however, disappointed he'd have to relive that day again. On a scale of one to ten, ten being the most sucktastic, the day he'd just finished would have been a ten on the suck-o-meter. After all, he'd been kidnapped by the demon, seen a bunch of innocent (somewhat) people get brutally killed, and been forced into a fight in which he'd had his ribs busted and his arm dislocated. He wasn't real anxious to do repeat any of that!
The only positive he could see was that he might be able to prevent some of it from happening, provided he could do just the right thing at the right time. That would be tricky. If it were a perfect world – and it most definitely wasn't, especially where Sam was concerned – he could relive things starting a bit earlier and prevent himself from being abducted in the first place. Maybe if they'd driven a little further down the road...
He had to smile. Dean was simply not a Subway kind of guy.
The smile faded quickly and he opened his eyes to stare up into nothing but dark swirling clouds. Thinking about Dean made Sam realize something was wrong. Firstly, when he'd come to in Cold Oak before it had been daylight. It was dark now, and thunder rumbled ominously in the distance. Secondly, it occurred to him to wonder why the demon would give him a re-do opportunity at all. Was this really a do-over, or merely round two?
Sam levered himself up onto his elbows. He saw lightning flicker far away on the horizon, beyond the treetops surrounding the town. Gingerly he felt of his ribs and felt no pain. His arm was back in play. He flexed it a few times just to make sure, made a fist...good as new.
"What the..."
He'd fought Jake and won, hadn't he? Okay, so he hadn't killed the dude, he still came out the winner, right? Had he been healed and sent back into the game? Ava had been there for months, killing everyone who had come through, but the Demon had implied that this was the final competition.
Rising, Sam stood in the road and looked around. Everything appeared to be the same, and he saw no signs of occupation by either the living, the dead, or the somewhere in between.
He let out a cautionary, "Jake?"
The only response was another rumble of thunder, but when it began to fade Sam thought he heard shouting from the town square. A moment later he did hear the sound of running footsteps. They were coming from the square, heading for the corner of the livery stable, behind which Sam now found himself. He also found himself weaponless, and readied himself to face whoever – whatever – was about to round that corner.
It was Jake. Sam backpedaled a few steps, calling the young soldier by name. If they were both still alive and in the game, there was still a chance Sam could convince him that fighting the demon together was far better than fighting each other.
"Jake!"
Jake ignored him the second time as well. He ran past Sam, running as fast as he could with a strange expression of pain, grief and fear etched upon his features. Sam tried to call out to him one more time but he kept going. In seconds Jake had vanished into the dark. He was, however, not alone, and Sam turned his attention to the man in pursuit. Relief flooded through him when he saw a familiar figure emerge from behind the building.
"Thank God, Bobby!"
Now he remembered. Dean and Bobby were there, they'd found him. It still didn't explain how Sam came to be lying behind the livery with his wounds healed, but at the moment, he didn't care.
"Bobby!"
The older Hunter stopped near the corner of a wooden corral that was listing precariously as if it would collapse at any second. He bent, his hands on his knees, panting and wheezing to catch his breath, pausing only once to remove his hat and wipe the sweat from his brow. When the hat went back on, Bobby stood up straight and uttered a curse in the general direction in which Jake had vanished.
Sam broke into a jog toward the corral. Bobby had not heard him the first time, nor seen him apparently. "Hey, Bobby!"
Instead of turning toward Sam, Bobby turned away, looking back over his shoulder in the direction from which he'd came. Sam slowed his pace, approaching more slowly, cautiously, knowing now something was wrong. He began to say Bobby's name again, but this time a sound stopped him in his tracks. It gave Bobby pause too.
The sound was a cry that could only be described as "anguished." It consisted of only a single syllable, and yet the pain within it was heartbreakingly palpable. It spoke of loss, and utter devastation...
"SAM!"
Bobby started to run again, this time with Sam following, but Sam wasn't following for long. He easily outdistanced Bobby, sprinting toward the town's center. It had been Dean's voice they'd heard, and it was Dean Sam saw first as he rounded the corner.
Dean was kneeling in the mud, cradling the body of a man in his arms. His head was bowed so Sam could not see his face, but he could hear the sound of muffled sobs. The grief they held was unmistakable. It came from deep inside him, from a place Dean rarely, if ever, let anyone see. Now it seemed as if he had been torn apart, his heart mercilessly exposed, battered, and broken.
Shattered.
Sam stumbled to a halt. His voice was barely audible, even to himself. "Dean?" He felt dizzy and ill, confused by what he was seeing. What had happened? He didn't understand.
Bobby arrived, pausing only a second before moving past Sam as if didn't exist. "Oh my God!!" He slid to his knees beside the younger man.
Dean raised his head. His face was pale and streaked with tears that still fell from raw, red eyes. His voice was a hoarse whisper. The tone was pleading. "Bobby..."
It was then that Sam saw what – no, who – Dean held. He saw his own face, now a death mask – still, white, lifeless.
"No. No, no, no, no..." His knees buckled. He sat down in the dirt. "Oh, God..."
Blood stained one of Dean's hands. He held it out toward Bobby. It was shaking. Bobby bent to examine the wound in Sam's back, and slowly shook his head back and forth, tears welling in his eyes.
"Damn it," he whispered. "Dean...there's nothing you could have done."
Dean groaned. For a second his eyes rolled back so far Sam thought he was going to pass out. If it were possible, more color seemed to drain from his face. He spoke, a small, broken word.
"Sammy..."
Sam scrambled to his feet. "No, Dean. Wait. I'm here. I'm HERE!" He raised his voice to a shout, hovering close to his brother's shoulders. "Listen to me! We've seen spirits before, just try...look at me. LOOK AT ME!!"
His voice echoed down the road, through the deserted town, but neither Dean nor Bobby reacted to it. Bobby had Dean's face in his hands, forcing him to look up into his eyes.
"Don't you shut down on me, boy. Come on. This isn't the place. We need to get out of here before that damn demon shows up. Do you understand me?"
Dean's grief stricken expression hardened at the mention of the demon. "I'll kill it..."
"How? Huh? How're going to do that?" Bobby shouted. He took one of Sam's arms in his hands. "Get up. Let's go."
"Go?" Sam stepped back as Dean rose, reluctantly, to his feet. "Go where? Don't leave me here!"
The two of them lifted Sam's body from the ground. It hung limp between them, toes dragging through the muddy street. Blood had spread all across the back of his jacket. It dripped from slack lips as his head lolled limply against Dean's shoulder.
Sam followed them, pleading for someone to hear him. "Dean! Dean listen to me! You have to stop Jake. Don't let him get away. There's something going on, something big, something bad, and you have to stop it! DEAN!"
"You know if you keep screaming like that, you're gonna wake the dead."
Abruptly, Sam stopped. As Bobby and Dean continued down the road, half carrying, half dragging his body between them, Sam turned to look over his shoulder. A man-shaped figure materialized from the shadows. At first Sam thought it was the demon, but as it stepped off the porch of the house it had been occupying, its features became more familiar.
"Andy?"
Andy rolled his shoulders in a shrug. "In the flesh." He frowned. "Well, not exactly. I'm guessing if that's you..." he said, nodding toward Bobby and Dean. "Then I'm probably...dead...too."
Sam quickly grabbed him by the shoulders. "Your abilities...do they still work? I mean as a spirit will they still work? Can you send a vision to my brother again?
Sadly, Andy shook his head. "No. I've already tried that. We've been disconnected."
"We need to warn them." Sam let go of Andy's shoulders and turned to watch his brother disappear around a turn in the road. "About what the demon is doing."
"Uh, do we even know what the demon is doing?"
"No, but whatever it is, he's one step closer to being able to do it. He's got Jake. He's got his champion."
Sam's own fate took a back seat to that of the rest of the world, his brother especially. He had a nasty feeling that Dean was one of the first people the demon was going to take care of as soon as his current mission was accomplished. He had no doubt that mission would be accomplished either. Jake's big words about fighting and kill the demon had been just that. Sam knew the demon, and as good as his intentions were, Jake's will power would crumble under Yellow Eyes' power of persuasion. The bastard would find some chink in the soldier's armor, of that Sam was certain.
"Come on."
He took off again after Bobby and Dean, with Andy close behind.
"There's one thing I don't get," Sam said after a moment. "If I'm dead, why am I still here?"
"You're asking me? You're the expert!" Andy laughed, but there was an uneasiness about it. "I figured I'd wake up toast, you know, considering..."
Sam frowned and looked back over his shoulder. "Considering what?"
Andy pantomimed smoking a joint.
"I doubt smoking pot gets you a one way ticket to Hell, Andy."
"Yeah, but it's illegal."
"That's a human law," Sam chuckled. "Saying you'd be condemned for getting high is like saying you'd go to Hell for jaywalking."
Suddenly Andy stopped in his tracks. "Then why are we here, Sam?" This time there was no mistaking the fear in his voice. "None of the others are. I've seen some people, but they're dressed like they're in some Western movie and they hide from me." He made a wry face. "And this sure isn't Heaven because I'm not rolling in premium weed with Playboy bunnies supplying me all the Ding Dongs I can eat."
Sam turned around and cocked his head slightly. "That's your idea of Heaven?"
"I'm just trying to make a point. Why us?"
"I don't know," Sam said softly. He started moving again, this time at a slower pace. Andy fell in beside him, moving quickly to keep up with Sam's much longer stride. "Most spirits stay Earthbound because they have some sort of issue – something they can't let go of."
"But I don't have any issues. I don't have any thing.. I live in a freakin' van." Andy shook his head. "And it's not like I'm holding any grudges against Ava. It could have gone the other way around, you know?" He hesitated. "Of course, I did kill my own brother," he added sadly.
"In defense of yourself and others. You saved me, my brother, Tracy..." Sam considered. "You're a good person at heart, Andy." He smiled slightly. "Gay porn visions aside, you never hurt anybody with your abilities. You stayed true to yourself."
"Yeah, I guess."
Sam hadn't fallen either. Jake had been in his sights and was allowed to live. Sam could have easily killed him – and probably should have considering Jake got up and knifed him instead. The demon now had his champion because Sam hadn't wanted to give it the satisfaction of seeing him fall. Had he known the outcome, if his abilities had shown him this future, Sam might have sacrificed Jake and thrown himself to the wolves. His confidence in his own will power was slightly better than his confidence in Jake's, mainly because he knew what he was dealing with and he had backup – Dean. Dean would have found a way to save him.
Or kill him when all else failed.
Dammit, he knew! Dad knew what was coming! Why didn't he tell me? Why?
It was pointless to dwell on it now. He was dead, the demon had Jake, and Dean had to be warned about what was coming. First things first. A bitter rant against his father's reticence would have to come later.
"I think we're in limbo because we're not bad enough for Hell, and not good enough for Heaven," he concluded. "The demon did something to us. We can't get in upstairs because of it, but we haven't done anything bad enough to get sent downstairs either."
"Great. I get to spend eternity in Deadwood."
"There has to be a way out," Sam muttered. He was not, however, very confident in that.
Neither was Andy. "Yeah, tell that to the people I saw before, the ones that looked like they'd been hanging around here for a while."
The road became a trail, and total darkness closed in around them as soon as they entered the overgrown woodland surrounding the town of Cold Oak. The storm that had been threatening never materialized, although thunder still rumbled distantly and a cold, drizzling rain began to fall. Sam didn't feel the cold, or the rain, nor the brambles that should have been tugging at his clothes and scratching his skin. Instead they passed through him. He heard Andy gasp quietly behind him. It was disconcerting, Sam had to admit.
"Don't look. If you don't look, it won't bother you."
"I'm freakin' Casper, man! It's creepy!"
"Don't. Look." Sam repeated.
He concentrated on the way before him. Even if he hadn't been trained to track, it would have been hard to miss the trail of two grown men dragging a body through the underbrush. There were broken branches and drag marks everywhere. More than once Sam saw blood stains, which made him shudder. He didn't seem to be having any trouble seeing in the dark either, although it seemed to be more of a "sensing" than an actual "seeing."
The wood suddenly parted to reveal another road, and the all-too-familiar grill and duel headlights of Dean's old Chevy. They had already laid their burden down in the backseat. Bobby was riding shotgun. Dean was sitting at the wheel looking exhausted and ill. He stared out into the darkness without moving, without blinking.
"Dean," Bobby prompted.
Dean flinched as if he'd been shot. "Yeah," he said hoarsely, and turned the ignition key. The car rumbled to life. The lights came on, shattering the darkness.
Sam stood there in the headlights. For the briefest moment he thought he saw Dean glance at him, but the moment was gone almost instantly. The Impala slowly backed away. Sam followed.
"Sam!"
He stopped at the sound of Andy's voice. Andy stood at the edge of the woods, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "I can't."
"What?"
"I can't leave. Something...I can't go any further." His expression was sad, but resigned. "I guess I have to stay with the others here. My haunt, you know."
"But..."
"Go on. If you can leave, I say leave."
Unfinished business, Sam thought. I'm not tied to the place where I died like Andy is. I can leave.
"Andy. I promise. I promise I'll find a way to..."
"Put me to rest?" Andy nodded, smiling wryly. "Sure you will. It's your job." He made a shooing gesture. "Go on, Sam. Save the world. When you're done, I'll still be here."
Sam went back to him, clapped him hard on the shoulder. They said nothing more. There wasn't much to say. As Sam broke into a jog, pursuing the Impala down the road, the ghost of Andy Gallagher vanished back into the shadowy wood.