Author's note: Hi there, my dear readers! This story starts right after the end of season 2 of Supernatural. Although it more or less follows the timeline of the series, there is some canon divergence; also, it focuses almost completely on the time between the episodes. There will also be a teeny tiny hint of destiel hidden in there somewhere, even though this story is mainly about Dean and Alison (who we meet in the next chapter). This is not a love story: these two people only see each other once in their lifetime, but have a profound effect on each other's perception of the world around them. Please comment and review, every opinion is appreciated!
And any time you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain;
don't carry the world upon your shoulders…
for well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool
by making his world a little colder
-The Beatles-
When they arrived at the Bobby's salvage yard, it was almost sunrise, and the cold, pale light, herald of a new day, greeted them as they walked into the quiet house, seeping through the half veiled windows. Dean's head was swimming, and when Bobby told him, Sam and Ellen to get some sleep, he had just enough strength to drag himself to the first floor and into the guest bedroom, filled with piles of books that the library couldn't hold. The old hunter's house was a temple of knowledge in disguise; a palace of dreams and memories carefully stored away in dusty boxes, between the brittle pages of books and registers. Some other time, Dean would grab The Book of Lies or Necromonicon – the problem of demon army roaming the Earth will have to be addressed eventually- but he was so weary, weighed down by half-formed questions and poorly concealed worry; familiarity of the place tempting him to forget his burdens, if only for a little while.
The bed still smelled like dust and tobacco and home. The last time he and Sam stayed here, Dean just turned fifteen, and his father was hunting a shape shifter two states away. Bobby brought a slightly crumpled cake from the nearby supermarket, some candles and a pack of colorful paper cups with smiling clowns that ended in the trash bin, unopened.
That night Sam crawled into the bed in the middle of the night, blaming the clown paper cups for his nightmares, and he and Dean fell asleep holding on to each other, both knowing that the true reason for Sam's fears was the fourth chair at their dinner table, still vacant…
The image of his father smiling and illuminated with light of some distant, unknown heaven interrupted his stream of thoughts, and he forced himself to lie still and breathe as the tide of anger and guilt and relief washed over him. Dean thought for years that revenge was going to free him: it was the one driving force in his life he couldn't resist; a shadow latched onto his soul like a parasite, whispering promises of fulfillment and peace. But now the yellow eyed demon was dead, and the shadow grew; sinking its teeth into his heart, suffocating him. He wondered if what he felt was exhaustion or resignation.
He could hear the muffled sounds of conversation from downstairs; at first, the noise had no meaning, but then it hit him, even as he was slipping into sweet oblivion: Ellen is probably asking Jo to come over, and she will have to tell her daughter about the Roadhouse and Ash…
As he was fading to sleep, a ray of light found its way through the slit in the heavy curtains, fragments of dust dancing through the air like golden snowflakes. He hoped this Christmas would be a cold one; he wanted to see the snow one more time before he goes. Three hundred sixty four days and counting, he thought to himself, and something dark and heavy stirred in his chest- not fear, not yet, but an echo of the terror still to come.
When he woke from his nightmare-filled drowse to the sound of knocking, the room was clad in shadows once again. He forgot where he was for a second, the phantom smell of fire and blood still lingering on his skin, but then he recognized the familiar voice, forcing himself to breath steadily and running a hand through his short hair that sweat stuck together in tousled spikes.
"Dean?" Ellen stuck her head through the door. "I made some soup, thought you all might want to eat something warm and homemade for a change. Are you coming down?"
He nodded silently, afraid that his voice would quaver and give him out, but she noticed anyway.
"Are you alright?"
"Yeah, just a little jumpy."
She narrowed her eyes distrustfully, but then to Dean's great relief apparently decided that she must be exaggerating things.
"Just come down, okay? You need to eat something."
As she hurried down the hallway, Dean felt a pang of guilt. She doesn't know. After he made the deal, he was scared that his brother would find out about it, but only after witnessing Bobby's devastation and rage he began to understand that Sam wasn't the only one who was going to be irreversibly damaged by Dean's decision. Selfish, snarled a voice in the back of his head, the one that drove him to the crossroads two days ago, mad with grief.
"Have you seen Sam?" He scrambled out of bed and followed her on the dark corridor, stumbling on the carton box that apparently contained "anti possession charms".
Ellen turned back to him, Dean's worry mirroring on her face. "He is in the library, since we returned from Wyoming. He said he didn't have time to sleep, and he isn't hungry, so…"
"I'll go talk to him," Dean cut her off. For the last two days, it seemed like he was moving through some sort of haze, clouding his vision, numbing him; but now his hardly suppressed fears bubbled to the surface like poison. He remembered Sam's promise to save his soul, but also the terms of the deal he agreed upon…
"What's going on between you two?" Ellen asked gently.
Dean shrugged off the question he didn't know an answer to, but before he could say anything else she embraced him like a mother, vivacious and strong and full of life. "I told Jo to stay away from here," she said, and in her voice, there was no apology. "I'm scared, and it's not about Sam, or the psychic children, or you. But if things get out of hand, she should be as far away as possible. I want you to understand that. And I want you to tell Sam, too."
"Okay."
"Tell him it's not his fault, you hear me? You boys are blaming yourselves for the things you have no control over."
He nodded and unclenched the arms wrapped around him carefully. "Just wait for us, all right? We'll be in the kitchen in a minute."
"You better be. Robert nags all the time when he's hungry, he is driving me nuts," Ellen snorted, and Dean smiled for the first time in a long time as he watched her descend the old, creaking staircase.
The library was Dean's favorite room in the house. The bookshelves were stretching along the walls, but like everywhere else, books were stacked up on the floor, the window panes and on the two non- matching armchairs in the corners of the room. He didn't really care about reading- although the research was necessary, he found the process painstakingly slow and often boring- but the sense of chaotic order was strangely calming.
Sam was sitting on the floor by the window, surrounded by notes and ancient looking books with leather bindings, chewing on his pen nervously while slogging through what appeared to be Dante's Inferno.
"Hey."
"What's going on?"
"Nothing." Sam closed the book abruptly. "There's absolutelynothing written on how to cancel the crossroad deal in any of the books that I read through. And there is probably at least some sort of guidelines on how to make the pact in every single one of them."
"Ellen said you didn't sleep since we came here."
"Sleeping is not my concern right now."
Dean sat down next to him with a sigh. "You're not going to find the answer in a book, Sam," he stated. "It's not like someone actually managed to bre-"
"Shut up."
"Will you just-"
"No," Sam snapped, breathing heavily with frustration. "Not while you're still pretending you don't care."
Dean's hands, nervously pulling the threads out of a worn carpet, froze mid-air. "I don't know what you're- oh, come on!"
The younger Winchester jumped on his feet, the book falling from his lap; its pages fluttering like broken wings.
"Can you please understand I don't want you to die?! Can you?! I don't have a clue what your problem is! If you want to think of yourself as worthless, that's okay, but you aren't worthless to me, and you are not going to sit here all heroic, saying you're fine!"
The silence that followed was deafening.
"I never said that," Dean uttered quietly. Sam sniffed in annoyance, running through his hair with shaking hands. "I never said it," Dean repeated louder, standing up. "Nothing is fine, and I understand that you're angry, I do. But we have other work ahead of us, and you are not going to quit because of the choices I made."
Sam turned around, ready to counter him, but his brother was quicker. "I'm not saying you should stop looking. Even if I told you not to, I know it wouldn't change anything. I'm just trying to say that we can't forget about what's happening around us right now. I need you to have your head in the game."
Sam stared at him unblinking for a second or two, his hand covering his mouth as to keep him from yelling again. "Look", Dean begged, "things are bad enough without us always at each other's throat. Can you at least drop the issue until we are sure what we're dealing with here?"
"Yeah," Sam said at last, his voice hoarse. "Okay."
"Okay, great."
"But you're still an idiot," the younger Winchester snorted. "A hopeless, incurable-"
"You're welcome…"
Sam laughed nervously. "No problem, man. We better get downstairs, though, see what's going on. And I have to apologize to Ellen anyway; I'm afraid I almost closed the door on her when she came to see me around noon."
"Always so angsty," Dean teased him. "Jesus, Sammy. Let's go, before you start yelling at me again."
He clutched the sleeve of his brother's chequered shirt and led him through the door gently, tiptoeing around the strewed books and notes. Outside the window, a bird shrieked in warning; and dust covered their footsteps like the first hoarfrost of the year, wedging the flowers in its cold embrace.
Dinner was a tense and awkward affair. Bobby and Ellen were discussing the situation feverishly, anxiety sipping into their voices as phone calls began to pour in. When Robert stood up for the third time, disrupted by ringing from the living room, Ellen just sighed and put the half- full bowl of stew in the microwave. Sam jumped to help her clean the table right away, and Dean joined the two of them, too nervous to sit still and do nothing. In the next room, Bobby was franticly scribbling on a page of an old newspaper with one hand while holding the phone in the other, his face pale with worry.
"Ellen, could you come here for a second?"
"Sure." She dried her hands with the kitchen towel, placing the spoons in the top drawer accompanied with soft clinking. Dean didn't know when the shaking started. Perhaps after the Roadhouse got burned to the ground, turned into a giant funeral pyre; perhaps when Hell's gates opened, releasing an army of shadows and her husband's killer. If her hands had been trembling before, he never noticed.
"Yes, of course we will. Take care", the old hunter ended the conversation rather abruptly.
There was urgency in his voice the Winchesters weren't used to. Sam leaned on the doorframe, listening carefully, and Dean followed the example.
"It's Pamela", Bobby explained. "A psychic."
Ellen frowned. "I don't think I know who she is. She's not one of my contacts…"
"No", Bobby said somberly, "No. But these two are."
He held up a piece of newspaper he was writing on a minute ago, and Ellen's eyes went wide with realization.
"Do you know them?"
"They were regulars at the Roadhouse, of course I know them. What the hell were they doing? Archie's been helping us out for years, there's no need to go to someone you're not even sure is trustworthy…"
"Pamela is the best in the business, it wouldn't be hard to find out where she lives. She said the two of them just showed up at her door around midday, asking about me, where to find me, stuff like that. But what they were really interested in was Sammy."
The atmosphere changed in a second.
"You can't be serious," Dean gasped.
Bobby collapsed into an armchair and hid his face into his hands. "News travel quicker than we thought they would, apparently. That, or they simply overheard something while the Roadhouse was still standing, and put the pieces together themselves. It would be a much more valid option."
"That's not what happened," Ellen affirmed. "No one besides Ash and the people in this room knew about Sam's abilities. It's impossible."
"So now they- what? Blame him for what happened, is that what you're trying to say?"
"Dean", Sam grabbed his brother's shoulder. "Dean, calm down, it's going to be -"
"A pack of bloodthirsty hunters is probably after you right now as we speak, and you're telling me it's all okay? Like we don't have enough problems without a couple of morons convinced you are the Antichrist- let go of me!"
"Get yourself together, kid", Bobby growled. "We have to think this through; you can't keep losing your head like that every time something goes wrong."
"Robert is right", Ellen added quickly, before the older Winchester could respond with something snarky in return. "We shouldn't panic, this whole mess can be solved in a rather elegant way, actually."
Dean began to feel really stupid. "I don't see any magical solution here. They know we're here, they are probably on the way…"
"Yeah, they probably are, but you won't be here when they arrive."
"Bobby", Sam started gently, like talking to a child. "This is not going to work. They already suspect we are staying with you, otherwise they wouldn't bother seeking out your contacts. Even if we leave now and you tell them you haven't seen us since April, they would never believe you."
"Well, hopefully they will believe me", Ellen shrugged. "If not, we'll just have to kill them… not that doing it would help the situation anyhow."
The Winchesters were stunned. "You can't do that", Dean said. "You kill them, and you're going to have their friends on your tail before you know it. I've seen it before, when we were hunting with dad…"
"It doesn't matter", Sam jumped in. "We are not killing anybody."
"If they find you, I doubt they are going to do less than that. You're just another monster to them", Ellen said forcefully. "The main thing now, however, is to get you two as far from here as possible. There's a town nearby; you should pack your things and be gone by nightfall."
"And do what? Hide in some hideous motel room for days, waiting for them to show up at your door? I want to do something already."
"It's not my fault you feel useless", Ellen said, a trail of irritation in her voice. "Everything's been quiet for now. We should be careful, come up with a plan, wait for the demons to make the first move."
"I can inform you two about anything strange that might happen around the town," Bobby said, "but I would strongly advise you not to go on a hunt until things have calmed down a little. Don't draw any unwanted attention on yourselves."
Sam wanted to make a remark, but Dean was quicker. "We'll get our stuff right away. Come on," he motioned to his younger brother. Sam followed him, although reluctantly, out of the living room and up the stairs, avoiding the clutter skillfully.
"What was that, by the way?" he added later, while they were hauling their travel bags down the hallway. There wasn't much to do in the first place; they stayed at Bobby's for merely a day and didn't even have the time to unpack. "At first you nestle in the library and refuse to deal with the situation, but now you want to go charging out there with no plan or direction whatsoever?"
Sam stopped and stared at him, and at first Dean thought he will have to deal with more disappointment and rage; but there was only calm determination in his brother's eyes.
"I can play along," he said. "I can pretend that the demon army is the only problem we have right now. But you don't have to do it for me." He took a hold of Dean's bag, lying forgotten on the floor. "Now, tell me about that nightmare."
"How do you…"
"You can just pretend you didn't have one if you don't feel like it," Sam shrugged. "Just know we can talk about this stuff whenever you like, okay?"
Dean felt a stab of sadness. "Don't grow up too quick, little brother," he murmured. But when they stepped outside, Bobby and Ellen saying their farewells, the sunset seemed to have a little more color in it than the day before.
Motel 6, Sioux Falls was actually better than some other places they usually stayed in- which meant it was still surprisingly terrible. The wallpapers were of a garish yellow color, the beds hard and lumpy, and the bathroom has obviously seen better days.
The stay didn't include dinner, so the Winchesters brought some burgers and salad in the drive-through along the way ("Back to the junk food," Sam announced- not too happy- while Dean dug in like a starved wolf). None of them felt like sleeping, and after a few attempts at conversation failed, they both retreated to their own doings: Dean was absent-mindedly cleaning the guns while his brother thumbed through one of the books he borrowed at Bobby's.
The place actually had a television set, and the older Winchester turned it on after the silence became unbearable, his fears growing again as midnight drew closer; but for now, everything seemed peaceful- too peaceful, his father's voice whispered in his ear. Tread carefully; the stakes are far too high to screw up this time.
When Sam's emergency phone rang, they were finally preparing to call it a day. The younger hunter, who just flopped down into the bed a minute ago, sat up with a groan and picked it up.
"Yeah?"
Dean stepped out of the bathroom pulling on his pajamas with a questioning glance, but stopped short of opening his mouth- his brother's face was pale and worried.
"Grab a pen," the younger Winchester told him seriously. "Bobby got us a case."