Set between Playthings and Nightshifter. This turned out a lot stranger than I expected - I thought there must be some reason why Dean was so cheerful in the beginning of Nightshifter, and wanted to write something exploring why. This is not it. Unbeta'ed, so all mistakes are mine.
Warnings for violence, gore, strange dream sequences, snark, angst, foul language and literature.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not now, not ever.
"Our lives are weird, man."
"Yeah, you're telling me."
Sam and Dean, CSPWDT.
The Gerschmann Library is a small privately endowed institution specialising in the collection of children's books from as far back as 1870. On the first Monday of February they received a book shipment from their buyer in New York. Since the Library has fallen on hard times and the buyer in question is fleecing them for all he can get away with, said shipment consists of only two books.
One is a first-edition Famous Five story. The other has neither title nor author. The blue, faded cover has been damaged by fire and water. It also bears some brown, rusty stains you wouldn't want to speculate about, the kind that used to be red. It is catalogued as 'novel, badly foxed' and shelved until Friday, when the Chief Librarian can inspect it and decide on its future.
On Tuesday Hetta Rossini, student and part time librarian, idly flicks through recent acquisitions. She reads chapter three of 'Five go Smuggling' and the foreword of 'A Childe's Gardene of Verse and Song'. She then proceeds to the restroom, where she is later found neatly eviscerated, with both wrists cut so deeply that slice marks are found on her bones. She is propped up on the toilet seat, palms upward, cradling her own intestines on her lap. Her face is unmarked, half-closed eyes and serene mouth apparently waiting patiently for her discoverer to speak.
Investigators are disconcerted by the complete absence of blood, both within Hetta's body and in the surrounding area
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"Sam, stop whistling right now. You're destroying this song."
Sam grins while continuing to whistle, quite a feat of facial contortion. The song is 'Back in Black' and he is indeed a tuneless, rhythmless whistler.
Dean is irritated down to his bones, squirming in his seat, feeling as though his eardrums are being polished. He knows that Sam knows exactly how much this is annoying him. He also knows that Sam is relishing his discomfort like a fine wine. Brothers.
"If you don't stop right now I'm gonna kick the living crap out of you. In public."
"You could try." And Sam waits a beat before he attempts to render the guitar solo, hampered by laughter at Dean's petty fury.
"I swear, I'm gonna kill you."
It takes Dean all of five seconds after Sam stops whistling to realise what he's just said, relate it to recent events (If I ever become something I'm not, you gotta do what Dad told you) and mentally kick himself in the face.
"I, uh, didn't mean..."
"I know. And anyway, it's what I asked you to do, right?" Sam turns to the window, thinking sardonically that the irony is almost worth the deeply uncomfortable atmosphere. Dean braces himself to make a truly heroic concession.
"Seriously, whistle if you want. It's not that bad."
"Dude, it's okay. I don't feel like whistling anymore." Sam fake-smiles, trying to reassure Dean. The smile is a little too wide and lopsided and it creeps Dean out because Sam looks kinda hollow, in a 'someone kicked my puppy' way. He has to break the silence, even if it kills him.
"Don't get all... broody about this, okay? It upsets the car." Sam loses the hollow look in favour of incredulity, to Dean's heartfelt relief.
"The car is upset when I brood? Which is not an admission that I have ever ... Is brooded a word?"
"... I have no idea."
Sam goes back to staring broodily - yes, broodily - out of the window, but at least Dean is now reasonably sure he's thinking about the history of the verb 'to brood'. Freak. Stanford has a lot to answer for.
Dean switches on the radio, mentally consigning AC/DC to the pit of hell. Along with so many other things, 'Back in Black' will now forever remind him of his father's final words. Thank you, Dad and Sam, for leaching every moment of joy from my life. Stamps down the knee-jerk guilt reflex, checks the map.
The radio report on Hetta's death is as gorily accurate as the avid local researcher can make it. It causes Dean to execute a rapid U-turn, narrowly missing the verge. Sam briefly meets his eyes, silently agreeing that this is our kind of job.
The lack of blood says vampires, but blood-lore is extensive and disgustingly gory. They check the supply of dead man's blood in the boot on arrival, just in case. The attack happened in daylight, which says it can't be vampires, so they load up the guns as well.
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At the library they are Jim and Eric ("Eric? Nice name, dork."), reporters for World News Weekly. The librarian, twinset, pearls and too much hairspray, gives them a clearly rehearsed speech in a distracted monotone.
"Terrible event..."
Dean peers round the front desk. Sam maintains a look of sympathetic concentration while unobtrusively stepping on his foot.
"… sorely missed."
"What was she like?"
"She was a very dear friend. Usually it was just the two of us here, we're so understaffed and she was going to leave soon, go to college - she was always so full of plans, so happy and now she won't get to go... I'm sorry." The librarian dabs at her make-up, precise movements a thin barrier of civility over grief
"This was where she worked." Sam shoots an eyebrow and a jerk of the head at Dean, who takes the librarian off for a weepy interview and coffee. The pile of books at Hetta's work station are an odd mixture. Solhenitsyn, Kafka and Sylvia Plath mingle with Beatrix Potter and Arthur Ransome. Sam correctly guesses that the latter are from the library, the former Hetta's own. At the top of the pile is a blue book with no title. Sam starts to leaf through "Metamorphosis". By the time Dean returns, Sam's moved on to Enid Blyton. The defensive snap of the book closing is underscored by the meeting of eyes, one pair amused, the other shamefaced.
"Find anything useful?"
" Look, I really enjoyed it when we were kids, okay?"
"I didn't say anything." The smirk spreading across Dean's face speaks volumes, however.
The Librarian fusses in.
"Ma'am, would you like us to clear some of these books out for you? You seemed a little upset by it, so if we could help at all..?"
"Oh, thank you, Eric. That would be nice. It's just..." Sam pats her shoulder as she dissolves into tears, concerned, sympathetic and as genuine as a brass nickel. Dean allows himself a moment of admiration for a superb and subtle manipulator before diving for the stack of books.
The librarian removes "Swallows and Amazons" and a few others from the pile the boys cart out to the Impala but as Dean says, Sam's still got a lot of bedtime reading to do.
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"So, while you're reading I'll go and, uh, talk to some more people. The librarian said the family moved here 'bout ten years ago, no visible problems, no weird deaths. Maybe the local barflies know some more."
"Mmm."
"Sam french-kisses his pillow."
"Whatever. Go and get wasted if you have to. While you can still see straight, you might want to look at this blue book."
"I resent that. I am going to gather important, relevant information, in a place that happens to sell liquor. Getting wasted is what you do. What is it?"
"Handwritten fairy stories. But less Cinderella, more directly transcribed supernatural legends. It reads like a hunter's manual; habits, range, weaknesses. I can't believe they put it in a children's library. There's stuff in here I don't think even Dad's heard of - had heard of."
"I thought the librarian took this one back."
"Well, yeah."
"Theft, Sammy? That's my boy. Steal anything else?" Sam's eyes slide guiltily over to the table.
""Five go Smuggling"? Oh dude, I hope for your sake this is just random kleptomania."
"There's a bookmark in it. It was one of the books she was reading when she died. Might be important" And I wanted to finish it because I started it and can't remember how it ends, but that's not something you need to know.
"Yeah, right. I'm outta here. Don't wait up."
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It's 3am. The motel is quiet, until Dean's extremely welcome sleep is rudely interrupted.
"Dean?"
"If you're not dying, I don't want to know."
"Help..." Dean slaps at the light switch.
"Son of a bitch, what did this? That's a lot of blood, dude, stop trying to move."
"It was fast. I didn't even have time to sit up."
"Did you see it? Watch out, I'm just gonna bind this up."
"Ah!" Sam catches his breath, turning sheet-white as he tries not to scream.
"Sorry, Sammy."
"Dean, get - knife or something, I think - it's still here."
"Holy shit. Be right back, Sam." Rustles and the snick of metal on metal emerge from the darkness surrounding Sam's bed, spotlit by the bedside lamp. He resembles one of the gorier medieval icons, long hair and all. Deep slicing wounds criss-cross his stomach, blood seeping through a hasty pillowcase dressing. Dean reappears, shoving a gun into Sam's hand. Almost absentmindedly he takes note of the symptoms - pale, cold, clammy. erratic breathing - and that's just his own response to Sam's injury. Stomach wound, so much blood, infection, it's still here… Training kicks in and he makes a decision.
"We have to go. Can you stand?" Sam grunts, rolling slowly over and moving with geriatric care to his feet. Dean watches the walls like they're about to explode. They hustle to the car, Sam is half-dragged, half-crawls across the back seats, his skin pale as a ghost.
What follows should by rights be the most nerve wracking drive of Dean's life. That it barely makes the top ten is disturbing, or would be if he had time to consider things like that when he can hear Sam's breathing getting shallower and slower with every mile.
"Hold on."
Sam would love to say something sarcastic in response, but he's concentrating on keeping his internal organs internal.
The Impala pulls into the hospital forecourt with a screech of the brakes. Dean remembers, through the haze of fear and the remains of alcohol, that Sam's still holding the gun. Gripping it, actually, so tight that Dean can't prise it out of his hand. Sam won't wake up to let go and Dean is almost crying with frustration when Sam finally eases up and Dean can stash the weapon out of sight of the paramedics. As Sam is wheeled in, he realises that it didn't matter. With injuries like that the cops will be called in to investigate anyway. He just wasted a precious minute of time on a pointless struggle. Dad would have ripped him a new one. Suddenly he can smell sour beer on his own breath and wonders when he got so goddamn sloppy as to get drunk in the middle of a hunt.
"I'm so sorry, Sam." He watches the doctors and nurses, taking comfort in their quiet efficiency.
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By the afternoon Sam's awake, being dripped full of fluids and antibiotics, making an excellent recovery. Dean never mentions the previous evening's mistake. Maybe it's shame. Maybe he's just not the confessional type.
He tells himself it doesn't matter, because he'll never be so stupid again.
"Hey, kid, you scared me there. Thought I was gonna have to read all those books myself."
"I'm fine. I'll be out in a couple of days."
"Your doctor said a week. At least."
"I heal fast. Anyway, it won't be the first time I've gone AMA, right?"
"You're staying if I have to tie you to that bed for the next week." Dean ignores the humour in Sam's voice. His own tone is almost angry.
Sam sighs, lacking the strength for an argument. Trust Dean to get all pissy and protective just at the wrong time. Dean Winchester is wanted for mutilating and killing young women and just such a crime occurred right down the road. Since Baltimore, he's no longer officially dead, so they've had to start worrying about little things like leaving fingerprints by dead bodies. Or letting Dean try to explain to the cops that Sam cut himself whilst shaving - yes, shaving his stomach. With a hunting knife...
"Whatever. Just don't talk to the police before we work out a story. Please." Dean is not stupid enough to take this as agreement but if Sam's too tired to argue - and God knows the kid would argue till the point of death and probably beyond - then he needs rest.
"Sure thing, Sammy. I'll go back to the motel, grab some stuff, probably won't even see them. Don't worry about me."
Sam drifts off, a frown creasing his brow even in sleep.
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Dean heads back to the motel room, ready to clear up the slaughterhouse of Sam's bed. The complete absence of blood in the room almost leads him to doubt his memory, but Sam is definitely in hospital. The absence of blood means someone removed it. Not just cleaned the sheets and carpet, but removed it as if it never spilled out of Sam's body, never existed. Nothing he knows could clean up that much blood this fast. Definitely not vampires, they wouldn't bother to mop up after a feast.
"Huh. Weird."
Of course, this means that the thing remained in the room after they left and could still... be... here... Dean's perceptions slow briefly. He notices that he's already got his gun out, his hindbrain having come to this conclusion a good few seconds before his conscious mind and communicated it's disquiet to the motor and autonomic systems. His eyes flick round the room, his breathing and heart rate have quickened. Blood flow patterns have altered, draining away from his skin. He moves to the wall, protecting his back.
The room remains quiet. Nothing moves. The standoff continues for five minutes or so, Dean watching everything not move while his breathing slows. He then picks up some essentials for Sam, like clothes and the laptop and that big freakin' pile of books, moving quick and quiet. He heads for the car, since the room is dangerous until proven guilty, and angsts for a while before driving to the hospital, to sit and sleep in an uncomfortable chair next to a drugged Sam
The sounds of the hospital engender strange dreams. Dean's wearing a suit of armour as he and Dad walk through the woods. The trees ooze and drip viscous black fluid, like ectoplasm or oil. The armour is slowing him down, he keeps trying to run after Dad who is walking far too fast. Dad points to a clearing and Dean looks, seeing nothing and looks back to find Dad has disappeared. In the clearing Hetta appears, as seen in her autopsy photos, eyes glazed with death. Sam is with her. She plucks hairs from his head and shows them to Dean. "See? It's not brown, it's green. Like a snake. You have to kill him now!" Dean turns and struggles on through the briars, running away and getting nowhere fast
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"Mr. Walton... Dean. Wake up." A nurse is tapping his shoulder.
"Wstf? Augh. Goddamn... light. Too much light."
"That would be daylight. From the sun?" Sam is waaay too chirpy for someone who was at death's door yesterday.
"I was up all night. Leave m'alone."
"Dean, the police are here. They want to talk to us about the guy who attacked me.
"Mr. Walton?"
"Uh, could I have a minute? I need to... make brain work."
As it happens, the cops are fairly satisfied with Dean's 'too drunk to see' alibi. He's pretty convincing as 'hungover'. Sam was attacked by 'Some guy, shorter than me, big knife' and knocked conveniently unconscious. It's uncheckable and plausible and useless to police officers who are far more concerned with a murdered local girl.
"I'm starving. Get me a burger?"
"With a stomach wound? You gotta be kidding. There are a lot of cleaner ways to off yourself, you know."
"It's cool. I talked to the doctor while you were asleep. This injury-" He gestures to his own abdomen, all detachment "-it's as though it was planned to cause as much bleeding as possible with the minimum of damage. There's not a scratch on the peritoneum, it's just the skin and muscles. Neat slices, right along the major blood vessels. I was thinking about Hetta's injuries - I'll bet that her belly was sliced up like mine before whatever it was started to cut out her guts."
Dean's stomach rolls over at the description. He's not squeamish, god knows, but the casual comparision of his brother's wounds to those of a corpse triggers a nausea that has more to do with retrospective fear than disgust.
"It's like whatever it was sucked the shallow blood vessels dry, and then went for the deeper ones."
"That's just gross. But since we're talking about weird - "
He tells Sam about the strange absence of blood in their room, matching the situation at the library.
"Huh."
"Yeah."
"Okay - let's get this straight. It - or they - feeds off blood. Not a vampire, unlikely to be a ghost, given that it hasn't stuck to the library."
"We brought the books away from the library. They're the common factor here
"So it could be a spirit linked to one of the books, a haunted object."
"But it only attacked you. If it was just a haunted object anyone in the area would be in danger, and there's not a scratch on me."
"Or on the other Librarian, the one we talked to."
The rhythm of theory and facts accelerates as they talk, trading ideas, finding flaws and implications. Two minds in synchrony. This is what Dean lost when Sam left, what Sam found a weak and twisted echo of in scholarly discussion at Stanford. John wasn't so keen on the free exchange of opinions. He was older, he knew best. But his sons are evenly matched, experience complementing intelligence. Together, they are stronger than he ever was alone.
"The books that Hetta was reading - I read a few of them before I was attacked. You didn't read any."
"Awesome. We can just torch them."
"Salt and burn - you think that'll work? You said yourself it's not like a haunted object. We're missing something."
"You just don't want to burn the books, geek."
"Dumbass. We should take a look at them."
"They're in the trunk of the car. No one else is gonna get hurt. Let's relax and deal with the book-burning when you're better."
Sam's starting to look tired. The morning's burst of energy wore off quickly. Dean's been watching his brother frown in a way that says Sam's concentrating more on not falling asleep than on things that go slash in the night.
"No. We'd better do this now. It's weird - I'm sure I've heard of something like this before. The blood and the cuts - very neat edges, like... And it only attacks if you read it. Goddamn it! I know this!"
"Sleep on it, kiddo. You're getting cranky without your nap." Dean's concern is barely disguised, and it is this that snaps Sam out of his fit of OCD.
"Yeah. Guess I'd better." He grins at Dean, sincerely apologetic, and follows orders for once.
Sam dreams of pain. Pain is true and real and quick and quick and sharp and strong as wine. Clean and to the point. Watches the blood flow, redder than cherries, redder than rubies, redder than red. Tastes the iron tang of it, sweet and bitter, like the sharpening of knives. Feels the slick chill spread across his stomach again and again, followed at last by fire as he knew it would be. He looks up and sees himself on the ceiling. The other him stares hungrily down with yellow eyes, and speaks. "Wampyr". Flame consumes them both.
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Sam looks up from his laptop to see Dean reading Dad's journal. The concentration in Dean's expression is exposed and almost childlike. Sam feels a sudden protective impulse towards that expression, to the vulnerability it betrays.
"So, it seems like Dad never heard of wampyrs."
"I found something online. Take a look." He turns the laptop round.
"'A wampyr is an object, usually a weapon, that is exposed to it's owner's blood and gets a taste for it. It turns on anyone who wields it.' Good catch, Sammy."
"Way back when they used to destroy tools that had cut the owner, in case they became malevolent. Books are a little atypical, but it still fits. Even my cuts - they're like papercuts, magnified."
"It doesn't say... but I think I remember where I heard about wampyrs. Pass me that blue book." He gestures towards it casually, not meeting Dean's eyes.
"Isn't this one of our suspects?"
"No. I thought about it, and this one didn't have a bookmark in. I don't think Hetta read it."
"That's a pretty small fact to risk your life on." Dean holds the book out of Sam's reach.
"Look, that book has the answer in. We can debate this after we find out how to kill the wampyr. If necessary, we just destroy it before it can get to me." Sam sound aggressively reasonable, which means he's entirely unsure of the grounds for his argument.
"No dice, kiddo. Check online again. Or see if there's some way to identify a wampyr object."
Sam huffs and rolls his eyes - something Dean is starting to find annoying as hell after a day cooped up together in Sam's shiny private room . But a further hour of website trawling turns up the holy water test. Easy as pie. The blue book is pronounced safe and Dean feels stupid - unreasonably, he knows, because it's better to be safe than sorry. But still...
There's this look Sam gets - the 'I went to Stanford, you high school dropout' look. He uses it as he grabs the blue book off Dean. Dean hates that look; the embodiment of everything that drives them apart. Arrogance, the lure of lauded endeavour, his own insecurity, the Winchester pride that would rather die alone than ask for companionship. His own face becomes blank, a wall of ice, a thousand miles of distance.
"Break it in two, then burn it with... I think this word is supposed to be 'Oil'. What do you think?" It's a transparent attempt to apologise – Sam isn't blind – and the very transparency of it is comforting.
"It says 'Rue'. The herb, we've got some in the trunk. Good for purification and the easing of sorrows."
"I thought it was poisonous."
"That too. For the easing of seriously deep sorrows, I guess."
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Sam's still confined to the hospital room until Dean feels better about signing him out. Dean is the one who takes 'Five go Smuggling' to a deserted spot, chops it in two and burns it. He throws rue on the fire, watching the tiny pungent flowers bloom and shrivel in the flames. The blue smoke drifts lazily sideways in the breeze, curling in unseen currents of air. A strangely low-key ending, this, watching the book burn to unreadable ash and stamping out the guttering flames. After all the blood spilled and the death of at least one person. No more deaths, though, so screw the anticlimax and screw the memories of blood and panic and fuck feeling guilty. The job is done.
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AN : My longest ever fic, beset with technical problems and writer's block. The job is done. From now on I'm doing 1000 words or less. Reviews appreciated, and sorry if the end was too sudden. I may write an epilogue.