Title: Enter Sandman, Part One
Word Count: 4353
Summary: Kate and the brothers Winchester set off to investigate a series of deaths among coma patients. It turns out there is an evil Sandman on the loose.
Warnings: Insomnia, implied abuse of sleeping aids
Authors Note: I'm writing this short-story style. If this gets good feedback, I'll keep the character line going. So please give me feedback at lifeofsnark!
Kate looked up from the laptop screen, glancing around the library as she stretched. Sam and Dean had her looking for a new case. They were all getting a bad case of cabin fever; it had been over a fortnight since they'd had a case, and that was a simple salt and burn. She had confiscated both Sam and Deans ipods after enduring the Battle of the Genres ringing through the bunker
Picking up the laptop, she wandered into the kitchen. Dean stood at the stove, a wooden spoon knocking into the side of the frying pan as he stirred. "I think I've found a case," Kate told him, sliding onto a bar stool and turning her laptop around so he could take a look. Dean passed her a spoon, a noodle and a few vegetables balanced on it. She chewed while he read, looking thoughtful. "Add some garlic" she said finally.
"To cashew chicken stir fry?" he asked, looking aghast.
"Yep. It'll add flavor without adding more salt to the soy sauce" she responded. "So, do we have a case?" she asked as he shook garlic into the pan.
"I don't know, Kate" he responded. "People fall into comas all the time. It could just be a sick town."
"Right, that's what I thought at first too" she replied, her brow wrinkling between her eyes as she focused. "But when the vics eventually die, they have unexplainable trauma on their bodies."
She turned the laptop around again. "See, this man was fine until his death, when they discovered that every major bone in his body was broken, like he had fallen out of a high window." She clicked to a new screen; Dean's eyes began to take on that intense, interested look they always got at the beginning of a new case. "This lady was the third victim. She died of exsanguination from two deep slashes to her wrists. But being in a coma, she couldn't have done it herself. Another died from a gunshot to the temple inside a high security hospice facility."
"Sam!" Dean hollered. "We got ourselves a case!"
Sam stuck his head into the kitchen and took the plate Dean passed him. "Yeah? What are we looking at?"
"Dunno yet," Kate mumbled around a mouthful of stir fry. "We've got coma victims dying in mysterious ways outside Savannah, Georgia."
"Awesome." Dean stated, eating while leaning against the counter. "We'll leave in the morning." He walked out, presumably to pack.
Kate and Sam looked at each other, and glanced at the dirty dishes. Sam rolled his eyes, Kate sighed, and they each knocked a fist against their open palm in the time-honored tradition of rock, paper, scissors-loser cleans. Sam lost, and grumpily started filling the sink up with sudsy water. Kate took pity on him and wiped down the counters and helped him put the pans away in companionable silence.
The Impala growled in the morning hush, thick steam wafting from the tailpipe. Kate dropped her beat up leather duffel in the trunk, slamming it shut afterwards. Dean was already in the car, eager to be on the road again. He rubbed his hand lovingly over the dash. "Baby's ready to go this mornin'" he said happily.
Kate slid into the backseat through the passenger-side door. "I would like the record to show that I beat goldilocks out of the house this morning" she stated.
The garage door slammed, and Sam appeared with three travel mugs balanced in his large hands. "Tardiness excused," Kate said to him with a grin, grabbing a mug from him. The Impala bounced as Sam folded himself into the front. Dean had the car rolling back before Sam had even strapped himself in.
"What's the rush, Dean?" Sam asked, exasperated.
"Don't you feel it Sammy?" Dean smirked, jamming a cassette into the player. "It's gonna be a good case."
"Quiet Riot? The sun isn't even up yet!" Sam complained, scooting down so he could rest his head against the back of the seat, his knees resting against the glove box.
Dean thought for a second, and switched the tape to Clearance Clearwater Revival. "Alright, Sammy. Maybe you'll be in a better mood after some shut eye. Blues rock always did put you out."
Sam harrumphed, resting his head between the seat back and the car frame. After a few songs his breathing evened out, his jaw losing its tension. Kate sat in the back, watching Dean tap on the steering wheel as he occasionally hummed a few bars of music. When the sun started to come up, Kate shifted her weight against the door, her legs curled underneath her on the smooth leather seats.
Dean glanced back at Kate in the rearview for what felt like the hundredth time this morning. He didn't understand her, even after living with her in the bunker for several months, and that bugged him. It was like a mental itching that never quite went away. She was capable of sitting still for hours, but she constantly radiated a sense of just-contained awareness; it was as though she had a low-level electric current running through her. She never complained on stakeouts or long drives, always content to sit in the backseat behind Sam and take in her surroundings. She never slept on car rides, and Dean just didn't get it.
One trip he'd finally given in to his curiosity and asked if she didn't trust his driving abilities. No, you have excellent reflexes and are constantly observant. Of course I trust you to drive she had responded, and then had turned to stare out the window again. It didn't matter whether or not he played music; she would watch the road or the scenery go by, occasionally pointing our something she found interesting. Sammy said she did the same thing when he drove.
The Impala rolled through the day, its three passengers having fallen easily into their usual road trip routines. The roads curved on, connecting towns together in a complex vascular system pumping from corner to corner of the country, the classic car a veteran of the asphalt.
Ten hours into the trip, Dean pulls into a nondescript gas station somewhere outside Nashville, Tennessee. He shook Sammy awake and dropped the keys into his lap, then strode into the station. Kate hopped out and watched the pump, touching her toes and doing a few stretches while she waited for the boys to get back.
"You cheer or something?" Dean called to her. She caught the bottle of water he threw at her head, broke the seal, and took a drink.
"Nope. Did Charlie care when you dropped Jack off with her?"
Dean scowled at the mention of Kate's beloved mutt, Jack Daniels. "No, she loves that damn thing. Told me she might just keep him this time." He scowled.
Kate smiled at him. Dean had bitched when she refused to get rid of her dog, saying that hunters who are always on the road can't have pets. She had insisted; it was her only condition she had for moving into the bunker with the Winchesters. Now, though, the canine spent more nights in Dean's room than he did in hers.
"Jealous of his luck with the ladies?" Kate teased.
"Dog's got no balls, of course I'm not." Dean bit into a burger and passed her a plastic bag. "Got ya a grilled cheese."
Kate unwrapped her sandwich and leaned against the Impala, chewing. About ten minutes later they were back on the road, Sammy behind the wheel. It was quiet, no music playing. Apparently Sam's music preferences were not available on tape; no surprise there. The drove through twilight and into the dark, the tone of the Impala's engine rising and falling as Sam smoothly switched gears. Kate rode in the back, her hair tied away from her pale over face, calmly watching out the windows.
"Do you miss it?" Kate finally asked.
Sam raised his eyebrows without turning to her; it was unusual for Kate to ask them personal questions.
"Miss what?" he asked.
"School. Having a structured life," she responded, turning from the darkness outside her window to look at the back of Sam's chestnut head.
"Sometimes. Although I've been away from college longer than you have" he replied.
"I've been away three years. I'd have my PhD now if I had stayed," she responded quietly. Dean shifted in his seat, and there was a pause in the conversation while he settled. "I guess you would have a law practice by now" she finished. The brothers had told her bits and pieces of their past over the few months she had been with them.
Sam was quiet. He wanted to see if she would say more. After a moment, she continued, "I think I am doing more good this way. I loved what I was doing; I miss working in the lab. I was applying to research micro-sea-level change in the Chesapeake region… but doing this I am helping people. We make a difference in the lives of the few people we save." Kate went quiet again, turning her face to the sky. They were in rural Georgia now, and there was no light pollution to come between her and the cold anathema of the stars.
Sam thought about the woman riding in the back. He was glad she had come to live with them; though she was several years younger than him and Dean it was nice. Kate looked at the world differently than he and Dean did, she lent a perspective to hunting that he hadn't had in years.
The sun was just coming up when the Impala rolled into the suburbs of Savannah. "What's the plan, guys?" Kate asked as she stiffly climbed out of the car.
"I thought we'd split up," said Dean.
"Yeah? You and Daphne gonna go look around, Fred?" teased Kate. "That's real original."
"No, I thought you could break your scrubs out and look around the hospice facility while Sam and I talk to the local law."
"Oh. Good plan." Kate grabbed her bag and went into the fast food joint to change.
After being dropped off, Kate slipped into the facility behind another nurse who keyed herself into the employee entrance.
"Hi, I'm Jamie," she shook the petite woman's hand.
"Linda" the nurse replied. "You here from the temp agency?"
"Oh, yes," replied Kate. "I guess some people here have quit recently?"
Linda led the way to the nurse's station and began flipping through charts. "Yes, we've had an awful time. Two of our coma patients died suspiciously, and some of the younger girls couldn't take it." Linda looked at 'Jamie' quizzically.
"Won't bother me," she replied. Linda took her pile of charts and hurried towards one of the rooms.
After checking to make sure no one was around, Kate pulled out her EMF reader and started walking through the rooms of the facility. Most of the charts she read said that the patients were there long term; the majority dependent on machinery for their survival. Eventually, she came to the morgue door and slipped inside. Pulling open the doors, she finally located the woman who had died of blood loss. The EMF stayed quiet. "Not a ghost, then" Kate murmured.
After closing up the refrigerated drawer, Kate snagged the vics chart and furtively made photocopies. Holding them tight to her side, she slipped out the back door and called Dean.
"Agent Young," he answered in his clipped FBI voice.
"Styx? Nice. I've got the chart and I'm ready to meet up. How's things on your end?"
"Copy that. Thanks for the update," Clearly someone was around who could hear him. "Be there soon."
About twenty minutes later Kate could hear the low rumble of the Impala as the boys pulled into the lot. She slid into her seat, and they set off again. "No EMF in the place, including the morgue" she informed them. "But I got a copy of the chart." She flipped through it.
"Her name was Molly. No alcohol in her system when she was brought in, just allergy medications and Diphenhydramine. That's the active ingredient in a bunch of sleeping pills," she explained.
Sam turned to give her a look. Raising an eyebrow, Kate just shrugged at him. "Could be worse," she defended herself. Thinking back to his own experience with addiction, Sam was forced to agree.
"We got nothing from the sheriff," Dean stated. "These people didn't know each other, didn't have a record, and were all clean of hard drugs and alcohol. Regular Joes." Dean seemed offended by the idea.
"So now what?" Kate mumbled through a yawn. It had been well over twenty four hours since she had slept.
"I think we need to look in these people's houses. If it isn't a ghost, it could be a witch. This seems witchy to me." Dean complained. "I hate witches." Sam read him the address of the first victim.
After Dean picked the lock, the three fell into their usual snooping rolls. Sam went through the vic's laptop, Dean checked for hex bags, and Kate took in everything else.
After about an hour, Sam called, "I don't see anything weird on the computer. This guy was happy in his life, work was going well. He was on all kinds of social media, posting a lot."
Dean came in from the bedroom. "No hex bags that I can find. I even dissected the man's mattress." He looked slightly disgusted by himself.
Kate made her report. "He liked mystery movies, but nothing occult. He had one bottle of booze, but the date stamp on it is from over a year ago. No sign of a woman being in the house. He had prescriptions for Lipitor, Ambien, and an antibiotic. Nothing suspicious. Just your average single middle-aged man.
"I wonder what the antibiotic was for?" mused Sam.
"I don't know. He didn't have any wounds, according to the coroner's report," said Dean.
"The script was a few months old, anyway," said Kate. She sighed. "I think we need to call it a day, boys."
In agreement, the dragged themselves into the car and headed for the nearest motel. After checking them in, Dean came back to the car with the keys. "They don't have rollaway beds here, Kate, so looks like it's the couch for you. Sorry 'bout that."
Kate shrugged. It doesn't really matter she thought to herself. I'm not going to get much sleep anyway. She had always had trouble sleeping, even when she was a kid. Her insomnia had only gotten worse when she was in college, stressed about her schooling and relationships. Then, after the way her boyfriend died… well it felt like she spent more of her nights awake than not.
They trooped into the room. After dropping his bag, Sam took the keys and headed out to grab beers and a pizza. "And don't just get vegetables on it this time!" Dean shouted after him. He lounged back on his bed, flipping through the channels. "Anything you want to watch?"
Kate shook her head, yawning again. Dean raised his eyebrow. "You know, you could sleep in the car," he drawled. Kate shot him a look that would have cowed a man not used to facing the supernatural.
"I understand that it is an option for most people," she said haughtily. "I just can't sleep in the car."
Dean pondered that. If he couldn't sleep in the car he would have dies long before even learning to drive. "Why?" he asked.
Kate shrugged. "I don't know. My brain just won't settle. I'm too aware of what's going on." She paused, and he looked at her with his I know there is more face. She sighed loudly. "Sometimes I can hear when your phone vibrates on the nightstand at night. That's how alert I am."
Dean seemed disbelieving. "My room is two doors down."
"But sometimes you leave the door cracked for Jack. Last night you got a text around three."
"Son of a bitch," said Dean wonderingly. "Is that why you pace around the bunker some nights?"
Kate looked sheepish. "Yeah. If I lay in bed and keep looking at the clock, it can really mess with me- like I'll cry and rant and feel really trapped in my own mind. So sometimes I get up and do something. Like bake banana bread for you guys to have for breakfast, or write, or read. I deal with it."
"Why don't you wake me or Sam up when you get feeling trapped like that?"
Kate furrowed her brow, sending Dean a glance out of the corner of her eyes like he was the crazy one. "Why would I?" she said, her tone inferring that this was a moronic question.
"Oh, I don't know Cupcake, maybe so you could get more than little snatches of sleep?" he drawled sarcastically.
"What could you possibly do to help, Dean? I cope, just like you. I picked up Jack off the side of the road on the way home from the liquor store one night. You don't get to judge me; I've seen the empty bottles in your room." Kate's voice started to rise defensively.
"I'm not judging you. Think about the liability you are to the hunts when you show up tired."
"I haven't been a liability before. I wasn't a liability when Ellen and Jo took me in and taught me to hunt. When I become a liability, I'll handle it. I don't have illusions about myself, those were knocked out of me a long time ago."
Dean looked at Kate scowling at him. Her color was high, a few strands of brown hair that had escaped from the tie hanging around her face. He heard Sam fumbling at the door, and stood up to open it. "This isn't over," he shot over his shoulder.
The three of them worked their way through dinner. Sam changed into his running pants and headed out. Kate watched him go, listening to Dean teasing his younger brother. She understood Sam; his body was all he had that was really his. He had been possessed and addicted; he had been fed demon blood as an infant. After everything, he was trying to treat his body as well as possible. Good for him.
Kate glanced at Dean. He was stretched out his belly, enraptured in an old cop movie that Kate knew he had seen at least four times. She rolled her eyes and fished her book out of her bag. After scooching around on the lumpy couch, she finally walked over to Dean's bed and snagged a pillow, ignoring his protest. He, in turn, stole a pillow from Sam's bed. Kate hid her grin in the pages of her book.
She lay in bed that night, listening to the cars driving by in the parking lot, trying to match her breathing to that of the men deeply sleeping just feet from her. She heard the drip of the leaky faucet in the hideous bathroom. She heard the rasp of Dean's scruff against the pillow as he moved his head in his sleep. As silently as she could, she pulled a small bottle out of the bottom of her bag and dry swallowed a pale blue capsule. Relaxing back, she eventually fell into a restless sleep.
Sam woke up and swung his feet over the side of his bed as quietly as he could. In the shadows he saw his brother asleep on his back, head cocked to one side. Kate was a dark curve on the couch, her knees drawn up tightly as she slept in a ball. Walking as lightly as possible, he headed to the bathroom. As he sylphed past the sofa, Kate sat bolt upright, like a spring-loaded jack-in-the-box. She didn't make any noise, just froze with one leg on the floor supporting her weight, one arm stretched toward him, palm flat, like she was prepared to push him away. Her brown eyes were wide and mostly in shadows cast through the thin curtains.
"Easy" Sam whispered. She sank back down, and Sam closed the bathroom door behind him. When he came back out, his eyes slowly readjusted to the gloom. Kate was gone, and Dean's keys had been taken off the table scattered with paper napkins and empty beer bottles.
Sam shook Dean. "Dude, wake up."
Dean didn't open his eyes. "You'd better have a good reason for this Sammy" he mumbled, his voice deep and raspy from sleep.
"Kate's gone. She took the Impala."
"What the hell? Why?" Dean sat up, rubbing his hand over his face to scrub away the lingering drowsiness. He switched on the light.
"I accidently woke her up on my way into the bathroom- she just froze with this heartbreaking face on, Dean. Like she was beseeching me not to come any closer. What do we do?"
"We can't do anything, she took the car. I didn't even know she could drive stick." Dean cursed. "Earlier we'd talked about how she had trouble sleeping, but this is serious. I mean, we're hunters. Haven't met a hunter who didn't have some bad nights. But this is worse."
"I'm thinking there's a lot we don't know about this girl." Sam murmured.
Just over an hour later, a bit after 5:30, they heard the Impala pull in and idle before the engine cut off. Kate came in with a cardboard tray of coffee and a bag of sandwiches. "Breakfast" she said simply, dropping the goods on the small table. She ignored the pointed looks from Sam and Dean. "On the way here I saw a couple police cruisers heading towards the hospital. Looks like we might have something." She went into the bathroom, and they heard the shower trickle on.
"Women, man," said Dean. "We can't just pretend this didn't happen."
"No, but maybe now isn't the time for it," Sam defended. "We have a case, and she's an adult. She's been taking care of herself for a long time."
Dean looked belligerent, but didn't say anything when Kate came back out of the bathroom a few minutes later. "When'd you learn to drive a clutch, Kate?" he asked. "You're truck is an automatic, isn't it?"
Kate thought about her beloved beat-up old pickup. "Yep, I prefer to drive an automatic." She laughed at the horrified look on Dean's face; the tension in the room dropped. "Well, think about it. When Ellen and Jo didn't come home, I was hunting on my own for about a year. I only need to come out of a fight with one good leg if I have an automatic; for a stick I'd need two legs and two arms."
"Okay, very logical, college girl," Dean conceded.
"I learned to drive stick in college. My best friend broke her left foot, and we needed to get her Jeep back to her house so she could switch with her sister. The only way to do that was if I drove. It was drive-or-die manual transmission training" she joked. "The clutch in Baby is finicky."
"Racing clutch," Dean bragged.
"Uh-huh," Kate rolled her eyes.
"We doing more B and E today boys?"
Sam looked uncomfortable. "I thought one of us should go as a Fed, check out the hospital and some of the next of kin."
"I'm guessing you want out of the illegal activities? Fine by me," Dean said. "Don't have to wear the monkey suit."
They dropped Sam off at the hospital to do interviews and headed for the house of the man with all the broken bones. "What if his wife is home?" Kate asked.
"Nah, it's the funeral this morning."
"We're breaking into his home during his funeral?" Kate seemed insulted on principle. Dean ignored her.
After rifling through the two victim's homes, Dean and Kate were still drawing a blank. They went back to get Sam from the hospital and went into a local diner to compare notes.
"Did you find anything in the homes?," he asked as they slid into a booth.
"Nope," said Dean as he winked lasciviously at the waitress.
"So get this," Sam continued, used to his brother's wandering eye. "They all had that sleeping chemical in their bloodstream when they were found."
Kate made a choking noise. Dean thumped her on the back bracingly. "So it's going after people who can't sleep? Is it another dreamwalker?" asked Dean.
"No, I don't think so. This is much more powerful. Almost like a sleeping curse." Sam parried. "But it isn't witches, there's been no trace of them. And," he sounded exasperated, "the victims take different amounts of time to die."
They were silent for the rest of lunch, each wondering what this thing they were hunting was. Returning to the motel, they started to research.
"I've got something" Kate announced after several hours had gone by. The light outside the grimy window had turned into the late, golden-honey color of late evening in the south. "The Sandman is a common myth in several cultures- a demigod that comes to people and gives them good dreams. Well, a few references are made to the brother of the Sandman- like the anti-Sandman. He gives people nightmares that drive them to insanity."
"Makes sense," said Sam slowly. Except these people are in comas, not mad," he finished.
"What if they are choosing to die in the dream? That would explain why one lasted months and the others just a few days."
"Mr. Sandman, bring me your dreams," sang Dean.
"Not funny, Dean," Sam chastised. "This is the best thing we've got. All of the victims had trouble sleeping, they were probably begging for a good night's rest. And then this guy curses them to sleep through nightmares until he dies."
"If it's a demigod, we have to stake it," Dean stated. "So how do we find it?"
"You use me as bait," said Kate slowly. "You use me as bait."