Where am I?! We're in the Supernatural fandom, kids. So, I've been mainlining this show like nobody's business since the late fall and I'm almost up to date (I'm halfway through Season 6) and this plot bunny fell like an anvil when I was halfway through Season 4. Thus, it takes place in a pre-Apocalyptic Season 4 world. Demon blood drinking, worried brothers, saving the world, all that shit.
This is a one-shot, mid-Season 4, genderbent Sam and Dean. I spent a great majority of Season 4 wanting to choke these two brothers that I love so dearly because I just wanted them to talk to each other. I think seeing things from a different angle - meeting themselves - would've been beneficial. I probably won't write much in this fandom (mostly because I scare easy and this was my only plot bunny), but I hope you enjoy.
You can read this on my AO3 (link in the profile) if you want to see who I imagine portraying a female Sam and Dean.
(For those of you looking for updates forthe Manifesto or Stockholm I have things coming by the end of the week. Promise).
"I think that if–"
"Who the hell is touching my car!"
Dean was torn from his rapt attention to Sam's borderline psychotic research capacity – really, the kid had problems but hell if that shit wasn't damn useful – by the blonde who happily helped herself to the driver's seat of the Impala.
Damn bitch.
He jostled the diner's table in his haste to get out the door, and Sam managed to catch the cup of coffee and the glass ketchup bottle before they crashed to the floor or spilled on the laptop. He glanced out the window and noticed the girl in the driver's seat, and the brunette leaning into the passenger side window.
Were they seriously being carjacked in the middle of the day in a downtown parking lot? Sam snapped the laptop closed, tossed fifteen bucks on the table, and followed Dean out the door.
"Hey!" Dean barked, finally approaching the Impala.
"Hey yourself, sweetheart," the blonde smirked as she turned the engine over.
Dean and Sam's jaw dropped in sync as the brunette slid into the passenger seat, flicking avidly through a beat up, leather-bound book. Dean just stared and groped around his pockets for his keys. How the hell did she get his keys? Wait… he had his keys. He felt the metal rings in the right side pocket of the leather jacket… where it always was. He was about to reach for a slightly heavier piece of metal but he felt Sam stop him.
Sam probably thought shooting a girl over a car was a bit much. Dean was inclined to disagree.
"What the hell are you doing in my car? Get out."
"Your car?" The blonde pouted. "Sweetheart, something tells me you don't have nearly the balls to drive my car."
"I don't know what kind of hash you are on, but if you don't get out of my car I'm–"
"Dawn," the brunette interrupted. "I really don't know how we're going to find these two. I mean… we really wouldn't know them from a hole in the wall and Dad's journal doesn't cover anything like this."
The blonde, Dawn apparently, glanced to the brunette. Both Dean and Sam's eyes bugged and their heads reeled back ever so slightly.
Sam stepped forward and put his hands on the car door's window sill. "Who are you?" he asked carefully.
"Depends on who's asking, handsome," the blonde replied without glancing up. She took the leather-bound book from the brunette and there was a collective gasp.
"Sam do you–" Dean began, trying to keep the frantic edge out of his voice. Sam lifted his right hand that held both his laptop and John Winchester's journal. Which was odd, given that it appeared the girls had hijacked not only the Impala, but the journal.
"I need me an explanation before I kill someone or throw a stroke," Dean shouted.
The brunette glanced past Dawn and two the alternately bamboozled and amazed boys standing outside the car. "We're looking for the Winchesters. We heard they were in town?"
"Dean," Sam glanced back at his brother as the blonde looked up. "They're us."
"Dean?" a knowing smirk crept up Dawn's face. She slipped out of the car and strolled over to Dean who was looking thoroughly horrified. Like that time Sam told him he went out with a redhead.
Sam just stood and watched, leaning against the car. He heard the brunette get out of the car and lean beside him. "So you're Sam?" she offered. He nodded. "Me too. Let's go with Samantha for sanity's sake. Nice to finally meet you." He silently shook the girl's hand and watched the scene playing out before him.
He watched as Dawn stalked around Dean, like a bird of prey. "Stop that," Dean insisted through clenched teeth.
"Well aren't I a sight for sore eyes, Dean Winchester! You came out all right, I suppose… I have a way better ass, to be sure. And not nearly as bowlegged." She paced around glancing up and down and Dean spun to keep her in his line of sight. She stopped and reached to straighten the collar on his jacket. "Don't slouch, sweetheart."
"Sam," Dean glanced back at his brother, still an edge of panic to his voice.
"She's you," Sam replied, hardly believing what he was saying.
"How the hell do you know something like that?" Dean demanded.
"Dawn and Samantha?" Sam insisted. "She claims the Impala is hers and I watched her slip the keys out of her right hand jacket pocket. You never put your keys anywhere else, you're like Adrian Monk about this car. They have Dad's journal. We have Dad's journal? What else could it be?"
"A trick," Samantha insisted. She reached inside the car and pulled the keys from the ignition. She popped the trunk and lifted the fake floor, pulling out a bottle of holy water.
"Shots, shots, shots. E'erybody," Dawn sang as she joined her sister. She took a swing and swallowed. "Mm… not doin' the demon thing. Although… that's more your kink, isn't it?" She glanced between Sam and Samantha who both averted their indignant gazes to the ground.
"This bitch isn't me," Dean insisted like it was patently obvious.
"Dean, she's you to a T," Sam insisted.
"Except for some minor hormonal details," Dawn added. She tossed the bottle to Sam who took a petulant mouthful and passed it to Dean.
"Glad that's all cleared up," dawn continued lightly as Samantha shut the trunk. "Now, if you don't mind, Sammy and I have just been through a wrinkle in time and I'm starvin'."
It was pretty obvious that Dean was not dealing well with meeting himself.
He and Sam sat on one side of the booth, Sam looking pensive and Dean looking downright floored as Dawn put down two bacon cheeseburgers and Samantha stared into her coffee.
"How'd you two get here?" Sam asked, cutting the silence.
"You really wanna talk about that in the middle of this diner?" Dawn replied quickly. "I thought you went to Stanford?"
"Okay, let's start with who are you," Dean insisted.
"Samantha and Dawn Winchester. Daughters of John and Mary Winchester. Mary, god rest her soul, was killed ages ago by the very thing that poisoned our baby siblings and later killed our father. Azazel is gone, but that's small consolation."
"You're hunters," Samantha continued. "Been that way for ages. Lived out of motels since Mom died, Dad always hunting. Went to new schools every month. We," she pronounced looking at Sam, "put our foot down and decided to be normal and flew the coop after graduation. Four years at Stanford got us a fasttrack to law school before we lost someone else we loved."
"Enter the embittered and substantially better-looking older sibling," Dawn picked up. "Couple crossroads demons, a few decades in hell, some angels, and whatever the hell it is these two are doing and not telling us about."
"That about covers it," Sam nodded.
"Still doesn't explain why the hell my long lost uterus is sitting across from me," Dean insisted. Dawn rolled her eyes and tossed a few bills on the table before she and Samantha slid out of the booth.
"Considering we'd be even matched in a fight, but I could absolutely put one of these stilettos through your heart, I'm sure you won't have any issue letting me drive, right, Dean? Good," she spoke without pause. "I assume you and Sam are staying in the same shitty motel on the edge of town that we were at."
Dawn opened the driver's side door and Dean begrudgingly got in the passenger seat. Sam and Samantha stood outside the car and waited for their siblings to realize the need for the backseat.
"Oh, well this is new," Dawn conceded. "Sorry. Climb on in, gigantor!" she smiled wickedly as Sam tried finangle all his limbs into the back of the Impala.
"You mean to say you came through a wrinkle in time? A tear in the space-time continuum?" Dean asked dubiously. "You're gonna have to convince me, doll face, because this all sounding like a BBC drama to me." Dean slammed the motel door as the sprinkling rain turned into an all-out downpour.
"Dean stop flirting with yourself," Sam noted idly as he flicked through web pages.
Samantha sat across from him and turned on the desk lamp. It had grown dark with the movement of the clouds. "There's stories existing throughout the historical canon regarding time travel, of people meeting beings from the future, or what they thought to be outer space," Samantha interjected.
"But you're not from the future," Dean pointed out.
"No," Dawn shook her head. "We're from another dimension. We were in this same town as you, where we came from, in the middle of the US. Everything seems more or less the same... Just people are different. But these historic accounts? There's no reason people recording this stuff weren't really seeing people from other dimensions. They just had no idea what was going on."
"Obviously," Dean nodded.
"Free will means that people choose their path in life and nothing is set in stone. So every choice literally has a million possible outcomes." Dawn explained. "All that butterfly shit. We are just two separate possibilities of who friggin knows what."
"But we didn't bribe an angel to tear a hole in existence just to mingle with ourselves," Samantha cut to the chase. "We aren't the first to do it. Something on your side is going wrong. People from your dimension are somehow ending up in ours, stumbling around confused and bringing too much attention to well..."
"The impending end of days?" Dean inserted snidely.
"Exactly," she slapped a book down on the table. "Something is creating these tears... These anomalies ... And it's bringing another front to this war and you can only imagine the consequences if our two universes come into contact."
"Demons?" Dean questioned.
"Nope." Dawn shook her head. "Their story checks out. These people come through looking like possession victims. They're attracting hunters from all over. Not good for demons. Whatever it is, it's got it out for the demons too."
"Cass told us the boys had the same problems, Dawn," Samantha whispered cryptically.
"You know Castiel?" Dean deadpanned. "That asshole has been traversing the galaxy for intergalactic travels to god-knows-where and hasn't mentioned that he met us somewhere else?"
"Casilda?" Samantha asked.
"They're probably counterparts. Like us... But back to the important stuff: this isn't a demon circus act. They don't have the chops anyways."
"It's the renegade angels..." Sam muttered finally. The three glanced at him and Samantha nodded in agreement.
"Cass said that whatever was doing this... It couldn't be undone by any earthly power, because it was begun by an unearthly power. The rebelling angels make sense, but now how do we stop it? We need a power greater than mankind." Samantha relayed the information as she spread a map of the town on the boy's motel room table.
"So far we've had anomalies here, here, and here in our own dimension." Dawn marked off the places on the map. "They never come through in singles. They're opening up in places where people gather. Gas stations, banks, coffee joints."
"If all the strangers from an alternate universe are wandering around your world, and you're here then... What are they doing over there?"
"Well, Cass and Pan owed us a favor, so... Hopefully they don't tear each other apart."
"Wait... Who's Pan?" Dean asked. Dawn averted her eyes to the map and Samantha glanced down quickly before her gaze flicked to Sam.
"You have a demon and an angel of the Lord babysitting dimensional kidnapping victims?" Dean deduced.
"Hey," Dawn retorted. "They're all out like lights. Nothing a little crushed Tylenol PM and some persuasive force trauma to the head couldn't handle. Pan and Casilda just have to concentrate on not killing each other."
"And in the meantime we should figure this out before the fallen angels on our side realize their plan worked."
"Cass said... an earthly power?" Sam questioned. "What about something unearthly. This thing is created by renegade angels so it makes sense that we can't take it down with something man-made. But what about something natural. Something that can take on the power of heaven?"
"Is that where the thought process ends?" Dawn asked without enthusiasm.
"Unfortunately," Sam replied flopping onto a lumpy mattress. The storm raged outside and thunder clapped.
"Hey," Dean stood up in his protective older brother stance. "Don't be mean to Sammy."
"Dean stop chastising yourself," Sam sighed liked he realized he was going to have to get used to this for the time being. "Let's think: what elements are so fundamental to existence that we could even begin to take this on."
"Water's natural," Dawn offered a one-shouldered shrug.
"I refuse to take on a legion of fallen angels with a bottle of Evian," Sam deadpanned.
"Cosigned," Samantha muttered distractedly. "Air is out too. That's kind of an obnoxious state of matter to have to manipulate."
"We'll were kinda running out of options," Dean replied in a clipped tone. The lights flickered as a boom of thunder sounded. The lights browned out for a moment, and the motel room was filled with the sudden flash of lightening outside.
"Light!"
"Fire!"
Sam and Samantha just watched as their siblings argued with themselves. "Is he always like this?" Samantha asked.
Sam nodded. "Pretty much, but usually he's arguing with me. I think having him argue with himself is a pretty decent existential exercise."
"I usually calm Dawn down with food..." Samantha added. Sam smiled.
"Surprise, surprise. Wanna take a trip across the street? The rain's mostly let up." The pair slung on jackets and took a room key before closing the bickering halves of the same person inside.
"Dawn doesn't argue with me as much as she used to," Samantha spoke as they tromped across the parking lot.
"Yeah... it's actually kind of unnerving, huh? I kinda missed the days when Dean would call me a pansy-assed bitch." Samantha grinned and waved a thanks to the Ford that let them cross the busy two-lane road.
"So many car rides are just so ridiculously quiet. I mean... I kinda wish Dawn would yell or scream or something. Anything."
"Nothing is worse than the disappointed older sibling routine," Sam agreed. "I'm assuming you haven't told her."
"No," Samantha scoffed. "But she's not stupid, either. She knows Pan and I are... involved. Just like I'm sure Dean knows you and..." Samantha paused, realizing she didn't know the name of her demon sidekick in this new world order.
"Ruby," Sam filled in the blank as he opened the door to the small rest stop mini-mart.
"Just like I'm sure Dean knows about you and Ruby. To some extent, anyways. If Dawn found out... she'd flip. She really would. I don't blame her. I can feel it. I can feel myself slipping sometimes... There's a lot we don't talk about anymore. Dawn never talks about hell – not that I expect her to. But, it's just all piling together now." She plucked a basket from the entryway and moseyed down an aisle. Her and Sam picked food indiscriminately off the shelf and tossed it in the basket.
"But if it means we can end this thing... that's good." Sam hedged. "I mean, I'd rather go crazy in the process of putting a stop to all this than letting it swallow all of existence whole."
"If we succeed, then it'll be okay. It'll be worth it." Samantha added, putting two bags of Doritos in the basket. "If we don't, well... we'll all be dead anyways, right? That's what happens when Lucifer rises. I don't know anything else. We're born hunters, right? What happens when you're a different kind of lynchpin?"
"We wouldn't be the first to go out in a sloppy cataclysm. No one retires from this anyways. This lifestyle doesn't take any prisoners," Sam muttered petulantly, as he grabbed a loaf of bread. They reached the end of the aisle and Sam glanced down to Samantha. She was a lot shorter than him, which he found peculiar. She was probably Mary's height. His mom. Their mom. She looked just like her too. Same face, but with their father's Italian hair and skin tone.
"Are we justifying our actions to ourselves?" Samantha asked.
"And by 'ourselves', you mean we are literally talking to ourselves," Sam added.
"We got problems, kid."
Sam nodded with a side smile as they turned towards the register, which joined a counter baking under a heat lamp, where 'fresh' food was kept just warm enough to ward off salmonella.
"We should get some pie," the pair spoke in unison. Sam and Samntha looked at each other with wary, narrowed eyes.
"This is getting weird, Sam."
"Well, pie does soothe a savage Dean."
"I cannot believe your caveman brain, refuses to admit that maybe fire is slightly uncontrollable. Light is something we can feasibly handle!"
"Well, I don't know if you recall," Dean retorted. "But light was one of the key ingredients in completely melting a friend's eyes out of her - or his, or what the hell ever she is in your world - out of her face, when Cas showed up in his true form. I'd like to keep these puppies right the hell where they are, thank you."
"So you think maybe rigging some kind of improvised flamethrower would be better?" Dawn quirked a brow as she turned to stare at him, sitting in her hip. "I'm detecting a lot of sass from your part of the room over there."
"We brought pie!" Samantha announced, as she and Sam returned from the drizzle.
"So you two are apparently still arguing," Sam muttered.
"Yeah, as a matter of fact we are," Dean barked. "So you all can just stay the heck out of it, while I continue to yell at myself." Dawn rolled her eyes and walked past Dean to take some of the wares on the table.
"Mm... pie. C'mon Dean," she pouted. "You can't be so mad at yourself you can't enjoy a piece of pie. I know I can't." And so Dean and Dawn sat at the end of the same bed, content as children, as they ate their pie in silent synchronization.
Sam and Samantha brainstormed.
"Okay, both light and fire have their pros and cons and I think either one would be viable. The only issue is with fire, how do we stop it once it starts, and light... well how do we start something that bright or powerful in the first place without also killing ourselves or… melting our eyes out."
Samantha pulled a Dorito out of a bag and munched thoughtfully as Sam thought aloud. Dean and Dawn just watched from beneath their brows as they ate their pie. The thunder continued to rumble off in the distance but the storm was gone, swept off this part of the plains. It could only just be seen on the horizon.
"Oh!" Samantha announced around a bite of food. "Sam! Get this," she pointed out the window at the receding storm. "Lightening. Light and fire. Electricity."
"Do you think there are other dimensions besides ours?" Dean asked after a full half hour of silence had dragged through the cab of the Impala. The pair had made a run to the local hardware store to pick up jumper cables. After deciding electricity to be their weapon of choice, they had to figure logistics. Casilda had told Dawn that only a power greater than mankind would be able to stop the anomalies. Whatever had opened them up may have ended up killing the angel that did it. Either they were incredibly powerful, or they were a pawn.
Wherever an anomaly popped up, and none of them really had any idea where that might be, they had to keep track of it long enough for Dawn and Samantha to go back through to their own dimension, taking one end of the jumper cables with them. No one had any idea if it would work. Sam and Dean had agreed to give Dawn and Samantha ten minutes to ground the wires into something, anything, push the misplaced humans back through, before they turned the engine over and shot volts of electricity through time and space. It was certainly an unearthly power. Hopefully it worked to short out the process.
Bobby thought they were all insane.
Dawn and Dean left Sam and Samantha to research in their respective cocoons of technological solitude. Admittedly, they both needed to get the hell out of that motel room. They had at least stopped yelling. They were growing on each other.
Dawn quirked her glance in his direction. "You've seen one you've seen them all, right?"
"What I mean is... Do you think that in some dimension, some butterfly fart in Nepal or whatever might've changed things for us."
"What do you mean?" Dawn asked all joking aside.
"Do you think there's a dimension where we're not hunters. We're all this BS doesn't happen to us?"
"Dean..." Dawn shifted in her seat. "You've lived the few alternate lives various creatures, tricksters, and angels have put us through. We weren't hunters but we were still pretty goddamn miserable. And that time we went back and met mom when she was even younger than us? This hunting things goes to at least our grandparents. Probably further."
"That's a helluva butterfly fart..."
"Yeah..." Dawn nodded. "Admittedly it would be pretty cool if every single one of my immediate family members except Samantha wasn't dead, and I didn't have to spend forty years in hell, but..."
"Nothing else feels right," Dean finished.
"Maybe we're just sadists."
"If this idea of yours destroys my car, I will never forgive any of you. We'd all get through the world just fine if Bobby's shitbox up and died."
Dean was none too pleased to have the Impala involved in the scheme to the right the cosmos. Truth be told it was better than standing in the middle of a cornfield with an iron rod, though not by much... But he wrapped the jumper cables - stripped to the copper - and tossed them in the back seat anyways. "Dean, it's the only way we can muster up enough electricity safely and inconspicuously. Plus it has the added benefit of being mobile," Samantha told him sagely.
"We have no idea where the next anomaly might pop up."
"Well let us all hope that it's Bobby's battery and electric system on the chopping block..." Samantha laughed a little. "I think it's funny that Bobby is a guy in your world too."
"Well, you got all that stuff - and this car - from Dad, right?" Dean asked indicating the exact replica of John Winchester's journal in her hand.
"Yeah. And your Dad did the same for you and Sam. I guess not everything's different, huh? Just some stuff. You're a lot more mellow when you're not spending so much time with yourself. I'm glad Sam and I decided to split you and Dawn up. You're a little more tranquil than my sister. Which is kinda odd."
"I think it's mostly because I feel bad about yelling at my alternate universe little sister. Just doesn't seem fair to pick on a girl."
Samantha rolled her eyes. "I could take you, Dean Winchester. So don't even begin to think I'm some fragile little pixie. I know you went to hell just like Dawn, but who do you think lives it everyday?"
"Huh," Dean laughed once as he shut the trunk. "Not gonna yell at the little sister... not gonna yell at the little sister..." Both he and Samantha walked to their respective car doors and sat inside. Samantha turned on the EMF reader on the dashboard, and Dean turned the car on. "Your hell - Sam's hell - is by your choice. I get that you were both, more or less screwed from birth, but if you think being on the side of the angels is any better you're smoking the wrong crack. I went to hell to save Sam's life - Dawn went to hell to save your ass."
"That was your choice. This ours."
"Saving my pain in the ass kid brother's life wasn't really an optional kind of thing," Dean replied caustically as he pulled out of the home improvement store's lot and headed towards the south side of town. They would patrol the south, Dawn and Sam had the north. They'd keep a weather eye out and hope for the best.
"Of course it is, Dean." Samantha scoffed. "People die everyday. I died a natural death. Some paranoid, power hungry, scared, cursed vet cut my spinal cord. That's nothing paranormal. You chose to bring Sam back. By doing this, I am saving lives. I am making the resurrection worth it. I am exorcising demons, and the people they possess survive. I'm getting strong enough to kill Lilith and you want to balance moral quandaries? We dropped that dead weight a long time ago."
"A moral compass isn't dead weight, Samantha," Dean insisted. "If you can't see the line between good and evil, right and wrong, then where does it end? When do you cross that line? When do you go from being Samantha, Dawn's sister, my sister, to something deserving to be hunted? You can't just toss the moral aspect out the window to make you feel better. That's the whole game we play. We toe that line as hunters everyday. Killing things. But only things. This shit you and Sam are up to is suicide."
"It's not like we plan on living like this forever," Samantha sighed. "Once it's all over–"
"Then what? What, Sam? Tell me, because I'm dying to know! You just give up the demon blood cold turkey and become a regular person again. You're changing. It changes who you are. Just a drop from that yellow-eyed bastard when you were a kid gave you the ability to see the future twenty years later. What kind of damage do you think sucking down a couple pints a week is going to do? This is bullshit, Sam. Total bullshit. I did not spend forty fucking years in hell, just so you could write your own ticket. Does that really mean that little to you? I know I'm a selfish bastard, but I was expecting a little more appreciation. What the hell was it all for then, huh? Why did I go? Why did I come back? Because I'd rather rot in hell, torturing strangers for another forty years then watch you drag yourself down."
"You're yelling at the little sister."
"...holy shit."
Both Dawn and Sam sat upright, staring straight ahead they listened to the static-like crackle. They had parked behind a local supermarket in full view of the parking lot. The anomalies had been cropping up in well-traveled places around town, but it had yet to hit the supermarket. Sam glanced around... no one seemed to notice the way the air and light at the end of the lot began to bend and warp like horizon just over steaming pavement on a hot day.
The effect rippled outward and a moment later a man stepped, seemingly out of the writhing abyss and into the parking lot. He wore all white, from the pants to the jacket, and his skin was pallid and wan. Sam reached for Dawn's shoulder and dragged her downward to slump in the seat like him.
"The hell is that?" she hissed at him. "I um... I think that's the Angel of the Abyss," Sam tried not to swallow his tongue.
"Who?"
"Roll up the window," Sam suddenly noted as he stared at the car's open driver side window in horror. Dawn snapped around and cranked the window sealed and Sam brought his up the last remaining few inches with just enough time to be hit with what felt like a tsunami wave.
The car rocked against two wheels as all light left the sky and the windows blacked. An almighty roar, like a hum deep inside the skull, surrounded them. The sound intensified and the pressure against the car continued until both Dawn and Sam felt their horizons shift and the car tilted on its side, sending Sam towards the driver's side door and nearly cracking his elbow into Dawn's temple. Then as quick as it came, the sound began to subside and light slowly returned to the car.
"You all right?" Dawn asked.
"Good. You?"
"I'll be fine soon as you get all your pointy-ass, gangly appendages out of my shit. Sam stood pushed the passenger side door open, and Dawn climbed lithely out after him. They looked around and, apart from their overturned car, all was well. No swarming tide, no pallid man, no anomaly.
"What was that? How did you know about the windows?" Dawn demanded as the pair futilely tried to rock the car back to its proper position.
"Well... when this whole seal business started up I figured I should read my source material."
"You've been studying the Book of Revelation? Rivers of blood, raising of the dead, locusts and all that stuff–" she paused for a moment. "Locusts... That was a plague of locusts."
Sam nodded. "I think so. Apollyon is the angel of the abyss, he commands an army of mutant locusts. Some people think he and the devil are one in the same, but few of the descriptors agree on that. He's both a place and a person. A place of destruction, the angel of the abyss... It's said everyone fears him - angels, demons, and humans alike - and, get this: he's the one to ferry the souls to Valley of Josaphat for the Last Judgment."
"So we have another harbinger of the Apocalypse on our hands?"
"He's the fifth trumpet. After seven seals are broken it's said that apocalyptic chaos starts to line up at the doors to the earth to wreak havoc. The fifth trumpet and the first woe. His army of locusts is just another part of the show..."
"Maybe it's this angel creating the anomalies," Dawn mused. "Ferries the souls to the Last Judgment, right? He's picking people off left and right, and sure they ended up in my dimension, but maybe he's trying to get them elsewhere."
"They're starting to clean house," Sam realized.
The phone lit up the dashboard and Samantha peeked over Dean's sleeping form to look at the screen. Sam.
She flipped it open. "Sam, what's up? Did you find an anomaly?"
"Roll your windows up."
"Excuse me?" Samantha was slightly confused, and Sam sounded very out of breath. She moved to roll up her window anyways. "Ow," he shouted and Samantha heard the distinct crack of what she thought was his head against something very hard. "Easy around the corners, Dawn. This is the only head I've got."
"I told you to buckle your seatbelt!"
"Sam what is going on?" Samantha asked as she leaned over Dean's sleeping form to crank his window closed. He sprung up from a dead sleep and snatched her wrist as she finished and moved to sit back down. She twisted it easily from his grasp and he looked a little amazed for a moment wondering how she'd managed to do that so seamlessly.
"Apollyon," Sam said. Samantha pulled out her own phone and had a Google page up before Sam could finish his description. "He is the personification of the Abyss. He's a bit like Charon from Greek mythology, now though."
"Ferries the dead to the other side," Samantha spoke as she read the page before her. Dean had been staring at her with rapt attention and one eyebrow was now moving dangerously close to his hairline.
"Yeah, but there's more–"
"Locusts," she nodded. "So you saw him? He came through? Did he take anyone with him? How long did the anomaly last?"
"We don't know if he took anyone. It was kind of hard to tell after his cyclone of mutant locusts rolled the car over. It maybe lasted five minutes."
"That's not a lot of time."
"I bet the manufacturing plant's next," Dawn crackled from the other side. "He's hit up the bank, a gas station, the center of town, a department store, a church, and now a grocery store. He's running out of populated areas."
"We'll be right there." Samantha hung up and flung the phone back onto the dashboard while Dean continued to stare.
He gestured to Samantha in a way that suggested he would like to know what was going on now. "Plant. Now. Drive."
Samantha explained the course of her phone call on the way and they pulled into the plant's lot not five minutes later. It was early afternoon and there was no one around but the lot was about half full of weekend workers. Thank god for Saturdays.
"What makes you think this place is next?" Dean asked climbing out of the Impala while Samantha pulled the jumper cables from the back seat. Dawn popped the hood of Bobby's Chevelle.
"Well," Sam shrugged as he looked over the roof. "She's got a point. This town is tiny and this is the only place left that would reasonably host a decent amount of people. We've really run out of alternative options."
Dean lifted the car's hood and Dawn killed the engine. "Populated areas aside, this town is so small this is one of the last options period. It's here or the school across the rail tracks right there." She pointed through the scrubby to the back of a thankfully abandoned school building not a hundred yards away.
"So now we wait?"
"If you could think of any bug proofing in the meantime, that'd be super," Dawn grimaced. "I'm not looking forward to charging through that..."
Dean and Sam shared mutual grimaces. It only just occurred to the pair that they probably had the easy part of this task. They got to sit inside Bobby's shitbox car and just turn the key - electrocuting the connection between their two parallel existences. Dawn and Samantha were going to have to run in to the heart of the beast, charging past the Angel of the Abyss, through a swarm of locusts and back to the other side.
Now they could only just sit and wait.
"Hey little sister who's the only one?" Dean sang in an awful falsetto. It had been three hours and there had been no signs of Apollyon at either the plant or the school. Sam and Samantha had plotted a chart that was corroborated by Dawn's memory: Apollyon struck every four hours. Sam or Dean alternately patrolled the the town every hour or so - just in case - and nothing else was amiss. Apollyon had not showed up since his appearance in the grocery store parking lot.
The waiting was starting to get a little mind numbing and Samantha had turned on the radio at the three and a half hour mark, attempting to pass the time, completely unaware that - unlike her sister - Dean was actually quite fond of awful oldies karaoke.
Samantha laughed and shook her head from her spot on the Impala's hood. She and Dean were facing the plant. "Dean Winchester. I think I technically would have two brothers. You're not the only one. That's not very fair."
"Thank you very much," Sam retorted from his spot on the trunk. He and Dawn were watching the school.
"Sammy?" Dean scoffed. "Nah... He's your balls that never dropped. The conjoined twin you ate in the womb." Samantha grimaced. "Hey, I saw that episode of Ripley's. It's totally legit."
Dawn laughed loud and long.
"Okay. Fine. Even if it is just an excuse for you to sing bad 80s music."
"I'm offended... Okay not really."
Sam glanced down at his watch. Ten of. "Well, we're almost there everyone. We've got a couple minutes. Let's say we equip up and get ready to send you two back home?"
"Finally," Dawn sighed. "Not that it hasn't been a treat, but I cannot wait for this fiasco to be over. But... it was nice meeting you both. It was... enlightening." Dawn gave Sam an ungraceful pat on the cheek and ducked into Bobby's Chevelle to pull her few things out of the car and stash them in her pockets.
"Be nice to your brother, Sammy," Dawn noted quietly as Sam pulled their own set of jumper cables from the car. "He worries about you a lot and that's a full time job and of itself. Trust me, I know."
Sam laughed once. "I figured by my midtwenties he'd think I could walk and talk and tie my shoes by myself."
"You're all he has left."
"And he's all I have left," Sam countered.
"But you're all he's ever had in the first place," Dawn noted simply.
"Guess I'll you on the flipside, kid." Dean glanced over to Samantha as she watched her sister rifle through the rusty old Chevelle a dozen feet away.
"And do me a favor?" Samantha paused from starting to reconstruct her backpack and glanced up. "Give Dawn a small break? She's worried as shit about you and it's probably only going to get worse as shit gets closer to the fan. Just... stick her out, okay?"
"Dean she's my sister," Samantha said softly. "She's all I have left. You really think Sam's gonna run out on you?" Dean didn't reply. "We're all each other has. Sam and I aren't going anywhere. Do me a favor? Give Sam a break? He knows there's no way the shitshow we got ourselves into can end well. He feels like he's carrying the weight of the world and when it finally crushes him, he's gonna need his big brother to help him up off the ground."
"Deal," Dean nodded.
And then in a completely realistic, ungendered Sam Winchester move, the girl reached out and pulled Dean into a hug that belied her stature. "Stay safe."
Dean didn't have time to respond - his arms out at odd angles as little Samantha squeezed him tight - as a wave moved through the air and butted against the two sibling pairs and the cars. Their heads all tore to the direction the wave had come and a small wrinkle on the horizon began to form just across the train tracks in the school's parking lot.
"Into the Chevelle," Dean barked out. "Sam and Sam: in the back." Dean jumped in the driver's seat and Dawn only just managed to get the passenger door closed before Dean pealed out of the parking lot. He brought the car to a grinding halt only ten feet from where the air began to tear open, fraying at the seams. He pulled the lever to pop the hood and Dawn was already out of the car with the jumper cables wrapped around her crosswise.
Samantha launched herself easily over the seat and out of the car as the world began to hum with the sound of the approaching plague. Sam followed after with much less grace and he took the ends of the cables from Dawn - giving them as much time to get back through. The locusts began to pour through the tear quickly and there was a small shriek as the monsters made contact with Dean, Dawn, Sam, and Samantha's flesh.
"Two minutes," Dawn shouted over the din of buzzing that was once again beginning to shake the car. The sky had grown black and the locusts were everywhere: in hair, in eyes, in clothes, in mouths. "Any less and you'll electrocute me, any longer and the anomaly might close."
"Two minutes," Sam agreed with a nod.
"Go! Quick!" Dean shouted, clipping the second cable in place. The two girls grabbed hands and made for the darkest concentration of locusts, where the air still vibrated with the anomaly's presence.
He and Sam ducked through the waves of locusts and Dean chiseled a layer of them off the steering column to find the key in the ignition.
"Not yet!" Sam shouted, keeping an eye on his watch. The two hunkered down in the car trying as much as they could to protect themselves from the onslaught. What seemed like an eternity being consumed alive, one small bit of flesh at a time. "Okay, go!" At Sam's word Dean turned the engine over. There was an almighty and deafening roar followed by a sound that could only described as a hurricane. And in that instant the world grew quiet and sun returned.
Sam and Dean remained motionless, checking to make sure that they were safe for the moment. Sam was the first to peer over the dashboard.
"Dean..." Sam gasped in awe. "Dean, look! They're back!"
"Whaddya mean they're—" dean glanced over the dash and saw about a dozen people on their hands and knees on the pavement gasping for air. Some were in Sunday finery, some were clutching checkbooks. It was all the folks that had disappeared.
"Casilda and Pan must've figured it out and been ready on the other side. And Dawn and Sam sent them back through."
"Crafty bitches," Dean smirked.
For those of you up on your mythological hierarchies, Apollyon is the Greek name for Abaddon. Abaddon appears in Season 8 for one episode. I wrote this story and the author's note before I ever saw that episode (imagine my face when I finally watched that character pop on screen). The writers don't key very accurately into the mythology like they do with many other creatures, so I did a nameswap and none of us are any worse for the wear.