Title: Hide in the Shadows, Step into the Light
Author: Arian (arianstarr)
Category: gen, futurefic, AU
Spoilers: Up to the season 2 finale
Summary: Sam isn't the only one who doesn't want Dean to die at the hands of the crossroad demon.
Notes: Nearly all of the locations in this story are based on my imagination. I have no medical background, so if something doesn't ring true, it's just proof that I would make a terrible research assistant.
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't profit, just like to play. Supernatural belongs to Eric Kripke, along with the WB and the CW and whoever I might be missing. Original story content belongs to me.
Sam woke slowly, blinking his eyes against the early morning light peaking through the crack between nearly closed curtains. The last thing he could remember was feeling more tired than he had in months and collapsing face first into bed fully clothed. He could see Dean's empty bed and hoped the silence in the room meant his brother went for food and coffee.
He rolled carefully out of bed, feeling hung over and run down. Sam stood and started to pull off his clothes, shedding the grimy feeling of the bar, feeling desperate for a shower and a toothbrush. He could still taste last night's beer. By the time he reached the bathroom, the thought of one week was back in full force. One week. He had one week left with his brother, and he still hadn't found a way to save him from the deal with the crossroad demon. Dean had refused to look for an answer, and Sam had raged at first, demanding to know why not. It had taken his brother three months to crack under the barrage.
Sam flipped on the shower as he thought back to the shitty motel room in a small Texas town. Dean had tensed when Sam started speaking; he'd turned his back and started pulling clothes out of his duffle bag, shoulders tight and back stiff.
"God damn it, Dean, do you want to die?" Sam had finally shouted, voice gritty with anger and pain. "Do you want to leave me alone?"
Dean had thrown the jeans he'd been holding down onto the bed and spun around. "No, Sam!" he'd shouted, face going red with anger. "But if I welsh on this deal, you'll die, and it'll all have been for nothing!"
Sam stepped under the weak water pressure and remembered how Dean had grabbed his wallet, phone, and keys, before storming out of their room. The door had slammed behind him hard enough to crack the cheap, wooden frame, and the neighbours had pounded on the walls and screamed for them to shut up.
Dean hadn't returned by the time Sam stepped out of the bathroom. He glanced around the room. Dean's cell phone and wallet were missing, but the keys to the Impala were still resting on the scarred wooden table by the television. The clothes Dean had been wearing the day before were folded neatly over the back of the room's lone chair, and his duffle lay zipped closed in the corner.
It was the sight of the closed bag that sent Sam's mind spinning in directions he didn't want it to go. Dean never closed his bag unless they were moving on to somewhere new. He claimed it was a waste of time shutting it when he'd just have to open it again later.
Sam reached for his phone and punched the speed dial for his brother's cell. "Answer, Dean. Come on. Answer." When the call flipped to voicemail after a few rings, Sam jabbed the end button without leaving a message.
He didn't want to consider it, but what if Dean had left him? The one time his brother had said he didn't want Sam to be around when the time came, Sam had vetoed the idea and an hour long argument had followed. Finally, Dean had glared and changed the subject. It hadn't come up since. Sam pushed the thought out of his mind. He wouldn't go there unless he had proof. He didn't want to think that his brother would deny him their last few days together.
Sam began pulling on clothes, mentally running through a list of the places Dean could be. Fully clothed, he picked up his phone again and dialed.
"Morning, Sam," Ellen's voice came over the line. "You boys on your way yet?"
"Not yet. We're going to be late."
"Everything alright?"
"Dean's gone somewhere, not sure when he'll be back." He strove for casual and ended up with tense. Ellen picked up on it right away.
"What do you mean by gone somewhere?"
"He wasn't here when I woke up. There was no note, so I figured he'd gone for coffee, but that was almost an hour ago."
"Something happen recently, Sam?"
"No. We went for a couple drinks last night, came back pretty early, and crashed almost right away." Sam paused, his mind reaching for details of the previous night. A couple drinks. He was sure they'd only had two apiece. But he'd been too out of it to take off his clothes when they returned.
"Sam?" He realized he'd fallen silent.
"Ellen. I think something happened to him."
"What makes you say that?"
"We had two drinks each last night then came back to the motel before eleven. But this morning I've got the hangover from hell and I feel like I haven't slept at all."
"You're a lightweight, Sam."
"Dean isn't."
"Sam."
"Look, I know my brother. There are things that just don't add up here. His clothes are folded over the back of a chair. His bag is closed. I know that doesn't mean anything to you, but it does to me. Something's wrong."
"Ok, honey, calm down. Bobby and I are on our way. Where are you?"
As soon as he was off the phone, Sam took another look around. The salt lines were undisturbed; nothing of his had been moved. Dean's bag appeared to be untouched inside and the bed looked slept in.
Moving his search outside, Sam checked the Impala inside and out, but nothing appeared amiss. He made a slow circle of the motel, seeing nothing out of the ordinary until he reached the farthest corner of the motel from the street; the corner closest to their room. A dirt path led to a narrow service road that looked like it hadn't seen use in a dozen years. Foliage had grown over the edges onto the road, and the foot path was wildly overgrown. In the distance, Sam could see the top of a factory with a rotting roof.
Except the path had broken and bent bushes lining the sides. Turning to look away from the factory, Sam could see tire tracks pulling off the dirt shoulder of the road and crushed plants further down. Someone had used the road recently.
Sam began a fast-paced stride along the service road towards the main street. It took him less than five minutes to walk the distance. As he reached the main road, he pulled his phone out and dialed Dean's number again. He didn't bother with a message when voicemail picked up again. He made his way back down the overgrown road, slower this time, looking for any clues as to his brother's whereabouts.
It wasn't until he was walking back across the dirt path that he caught sight of it; the mid-morning sun glinting off a small, golden object just inside the underbrush. Sam dropped to his knees and reached for it, coming back with Dean's amulet.
"Shit." He was on the phone to Bobby moments later. "Someone took him," were the first words out of his mouth.
"How do you know that for sure, Sam?"
"I found his necklace. Dean never takes it off. Not willingly. There's an abandoned service road behind the motel with fresh tire tracks. Bobby, I think someone drugged us and took him."
"We're a couple hours away. Have you started asking around yet?" At Sam's negative response, he said, "Well, get at it boy. We'll see you soon."
Sam made his way back to the motel on auto pilot. His mind was racing through one scenario after another. Everything from the demon coming to collect early, to Dean making it look like he'd been taken to spare Sam seeing him die, to a pissed off someone or something out for revenge. He didn't know what to think.
Questioning the motel staff proved useless. No one had seen Dean since he'd checked them in two days before. Sam started asking other guests to no avail. By the time Bobby and Ellen arrived, he was really starting to freak out.
"Sam we'll find him," Ellen said after taking one look at his distressed expression.
"You don't know that!" He was shouting, but Ellen didn't flinch. "I have seven days left with my brother, the only family I have left in this world, and someone out there is taking that time away from me. It's not fair! God damn it, Ellen, it's not fucking fair." His voice had dropped to a whisper, as he sat down heavily on Dean's empty bed.
Over his head, Bobby and Ellen shared identical looks of concern. Sam was already wound tight. As time had counted down to the end of the year, he had grown progressively worse. Snapping at the little things and turning a blind eye to whatever Dean said or did. They were in for a rough time and they knew it.
After Ellen forced Sam to eat something, he led them out back. They spent the remainder of the daylight searching for another clue. They came up empty. Sam paced and did research that night while the others slept. A constant litany of six days left, six days, just six days running through his head.
By the time morning came, he was furious. His brother had been taken and Sam was willing to kill do whatever it took to get him back. A fleeting thought of "not just Sammy that came back" ran through his mind. It had taken him months to worm that bit of information out of his brother. He remembered the way Dean's eyes had flared and his mouth tightened into a scowl. Dean had walked out of the room and come back three hours later as close to begging Sam to forgive him as he'd ever seen Dean. It had frightened him to see his brother that desperate. Sam had let Dean slide with just about everything since then.
When Ellen and Bobby woke, Sam was wired and ready to go. Only he had nowhere to go. They asked around at the stores and restaurants surrounding the motel, hoping someone would remember something. They arrived back late that afternoon, exhausted and no closer to an answer than they had been that morning. Sam led the way into his and Dean's room and sat down heavily at the table.
"I'm gonna go scrounge up some food," Bobby said, already heading for the door, however; Sam's panicked 'oh god' held him in place.
Sam was staring at something on the table. "Dean," he whispered. With a trembling hand, he picked up the small object. It glinted in the late afternoon sun peaking through the window. Dean's ring.
"Someone's been here. This is Dean's."
A search of the room showed nothing out of place and no signs that Dean himself had actually been there. This time when Sam flew into the motel office the clerk was able to help.
"There was a white cargo van parked outside your room for about five minutes. I didn't see anyone go in or out, but I noticed because I hadn't seen it in the lot before and we haven't had anyone check in since yesterday."
"Thanks," Sam said, nodding as he turned to leave.
The guy stopped him. "I got the plates if you think that'll help." Sam smiled grimly and snagged the slip of paper the clerk held out.
Against the flickering light from a group of television screens, he looked almost as if he were melting into the dark room around him. From the newly built second floor of an abandoned silo, he has the ability to monitor the surrounding outdoors for a two hundred feet in any direction, and the room below containing an unconscious Dean Winchester.
The ground on which the silo was built had been hollowed once, long ago. But that kind of protection doesn't just fade away, so it benefited him to be here. He's added his own charms, as well as spells that most wouldn't know, hadn't known in years, powerful charms that had been lost through the ages and found again by men such as himself. The demon could send her hounds, but they would not get in. Dean Winchester wasn't going to die at the jaws of her beasts, no. He wouldn't die because of some pathetic emotional bargain to save his brother. Dean Winchester was going to die by his hand alone, and little brother Sammy would follow soon after. He has a score to settle, and it would be settled with blood.
He continues to stand before the monitors, dark eyes fixed on where Dean lay strapped to a rickety cot, oblivious to the world and surrounded by a myriad of machinery, various tubes leading in and out of his body.
"Enjoy your last few days of rest, Dean, because once you're mine, you won't remember what it feels like not to be in pain."
Below him, Dean remains unmoving in his drugged state.