Of All the Western Stars

Authors: Skadu and Elaeazeph
Rating: R, for strong language and violence
Warnings: Contact the authors with specific concerns.
Synchronicity: Divergent universe, post All Hell Breaks Loose, Part II
Disclaimer: Supernatural is the property of Eric Kripke and his colleagues. We don't claim ownership. But Toby (fucking) Parsons is all ours. Rah!
Summary:

The brothers Winchester emerge from the graveyard in Wyoming to a turbulant atmosphere where hunters don't trust them and demons are too eager to assist. Azazel's death has stirred the supernatural world and set in motion plans that eclipse anything Sam and Dean have yet encountered. And amongst it all, they must establish a balance between Dean's need to keep moving away from his fate and Sam's desperate desire to stand still and fix it.

A/N: This is the result of many, many months of collaborative fic, just now being put into a postable phase. Written by the both of us, and edited extensively by Elaea, who is... pretty much the most badass partner-in-crime one could possibly ask for.

This fic is also available at its Livejournal forum, "westernstars", which you can find through my profile. I also highly recommend Elaeazeph's other work.

Alright, kids. Buckle up. It's a hell of a ride.

I.i For Momentum to Catch

The cellphone in Dean's pocket vibrates. It probably erupts into agitated sound, too, but he can't hear it above the wailing of the banshee in the opposite corner of the room. Instead, he vaults over the couch and kneels behind it, avoiding being struck by a lamp or bookend or whatever-the-fuck the bitch is using for ammunition. He reloads the clip in his Glock--which, really, isn't doing wonders for him against a ghost--and peers around the far side of the couch for the handle of the shotgun that scattered there.

A power cord, attached to the old television set that soars past him, whips him across the face. Dean ducks back behind cover and swears. "A little help here would be great!"

The brothers Winchester are in the second story of an old, Victorian-style home host to a particularly violent banshee. When the salt-and-burn tactic failed, on account of cremation, they came to the house in search of whatever trinket might be keeping the woman here. But Dean--high on life and adrenaline and whatever else has been his excuse for the reckless, fast-paced weeks since Sam's resurrection--had charged into the house without pause or plan, leaving Sam to chase after. Which is why Dean is now being driven closer to the balcony that overlooks a small cliff and windy moor, and Sam's foot and shotgun are pinned underneath a heavy cedarwood cabinet in the adjoining room.

The banshee wails with renewed vigor. Dean claps his hands over his ears, but the sound is a wall of force that knocks him backward, sending both body and couch sliding perilously closer to the balcony doors. He's not too keen on taking the dive onto the hard rock and soil beneath, and so braces his feet against the doorframe and locks his knees to wedge himself there. From this position, his maneuvering options are limited; a desk drawer barely misses his head. "Really, Sam, any minute."

Sam searches for handholds to displace the weight of the cabinet painfully crushing his foot, but torque and leverage are not on his side. He has to wrench his foot free with an unpleasant twist of the abused ankle and abandon the gun as a lost cause. It's Dean's fault for crashing into the house like an action film hero. How is Sam supposed to keep up with that? Dean is riding the adrenaline trip like a PCP junkie. Sam has nothing but restless nights and a pit of worry in his stomach that is eating him alive.

Presently, though, what Sam has is a banshee to dispatch. The sound is deafening; wax earplugs do nothing to dampen the piercing wail, only sink deeper into his skull. He executes a tumble to collect Dean's discarded shotgun and fires a rocksalt cartridge at the ghost, dispelling her. The cellphone sings shrilly in the silence that follows, accompanied by the ringing of their ears.

Dean sits up and smiles his sloppy, goofy grin at Sam. "About damn time you got here, Princess. What'd you do? Stop for tea?"

"Yep. It was delicious, too, until you started bitching. I mean, what the hell, man? You can't keep doing this. Dashing in--" like he's got nothing left to lose? "--like you're Rambo, guns blazing." Displeasure registered, he begins searching the scattered vanities and wardrobes in the room for the binding object.

Dean is climbing to his feet when the air rushes out of the room--a tangible inhaling--and so the force of the banshee's scream hits the flat of his chest and pushes him through the sweeping french doors onto the wrought-iron grating of the balcony. He wheezes, trying to regain breath that the impact knocked out of him, and digs his fingers into the iron weave to keep from going over the edge.

"Try the locket," he shouts to Sam, but even he can't hear himself over the shrieks.

Sam uses his second shot--nothing left, now, the extra shells are in Dean's jacket pocket--and in the ringing silence as the banshee reforms, he demands unnecessarily loud, "The what?"

"The locket. The locket, the thing on her neck." Dean unhooks a hand to point at the banshee's neck and the heart-shaped pendant hanging there. Sometimes it's hard to believe his brother is the college-educated one. In that moment she wails anew, angered, and the force whips through Dean, strains against the fingers of his left hand curled in the iron mesh until three muted pops travel up his skeleton to echo in his skull. He digs his right hand in again and grits his teeth.

He dangles, buffered by the turbulent shrieking, trying not to look down at the thirty feet of air between himself and the rock below. Inside, completely ignored by the banshee, Sam is digging through the lacquered wood vanity for the jewelry box and making a funeral pyre of scarves and lighter fluid on the floor. When the locket catches, the banshee's scream pitches and then dies in a burst of flame and loud--painful--silence. Dean coughs appreciatively. "Made me drop my gun. What a bitch."

Sam leans over the balcony, tone completely conversational. "So you'll notice that it was he who stopped for tea who just took out said bitch, not he who ran in first like an idiot."

"Yeah, and you'll notice that you couldn't even figure out the binding components. Pansy. Go back to your Barbie dolls; I have real work to do." He swings, bodily, trying to kick his feet up on the ledge.

"Uh huh. And you would've burned them from down there how?" Sam gloats, arms crossed and a smug grin on his face.

"Would've found a way." Dean manages to kick a knee up, which is more than a little uncomfortable on the swollen fingers tangled in the grating. If he'd have to guess, he'd say he's got a few broken on his left hand. Bitch, he thinks savagely. Then he looks up at Sam, and past Sam, at the flames that are sprouting from the wooden panel floors and climbing the walls. "You set the room on fire? That was your solution? You set the room on fire?" Because really? Sam is going to criticize him for dashing in? When he set the room on fire? Yeah, no.

Sam is unimpressed. "And? You ran into a room with a banshee. Besides, you should be happy with that. Pyromaniac." He hauls Dean up, mindful of catching the purpling fingers or putting too much weight on his own bruising ankle. Behind them, the fire spreads quickly, hungry for the dry and brittle wood.

They collect the shotgun that the flames are starting to itch towards and heads down the stairs, but Sam stops him and gestures at the upturned cabinet. "Wait wait wait. My gun's under there."

Dean stares at him like he's brain-damaged. "Burning building. Not structurally sound. Ringing any bells for you?"

He lingers a minute, in time for a beam to give an ominous creak in the next room, followed by a sharp snap. The floor shakes and groans. Sam rolls his eyes, glares at him as he heads down the stairs in a lopsided partial limp. "I blame you. I liked that gun."

"Don't blame me. I'm not the one that lost a fight with an inanimate object. Pansy." Dean kicks a teacup at Sam's feet and grins wickedly.

From a safe distance, they watch the house erupt in flames. Dean crows appreciatively when the second story collapses, and claps Sam on the back. "Overkill, but it's an impressive show. Good job." In his pocket, his cellphone chirps a reminder of a missed call, but he reaches in and silences it.

Three weeks following that mess in the graveyard in Wyoming, the hunting community is still giving Sam and Dean a wide berth. Superstitions run deep among those who walk the darkness--a pinch of salt over the shoulder, unbroken mirrors, knocking on wood--and the Winchesters are Bad Luck no matter which way you look. But they've got a few contacts that are willing to stick it out, and so a couple of possession cases in Mississippi fall into their lap the next morning.

Dean is not about to let a busted hand keep him from sending a few demons back to Hell, and jury-rigs a splint for the breaks using popsicle sticks and duct tape. He looks like a craft-store rendition of Edward Scissorhands, but he's proud of it and holds his hand out to admire his handiwork--ha!--before setting about negotiating the mechanics of steering and shifting with only one functioning hand. Sam folds his long legs into the familiar confines of the passenger seat and settles with a book to keep himself occupied for the hours to come.

They drive.

A Southern summer is hot and uncomfortably humid. Worse--the dashboard fan had ground to a halt before they'd crossed the Wyoming state line, and Dean couldn't be bothered to stand still for the twenty minutes required to fix it. They roll down the windows of the Impala and dare the mosquitoes to try and catch them, flying down the highway at criminal speeds. Dean manages to keep the cops away from them by force of will alone.

Stereo notwithstanding, the drive is mostly silent. Sam has enough to occupy himself, worrying over the mechanics of demonic deals and trying to find answers amongst the fading print of dusty tomes. Dean's thoughts are on the cellphone sitting on the bench seat beside him, that doesn't ring but constantly threatens to. The two most recent messages in its call history are from Joshua and Finnegan--hunters Dean hasn't seen since he was working solo gigs during Sam's Stanford years, and the kind of men that wouldn't call him up on a whim. But he has a pretty good idea what they'll say when he checks his voicemail, because he's received three messages from other contacts saying the same thing. It's inevitable the call will come in that Dean can't ignore. He's just waiting.

So their life is reduced to a kind of routine: drive, hunt, kill, research, drive, hunt, kill, monotony broken only by food and sleep and complaints about the heat. They smoke the demons in Mississippi.

Exorcisms have become familiar in the wake of Wyoming, so much so that Dean has stitched the Latin into the lining of one of his favorite collared shirts and Sam's accent is slipping out into the rolling cadence of the words. It's embarrassingly easy to put the demons down, trap them and send the fuckers sailing. At one time, that might have been important to them--to regain a little of the ground they lost when the yellow-eyed demon claimed their mother and then their father, to take back some measure of control and be able to hold back the darkness, to feel safe in a world full of monsters. But it doesn't matter. None of it matters, at least not to Sam, because they sit on the verge of losing something more important--each other--and the hunting is just static to cover the silences that they aren't speaking into.

They've said all of ten words between them about the deal, but it's all Sam's thinking about. Dean is coping in his own way, fast-talking and fast-moving and everything just so fast that it borders on frantic. (But Sam doesn't want to see it that way so he doesn't. It's just Dean, it's just how he is, isn't it?) Dean is mechanically efficient, inconsiderate of the fact that every demon expunged might soon be his close company. Perhaps it's reckless abandon: that if he must go down in flames, he'll take as many as he can with them. Or maybe he wants to make that stupid, stingy demon regret she'd even given him a year to live, and do it by carving the price into the fire and brimstone with black demon souls.

Sam doesn't need the dangerous set of his brother's shoulders. He doesn't need reminders of how Dean was after Dad died. (Blood on his face.) Every demon Dean throws down and douses in holy water is a question: who is he mourning?

He wants to shove him. I'm looking, damn it. But he doesn't. He is moving, arguing Sam, with his long silences and hours spent at the local library and only a fraction dedicated to their current case. He doesn't say anything about the deal. He just quietly trusts the fact that he will save him, and spouts another regna terrae, cantate Deo.

Psallite Domino. Praises to the Lord.

Eventually they stall, and Dean doesn't have anything else to do but stutter to a stop and book a room at the motel until they can dig up another case. He's itchy, being forced to ground, but Sam immediately retreats to the sanctuary of yet another library. By the time he returns, backpack slung over his shoulder and laptop fan humming faintly from prolonged use, it's dusk. He deposits his things at the foot of his bed wordlessly.

"Find anything good?" Dean asks, looking up from where he's cleaning the guns.

"Sure." He collapses onto the bed that isn't covered in weapons, burying his head in the pillow. There's a headache building behind his eyes--too much reading.

The Walther comes together like pieces of a puzzle in Dean's expert hands. Weapon maintenance is probably the only thing he'll sit still for, nowadays, and even that is strained. He's fishing for something when he asks Sam about any of the potential cases he'd uncovered during the day, and Sam lies admirably and denies seeing anything of merit, but Dean is relentless. There's frustration building in his tone, and something darker, edgier, underneath it, that isn't familiar.

"Oh, so you ruled out the potential tree nymph in Kinkaid Lake, Illinois? I was thinking that there might have been too much rain. And the triple-homicide in the house in McCormick, South Carolina wasn't a poltergeist? Yeah, I can see that, because the house is relatively new. And there was no conclusive evidence that the suicide at Lake Tahoe was supernatural? That's a shame."

Sam lies still for a minute before he decides to play Dean: close his eyes and shove his face back into the pillow, pretending the problems are nothing. "Must've missed those," he says in a muffled voice.

"I see," Dean says slowly, knowing he's cornered Sam. He stands up and tosses the rag on the table, with the audacity to look betrayed as he glares accusingly at his brother. "So when you said you were going to the library, was that to catch up on the Hardy Boys? Because it sure as hell wasn't to look for another job. So what then? Because I swear, Sam, if you tell me you were looking into the damn deal then things are gonna get ugly real fast."

"I was looking for an exorcism ritual that doesn't take twenty minutes to recite. Thanks for asking," Sam snaps back.

He's met with skepticism. "Yeah? Any luck?"

"No, not really. But I got a headache for my efforts, so how about we all just shut the hell up?" Lies, all lies. It's all they say to each other--Dean lying about how fine he is with everything and Sam lying about how much work he's doing to make sure it stays that way. It's a pain-in-the-ass dance that he's rapidly growing tired of.

Dean shrugs into his jacket and grabs his wallet from the desk. "You let me know when you want to suck it up and get back to our job." He tosses a newspaper onto the bed beside Sam's head before he walks out the door.

Once there's silence Sam rolls onto his back and digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. Fuck off, Dean. I'd be doing our fucking job if you hadn't— No. I'd be doing our fucking job if I hadn't— Whatever. He sleeps less and he's reading and writing and wandering empty useless libraries until he can't focus his eyes anymore, so Dean of all people can just back off.

His hand finds the newspaper, crumples it with an unnecessarily tight fist before he pulls it up and stares at the front page. "Roanoke Colony mystery revisited in Greensboro, Indiana," it proclaims. The journalist continues to explain that all electronic communications into and out of the city had ended at approximately the same time: between two o'clock and four o'clock in the morning. When officers from New Castle drove out to investigate, they found empty houses and offices, and the word 'Croatoan' carved into the post of the city's single stoplight. It was being quarantined as a site of a potentially devastating epidemic, but no bodies had yet been recovered.

After he's finished scanning the article he throws it on the floor. Not even a full day standing still.

When Dean returns he's got oil and engine grease on his hands, deli sandwiches in a paper bag, and a six-pack of beer. He slinks in the door without saying anything, like maybe he recognizes that he might be a bit of an ass but isn't going to confess to anything, just wants to see if Sam's going to let it slide.

It's not something that he usually does, and certainly not for small arguments. But the nature of their relationship has fundamentally changed since Cold Oak. ('Since Cold Oak', not 'since Sammy died' or 'Dean sold his soul' or 'they killed the demon,' because naming things gives them power over you.) And now, with only a year left, it seems stupid to waste it arguing with Sam when he's the one he spent it on. So he sets food and drink on the table next to Sam's laptop and moves to wash his hands.

Sam accepts both without any word about the reasoning behind it. The Mac is humming in front of him, an article about Roanoke Island spread across the screen. Researching their job like a good boy, he notes angrily, but he keeps it to himself. He twists the cap free and takes a sip before he gives Dean a querulous look. "You always have to choose the pain-in-the-ass cases." Translation: apology (mostly) accepted.

It cuts through the tension, and loosens Dean's tongue. "Thought we should head up to Greensboro, check things out. Getting past the quarantine will be a trick, but it's a place to start. Not like we've got a lot to go on, with this one." Dean shrugs and snags a beer, uncaps it with his ring--a flashy parlor trick that's become an ingrained habit--and drops onto the bed. Guiltily, he adds, "I fixed the fan." Like he's only just realized that maybe he's been hitting things a bit harder than usual, and should probably slow down.

"Oh, joy. We can just be half-plastered to 100-degree leather seats now," Sam replies, skimming another article on the Indiana case. "Greensboro? S'what, a day and a half away?"

A day and a half of long, twisting roads underneath the burning summer sun. Less than five thousandths of a year spent driving, just the two of them, just music and an open sky above them. The space doesn't make it less claustrophobic: three hundred sixty-six minus twenty-seven point five...

About an hour inside Illinois, Dean's cellphone vibrates like an angry hornet, and it shouldn't surprise him that Bobby Singer can communicate by cellular signal just how damn serious he is about Dean picking up this call. He pulls off to the side of a dusty two-lane highway and kills the engine, climbs out into the dry heat, and answers. "Hey Bobby." Abruptly he tips his head back, angling away from the angry voice shouting through the receiver. He has the presence to look slightly guilty.

Sam's been buried in a book for the better part of the last hour, his knees bumping against the dashboard with every jostle of the craggy road. He throws the door open to let in the heat that is, at least, moving. Albeit sluggishly. Stretches his legs out the door without getting to his feet, shoulder against the sticky leather seat, wondering why they can't have a job in Canada or Alaska while staring at the book without really reading it. He's mostly listening.

In the rippling heat from the pavement, Dean paces and scrubs at the back of his neck. He speaks into the phone, "Yeah, Bobby. I know. I've--" Boots scuff in the dirt, and Dean folds his free arm across his chest sullenly. Sam muses over the words through the stifling heat. Bobby must be lecturing, because Dean picks disinterestedly at fuzzballs on his shirt with popsicle stick fingers.

There is a very noticeable moment when the conversation turns, because Dean--who is always so full of restless energy, fidgeting and humming and drumming--becomes absolutely still. Sam looks up, reading the set of his shoulders and back, and the terse crunch of his feet in the gravel. Dean glances at him once, sharply, then paces another five feet in the opposite direction, speaking levelly, "No, I don't have any idea. Really. Could be a lot of things." Crickets chirp in the silence: Bobby saying something important and the cellphone holding all the secrets in. Sam catches frustration in the quiet grind of his teeth.

The energy that suddenly possesses Dean is not warm restlessness, but nerves. Nervous energy: the need to move and move and move until he outruns whatever it is that is haunting his steps. He paces in the space between himself and the Impala. "So he said. Yeah. Nate, PJ Hawkins, Rollins, Joshua, Finnegan. Hunter--well, obviously. He was wondering about--yeah. You think? Yeah, I know what it sounds like."

Sam doesn't recognize some of the names, but Joshua is familiar--Dad worked with him when they were teenagers. All hunters? Might be who's been calling as of late. But about what? Someone working through the grapevine? Dean spares another glance at Sam, his brow furrowed in confusion. "You're not the first to say it. He's good. Damn good, and--" Bobby interrupts with something, and Dean nods along. Sam has the feeling that "damn good" isn't going to be "damn good" for them.

"You know we will. Yes sir." The phone slaps shut and is tossed onto the seat. Dean stands between the body of the car and the door, drapes his arms over it and hangs there for a slow minute and stares at the rolling horizon, letting agitation bleed out of him because his life is suddenly too short to be wasted on things like this.

He's waiting for momentum to catch him and propel him in one direction or the other.

Finally, Dean slides into the Impala and starts up the engine. He digs around in the shoebox of cassette tapes for Metallica and catches Master of Puppets. It slips into the deck as he pulls back onto the road: clean, simple guitar chords, unsettling. Sam lets the sound roll for awhile, looking for meaning between the words to Bobby and the choice of music. (Metallica calms him down.) After the courteous period of silence he clears his throat. "So what was that about?"

"That was Bobby." Dean doesn't immediately elaborate, choosing his words and sorting out the kernel of truth from the lies he's about to tell Sam. He slides into that fake plastic smile he uses for all his acts, wears it like a familiar leather jacket. "It's the same old bullshit. Hunters that shoot before they think. Somebody else on our trail."

Slouched into the seat, Sam looks all relaxation but he's not fooled. He's been hunting with Dean for most of his life, and knows all the lies and the cons. It's genuine Dean Winchester bullshit, and it's insulting. "Must be pretty good if they've got Bobby bitching you out. 'Damn good.' Who would have that many hunters calling you? It's not Gordon; that guy's a friggin' idiot, and most people know it."

"You know what I don't get?" Dean asks abruptly, interrupting Sam. "What the fuck is a banshee doing tossing me out of windows? They're death omens. They aren't supposed to be hurting people."

"They don't always follow the pattern. That Woman in White in Jericho was making men cheat so she could punish them." He switches back stubbornly. "Did Bobby say who he thought it was?"

The conversation rolls on without Sam. "Or maybe it's because I'm already dead? Sold my soul, I'm halfway in the grave already, so she's just trying to finish the job? Put me to rest proper?" Dean is taking jabs, low and painful stabs that Sam doesn't deserve and certainly doesn't need. He flicks the turn signal on and speeds past a little red Camry.

Sam stares at Dean for a minute. "That's cheerful." Shrugging, he falls back against the seat, already making excuses. "I didn't look at the autopsies that closely. Could've been they all had coronaries waiting to happen, and the banshee just played premature reaper. I don't know." After a pause he adds, "So did he or didn't he?"

"Have a coronary? I don't know. Does that mean that all death omens are going to take a liking to me? Because that will get old. Demons need to put some fine print on these things or something."

"Ha, ha," is Sam's dry reply. "Well you only need to worry about the ones that like to throw people out windows. And I meant did Bobby know who's following us, jackass." Battery rolls into Master of Puppets, and Dean slaps the steering wheel with each hit. The answer hangs in the air. "Six different hunters call you and no one has any clue who it is?"

"Sam." It's a warning. He's trespassing, walking into territory that he has no right being on, much less trying to fortify himself there.

"Dean," he parrots back. Sam knows where all the land-mines are, and isn't afraid to tread in this place. "The last thing we need is some hunter showing up in the middle of this and screwing everything up because you wouldn't tell me what the hell is going on."

"There's nothing to worry about, okay? I've got it covered."

"'Ignoring' isn't the same as 'got it covered'."

Dean is a ball of tension in the driver's seat. "I'm not ignoring it, okay? This guy knows his stuff. He knows where to go and what questions to ask, and a bunch of people are getting a really bad feel off it. I'm paying attention; I know that's bad news. But we're moving fast, and we're only in communication with people we know we can trust, and nobody knows that we're on this job. So yeah, it's covered." He wraps his fingers around the steering wheel, tight, and glares at the stretch of sunny road like he could will a storm cloud into existence. The Impala takes a turn uncomfortably fast, and a duffel bag slides across the backseat with the centripetal force.

The set of Sam's jaw is stubborn. "And you didn't think that maybe I should know this, too?"

Dean locks his arms against the steering wheel and sinks into the driver's seat. "It's not your problem."

Incredulity, mixed with a fair bit of resentment. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"Because this guy's not looking for us." His thumb taps the steering wheel agitatedly, and even though the Impala is edging toward ninety, Dean's foot finds the accelerator pedal. Fast, faster, faster still--no matter how fast he goes, he can't outrun the things that are chasing him. "He's looking for me."