Disclaimer: I don't own SPN. Things would be very different if I did, let me tell you.
Author's Rant: Okay, so, if you're reading this, then logically you should have read 'A Hollywood Hazing' and 'Care Packages' as well. If you havn't you may be a little confused... Anywho, this all takes place in Season 3, the Year of the Deal, after the boys have done their stint in Elizabethtown and Dean's brain is on fire with the crazy that went down there, and the things Casey told him. It really is time they took a break...
One: Begin Again
He stands in grasslands; narrow, dull yellow leaves, half-broken in some absent wind that reach his knees. It must be night, because he can barely see further than six feet in any direction, though there are no stars overhead, only the endless, unrelieved blackness.
He can hear nothing save his own breathing, feel nothing save his curling hands and the earth, so very solid beneath his bare feet.
Then out of the dark, there is the rush and hiss of shifting grass…but no discernable footsteps.
He tenses, braces himself for a fight, though he has no idea what's coming and no way to defend himself against it save the strength of his limbs.
A shape looms slowly out of the black and he knows there is no defending against something of that size.
Slowly, so slowly, he begins to make out the half-familiar form; the lines, the arcs and curves of it.
Out of the velvet black night walks the white elephant.
In truth, it's an African, with ears like blankets held out from the broad head. But its skin is like old white leather, spotted and freckled the way silver does as it tarnishes. The tusks that preclude it as it sways toward him, great footsteps near silent, are glowing pearl.
When it stands before him, not three feet away, he sees the eyes – intelligent, familiar eyes; not the usual elephantine amber, but deep, rich blue.
He frowns, reaches out.
"I know you," he says.
The elephant bows its head, and as his hand meets warm flesh, he looks up, and sees the beginning of the word written in wide black brushstrokes down its spine.
The elephant regards him, gaze as blue as any sky. The whisper against his ear is its voice.
"This is where it began –"
Lightning flares in one magnesium-bright instant, lighting the grasslands around them. Sam sees the familiar gravestones and knows where he is.
"– and this is where it will end."
Sam wakes in the polluted dark of the motel room, his brother still sleeping in the bed next to his own. The air still smells of dry grass, and when he blinks, the reverse silhouette of the elephant burns in his mind's eye.
He hasn't dreamt like that since they opened the Devil's Gate…
…and yet if Dean asks in the morning, Sam will smile and shrug and say nothing at all.
In the end, it's Dean's decision to take Peggy up on her open-door policy.
Sam arrives back in their motel room with food in hand to find Dean sitting on his bed, a little less hunch to his shoulders than there has been in recent days, talking on his cell and smiling, which is rather novel too. For a week after Elizabethville Dean was…not brooding exactly, but troubled, and Sam worries more and more about what went on between him and Casey while they were stuck together in that basement.
Demons lie, Sam knows, but sometimes they do it by omission.
Something she said, or did, has stuck with Dean, leaving him mentally scrabbling like a bear with a burr on its back that it can't reach.
It's making both of them twitchy.
"Who?" Sam mouths, setting down the food on the table.
Dean glances up at him, still smiling, and mouths back, "Peggy."
Sam frowns. This is new. In the – what is it now? – almost four months they've known Peggy, Dean has never been the one to call her. It's always Peggy calling them or Sam calling Peggy and hitting 'speaker-phone' so she can talk to both of them while Dean drives, or eats, or spring-cleans the arsenal that lives under the floor of the Impala's trunk.
There isn't anything mean-spirited in it, just that Dean doesn't really think in terms of social calls; you call someone for information, or help, or to check up on them…or, more often than not with Dean, to seduce them.
Sam really hopes this isn't the latter…
"Alright…yeah…" His brother glances at him again. "Yeah…see you in a week, Peg."
Wait…what?
Dean calmly hangs up and looks over at Sam, who is still standing beside the table and now staring at his brother with his eyebrows steadily climbing his face.
"We're going to LA," Dean says, then watches him closely, as though waiting for a reaction.
"Uh, okay. Not that I'm not happy to be going to see Peggy, but why now?"
Dean shrugs. "She invited us."
"Well, great, but we've been invited before…"
"This time we're not on a job, or too far away," Dean says, shrugging again as he makes a beeline for the food.
Sam snorts. 'Not too far away'…conveniently ignoring the fact that there's most of the country between them and Cali. It really will take them the better part of a week to get there, unless Dean plans to floor it the whole way, which isn't really feasible.
"Besides," his brother continues through a mouthful of carry-away lamb roast, "by the time we get there it'll be July Fourteenth."
Sam frowns. "What's on July Fourteenth?"
"Hell if I know. Peggy just asked that we be there by then if we decided to come." He grins. "Well, demanded, really, but its not like she's in the immediate vicinity threatening to stab me with a fork…again."
Its a memory Sam treasures.
"Yeah…" Sam steels himself. "Look…really, it'd be great to see her again…" It really would, "but, Dean…there are still things we can do, things we need to look into. The Deal –"
Dean's hand comes down on the table.
It isn't loud, or violent, or anything like that, but its a sharp movement, and it does what it was designed to do and gets Sam's attention.
So does Dean's expression.
"A week, Sam," he says, gaze steady. "That's all I'm asking for here. A week, maybe two. We've been running ragged for almost two months here and…downtime okay? We could both do with some. A week to get there, another to chill out, drink some beer, eat food that wasn't put together on an assembly line. You and Peggy can get together and do your little book club thing…"
Sam flushes. He and Peggy have been emailing each other drafts of each other's work almost since they met. He thought he was being subtle; never showing his or her work to Dean, or leaving his writing notes out where Dean could find them.
Dean wasn't even awake when Sam unwrapped Peggy's early/late birthday present to him; a handsome journal bound in dark green leather, for him to write in when he needed to feel paper under his fingers. When the words where burning him up too fast and the laptop was too slow waking up.
Evidently he hasn't been subtle enough. Crap…
Dean's smiling now.
"Two weeks, Sam," he murmurs. "The Deal can wait two goddamned weeks."
Sam swallows, eyes ducking to the floor, and nods.
Two weeks…they can swing that…
Author's Latter Rant: I feel that break coming on.