"Ferrying the Dead"
Blood.
Blood everywhere.
Smears of it on the shattered motel room door.
Footprints of it, tracked across the floor.
Big prints. Male. Styne.
No sound at all. No movement.
Dean hesitated a fleeting instant as he stepped through the broken door, noting the direction of the footprints, aware of his brain feeding him a myriad of emotions, of scenarios in sharp, fast flashes of images and understandings.
Dread.
That's what he felt. That's what surged to the forefront.
Sheer, overwhelming dread.
Because he knew.
He didn't want to know.
He wanted to deny. To refuse.
But he'd been doing this too long. It had happened too many times.
Dread, and knowledge, and comprehension despite denials, was enough to make him lower his gun.
Because he knew.
Sam moved ahead of him, moved swiftly, strode toward the bathroom.
For some reason, he could not take point. Could not move swiftly.
Dread.
Tell me no. Tell me it's not. Tell me she's just gone. That he's taken her. Because we can get her back.
We'll get her back.
Let her just be gone.
Please . . .
She'd holed up in the bathroom. That's where she'd called from. And Eldon Styne, bleeding from the stump of an arm he'd torn off, had tracked her.
Had come.
Had found her.
Let her just be gone.
We can get her back.
Sam moved up into the bathroom door, stood close against the jamb, prepared. Dean saw his brother's posture change, heard the breathy, choppy exhalation.
Heard the words upon it.
"Oh—God."
He moved swiftly then. Stepped up next to his brother. Heard the caught breath, the gagging sound; was aware of Sam pressing the back of his arm against his mouth.
He looked into the bathroom, and dread became emptiness. The utter emptiness of knowing.
He could barely shape her name.
But he did. He said it.
Let her just be gone.
We can get her back.
She was gone.
They could never get her back.
'Charlie loves you, Dean. We all love you.'
She'd done it for him.
Sam slid down to the floor, both legs collapsing. Dean heard the gun thunk against tile as his brother released it. Sam huddled on the floor like a kid with his world collapsed around him, and for the first time in all his life Dean did not want to kneel down, to put a hand upon his brother; to tell him all would be okay, that they would fix whatever it was; that they would be okay, that they'd get through it no matter what because they were brothers, and that was all that mattered. Brothers, always brothers. It was the Winchester mantra.
But now? No. He couldn't.
'Can't freakin' believe it . . . you got Charlie involved with this again—and now she's missing?'
She wasn't missing anymore.
"Oh God," Sam blurted. "Oh God . . ."
'Charlie loves you, Dean. We all love you.'
People who loved him died.
He tucked his gun into the waistband at the small of his back. Took two steps to the tub.
Two steps. That's all it took.
She'd died in a skeevy little motel room like the hundreds of skeevy little motel rooms they'd stayed in all of their lives.
He knelt down on one knee there at the side of the tub. Felt the hard clench in his chest, the pain that filled his throat. He swallowed it back with effort.
Reached out. Placed a gentle hand on her head, touched that glorious riot of red hair.
'Give whoever it is whatever they want, you understand?'
And she'd said, 'I can't do that, Dean."
She'd known. She'd committed.
She was a hunter.
Sam moved behind him, rising. His voice trembled, but his words were prosaic. "Dean—we need to get her out of there."
"I'll do it."
"Dean—"
"I'll do it."
"I can help you with this—"
And he was on his feet then, had spun to face his brother. They stood very close because the bathroom was so small, but also because Dean stepped into him.
Sam had been taller for years, but he remained the younger. Dean saw Sam register what was in his older brother's face, and he moved back. He didn't look away, but he gave way. His eyes were devastated.
'- - can't be sliced, diced, shredded, burned, drowned . . . cannot be destroyed. Isn't that crazy? Because I know I saw something burn.'
'I thought it was the only chance to get you free of the Mark, so I grabbed it.'
Dean lifted her from the tub, carried her out of the bathroom, laid her down upon the bed. With great care he arranged her limbs. And then Sam was there, doing something after all, and Dean let him. His brother, with a wet washcloth, cleaned her face of blood.
They wrapped her in both bedspreads. Dean carried her to the Impala, placed her into the back seat. The rain, he thought, was appropriate.
'God's crying,' his mother had told him when he was very little, and asked why it rained.
No radio. No tapes. Just the rumble of the Impala, serving as a hearse.
And how many times had she performed such a mission? The psychic, Pamela Barnes. Bobby. Hell, his own body, from New Harmony, Indiana to Pontiac, Illinois.
Ferrying the dead.
Sam did not, this time—for once in his life—attempt to engage his brother in conversation. To ask how he felt.
Or to explain himself.
He drove until the rain stopped. Until the full moon broke through the clouds. And then he pulled over, turned off the ignition, stared through the windshield into the darkness.
After a moment he threw open the door, climbed out, walked across the highway verge until he stood atop the cusp between level ground and a hill falling away.
There were stars as well as the moon, spread across the sky.
And he remembered two years before, the night when the angels fell. When the light of their passage, the flames of burning wings, eclipsed the stars and the moon.
As Sam, sprawled across the ground beside the Impala, held in his brother's arms, lay dying of the trials.
He wanted to be angry. He had been angry, at the motel.
He heard the grind of cranky hinges as Sam exited the car. Heard, too, the crunch of boots against gravel, then the swish through unmowed grass. But Sam didn't come up to stand beside him. He stood just off his older brother's right shoulder, a little behind, giving precedence to the grief.
Dean stared hard into the sky. Thought about counting the stars. Thought about asking of the heavens a question it wouldn't answer. That God wouldn't answer.
But Dean knew it. He knew it anyway.
It was the price they paid.
He heard Sam draw in a huge, shaky breath. And it freed him, freed the older brother in him to turn to the younger. To see the terrible guilt in Sam's eyes.
"I know," Sam said, and his voice shook with it. "I know."
"No," Dean said, "you don't."
"I was the one who brought her into this. You said it yourself."
Dean had to think about his words. So many of them surged forward, wanted to be said. He had to pick his way through carefully to arrive at what he wished, what he needed, to say. For them both.
"I remember," he began, "something I said a long time ago. Ten years. I've never forgotten it. 'For you or Dad, the things I'm willing to do or kill . . . it scares me sometimes.' And that's still the truth, Sammy. It does scare me. But it doesn't stop me. No matter what anyone has ever said to me, it's never stopped me from making the choices I felt I had to make." He drew in a heavy breath, blew it out unevenly. "And I said something else, too, the night the angels fell. To you. I said: 'Don't you dare think that there is anything, past or present, that I would put in front of you.'
Sam was frowning, but he nodded. "I remember."
"So while I think you were wrong to keep the Book, and I know you were wrong to lie to me . . . " The air left him on a huff of breath, of tears. "Hell, Sammy, I can't cast stones. I'd have done the same. I have done the same. But this is—this is too much. We've lost too many. And it's on me, because of this Mark."
"Dean—"
"You have to let me go, Sammy. You have to stop. We can't lose anyone else. I can't. Cain said—" But he broke that off, because he had never told Sam or Cas what Cain had said to him in the barn. Or was it Biblical prophecy? "I won't risk Cas. I won't risk you. I can't. I'm begging you, Sammy—let it go. It's cost us Charlie. Let it go. Let me go."
Sam looked up at the sky as if he, too, meant to count the stars. But Dean saw the stuttering of his brother's chest as he drew in breath, as he tried to regain a measure of self-control. Sam's eyes had always been a window to his soul . . . and his soul, this moment, was knit of pain and grief and regret and a terrible certainty. Then he looked back at his brother.
Sam said, "No."
"I can't lift this from you, Sam. This guilt. I won't try."
"It's for me to bear," Sam agreed. "I'll go to my grave—well, a funeral pyre—with this on my heart. You think I don't know? You think I don't realize? But I made a choice, and it ended badly—" He broke off, swallowed hard, started again. "It ended terribly, and I wish it hadn't . . . and I would give almost anything to have it be otherwise, I would . . . but I won't lose you, Dean. I can't. Charlie knew that. I told her. I just—can't."
All the grief welled up in Dean's soul. "But I am lost, Sammy! Don't you see it? Don't you get it? It was for nothing, losing Charlie. An empty sacrifice! Because I'm done, Sam. You have to know that. You have to understand. This isn't a crossroads deal come due, or Metatron with an angel blade . . . I'm done, Sam. The moment I took on this Mark, it was over. And it's cost us too much. Don't risk anyone else. Don't risk yourself. Sammy—let me go."
Sam said, "No."
Something broke inside. He felt it break. Maybe it was resolve. Maybe it was courage. Maybe it was his sense of self.
Maybe it was his heart.
And then Sam was there, and his arms were, and Dean felt himself gathered close even as he had gathered close his baby brother so many times; as he had gathered close the adult Sam as he was dying in Cold Oak, dying beneath a sky alight with falling angels.
He let his own arms reach out, take hold. They clung to one another.
"Charlie," he said.
Sam said, "I know."
~end~