Laisser Tomber
Chapter Two - Insomniac's Anonymous
Dean stood near the edge of a precipice. His wrists and ankles were in heavy iron shackles. At least it was better than the hooks. The wounds from them were still bleeding as he stood there, feeling very much alone. Though he was naked, it was impossibly hot. He was sweating; it was like being inside a 500 degree oven along with a thousand rotting corpses. The smell was stifling. He looked over his shoulder, away from the edge of the cliff. He was just far enough back that he couldn't see what was beyond it. For all he knew, there was nothing.
His heart froze.
In the distance, though he couldn't pinpoint exactly which direction it came from, was the faint sound of howling. He knew that sound too well. He shifted his weight when the bottoms of his feet began to burn; the surface he stood on felt like hot blacktop on a miserable summer day. He didn't know how it happened, but he was suddenly standing right on the edge of the rock. With the slight movement of turning he head to look behind him, he'd lost his balance. It didn't take much with how weak he'd become. His hands latched onto the tip of the cliff, clinging to it to keep from falling. He'd caught a glimpse now of what was waiting for him, some hundred yards below: a pool of demons, each with glowing eyes and some merely wisps of purple smoke, all swirling in an abyss. He heard the howling again, the growling and barking of vicious dogs. As he tried futilely to dig his nails into the black obsidian rock, Dean thought he saw someone's face above him, only feet away. He reached a hand towards his brother's face as far as he could until the iron chains connecting his wrists restricted him. And then he fell.
The howling and barking grew louder and louder until it finally masked the cries and sounds of monsters tearing flesh from bone below.
Sam's hand flew up and he was shaken awake by the howling in his ears. He felt the headboard above him vibrating from when he'd struck it with his knuckles. He grunted tiredly and blindly grabbed for his brother's phone on the nightstand. There were no missed calls. The time was past eleven at night, and setting the phone back where he'd grabbed it from, Sam crossed the room to the window to confirm it. Sure enough, as he opened the blinds he saw the streetlamps casting an orange glow over the parking lot. There were droplets of rain covering the body of the Impala; had it rained? He remembered it seeming overcast in the sky when he'd gone out a few hours earlier to get a case of beer, a bag of ice for the cooler, and a bag of Doritos. He must've fallen asleep shortly after returning to his room, but he couldn't recall for sure. It was bound to happen; he hadn't slept after speaking with Joely…had it really been almost twenty-four hours ago?
Stumbling groggily into the bathroom, he turned the cold water in the sink on full-blast and splashed his face. The chill took his breath away at first, but he succeeded in shaking off the sleepiness. As he turned off the faucet, his eyes met his reflection in the mirror. He'd avoided looking in the mirror as much as he could. What he saw were deep gray-blue circles under his bloodshot eyes and a 5 o'clock shadow that was a couple days past being called just a shadow.
Sometimes he wondered if he was stuck in a nightmare, in someone's cruel idea of a joke. That maybe this was all the trickster's doing, watching Sam suffer day in and day out. But he knew better, of course. He knew it was his own doing. Maybe if he'd stabbed Jake when he had the chance, if he had been like his brother - shoot first, ask questions later. Maybe then he wouldn't have died and the Devil's Gate wouldn't have unleashed a new surge of demons. But more importantly, Dean wouldn't have had to make that deal. Was this what Dean felt when he knew their father had done the same thing? Sam tried to recall any advice he'd given to Dean to comfort him, to convince him that it wasn't his fault. He came up empty handed.
Suddenly hearing Dean's phone ring, Sam tore his eyes away from the sad reflection in the mirror and wiped his hands on a towel on his way out the bathroom door. He glanced at the caller ID and wondered if she knew Dean nicknamed her "Numchucks", but couldn't see how he could casually slip that question into a conversation with her. And quite frankly, a half-second later the thought vanished and he no longer cared.
Clearing his throat, he held the phone to his ear. "Hey, Joely."
"Hey." Joely was walking in circles around her car and came to a stop leaning against the hood when Sam answered. It felt good to stretch her legs after driving for so long. She was pleasantly surprised to hear that he sounded somewhat better than he had the last time they'd spoken. "Have you slept?"
Her assumption caught him off guard. He wondered how she seemed to be guessing right about several things pertaining to him lately; it was creepy. "Yeah, actually. For a few hours I guess." He omitted the part about those few hours being disrupted by unpleasant, super-real nightmares. After a second's awkward silence, he continued. "So uh, what about you? You've been driving all this time?"
The female hunter gazed up at the night sky. "You mean all twenty hours? By the way, you owe me gas money." She noticed there were no stars to break up the thick, black blanket of sky. It seemed heavy, like it was caving in on the earth. And quite still, though there was a light breeze blowing past her face…it was almost too still. Like a calm before the storm. She shook the feeling off as best she could - although she knew not to ignore her instincts - and focused instead on the hum of the radio she could hear through the driver's side window. "You know there's nothing out this way besides farms?"
Sam chuckled softly. "Yeah, I know." He was flattered that she would drive twenty hours for him. "Where exactly were you driving from?"
"New York," she answered after a pause. The radio began to sound garbled, broken up, and then it went static. She stood from the hood of the car and looked around the rest stop where she was parked. "I'm about an hour away, I'll see you."
Sam held the phone in front of him and pulled his brows together. She'd hung up before he could even say goodbye. Funny, but saying goodbye would've settled his stomach a lot more than abruptly hanging up. He went to the window once more. This time he saw a group of moths hovering at the edge of the window near the lamp just outside the door. He stepped outside and walked a couple feet to where the steps were, three or four of them leading from the parking lot up to the stretch of motel rooms. Sam sat on the first step and looked down at his watch, holding Dean's phone in his other hand.
Joely glanced down at the road map in her lap where she'd scribbled the motel name in one of the corners. She came up on the sign for the motel rather quickly and slammed on the break pedal, sending five or six empty paper coffee cups rolling forward from under the passenger's seat. Turning into the parking lot, she saw the classic black Impala parked in front of room 3 and pulled up beside it. The car wasn't as spectacular as she recalled; though the hood and trunk were still somewhat shiny, the lower half of the body was covered in dirt, bug guts on the windshield, and she thought there was a ding or two near the trunk. She sighed, tossed the map onto the passenger's seat, and cut the engine.
Sam stood when he saw the hunter's rust bucket park to the left of the stairs next to the Impala. The door creaked pathetically when she forced it open and slammed it closed. He shoved the phone in his pocket and stepped down the stairs to meet her. Joely hadn't changed - she still had the same old jeans and tank top, and the same golden-brown hair (as far as he could tell in the orange lights outside). She was his age, but her face seemed older. "Hey." He managed a small smile.
Joely walked around the side of her car and met Sam at the base of the stairs. He stood in the same awkward stance with his hands in his pockets. He was so tall; she wondered if he ever played basketball. "Hey," she smiled and put her hand on his arm for a moment.
"So, uh…thanks for coming."
The girl nodded and leaned back on her heels, resting her hands in her back pockets. They stared at each other in silence for only a minute, but it seemed like hours. Joely's eyes darted past him at the swarms of moths surrounding the laps outside each room. It was quiet besides the crickets, and the muffled sound of some late night TV show coming from someone's window. She looked back at Sam and pursed her lips before speaking; she feared she already knew the answer to the question she was about to ask. "Where is Dean?"
Sam looked down at his feet and nodded once. He'd anticipated the question coming sooner or later. It was like telling Ellen all over again. He'd never been able to say the words "Dean is dead". Thankfully, he hadn't needed to. Would saying the words make it more real, make it hurt more? Or perhaps he just didn't want to believe that his brother was dead. He was gone. "Let's go inside," he said, meeting her eyes again.
Opening the door for her, Sam stepped aside and motioned for Joely to proceed first.
"Care if I use your bathroom?" she asked over her shoulder.
"No, go ahead." She'd taken a couple steps towards the bathroom and had her hand on the doorknob before he called after her. "You want a beer?"
"Mhm."
Sam waited until he heard her turn the lock, then he went to his duffel bag and retrieved a silver flask. Crouching down in front of the cooler, he twisted off the cap to one of the brown bottles. He took a sip, filled the empty inch or so with holy water from the flask, and then wiped the mouth of the bottle with the bottom of his shirt. Hearing the faucet in the bathroom turn on, he recapped the flask and tossed it into his duffel, zipping it and shoving it under the table just as he heard the lock on the doorknob turn. When Joely emerged from the bathroom, Sam was once again kneeling in front of the cooler and grabbing a second beer. Standing, he handed her the first one and leaned against the table. It was only after gulping down some of his own drink that he saw Joely staring at him; she hadn't moved since he'd handed her the bottle.
"Joely?" He didn't like the way she was looking at him. It felt like she was analyzing him, or accusing him for something. Maybe it was just his guilty conscience, but he thought he saw her eyes narrow ever so slightly. Then she took a seat on the edge of the bed across from him. His eyes were locked on the woman as she the raised the bottle to her lips and swallowed a mouthful without any aftershock. There was something almost deliberate about the way she did it.
Clearing his throat, Sam's eyes darted away from the female hunter and focused instead on a corner of the bedspread. "You know about the demon at the crossroads, where deals are made." His eyes flicked up to see her nod before continuing. "Dean made a pact, a deal to, to bring me back from the dead." he stumbled over his words uncomfortably; he hated talking about his brother. "She gave him one year to live, and when his time was up, the hellhounds came for him. I don't even…I don't even know how long ago. Seems like it's been forever, but only a few hours ago at the same time, you know?" He felt like something was blocking his throat, the same familiar suffocating feeling that the subject always brought on. His thoughts wandered back to earlier when he'd been in the bathroom and thinking about what he could have done differently, how so many things could have worked out differently if he'd done one thing instead of another.
"I'm sorry, Sam."
"I see him suffering."
"Why are you torturing yourself? You couldn't have - "
"No, no. I see him."
Joely slowly raised one of her eyebrows. "You see him."
Sighing, he took a swig of beer and then nodded. "I used to get these…visions. Visions of people in trouble, it was all related to the Yellow-Eyed Demon we told you about, you remember?"
"Yes."
"Well after we killed the demon…after Dean made that pact, the visions were dormant. And now I think they're starting again…I think I know how to save Dean."
Joely exhaled sharply and shook her head. "You've got to be joking. You Winchesters are so willing to sacrifice yourselves for each other, it's ridiculous," she spat.
Sam was alarmed by the ferocity in her voice. She'd turned on him in a split second. "What?"
"Your father to save Dean, Dean to save you, and now you're hell-bent on saving Dean. You can't honestly be trying to make another deal with that bitch?"
"No, I killed her." Sam stared at Joely for a moment; her lips were set in a straight line, surely gritting her teeth, and her eyes stared back at him, trying to burn holes through him. "And anyway, she wasn't the one who held his deal. There's someone else. Her name is Lilith." It may have been his imagination, but he thought Joely's eyes flickered when he spoke the name.
"You can have the bed, I'll take the floor." Sam and Joely stood on either side of the bed across from each other. They'd both changed into their sweatpants and munched on Doritos while talking over what had happened in their lives during the past couple years. The hunters made a point to focus on the craziest hunts and strangest only-in-the-movies situations they'd experienced rather than the lower points, which there were also plenty of. Currently Sam was standing with his hands out, palms up and trying to convince Joely to take the bed, meanwhile Joely was standing defiantly with her hands on her hips.
"I will take the floor, you have the bed," she was saying to him.
"No, I insist."
"Why?"
"Because…" Sam pouted while he searched for a reasonable explanation. Because he was such a gentleman?
"We could always share the bed, you know," Joely suggested. She saw a flash of fear take over his face before he could compose himself. She rolled her eyes and shifted her weight from one leg to the other. "I'm not a succubus."
Sam thought briefly. It was almost two in the morning and he couldn't speak for Joely, but he was definitely too tired to argue about something so trivial any longer. Shrugging in agreement, he patted the pillow closest to him a few times and then climbed into bed while Joely did the same.
Joely was staring at Sam. The room was almost black, save for the red numbers on the alarm clock and the orange glow of the outside lamps seeping in along the edges of the blinds. But her eyes didn't wander; they were locked on the black shape sleeping with his back to her, but more specifically they were fixed on his pillowcase. The handle of a knife was protruding out an inch or so from inside the open end of the pillow case, beneath the pillow itself. She'd been staring at it for thirty minutes now. There was some sort of energy radiating from it, like being near a TV on mute, or the lightheadedness you got from moving downwards in an elevator. Her ears were buzzing from it. Perhaps it was merely psychological, but it was maddening and enthralling at once.
Her fingers tingled; she wanted to grab hold of the knife, to feel the power of it in her hands and know it was hers. Joely shifted herself up onto her elbow. Slowly, holding back the urge to mindlessly snatch up the dagger, she reached her hand towards the pillow. Her fingertips brushed the handle when suddenly Sam's hand clamped down on her wrist. It happened so fast that she'd forgotten to gasp. Not loosening his iron grip on her wrist, he turned the lamp on with his free hand.
"What are you doing?" Sam's eyes were fierce and his nostrils flared with rage. When Joely didn't respond, he grabbed her where her neck and shoulder met and slammed the back of her head into the headboard, causing the whole bed frame to tremble. "What. Are. You. Doing?" he repeated louder, articulating each syllable this time.
"Jesus fucking Christ, Sam, you have a knife under your pillow!"
"We're hunters! Do you know how many demons want my head on a platter?"
"Oh, bullshit."
"What, you think that knife is for you?"
"It won't do much to a demon unless you planned on tickling her."
Sam shook his head and let go of her. Her eyes narrowed when he failed to say anything else. Her lips moved in such a way that she was about to ask a question, but she never did. Why would he call her, beg her to help him, and have her drive all the way here only to stab her? He didn't get her logic. Besides, it wasn't like he was capable of murder or anything. He avoided looking at Joely as he grabbed his pillow, along with Ruby's dagger, and laid down on the floor. He knew Joely had started to suspect something more about the dagger, and he wasn't going to confirm her suspicions. Not yet.
But that wasn't what bothered him.
He clearly remembered Joely being quite the chain smoker back in Colorado. And she hadn't had a single cigarette since she'd arrived in Kansas.
Sam didn't go back to sleep.
Author's Note: Thank you to my one lone reviewer! That gives me some incentive to keep writing, as I'm sure it does for every other writer.
