Authors Note: Hello! This is taking me longer to write than most stories, so I hope you can bear with me. I hope you enjoy. Again, all feedback is valued and welcome. All mistakes are my own.
Disclaimer: I own none of the rights to Supernatural or its characters. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox.
***
Redemption: Part Two: Live
***
"I can't believe you let him go!' Dean said, running a hand through his short hair. A puff of dirt burst into the air at the motion. It would have been graveyard dirt, Bobby thought. But Dean hadn't been buried in a graveyard. So it was just dirt.
"Boy, I didn't let him do anythin'," Bobby said. He was glad his voice sounded indignant, even as he acknowledged to himself he was still staring. But, damn it, Dean had been dead for a year. Even after the fight, the splash of holy water in the face, the holy water in the beer, and Dean's own words, Bobby couldn't believe his eyes. Dean was alive, and standing in his study. Alive and pissed off already.
"You were supposed to keep him with you." Dean said. His fist slammed down onto Bobby's desk, and he winced. Dean was covered in wounds both old and new. The pain alone assured Bobby of the boy's humanity. Demons tended to ignore small things like broken bones and missing body parts.
Dean's unwounded skin was lined in white scars of all shapes and sizes. Bobby was slightly curious about the physics of it. Dean should be dead from the wounds alone. Yet he was not only alive, but up and walking. Bobby thought it had something to do with being dead while the wounds were inflicted. A man couldn't die when he was already dead, could he?
"You think I didn't try to keep Sam here? I argued with him for days. And then one day he woke up, walked out the door, and hasn't been back since." Bobby said. Then, softer: "He's as stubborn as your Daddy was."
Dean scoffed and shook his head. "Yeah, don't I know it."
"No," Bobby said. "You don't know it. Because you're the only one the kid ever listened to." Bobby took off his trucker hat and wiped at his forehead. "And with you in the pit, he certainly wasn't goin' to listen to me."
"I told him to stay with you." Dean said, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back against the desk.
"Well, he didn't." Bobby shrugged. "Instead he apparently went and got you out of hell."
Dean sighed and ducked his head. He ran a hand over his face. "You really think it was him?" Dean said in a low voice. His eyes were trained on the floor.
Bobby looked at Dean for a moment, unsure what to say. The boy looked torn between wanting to believe his brother had saved him and wanting to believe his brother was safe. No matter the answer, it would hurt.
Bobby believed it had been Sam in Hell. It was what Sam all but said when he left Bobby's house. The older man just hadn't known it was possible. Normal twenty-something-year olds could not just walk into Hell. But then Bobby thought of the stories he had heard from John and a young Dean; stories of rattling windows and upturned houses. Sam had never really been very normal.
"I think it was Sam," Bobby said finally. "He said he was going to get you out of Hell," Dean looked up at him, surprise on his face. "I didn't think it was possible to just walk in, but…." Bobby shrugged.
"Damn," Dean said. It was soft, a curse that held remorse as well.
"The question being: where is he now?" Bobby asked. It was rhetorical. If Dean knew the answer, he wouldn't be there. He'd be getting Sam.
"I don't know, Bobby." Dean seemed to tighten around himself, shoulders strung with frustration. "My memory towards the end…" He paused for a moment, eyes on the floor with a faraway gaze. "He was there. He pushed me towards the exit. Said he'd follow." Dean looked to Bobby, as if the older man should understand the importance of Sam saying that. And Bobby did understand it. Sam had always followed Dean.
"I thought he was behind me," Dean said. "I told him to follow." Dean couldn't say the next words out loud, the part that haunted him: Dean never looked back to make sure his brother followed him out of Hell.
***
One, two, three, four, five, turn.
One, two, three, four, five, turn.
Bobby watched Dean pace back and forth in front of the kitchen counters. It had become his daily pacing spot, as if any type of movement was better than none. Bobby wondered how long it would be before the old tiles gave in and wore away to the floorboards.
Normally, Bobby wouldn't care if Dean paced his legs off. But this wasn't a normal day, and Dean wasn't anywhere near healed from his time downstairs. So with the pacing there was wincing: one, two, three, four, five, wince, turn, wince. And Bobby couldn't recall the last time Dean slept. It was at least over a week ago.
"Boy, sit down before you fall down," Bobby said. It was barely eight in the morning, and watching Dean was making him tired all over again.
"I'm fine, Bobby," Dean said as he turned on his heel and started to the other side of the kitchen. "It's been a week. He said he'd follow." Dean said for the fifth time in the last hour. He sounded like a broken record, but Bobby didn't think it was the time to point it out.
"Do you think Sam is still in Hell?" Bobby asked. Dean stopped in his tracks and turned to Bobby, eyes wide and arms dropped to his sides. Bobby knew he hit the nail on the head and snorted. "You're a fool."
Dean swallowed so hard it looked painful. "Why?" His eyes never left Bobby.
Bobby stood from his seat at the kitchen table and took the two steps to stand in front of Dean. He placed both hands on the younger mans' shoulders. "You really think that Sam would put you through the same thing you did to him?" he said, ignoring the momentary flash of hurt in the younger man's eyes. Bobby pushed Dean towards the kitchen chair and Dean didn't fight. "Or do to you what your Daddy did?" Bobby backed Dean up until he had no choice but to sit or fall.
"Why wouldn't he?" Dean asked as he plopped down into the wooden chair. He continued to stare at Bobby like a drowning man stared at the surface of the water. Bobby had a brief flash of an eight year old Dean looking at him the same way when John had been MIA for over a week.
Bobby sighed. How was he supposed to explain to a grown man that self-sacrifice sucked for those left behind? Explaining it to Dean seemed redundant. If he hadn't figured it out by now, Bobby wasn't sure he had any hope of learning.
The phone rang and Bobby picked cordless up from the table. The caller ID scrolled: "Winchester, Samuel", and Bobby's heart skipped a beat. It was Sam's private cell phone, the one he'd had since before Stanford. It was one of the only things with Sam's real name attached to it.
Bobby was aware of Dean watching him as he walked to the door to the back porch. He pointed a warning for Dean to stay in the chair. Squinting, he stepped out into the bright morning. He answered with a casual: "yello?"
The voice on the other line was male, but it was not Sam. Bobby let go of a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. "Yes, ah…I'm looking for a Dean Winchester?" the man said.
"You got 'im." Bobby said without hesitation. Bobby would be damned if he let Dean know that someone who wasn't Sam had Sam's cell phone. Bobby couldn't guarantee anyone's safety when it came to someone standing between the Winchester brothers.
"All right. Um, my name's Jay. I have this phone, and a '67 Impala that I was told to return to you," said the man. He sounded young, maybe twenties. The connection was a little fuzzy, but clear enough that Bobby heard cars in the background.
"How'd you get them?" Bobby tried to keep the hostility out of his voice, but someone else on Sam's phone didn't sit right with him.
A sigh came from the other line. "He said you'd be pissed," Jay said. Bobby wanted to laugh. Saying Dean would be pissed was an understatement only Sam would make. The correct term would be murderous.
"Listen, I'm helping someone who helped me," Jay said.
"Right, sorry," Bobby said. "If you don't mind me askin': how long have you had them?"
"For as long as he told me to keep them: to the day." Which, knowing Sam, were orders written in a letter that wasn't to be opened until he was gone. That way there was no chance of refusal.
Sam did that to Bobby before he left for Stanford, hell, before he told anyone he got in. Sam gave Bobby a sealed letter, and told him he would know when to open it. When Sam left for Stanford and Dean was walking around like a piece of his heart was missing, Bobby opened it. The letter contained a California address, a note to give to Dean, and orders for Bobby to let Sam know where his family was when he could.
Bobby had sworn to never take another letter from Sam, ever.
"Do you know where Sam is?" he asked, tired of walking circles around the question. There was silence for a moment and Bobby listened to the birds sing. The air was sharp and fresh, just starting to warm after the night's cool.
"I'm sorry, "Jay said. Bobby felt his heart drop.
"Can you tell me when you last saw him?" Bobby tried, wiping a hand across his forehead.
"I'm sorry," Jay said again.
Bobby sighed and cursed. Stepping back inside, he was glad to see that Dean had listened and was still seated in the chair. The younger man was still a whirlwind of nervous energy: fingers tapping, foot shaking. But at least he was sitting. Bobby felt Dean's eyes on him as he walked through the kitchen to his study and pulled out a pen and paper.
"I'll send a friend to pick up his things. Where are you?" Bobby asked. He quickly jotted down the address and hung up the phone. Dean was still staring, nearly bouncing out of the chair. Bobby sighed. "The Impala and Sam's phone are in Detroit. Sam's not there."
***
Sam kept a journal. Not a these-are-supernatural-things-and-here-is-how-to-kill-them-journal, but a private, hand-written journal. Dean found it inside the Impala under the passenger's seat when they recovered it a month ago. There was still no sign of Sam.
Dean sat on the porch with Sam's journal his hands, turning it over and over. The lock was still on it, unbroken. The key was as lost as the journal's owner. It didn't matter though. Dean could pick it if he wanted.
The summer night was humid. Rain clouds gathered black to block out the stars in the distance.
"You going to open that?" Bobby asked with a gesture to the journal. He leaned against the railing beside Dean, and took a sip of his beer.
Dean flipped the journal over and over in his hands. His thumb ran over one of the worn edges of the cover. "No," he said. "He'll get all pissy and bitch at me."
Dean still hung on the words "I'll follow" and Bobby couldn't make himself speak the truth to Dean. It had been a month since Dean returned from Hell, and far longer since Sam had actually disappeared. There was no word from any other Hunters, not even the slightest rumor. The last person they knew to see Sam had been Jay in Detroit. And that, they had learned, had been over seven months before.
Bobby was starting to think that Dean had been right the first time around: Sam was still in Hell, and not likely to be coming back. Part of him wanted to tell Dean this, if only to allow the older brother to finally grieve.
But Bobby couldn't tell Dean to give up on Sam. So he did what he could to make Dean have a life outside trying to track down his brother. Dean would need something to hold on to when all that hope was gone. "You feel good enough to go on a small hunt?"
***
Bobby had lied when he'd said it was a small hunt. Shape shifters were never a small hunt. In fact, they downright tended to complicate the hell out of things.
In the middle of the fight, it occurred to Bobby that bringing Dean along hadn't been the smartest move he had ever made. He decided this somewhere between being thrown into a wall, and watching Dean launch himself at the shifter bare-handed.
Dean was coiled tighter than a rattlesnake ready to strike, and had been training rather than sleeping. Perhaps it would have been prudent to remember that the boy was never in his right mind when fighting grief. But Dean had always enjoyed killing supernatural things, and Bobby wanted to give him some joy back in his life.
"Get down!" Dean screamed, and Bobby found himself back on the floor he had just gotten up from. Something human shaped flew over his head. The house was dark, and it was hard to tell if it were Dean or the shifter. Then Dean hurdled over the couch, machete in hand and maniac grin and there was no need to question who was winning.
Bobby had time to wonder where the hell the machete had come from, and then Dean was lobbing off the head of the shifter in one smooth stroke.
***
Tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap.
Pause.
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tappity-tap-tap.
Pause.
Tap. Tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.
Bobby glared over his reference book at the younger man sitting on the other side of the desk. Dean had been tapping for the past half an hour. He now understood why, most of the time, Sam pushed Dean out the door on some errand before sitting down to do most of the research by himself before his brother returned.
Dean was a think-on-his-feet type. He was great in saving asses when there was a life-threatening situation, but his regular sit-down and sit-still habits, Bobby was learning, were lacking.
"Did you find anything?"Bobby asked and the tapping stopped.
"Huh?" Dean looked up from the book he had been using as a mini-drum set. "No, not really."
Bobby eyed him for a moment, believing the younger man clueless to the fact that he had been making noise at all. "Well, keep looking," he said, and returned to his book.
Tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap.
Bobby stared harder at the book on the desk.
Tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tappity-tap-tap.
Bobby read the sentence five times, trying to ignore Dean. He swore he used to have more patience.
Then the humming started. Bobby couldn't tell if it was Black Sabbath or off-beat off-tune Metallica but it didn't matter anymore. Bobby could do the research on his own. Dean needed to get out of the house so Bobby didn't throttle him.
Standing, Bobby pulled the keys to the garage out back out of his jeans pocket. He looked at them only a moment before stepping towards Dean and pressing them into the younger man's chest. "Go make yourself useful," he said with a nod in the direction of the large garage outside.
Dean gaped at him for a moment, eyes wide in confusion. He didn't ask any questions. He just swallowed, nodded, put the book down and left. Bobby sat back down with a sigh. Dean could make all the noise he wanted in the garage and Bobby could pour over the demonology books in peace.
***
Three months and there was no sign of Sam, or even any place to start looking. Bobby pushed Dean to hunt, to fix cars. Sometimes Dean slept and Bobby ignored the screaming nightmares.
They were staked outside a museum, waiting for it to close. A small time local artist had used their own blood as paint, and recently decided coming back to kill off relatives would be fun. The body was cremated, leaving only the paintings behind. Well, paintings and a journal they had tried burning two nights before.
"What am I supposed to do, Bobby?" Dean asked after an hour of silence.
Bobby gave Dean a confused look. "All you got to do is bring the matches."
Dean sighed with a shake of his head and pursed his lips.
Bobby let the silence fill the car again for a few minutes, considering his words. "You do the same thing you expected Sam to do, Dean." He said. "You live."
***
To Be Continued....
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