Episode 902
"Hangman, Turn Your Head Awhile"
Chapter Two

"FBI! Don't move!"

Dean put his hands up immediately and looked for -

- and growled at the sight of his little brother still in sweats and thin white tee shirt, face down on the ground, blood dripping down from a cut over his eye, arms up behind his back, pressure on that recently dislocated shoulder, under the weight of two red-faced officers of the small-town-donut variety. One of them had a busted nose.

"Sammy?"

"I'm fine," Sam called, but Dean listened for the strain. Just one iota of additional strain on Sam's delicate headparts was one iota too much. Shit.

Local police moved to arrest him.

"Hey, what's the charge?" Dean said, trying to resist just enough to stall, not enough to warrant the treatment Sam had gotten.

An agent sauntered up to them. "Credit card fraud." He grinned. "It's a felony, buddy."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Dean said, smiling cheerfully. "I'm sure this is all just a big misunderstanding." The was another little movement from the tangle of bodies on the ground where Sam was being held, a little grunt from Sam. "Hey, go a little easy, will ya? Sammy's... special."

Sam threw him an annoyed look, which Dean ignored. He sighed and allowed the local police to get his hands back behind him to cuff him. Ugh, fine. They'd just have to break out of the local lock-up, that's all.

"Impound the car, but leave the search and seizure to us, alright?" the agent said to the police officer who seemed like he might have been in charge if not for the suits. He patted the guy on the shoulder as he passed, and the officer gave him a look before turning back to Dean.

Dean shrugged. "Don't look at me. I'm not big on the Feds myself."

"Get him up," the officer said, and the cops holding Sam hauled him to his feet. To Sam's credit, he didn't so much as grumble in complaint, let alone curse vividly like Dean wanted to. But he was barefoot now, having lost his untied shoes in the scuffle, and his tee shirt had blood on it, and he was gasping for breath and pale. Goddammit.

"Why'd you have to fight?" Dean whispered as they were herded to the cop car.

"Reflex I guess," Sam replied listlessly.

"You okay?"

Sam didn't look at Dean. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."

Dean narrowed his eyes at Sam's hollow uncertain, ADD gaze. "Yeah, you're fine. Sure."

Booking took the rest of the morning and into the afternoon. Dean was hungry. He assumed Sam was not, but that didn't mean he didn't need to eat something. Worse, they'd been separated, so Dean couldn't even hassle him about it. Dean sat in the back of his interview room while the FBI and the police let them "sweat," whatever good that would do them, and tapped on the radiator. A reply echoed back.

Fine. No marathons. Desert. A long pause, then: Candy.

Sam was fine, but he wasn't going to be able to make a run for it. He was thirsty enough to be considered a liability, and needed some painkillers stat.

Ordinarily when Sam admitted to "candy," it actually meant he at least needed stitches or something, but Dean thought in this case it probably just meant he needed some tylenol for the constant headache that had to have been made worse by the crack to the temple he'd earned. Dean tapped back:

Roger. KYR.

He hoped Sam actually did it this time. Know your fucking rights, Sam. Ask for water, ask for a damned tylenol. KYR was practically their family motto, although Sam was more likely to get picked up on suspicion of runaway or that one time CPS had tried to get involved. At eight, Sam could charm the whole police department into giving him a puppet show complete with pyrotechnics while he drank chocolate milkshakes, but once he'd hit thirteen or so, all bets were off. It was about a 50/50 chance they'd caught him in a really bad mood and then he'd clam up and refuse to say a word even to ask for water or a sandwich until Dean or Dad showed up to claim him, dehydrated and dangerously under-sugared. So, K-Y-fucking-R, okay Sam?

Roger, Sam tapped back, and Dean thought he could sense annoyance running through the pipe. No dice.

Dean frowned.

They were refusing him water? That didn't sound right. But then his own door was opening up. Dean scrambled to his feet.

"Where's my brother?"

The agent smiled grimly, tapping the edge of a file folder against his palm. "He's fine."

"You can't hold us."

"Mr. Smith," the agent said. "I'm Agent Justice-"

"Wow," Dean said, dripping sarcasm. "You shoulda been a judge."

Agent Justice smiled again, a little knowing smile that made Dean's skin crawl. "Yes. Perhaps I should have been." He circled the room toward the table in the center of it and tapped the aluminum tabletop. "Have a seat, Mr. Smith."

Dean complied, if only because it heightened the chance he and Sam would be tossed into lock up together sooner rather than later. "Like I said, you can't hold us. We haven't done anything wrong."

Agent Justice watched him, said nothing. The hair on Dean's arms stood on end.

"You have to let my brother go, at least. He isn't well."

Agent Justice looked at Dean, lips pressed together into a contemplative line. "We know. He took a little turn-"

"You said he was fine."

"He's fine now."

"Goddammit," Dean said, standing so fast his chair spun out behind him. "You take me to him now."

Again, Agent Justice watched him, silent. Dean catalogued: unscuffed shoes, suit was new, hair was neatly trimmed, no watch, and the man was completely relaxed, as though he already knew how all of this was going to play out. As clues, they were almost useless - anyone could buy a new suit and get a haircut, and for some reason people were using their cell phones to get the time more than they wore watches these days, but the easy casual way Justice watched him-

"Well?"

Agent Justice smiled. "We're just finishing up some paperwork," he said. "Then I'm sure you'll be released within the hour."

Dean frowned. "What?"

"Unless you'd like to turn yourself in for some crime-?"

"No, door number one sounds good."

"Maybe in the meantime, you wouldn't mind answering some questions for me."

"Maybe I'll just keep my mouth shut, since you're not charging us with anything."

"We're not charging you with anything." Justice shrugged. "We're still checking Sam out. Got some disturbing information from Northern Indiana State Hospital."

Dean frowned. "That's not - he's fine-"

"I'm sure he is. Most people just recover completely from..." He read from the file. "'The most severe and debilitating psychotic break I have ever seen,' so says Dr. Kadinsky. It says here you signed him out AMA, mere hours after he'd been taken in for ECT. That doesn't seem safe."

"He's fine."

"He put one of these fine local officers into the hospital," Justice said, smiling faintly.

Dean frowned; on the one hand, that's my boy get 'em tiger, but on the other, Jesus Sam can we NOT with the assaulting a police officer already? "Oh please, for a broken nose?"

Justice narrowed his eyes at Dean in consideration.

Dean tried again: "He was defending himself-"

"You should take better care of your brother," Agent Justice said. Then a knock at the door and it was opening, and the agent from the gas station came in to scowl at Dean and mutter something.

"What," Dean demanded.

Agent Justice smiled serenely.

Dean didn't reply to his last message; Sam assumed he'd gotten walked in on and was undergoing "interrogation" or whatever passed for it here at police brutality central.

Come on. That's not fair.

Sam closed his eyes and breathed through his nose, calming himself where he sat in the corner by the radiator. His hands were still cuffed behind his back, he was barefoot. His tee shirt was damp from perspiration, and he shivered in the air conditioning. And he was so thirsty. But no one would come in farther than the doorway.

I mean, from their point of view, you provoked them.

The real trick was going to be telling Dean the truth while still convincing him that everything was fine. Assuming they busted out. Assuming Dean could bust them out.

You're a real big bruiser to everyone who doesn't know you. But then, no one knows you like I do, do they, Sammy?

The walls dimmed. Dehydration, Sam thought. Tunnel vision from low blood sugar. The dull laze still sitting in his muscles from the sleeping pill Dean had slipped him.

Or was it Dean? Or was it anything at all? Or was that the shadow of something else just out of sight, there fringing his vision?

The walls vanished. The space narrowed down to a point, the table, hopelessly out of reach, because nothing worked did it, not when it was all in pieces and unconnected, not when you were making tiny homes out of your bones for the little mice to live in, the little clockwork mice you created because they pleased you when they moved about so freely, so lifelike, little roofs for them made of teeth, little windows made of skin stretched so tight it let light through, little rugs made of thin slices of your heart.

That was a little thing he gave you, that was a little treasure, that was a thing that could be crushed into dust and viscera.

But you have eternity to remake it. You have eternity to make it perfect.

We have eternity. Sam. Saa-aam.

"Stop-"

Sam willed himself present. That song was not allowed. He focused on the burn in his shoulder, he focused on the throb in his skull. He shifted his head and felt the bones in his neck slide against each other. Felt the cold grit concrete of the wall press into the soft swollen wound on his brow and he pressed and pressed, and ground that grit into his flesh there tear away at his flesh there-

-and the walls came back.

And the table was just an object in a room, taking up neither more or less space than a table ought to.

And he was just in a podunk police station in god knew where, and they wouldn't bring him water because they were afraid of him, and he was the thing with power here.

But the thing with power could only curl up in the corner and rub blood onto the wall and breathe slowly and wait for someone to come and fix his broken puppet legs and speak more loudly than the thing in his head.

Please Dean, speak so loudly, please.

Sammy.

No.

Saaaam. Sam!

"Sam, goddammit look at me. Jesus what did you do to him?"

Sam gasped and looked up into Dean's panicked face, Dean's hands on either of his shoulders, shaking him, and when Sam looked at him, Dean moved his hands to hover at the gash on his brow, looking horrified.

"What the hell did you bastards do?"

"I did it," Sam said, breathless. "I did it."

"Cuffs, now."

Motion around him, and his hands were free, and his shoulder burned but it wasn't broken, and Dean was shoving shoes onto his feet and hauling him up fix those broken puppet legs and they were shoving through everyone to the outside.

When are you going to tell him?

Sam shook his head hard. Dean steadied him. Everything moved so slowly.

"Easy, here we go," Dean said, lowering him into the passenger seat. "Man, you weren't kidding with 'no marathon,' were ya?"

Sam breathed and focused and circled his shoulder a few times and by the time Dean was coming around to the driver's side of the car, Sam had worked out that they hadn't exactly escaped, and that they were in their car safe and sound, and that his shoes were on his feet. Oh, and he was lucid again, so there was that.

"What happened?"

Dean looked at him like he was - okay, that was fair.

"I mean. Why are we here and not sitting in county lock up waiting to be transferred?"

Dean shook his head and started the car up. "Crazy luck? They just let us go. Questioned me for about five minutes after making me wait for hours - you too, I guess."

"No one questioned me." Sam tapped at his bleeding head wound. "No one would come in past the doorway."

"Yeah, well," Dean said, pulling out of the impound lot, "you look like a bruiser to anyone who doesn't know you."

Sam looked at him, mouth agape. No no no-

"What? I'm not saying it's a bad thing. Jesus, sensitive much?"

Sam stared at the dash. Please be Dean please be Dean-

"We'll stop at the next hotel we see a minimum of three towns away from this shithole, get you patched up, changed. And Sammy?"

Sam blinked at him. "What."

"We're gonna have a nice little talk about what's goin' on in your head. Okay, I mean it. No hiding shit from me."

"I know."

"None of this 'I'm fine' bullshit."

"Dean, I know. Anyway, you lied about it first. You knew before I did. Hell, I even guessed what was going on, and you flat out told me I was wrong. So. Hi, I'm Pot. Mr. Kettle, I presume."

"Good to see you're with it enough to make a break for the moral high-ground, Sam. Sounding more like yourself already."

Sam rolled his eyes. Definitely Dean.

"So. I'm in."

Dean looked up from where he'd been flipping through the channels on the tv for porn while Sam showered. "Come again?"

Sam rolled his eyes in that I'm going to regret this but... way that he had, and flipped the towel over his shoulder on his way toward his bed from the bathroom, dressed in fresh jeans. "I'm in."

"You wanna tell me what changed your mind?"

"No." Sam rifled through his backpack for a shirt. "But I'm going to anyway."

Dean frowned. Sam pulled a shirt on, took his time. It was clear he didn't want to talk about it, and Dean had been paying attention; all it took was the mere mention of the cage to send Sam there. And the way Sam's fingers shook as he buttoned his shirt, Dean was like this close to saying forget it, Sammy. It's fine. Don't say anything if you don't want to.

Then Sam sat on his bed and didn't say anything. Just stared at his hands hanging between his knees. He tapped at the butterfly-bandages over the cut on his temple, pressed on the bruising without appearing to think about it. Dean frowned, opened his mouth, but Sam-

"I can't describe it to you, Dean. You know, I thought I would be able to. That this, we could talk about. But. I can't. I can't put it into words. I tried to rehearse in the shower, but..." Sam looked up at him, shame in his face, and Dean understood that to mean but I can't even talk about it to myself without falling apart, and isn't that just perfect, isn't that exactly what we need right now, and Dean opened his mouth again to say something, whatever, something positive and mean to get him off the pity-party train.

But Sam shook his head and Dean hadn't figured out what to say before Sam continued: "But I'm in for this mission, or I'll die trying, because I'm a liability to you this way."

Dean frowned. Suddenly Dean had a vision of Sam going flight or fight on the cops who tried to arrest him, thinking they were any of a million different terrible things from the cage, and his little control freak brother wouldn't be able to (hadn't been able to) handle losing his shit on a job, especially if it put Dean into danger.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Well, as heroic motivations go, it's a little weak, but I'll take it."

"Well we've done 'revenge for dead parents,' I've done 'revenge for dead brother.' You've done 'give life to bring dead brother back.' We're runnin' the well dry, dude."

Dean grinned. No, of course Sam hadn't mentioned find girlfriend's killer, kill werewolf who turned new lover, work out the emotional crap of having to put said new lover down like a dog by killing sons of bitches, watch old flame die as part of a grand scheme even though she hadn't even seen Sam in years. No, of course Sam hadn't mentioned them. But it was clear he was thinking about it. The pity-party train had lots and lots of cars with this guy.

"Maybe we'll just have to do a reboot," he said. "Start over. Work out some never-been-done-before origin story."

"Yeah, those exist." Sam gave him a little grin and threw his towel at Dean. "So where's all this research you want me to go through?"

Dean heaved on the strap of his own duffel and sorted through. "It's just the one binder from the library, the Complete something something of John Dee, or something."

"Oh, good, you know three words of the title."

"Shaddup." Dean frowned, pawing through his duffle again. "What the-" Then he dumped the whole thing out on his bed. "It's gone."

Sam shrugged. "Maybe it's in the car?"

"No, I left it right here." Dean growled. "Bastards."

"Oh. Of course. They weren't real FBI."

"They just rolled us for that priceless one of a kind fucking binder. That explains why they left our trunk full of illegal firearms alone."

Sam blew out a breath and fell backward onto his bed, arms splayed out to the sides. "Great. So not only did we get on the radar of fake FBI who apparently know us well enough to catch up with us nine hours from home, but some genius took the only copy of the material containing our only lead out of the most protected place on earth and got it stolen."

Dean made a face. "A) I'm pretty sure they were real FBI, which doesn't make me feel better, and B) of course I didn't take the only fucking copy. I had Kevin make scans and put them on your computer."

"Oh. Good. So let's just hope they didn't think of that and wipe my hard drive while they were at it."

"That means there's also a copy back home, smartass."

"Wow, it's like you knew they were comin'," Sam bitched, sarcasm oozing.

"No." Dean shoved his clothes and guns back into the duffel. "If I knew they were comin', I'da put that crap on a flash drive and made like a mule outta Mexico. This isn't a game, Sam. This is your life."

"I get it Dean, and I'm in!" Sam said, sitting up and waving him off. "You can stop with the disturbing visuals."

Dean grinned. "Just remember, Sammy. When your ass is on the line, my ass is on the line. Literally."

"Gross-"

"Don't think I won't make you put on the rubber gloves-"

"Dude, gross!"

"Laptop!" Dean said, chucking it over to Sam's bed. "Check and see if they left it alone. It could be fine. You gotta password on there."

"Like the FBI can't crack my password."

"It has all those random letters and numbers in it-"

"Unlike yours."

"Who's gonna guess DDSlantyBabes?"

"Anyone who knows you? And also, 'slanty'? Really? That's so not okay-"

"Oh get off, man. You know I say it with love."

"Whatever." Sam started tapping at the keyboard. "I'm gonna be pissed if they wiped everything."

"You needed new porn anyway."

"I've been cataloguing what we have at the bunker so we can actually find stuff. And I've been transferring information from Dad's journal and writing up some of our own cases. You know. Bringing the family business into the 20th century."

"It's the 21st century."

"We're so not ready for the 21st century."

Dean tilted his head in acknowledgement. Probably right. Dad was still drawing pictures of stuff when photographs would have been so much more helpful when trying to pinpoint specific types of fugly.

"Damn." It was Sam's thoughtful voice, didn't signal a complete loss, but he wasn't happy about whatever he'd just found. "Everything's where it should be, except there's nothing in the folder called 'John Dee.' I assume that's where Kevin put it."

Dean shrugged. "I assume. So just like everything else, they took just those files and left all the other weird ass, potentially illegal crap alone."

Sam looked at him. "I don't like this."

"You and me both." Dean went to the mini fridge where he'd stashed a six pack while Sam was primping and pulled out a couple of bottles. "Well. We still have John Winthrop. We still have Boston."

"Yeah, but what are we looking for there?" Sam reached up to catch the bottle Dean tossed him. "Do you remember anything else? Clues about where this mystery journal might have been hidden?"

"If I found any clues, you think I'd have called up John Dee on his ghost phone?"

"What about Charlie? She could maybe help recover the files?"

"Like the FBI couldn't do a thorough job of deleting them?" Dean scoffed.

"If they know us, they know that's beyond our assorted skillsets, and they had limited time to do it. Let's hope it was a rush job. Cell phone."

Dean found it in the pocket of the sweatshirt tossed over the chair at the desk and lobbed it into Sam's waiting hands. "I'll call Kevin, see if he can't work some prophet magic on the files back home and feed us anything."

"Good call. Hey, Charlie."

Dean watched Sam smile easy as Charlie launched into her jabbering mile-a-minute thing. He imagined she reminded Sam of his college days, someone with more similar interests in the smarty-pants arena. Girls and beating people with sticks and porn and scifi movies, that was all Dean, but Sam read the same dumb books full of hope and whimsy and Sam had had the same kind of idealistic aura about him, once. Sam tapped at his keyboard at her instructions, yeah yeah, did that, it says... And then oh, no, not really, just one like 100-level like freshman year. Oh, thanks, I mean, it makes logical sense...

Dean turned away and dialed his own phone.

"Kev, yeah, listen-""

"Are you almost done?"

"What? No. How far away do you think Boston is?"

"You're driving?"

"Got a problem with that? Listen, I need you to take a look at the stuff I asked you to scan-"

Sam smiled up at Dean sparring with Kevin over the phone.

"Sam?"

Sam looked back down at the laptop screen. "Nothing. Think it's hopeless?"

"I think you're overdue for a visit from your pocket techie. Gimme a couple of days and I'll swing by?"

"We kinda need it now. And we're kinda not home."

"On the road again? Not headed toward California, are you?"

"Other way, sorry. But you know, give us a..." He looked up at Dean to try to gauge how long this directionless, false-hope mission might take. "Maybe a week? And we'll have a cookout and beers and stuff."

"Only if I get to braid your hair."

Sam smiled fondly, hit with a sudden soul-deep grief. If this didn't work, he wasn't even likely to be able to recognize her in a week. "Deal. But. Better make it more like two or three weeks. In fact, call first. This might take a while."

"Sure thing, Sassafrass."

"Sassa-?" But she'd hung up, and he sat staring at his phone. She was so bubbly and eager all the time, even when she'd been scared out of her mind breaking into Roman Enterprises, she was this carbonated kind of scared, this giddy energy that fueled her. The passions she poured that energy into, the full throttle. She reminded him of Dean, but she was also just this completely different person, and it was nice to see that there was this whole life somewhere in a world where he didn't exist.

It made it easier.

And in three weeks or so, if he was gone, Dean was going to need her.

Probably should have told him the truth, the whole truth.

Yeah. Probably should have.

Sam looked up as Dean hung up on Kevin. Behind him, Lucifer waggled his fingers in hello, and Dean turned to him with black eyes, and under the door snuffled hell hounds, and in the corner was a city made of dust and broken bones with tattered sinew flags.

Really? Hell hounds? Demon-Dean? You're off your game.

Eventually, you're going to convince yourself that you've got it under control. That you can live like this. And then-

No. I know I don't live through this.

"Charlie couldn't help over the phone, but I did volunteer you for grill duty in a few weeks when she can swing by."

Dean grinned blood teeth and said, "Awesome. We'll have to get some steaks."

They stayed the night in that dingy motel, left the next morning bright and early - Sam's dumb idea. Dean woke up with coffee in his face and Sam already dressed and packed, and Dean was packed too, and Sam was too perky, and-

It was like they were just hunting again, on a case, ready to bodily tackle zombies and vampires and rugarus and whatever else. Ready to dig up graves and light shit on fire and bask in the smoke. And they didn't talk about Lucifer or lies or how soon Sam was gonna die and they bickered over the best route, and-

So when Sam fell asleep just after their vending machine lunch, Dean grumbled at the road. Nudged Sam when it was time to pee, time to get gas. Scoped out the insides of gas stations for signs of another cop show. More than once, he'd gotten just enough gas into the car to make the halfway mark before getting cold feet and zooming off. Maybe Sam's less-beaten path would have been a better idea afterall, but there was no way Dean was going to tell him that.

It took more like seventeen hours all told to pull into the cheap motel a few miles out of Boston and drag his sorry brother out of the car.

"Come on. You got sleep. You have to take over now."

Sam wrestled himself upright and stretched his arms up, yawning big. "Yeah okay, sure," he mumbled. Then he rubbed his eyes and looked around and said, "Where are we?"

"Boston, you ape."

Sam checked his watch. "Okay, well. It's one in the morning. If I'm the boss, I say we hit the hay."

"What?"

"It's not my fault you drove all day and night. It's too late to do anything now."

Dean slammed Sam's door shut and went round to the trunk for his stuff. "There's plenty we can do tonight. Dig up a grave, for one." He tossed Sam a shovel.

Sam tossed it back. "John Winthrop was buried in a mausoleum."

"How do you know that?"

"You literally just oiujaed John Dee and threw me into a car, didn't you."

"What? I found out he was buried in Boston, didn't I?"

"How?"

"... I asked John Dee."

Sam chuckled. "Dean. I'm telling you. Google is your friend." Sam reached into the back seat to grab his duffel and backpack. "Let's at least get our room and make a plan, okay?"

"Fine."

"Fine."

Thirty minutes later, Sam sat sullen in the passenger seat while Dean smirked, enjoying the bitchfest.

"Come on, dude. You slept like half the afternoon away. There's no way you're more beat than I am." He smacked Sam in the shoulder and laughed at the road. "Isn't this like old times? You, me, defiling the sacred final resting places of dead dudes."

Sam pressed his lips together. "Yeah."

"Oh come on. Cheer up! Jesus Sam. It's not a funeral."

Sam drew his brows together and he didn't look at Dean in that very obvious not-looking-at-you way he had which meant - Jesus Sam. It's not your funeral, okay? "Don't. Just don't. You wanna be depressed about saving your life, fine. But I refuse to be gloomy gus about it. We're saving you, and that's a good thing, and screw you."

Sam just nodded at the dash like he hadn't expected a different response. Well of course he hadn't. "Just up here," he said, watching the GPS on his phone.

"Look alive, Sammy," Dean said then, pulling over just south of the historic "King's Chapel Burial Ground" where Winthrop was entombed. Then he actually looked at it and cursed. "What the shit?"

Sam looked up from his phone and blew out a breath. "Great."

Cops. Just. Everywhere. Crawling all over the cemetery like it was paved in glazed pastries. Rubies and sapphires colored everything in turns.

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

Sam turned to him, innocent brows up. "Now can we make a plan?"