"I thought you guys were too busy upstairs to come and play with us humans anymore," Dean said bitterly.
The last angel he had dealt with had abandoned him when Dean had needed him the most. And before that, honestly, every angel that he'd met had turned out to be a dick... even the female ones.
"Things are not going well. That is one of the reasons why I am here," Jacob said, casting a look to the rest of the room. "But perhaps we should discuss these matters in private."
"There is nothing to discuss," Dean said sternly, turning to the rest of people gathered there. "So, here's your lesson number one: just because it looks human, doesn't mean it is. Class dismissed. You can all go home now," Dean said, grabbing a gaping-mouthed Ben and pulling him towards the door. "Don't call us, we'll call you," he added, nodding towards the three hunters as he went out.
"What are you doing?" Ben hollered as soon as he could find his voice. "How do you know what he is?"
"Dean hasn't told you all about himself either, has he? About how deep his connection with my kin goes?" Jacob said, stopping Dean on his tracks before he could exit. "I do believe that you'll want to hear what I have to say," the angel said, snapping his fingers.
Dean looked around, anger building up inside his chest. Everyone but he and Ben had disappeared. Jacob had gotten them the privacy that he'd wanted.
"What did you do to them?"
"Don't worry... each and everyone of them is now at home. They're safe," the angel assured them.
It wasn't enough to convince Dean. "T'hell do you want from me?" Dean hissed, turning his wheelchair around. "Did Cass send you here?"
"I want nothing from you," Jacob said without bitterness. "And Cass hasn't been around to send anyone anywhere for some time now. Some believe that Castiel took our Father's example to heart and fled; others believe he is simply dead."
Dean's heart froze inside his chest. He had thought that he was done with losing people in his life. Apparently, he was wrong. "What happened?" he whispered.
"Raphael happened," Jacob said without a hint of emotion. "Castiel wasn't strong enough."
Dean remembered that particular archangel well. He had been the one in charge of protecting Chuck, the prophet. He had been the one to kill Castiel when Lucifer was freed from his cage. It seemed that Raphael had acquired a taste for it.
"So what are you truly doing here?" Dean asked, tired of covert agendas and hidden facts. He'd gotten his fill of that when he and Sam were struggling to stop the world from ending.
"I am recruiting," Jacob said, turning slowly to face Dean squarely. "More and more battles for Heaven's leadership are being fought on Earth rather than in Heaven and we are in ne—"
"You want bodies... angel-condoms to die for you," Dean finished for him.
"Do you understand the consequences if Raphael and his followers win?" Jacob said, his voice growing in tone and power. The man himself seemed to expand and rise taller. "He plans to make the battle between Michael and Lucifer happen as it was supposed to happen, as it was ordered by our Father."
Dean swallowed hard. A nano-sized part of him was happy to hear those words, knowing that such battle could never happen with Sam trapped in a cage. But the thought of freeing Sam was nothing but a dream, an unreal expectation that would never be; that Dean could never allow to be.
His happiness against the survival of Mankind presented no contest at all. "And how does he plan to do that? Both his fighters are way beyond his reach," Dean asked.
"Don't fool yourself," Jacob answered, walking around the room like a lecturer, knowing fully well that he had a captive audience. "There is no place out of reach for the one ruling Heaven... he will pull Lucifer up, alongside your brother... and he will have his battle as it should've happened."
"What do you mean?"
"He wants Michael inside you, using his original vessel," Jacob said, pausing near Ben, a reassuring hand on the boy's shoulder as Ben gasped in fear. "He wants everything to go as planned this time around. You won't be as lucky as before."
Dean remembered the night he had told Ben and Lisa all about the averted apocalypse, about how everyone kept telling him and Sam that they were destined to fight one another, that they were to be used as puppets in the battle between Michael and Lucifer. About the way Sam had died to stop it from happening and how many millions of lives had been saved on the day Dean's brother had jumped into Hell.
He had scared them that day, zoning out in the middle of the supermarket, lost inside his head until he had come to, cuddled in Lisa's arms in between the vegetable stand and the canned beans. There was a smell of freshly baked bread in the air, but all that Dean could smell was sulphur and ashes. Ben had been crying softly to one side and everyone was staring. In the end, they had all gone home with red eyes and Dean's promise that he would let them help him carry the load.
That had been the day that Dean had decided to give himself a second chance and take the love those two people were offering him. That had been four years ago, mere days before Lisa had died.
"So what are you really doing here?" Dean asked, his suspicions making blood run like ice inside his veins. He'd seen the way this Jacob person was always circling Ben, touching him, eyeing the boy carefully. In his head, Dean already had a pretty good idea about what the angel was after.
"I have been searching for perfect matches for some of my stronger brothers, those who cannot take just any vessel," Jacob announced gravely. "Ben is one of the best I have found so far. The perfect vessel."
"No," Dean said flatly, his tone showing he would brook no argument. "You can't have him. Pick another one."
The mere idea was enough to send shivers up and down Dean's spine. Ben was just a kid. His kid.
"Dean!" Ben gasped.
At first, Dean eluded himself into thinking that Ben was gasping in fright; that he was calling his name in search for help, reassurance that Dean would never allow for something like this to happen to him.
Dean was wrong.
One look into Ben's face and Dean could see all the fascination, all the romantic notions that Ben had about hunting and angels arising and shinning in his eyes. Ben was seeing this as an opportunity, as his way into the fight.
"No, Ben," Dean said one more time, turning his chair to face the teen. "You have no idea what he's asking you to do."
"Yes I do," Ben answered passionately. "Angels, dad... he's asking me to become one and help in the fight against the end of the world."
"He's asking you to give your life for a battle that isn't yours to fight! He's asking you to die, Ben!"
"I'm asking him to embrace his fate," Jacob went on quietly, his words meant for Ben's ears rather than to argue with Dean. "So that you won't have to meet yours." It wasn't quite an accusation, not quite a challenge, but it still sounded like both to Dean's ears.
"It doesn't work like that... what about the blood lines and all that crap? Ben's just a regular kid," Dean pointed out.
Jacob's smile was as grading as Ben's scowl at being called 'regular'. Like it was somehow offensive notto be a freak.
"Even after all these years, you still have no idea, do you?"
"About what?" Dean asked, defiant. From the self-contented smirk on the angel's face, Dean already had a pretty idea what he was going on about. Dean had always had his suspicions, but the need to confirm one way or the other ebbed away as his connection with Ben grew.
"Ben's your son, Dean," Jacob announced all the same. "He shares the same blood line that made you the perfect vessel for Michael. That line must always be preserved."
Ben's round and shiny eyes made him look as young as he was.
To him, this surely was a night of earth-shattering revelations. And that, Dean knew without a doubt, had been Jacob's purpose all along.
The more emotional Ben was, the easier it would be to accomplish his task and get the kid to do what he wanted. But not if Dean could help it.
"There are no parental consent issues here, Dean." Jacob pointed out. "It is still the boy's choice."
Arriving early had its perks.
And one of them was to be prepared for everything. Including deceptive angels.
"Yeah... well, tell it to someone who gives a fuck, asshat," Dean hissed, pressing his bloody hand against the sigil he had drawn on one of the walls of the room.
Dean had forgotten how bright it was when an angel was kicked out of the room. When his vision cleared, Ben was looking at him. The disappointment in the kid's eyes was a physical thing that punched Dean in the gut. It hurt to see that look in his son's eyes. God… his son!
The electric jolt up his spine that followed was sudden enough to push a pained gasp out of Dean's mouth.
No matter how much he thought that he was growing used to them, the out-of-nowhere spasms that would sometimes hit Dean's broken spine always managed to catch him unaware.
Ever since the accident, they'd been a constant, unwanted companion, and their impact always surprised him. The doctors had called it electrical short circuits, something about the fact that parts of Dean's nerves still had some juice in them, like a faulty wire with bad connection. Sufficient to be painful as hell, but just not enough for him to use his leg muscles.
To Dean they were nothing but reminders of his failure to help Lisa. A reminder of what had happened that night.
Deep down, Marcus had always known that angels and Man weren't as far apart as the rest of the world believed it. Deep down he had always known that there was a link somewhere in the grey areas of science, faith and mystery.
People could become angels; angel could become people; both could become one. And in his possession, Marcus had the one man, of a whole planet of lowlifes, sleazy and smelly human beings, that had the potential to become the greatest angel of them all: Michael.
Now, it was only a matter or understanding what made Dean so special and replicate it.
At first, everyone had believed it would be as easy as analyzing a blood sample; that once the process had been completed, all the answers would just present themselves.
Life, however, seldom worked like that.
They had studied Dean Winchester in depth. And the number of answers produced was far from satisfying.
Even before they had started with the more invasive methods, Dean Winchester's body was a puzzle in itself.
As far as anyone could figure, the branded handprint on his left shoulder was nothing more than that: scar tissue in the form of a human right hand, result from some sort of burn. As to how it had been made, no one would venture a guess. One thing they could all agree to: the being to whom the hand-impression belonged had to have been burning painfully hot when the mark was done, so painfully that it would've been impossible for any human to have gripped Dean's shoulder at that point. In a burn that severe, the nerve damage alone would've prevented any sort of grasp, much less a strong one. So, they had concluded, whatever had made it, it was either dead or far from being human at all.
The marks in the ribs were a similar mystery. No one could seem to determine which language they were written in, or even if that was a language at all. And as to how they had been made without leaving behind any sort of surgical scar, no one seemed to know either.
Blood work, spinal tap, MRI's and CAT scans had all proven pointless. DNA testing had revealed nothing of importance that far, but none of the geneticists were giving up on the matter yet.
The man's insides were a study in boring, healthy normalcy, even if one of the doctors kept insisting that, for all intents and purposes, Dean Winchester's organs had the same decay level as that of a three year old.
The man was clearly not an infant, that much was proven by the amount of damage he had been able to inflict on the security surrounding him from the moment he was taken to the time he was sedated.
The only thing that Marcus had left was the man's brain. And he had decided to have a look around on the inside before resorting to cutting him open and letting the doctors have a look for themselves.
The man's mind had proven to be as complicated and shrouded in mystery as the body; every though, every memory... it was like a maze. There were parts so deeply ingrained and hidden that Marcus suspected not even Dean himself had access; everything else was too twisted and well protected for Marcus to simply wander in there and grab what he needed.
The distractions that Dean had in place to hide his true thoughts were nothing short of phenomenal. Layer upon layer of futility that was designed to tire the mind before any real emotion could be reached. A defense mechanism, Marcus suspected, not from external attacks like his, but from Dean himself.
Not that visions of strippers dressed as slutty angels and even sluttier demons weren't entertaining in themselves, but they were not the answers that Marcus was looking for.
'Weaken him with a trauma', a psychiatrist had advised. Something that would leave Dean vulnerable and open to suggestion. 'Make his psyche bleed and the mind will open'.
Dean himself had provided them with the subject matter to get them started.
It was meant to be a romantic date, just the two of them. A simple get away from the day to day life, a chance to enjoy each other's company without having to worry about nosy neighbors that were still far too curious about Dean's origins despite the fact that he and Lisa had fed them all with the same bogus story about his failed career as a door–to-door salesman. It was also a chance to give Ben a break, since he was still slightly icked about the notion of his mother having a boyfriend. Even if said boyfriend was Ben's personal hero.
Death, Dean realized, followed him around like his own shadow. This time, however, there were no monsters attacking them, no dark enemy coming straight from his past in search of revenge; it wasn't even violence caused by humans. It wasn't violence at all.
Just a tree.
It was late at night. The road had been free and clear when they had driven by the same exact place just a few hours before. Lisa had been laughing at something Dean had said. He could no longer remember what.
Dean swerved the car to avoid hitting the huge tree trunk that had cut the road in half. Had it been the Impala... he might've even made it.
When he woke up next, the dashboard was doing a great job at trying to break him in half and Lisa... Lisa was bleeding out by his side.
His fingers could reach her enough to brush her cold arm. But try as he may, he couldn't stretch or wiggle free far enough to stop the bleeding in her stomach. The only thing he could do was sit and watch as her pretty green dress slowly turn red. She had said the dress reminded her of his eyes, that she had bought it because of that. She should've bought it black, to match his soul, Dean remember thinking.
The hours that followed, as they waited for a rescue that neither was sure would come, would forever be indelibly, horrifically and painfully etched in Dean's mind, even if some of them were a bit fuzzy.
He remembered random details. Random flashes of images. Things his senses had captured even if his brain hadn't fully registered.
The smell of copper and rain inside the car, as his and Lisa's blood mingled, pooling on the floorboard.
The sound of her breathing as it grew more and more labored as time passed.
The feeling of bone grinding against bone each time he tried to turn on his seat to reach her.
The light of daybreak reflecting on Lisa's brown eyes.
The way her lips had mouthed 'I love you' over and over like it was the only oxygen she needed, until she could no longer draw a breath.
The salty taste of tears on his lips as he prayed a thousand prayers to Castiel to help Lisa and not a single one was answered.
The jarring feeling of electric saws cutting into the car frame as if they were cutting into his bone, as rescuers worked to get them out of that mangled, metal coffin.
When Dean had woken in the hospital, days later, he had exactly five minutes of happy delusion, thinking that Lisa had survived as well. And then everything was shattered with one look at Ben's puffed eyes and miserable countenance.
When the doctors had told him that he would never walk again, Dean figured it wasn't nearly punishment enough for what he had done.
The electric jolts had started a month after that.
"Is he ready?" Marcus asked dispassionately as he watched the spectacle before him; the machinery alone was intimidating, but in the middle of it all, it was the simple glass with the tea that scared him the most.
"He's ready sir," one of the men in charge assured him. "All you need to do is drink this and close your eyes."
And you'll be inside his head.
The first time the notion had been presented to him, Marcus had laughed. It was something far too deep in the realm of science fiction for him to believe it could work. But the fact was, it did.
The machine, 'Bogeyman' as the staff had taken to calling it, was a creation born out of Marcus ingenuity and his ability to combine the talents of his science team and the knowledge of the hunters he'd hired. It worked; everyone assured him of that.
Still, offering himself as a guinea pig hadn't really excite the millionaire. It hadn't gone without consideration to order one of his lackeys go in his stead; test it before hand, make sure it was safe. But the truth was, Marcus didn't trust anyone else to complete this task. This one was his; his destiny. If anyone was going to explore Dean's mind, it would be him alone.
One of the hunters Marcus' employed had extensive knowledge in venoms and herbs that allowed for a person to walk in another's dreams, to even control them. All he had to do was grab hold of some rare, African root and get his hands on a creature the hunters called 'Djinn'. That had been the easy part.
The hard part had been to create something that would turn those dreams into images and record them, or else Marcus would have to trust his memory alone to get all the information out.
The result had been the bulky machinery that now whined and whirled in the room where Marcus currently stood. It was the hub of all the activity surrounding Marcus hopes and dreams.
Long fiber optic cables ran the length of the space before disappearing under the table, sneaking in through a hole cut in the middle of the aluminum platform and connecting with the man's spinal cord, each individual bundle serving as a particular kind of stimulus meant to turn dream into reality, at least for the one wired. The Bogeyman's spider web.
The blue glow of the translucent cord gave the place an eerie, sterile appearance. Marcus figured it was appropriate to the illicit work they were doing there. All that was missing were the big computer servers with random blinking lights and they could be in any science fiction story of their choosing.
"Hook me up," Marcus commanded. Soon, he would be in the world he created for Dean Winchester, playing his part.
"We need to find a way to get in there!" Sam voiced one more time. It wasn't that he was having trouble in getting Bobby to agree with him; it was just that neither could see a way to do it, or even confirm if Dean was indeed inside that particular house.
A quick search in the property tax records had confirmed them the owner's name, one Marcus Finnegan. That piece of information lead to more research, revealing that the man had more properties than Las Vegas had light bulbs. There were factories, warehouses, apartment buildings, office buildings, malls, a couple of theaters and even a private clinic. And Dean, they came to a sinking realization, could be in any one of them.
The clinic, being the one with easiest access, had been the first place they had investigated. Bobby threw his best hissy fit in the waiting room, while Sam hacked into their patient files. There was no one even matching Dean's description, no suspiciously locked rooms, nothing out of the ordinary happening there.
It had been a wasted day.
"We could try calling Castiel," Bobby suggested, even if the angel had been ignoring their prayers so far. "Again."
Sam shook his head. Castiel's priorities had changed dramatically in the year that had passed. No longer was he the angel that they could count on to do the right the thing. These days, Castiel was working with demons and determined to open the gates of Purgatory; he no longer took the time to concern himself with anything other than his victory over Raphael. His human friends ranked very low in his busy schedule.
Castiel's change in priorities meant more than the fact that they couldn't count on his help to find Dean. Without his aid, Sam and Bobby were back doing things the old way: phone calls to every contact in their books and old fashioned leg work. It took them twice as long to get anywhere, time that they could not afford. It also meant that, for every day that they spent searching for Dean, it was one day less that they had to stop Castiel's and Crowley's plans.
Dean's disappearance had been so poorly timed (if there ever was a 'right' time for such a thing) that Castiel and Crowley had been Sam and Bobby's first suspects.
However, the one angel still answering their calls, Balthazar, had defused that idea. He'd assured them that Crowley was otherwise occupied and that the last time Castiel had laid eyes on Dean had been at the hospital, where they had parted ways, leaving behind a Lisa and Ben with their minds wiped clean of any memory of their time with the older Winchester.
Dean wasn't dead either. Balthazar had thrown them a 'freebie' as he had called it, and checked for them.
"Wouldn't matter," Sam said quietly, his tone oozing defeat. "Castiel wouldn't be able to find Dean either way." His hands moved slowly up to press on against his chest.
"You think the sigils are still there?" Bobby asked. After all, Sam had gotten himself a brand new body little over a year before.
"Mine? I don't know," Sam confessed, thinking back to the days when he had first returned and drawing a blank. Maybe soulless-him had checked, maybe not. Maybe Castiel gave him new ones when he'd brought him back. "Dean still has his."
That part Sam could be certain of. Balthazar had done his best to find Dean, a week before, when he had first disappeared. The hunter, however, was well hidden from all celestial bodies. Whether that was because of the marks on his ribs or because whoever had him had made sure that nothing could find Dean was irrelevant. At the time, the fact remained that they had to use other means to find and get him back.
Sam was reaching wit's end, one step away from climbing walls and calling Death himself to help him locate Dean, when sheer dumb luck had struck. Marcus himself had led them to him.
The man's connections had spread so far into the hunting community that, at some point, the hunters Marcus had talked to and the collective of hunters that both Sam and Bobby knew, had intersected. It was pure mathematics at work.
Queries about Dean Winchester coming from all sides were bound to call attention to themselves. When the same man asking questions about the Winchesters had put out a prize up for grabs to any hunter that could find him a particular item, Sam and Bobby had taken their chance.
Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. All of their lives, they had been trained to fight the supernatural, to deal with every monster in the world. Monsters of the human variety, however, were a subject that Sam always found himself at loss on how to deal with. They couldn't simply storm the place, guns blazing and demand to be taken to Dean, like in a Chuck Norris movie. Even if there was nothing else that Sam would rather do.
"We need to find out exactly where he's keeping Dean," Sam mused, staring at the front gate of Marcus' house. "My bet is that he would keep him as close as possible and, as far as we could see, the man doesn't leave his house ever. We need to get in there and make sure he has Dean, somewhere in that… frigging castle."
"And how do we do that?"
Sam looked around, searching for inspiration in thin air. The car was a mess of old food containers and barely piled books defying gravity at every breath. "A guy like that must have a battalion of servants, right? Maids, gardeners, maintenance, cooks, whathaveyou. I mean, a house that big, he has to."
Bobby nodded. He'd seen a couple while he was there. "What are you thinking exactly?"
Sam smiled, a smirk that was scarily identical to Dean's when he was about to do something really, really stupid.
"I'm thinking about teenagers," Sam replied mysteriously.
There were dark corners in Dean's mind that Marcus had learned to avoid. The first time he had connected with the other man's memories and ventured aimlessly through a mind that was darker than most, it had nearly cost him his life.
The second he'd taken a drink of that foul tasting tea, Marcus had found himself in a dark alley, surrounded by several men, all of whom had looked suspiciously like deformed versions of Dean himself.
The smell of blood and piss in the air had been overwhelming and, even though Marcus had known that none of that was real, he still found himself recoiling in disgust and fear.
In the red glow of furiously blinking neon light, Marcus caught a glimpse of the crowd surrounding him. Despite the fact that those men had human features, none of them was actually human.
There were horns and spikes growing from their skin, the texture of which appeared tough as leather; teeth and claws that sprouted randomly from elbows and necks; deformed feet and legs that resembled more hooves than toes.
The resemblance to Dean was also an illusion. They were all wearing masks. Stretched versions of Dean's face, of Dean's skin, over their own horrible and grotesque heads.
Whatever that place was, Marcus vowed never to return there again.
After that, they had devised a plan. Start with a trauma, make their way slowly from there.
They had moved with caution, taken their time.
It had taken Marcus a long time in dreamland to get to the point where he could convince Dean to give him what he wanted.
It was a good thing that in there, inside the mind, time was different. Moving at the speed of thought, one year rolled by in less than a day.
After the dark alley mishap, Marcus no longer ventured out of the light. Later, when he'd come to, he'd told no one why he had pissed himself that first time the machine was connected. He called it a nasty side effect and fired everyone who had seen it happen.
He could feel Lisa's blood, rushing inside her veins. If he closed his eyes, he could almost see it. A living thing, a lustful thing, calling to him, daring him to sink his teeth into its warmth.
Dean sunk his teeth into his own lips instead of her neck. His blood tasted of ash, of dead things. Dead, like he was now.
Lisa's hand found his arm, concerned fingers brushing against his cold skin. Dean couldn't feel a thing. Only the touch of her red cells, so close to him, so near that all he had to do was reach out and take.
Lisa was so concerned about him and he was nothing but a monster.
"Are you okay?" Ben's voice broke through Dean's fogged mind. He sounded more pissed off than worried. "You were doing that zoning-out thing. Again."
Dean blinked, looking around. "Yeah, I'm okay."
"Good," Ben huffed, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "'Cause I wouldn't want to have to make an important decision, like for example, dragging you to the hospital, without having your consent," he went on, belligerent. "You might've pulled some other magic trick out of your hunter's bag of tricks and blown the EMTs to space too."
"Ben..." Dean tried. He knew the kid wouldn't be happy with him. That he would see this as Dean stealing an opportunity from him. "This is not a decision to be made in haste."
Ben nodded, even if Dean could still see the fire in his eyes. He was sure that all it would take was for Jacob to show up when Dean wasn't around and Ben would say yes.
The angel had been smart about the matter. He'd conned his way closer and closer to Ben, earning his trust and wining the boy's favor. If Dean hadn't seen Jacob for what he really was, Ben would've been taken from him without Dean ever knowing.
The notion made him shiver; made him want to hug Ben closer.
But the kid was much too angry with him to allow that. "Let's go home," Dean said instead, waiting for Ben to stop looking at the sigil that Dean had used to cast the angel out and start walking. Dean followed him outside.
Once inside the car, bathed in the pitch-black night, there wasn't much more either of them could do but to watch as the car careened down the road, eating up each yellow center-line, one after the other. Dean's mind was only half focused on the road; the rest was working furiously on a way to convince Ben that it was a bad idea to give in to the angel's request.
"Da—Dean, do angels lie?" Ben asked after awhile.
The question abruptly broke the mesmerizing sound of tires on asphalt. Dean knew that Ben too was mulling over the events of the night in his head. He had expected more argument, more fighting, even more questions about angels and the way things worked when they took a vessel. Ben's choice of question took Dean by surprise just as much as his aborted whisper of 'dad'.
"Not so much as lie, as they conceal the truth," Dean answered, stealing a gaze to see where the teen was going with that question. "At least the ones I knew."
Dean could clearly remember each and every one of the angelic beings that he had encountered.
Uriel, with his sense of self-importance and short temper for the affairs of humans. The way he had betrayed the other angels and killed his own brothers because he had believed that Lucifer had been wronged when cast into Hell, because he'd agreed with the fallen angel that humankind was simply not worth the effort.
Zachariah, middle manager prick who had taken upon himself to force Dean to say yes to Michael. He'd pursued Dean as if there'd been some achievement bonus in store for him if he were the one to broker the deal of the century.
Michael, the head of God's army, so sure of himself and his reasons, so quick to dismiss free will as being of no importance, in his own way as arrogant as Lucifer.
Raphael, Michael's right hand angel, as every bit as self-righteous and as devoid of ethics as his big brother.
Then, there was Anna. She'd been so sweet as a human, and yet once she had her wings back, her grace restored, she'd changed. Fearsome in the worst of ways, she'd become every bit as self-important and overblown as her brethren.
Gabriel, who had escaped to live amongst humans so long ago and who had died for them because he had fallen in love with all of their defects and short-comings.
Balthazar, the angel with no boundaries who saw Earth as his personal playground.
And Castiel. The angel who Dean had thought he had shaped into a better person and who had abandoned him when Dean had needed him the most.
"Do you think Jacob was telling the truth?" Ben went on, his voice tentative and young, so very young. "About us?"
Dean bit his lip, finally understanding what Ben was really asking about. The confirmation that they were related by blood. "Would it matter to you?"
Dean had worked under the assumption that the news had been just as irrelevant for Ben as it had been to him. They already were father and son; a DNA connection wouldn't bring them any closer than what they already were. But maybe he had been wrong; maybe it did matter for Ben.
Maybe the only reason why Ben was with him was because the kid had no other choice after Lisa's death. Once Dean had killed her.
"Yes," Ben whispered, looking through the car window at the black world outside, unaware of how a single word had made Dean's heart stop inside his chest.
"Why?" Dean forced himself to ask. He had no idea what he would do if Ben told him that being his son was the last thing anyone could ever want.
"Because that would make mom a liar."
Oh.
"Who do you trust more?" Dean rasped out. "Your mom or some guy that didn't even tell you about his true intentions?"
Ben looked at him, brown eyes so similar to Lisa's, burrowing into Dean and seizing his breath.
"Mom, of course," Ben answered without hesitation.
Dean smiled. "Then it doesn't matter what Jacob says."
This at least felt like a victory for him and Ben. Jacob could try as hard he wanted, but Dean would not see a rift wedged between him and Ben.
"But I do like the idea of being your son," Ben added. "I mean, of being from your blood line," he amended.
Somehow, he had managed to make it sound like an honor, like something to cherish. Dean could only see it as a curse.
Two years ago Sam had suffered a rather traumatizing experience. His body had been hijacked by a would-be witch kid, while Sam was left stuck in a short, asthmatic, high school kid's body with a desperate need to stand up for himself.
In an attempt to reach his goal, Gary and his school friends, as patsy's for a demon sent by Lucifer, had used Sam, or rather, his body. They had figured that it would be the easiest way to kill Dean.
And now Sam would be using the same spell to save his brother. Life's little ironies never ceased to amaze him.
The spell had been easy to find. Well, easy enough for someone with Bobby's contacts and with Sam's memory, who had written down most of the incantation he had heard Gary use.
Once they'd acquired the correct words, all they'd left was to pick the right person to make the switch. Ideally, Sam wanted to grab Marcus himself, but the spell required the presence of the two people in close proximity, or at least using something that could be traced back to the bodies involved. There was no way they could ever get near enough Marcus to even snatch a hair out of his head.
Sam's initial inclination had been towards one of the security guards. He kept telling himself that it was because the guards would have free access to every room in the house, and not because switching into the body of another man was less jarring.
While that had made sense, Bobby made him realize that guards were like wolves, they tended to travel in packs and they would be able to sniff out an impostor in no time, especially the highly trained ones that Marcus seemed to have on his payroll. What they needed was someone less conspicuous, someone whose presence would be ignored in a house like that. Someone like one of the maids.
With Dean's life hanging in the balance, Sam wouldn't dare voice a single objection, even if his mind had screamed more than a few.
They parked the car in the same spot that they'd been using to keep an eye on the place, away from the gate entrance security cameras and hidden from any coming or going traffic, and waited for one of the housemaids to make an appearance, hoping that at least one of them wouldn't live inside Marcus' house permanently.
Luck struck a little after eleven pm. The electric gate whirled open and a blue Ford exited quietly through the opening. Seated behind the wheel, Sam and Bobby could see a young woman with black hair. She hadn't even bothered to take off her uniform, probably eager to get home.
Sam exchanged a look with Bobby. After this, there would be no turning back. Not after kidnapping one of Marcus' employees. Silently, he started the car.
The young woman stopped at a Chinese restaurant after a couple of minutes drive. Late dinner, Sam supposed.
Nodding in Bobby's direction, Sam slipped out of the car and followed the woman inside while Bobby slid into the driver's seat. This could be their only chance to get the woman alone before she got home to who knows how many people. All Sam had to do was get a table near hers and grab a glass, a fork, anything that she had used. This could turn out to be easier than he had thought.
His hopes sank to the bottom when he got inside and saw the woman hugging an older man behind the counter and kissing him on the cheek.
She wasn't there to grab dinner on her way home, Sam realized. She was home.
Quickly adjusting to the situation's shift, Sam realized that this didn't changed much. All he needed was to get his hands on something the young woman had touched. After the spell was done, he could just walk her body out and her family wouldn't even know she was gone.
Taking a deep breath, Sam moved to the counter and ordered a box of fried rice and chicken to take away. The young woman, sitting behind the counter, looking through a stack of receipts, didn't even look up at him as the older man took Sam's order and disappeared into the kitchen.
Standing casually, Sam leaned against the counter and hoped he looked calmer than he felt inside. Scanning the table, his eyes darted around furiously, eagerly searching for something that he could use, but it was no use. Except for the pen she that she absentmindedly nibbled away on, there was nothing.
Clearing his throat to grab the woman's attention, Sam offered her his best smile. "I see you deliver?" he asked lamely. God! He felt like he was fifteen all over again, trying to ask a girl out for the first time.
If he stopped for a second to think a little deeper about the situation, it was, in an odd way, a first time for him.
First time he'd kidnapped an innocent person. At least that Sam remembered. There was no way of knowing what soulless him had been up to. He hoped he hadn't gone around kidnapping innocent people...
Large brown eyes focused on his face and she offered a smile back. "We do. Fifteen minutes guaranteed so long as the delivery address is inside the city limits."
Sam looked around, casually. "Do you have a card? Or a pen and paper so I can write down the number? My wife and I just moved in and neither of us really likes to cook all that much," he added with a nervous smile, going for harmless rather than flirty.
When the young woman handed him a red card with golden letters, Sam almost jumped with satisfaction. That was it! That was all he would need to change bodies with this tiny woman.
Holding in his hands the chance to make his crazy plan work, reality slammed into Sam for the first time. Up until that point, his focus had been on Dean; finding out where he was, making sure that his brother was okay, getting him back to his family. This woman, however, had nothing to do with any of that. She was just a random person who happened to work for a very sleazy man.
Sam looked at her – really looked at her.
Soon, he would be her – this petite girl, maybe shy of five feet, with her heart-shaped face and delicate mouth – for the next twenty-four hours. Altogether, entirely too fragile for Sam's plans.
Too innocent.
She was, however, the only one that they could use on such short notice.
Sam felt bad for what he was going to put her through, even though, if all went according to plan, she would sleep for most of it.
Before he could change his mind and risk his only shot at finding Dean, Sam grabbed the card she offered, their fingers brushing in an innocent way. The piece of paper burned hot inside his pocket as Sam left the diner.
"You could've at least brought enough for two," Bobby complained as Sam got inside the car.
Sam looked at the bag he was carrying, not quite understanding what Bobby was saying until he remembered that he was carrying food. The smell of the Kung Pao chicken made him suddenly nauseous.
"Be my guest," Sam said, thrusting the bag in Bobby hands.
"Did you get it?" the older man asked, setting the food on the floor. He wasn't all that hungry either.
Sam nodded.
School corridors looked the same everywhere, as far as Dean could remember. And he could remember quite a lot of different ones, always changing school as he and Sam had done throughout their childhood. The corridors in the school where he taught were no different.
Dean was used to those yellow walls, lined with blue lockers. Students greeted him as he passed by, even if they weren't his students. There weren't that many teachers in there that needed a wheelchair to move around. Everyone knew who he was, if only because of that.
The lights flickered once before shutting down one, by one, in rapid succession. Dean pulled the brakes on his chair, waiting. Instead of the red glow of the emergency lights, Dean found himself bathed in a blue neon light. The blue lockers lining the school hall faded away and were replaced by a dark alley, the back alley of some trashy bar, smelling of piss and rotten food.
Dean could feel his back being pressed up against a green dumpster, wet plastic soaking his coat, food leftovers clinging to his hair where his head touched the dirty surface.
There was a guy looming over him, holding him up, uncomfortably and dangerously close. A big guy with wild, curly hair that made his head look like a big balloon. His breath smelled of stale blood.
Dean's back hurt, his face hurt. He had no strength left in his legs. If the big guy released him in that very second, Dean knew he would just fall down.
The guy smiled at him and Dean felt his skin crawl. And then he was tasting blood and ash in his lips and the world started to spin around him.
At a distance, lit by the street lamps, an impossibly tall, silhouetted figure stood; Dean could just make him out. Then the shadows drew back and the tall figure was staring at them. Smiling. Enjoying the show.
Dean grabbed the sidebars on his wheelchair and resisted the urge to scream.
"Are you okay, Mr. Winchester?"
Dean nodded, not looking up. His face felt flushed and covered in sweat; he didn't want to scare the student or give her anymore reason to call someone. It was weird enough that Dean couldn't seem to be able to keep a grasp on the world around himself; he did not wanted others raising questions about his sanity.
The world was still spinning, but fortunately the young girl seemed to have taken his word for it and left. Dean took a deep breath and rolled to his eleven o'clock class.
The man on the sterile table fascinated Marcus more than the surroundings. A true marvel of the human species, linked to the archangel Michael. A mystery that he couldn't wait to crack.
Harmless looking while unconscious, but deadly and dangerous when awake. Or so Marcus was slowly learning.
Dean Winchester.
The name had constantly come up in nearly every conversation between Marcus and his team of hunters. It had popped up when the Wyoming Devil's gate had been bandied about; some obscure rumors that Dean and his brother had been responsible for opening it. The name was there again when demonic deals were mentioned; however, rumors of Dean having struck one himself were neither confirmed nor denied.
Most importantly, his name appeared frequently, more than any other hunter's, when they turned their attentions to angels. There were whispers and murmurings, too many to be ignored, about a mysterious man often seen with Dean, someone who no one knew and whose actions had raised more than one suspicious eyebrow.
Rumors that word had been spread amongst the fringiest religious groups to be on the lookout for Dean had only added to the confusion.
Search as though they had, there was little hard evidence and fewer facts that the team could present to Marcus, but the consistency of the rumors had caught his attention nonetheless. And in the hunting world, rumor alone was often as much as any of them had to go on.
What few registered facts and official documentation they'd found had proved to be even more confusing. Dean Winchester, son of Mary and John Winchester and brother of Sam Winchester, had apparently died in 2005, in St. Louis. And again in 2008, in a bombed police station. Also, a couple of hunters had bragged that they had killed Dean over a year ago, in a motel room, not that anyone could find them now to confirm that story one way or the other.
Either people kept dreaming of killing this man, or he kept coming back to life. After so many failed attempts to achieve his goals behind him, Marcus had pinned his hopes on it being the latter.
Whichever it was, Dean Winchester seemed to be the man with all the answers to the questions Marcus needed answered.