Chapter 2

It's noon when they get to the motel where Travis is waiting for them, beer in hand. The old hunter gets up from the table and gives them each a hug. It strikes Sam that Travis is old—and short—but it has been over ten years since they saw him and Sam grew a lot after his sixteenth birthday. Other than that, Travis looks like he remembers: plaid shirt, insulated vest, old jeans. Like just about every hunter Sam's ever met.

They exchange chit-chat, mostly comments on the changes ten years has wrought, before Travis offers them beer but Dean says "no" and "long night" and gets the coffee going instead, and if Sam weren't already spooked he wouldn't find it weird because Dean just drove nearly twelve hours to get them here after being up for at least another dozen. But he is spooked and it does seem weird.

Aside from that one stretch before breakfast, they hadn't fought. Dean hadn't mentioned Ruby and Sam hadn't mentioned Hell and it was all calm and so friggin' civilized.

He'd tried to talk about what kind of creature Travis had found but Dean had just said "huh?" in a blank tone. Then Dean had muttered something that sounded like 'roogru' and Sam had given up. Dean's mind hadn't been there, which wasn't unusual in itself. Long road trips often had a mesmerizing effect on his older brother, but it had left Sam wondering what the hell was going on. They'd been arguing and Dean didn't usually give up until Sam surrendered and admitted that he'd been wrong and Dean was right. Not this time. This time Dean had just grunted and asked for the sunglasses. He'd driven all the way from Mexico, Missouri to Carthage, with his arm on the door resting his head on it as if he had a headache, but Dean never had headaches—or never admitted to them, at least.

Now, Dean's turning down free beer and showing this hunt all the enthusiasm of a French chef for canned spaghetti and Sam's thinking of using a silver knife in case Dean's a shapeshifter again. He feels like he's being split, like one of those movies where one thing happens on the right side of the screen, and something else is happening on the left, and it's impossible to keep track of both.

Then Travis' words bring him back to the present. "What did you call it?"

"A rugaru," Travis repeats.

Sam stares at him, then at Dean. No way Dean could've known. "That's made up. He's making that up, right?"

Dean just shrugs and lets Travis fill in the details. "They start out human, for all intents and purposes, but they turn ugly real fast. First sign is when they get hungry."

"Hungry for what?"

"At first for everything, but then… for long pig."

Sam swallows back his nausea. He looks at his brother. "That means—"

"I know what it means, Sam," Dean says. He takes a sip of his coffee, frowning, and Sam knows that he's debating something with himself. Sam can't imagine what it could be since this seems like a pretty straightforward case. He looks at Travis and the old hunter is looking at him questioningly. Sam shrugs. He doesn't know what's going on with Dean either.

Finally his brother sighs and speaks, "I've heard that if they don't take that first bite then they never switch over: never become a monster."

Again, Sam can't help staring at his brother because seriously, what the fuck? "When did you hear—" he starts to ask but Travis' drowns him out. "My thirty years of experience not good enough for you?"

Dean shrugs, looking unconcerned, "I'm just saying that if the only tool you have is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail." He sips his coffee, slurping it, which means he's not as calm as he's trying to project. Sam's eyes narrow: what the hell is Dean hiding?

"What does that mean?" Travis demands.

Dean shrugs again before responding. "It means we're hunters. We see something supernatural and we kill it. Simple, clean… easy." Travis shrugs as if to say 'so?'

"It may not always be right," Dean goes on. "It may not even be the best solution."

Okay, Sam thinks, where the hell is my brother? "Aren't you the guy who said, just a couple years ago, 'if it's supernatural we kill it'?"

Dean looks back at him, "And you're the one who said we hunt evil. So far, right now, Jack Montgomery isn't evil. The man wears a cell phone, for God's sake."

It's true, Sam used to believe that. It hasn't seemed as important lately, but the weirdness of hearing his hunt-happy brother spouting it as a philosophy has Sam trying to figure out Dean's underlying logic. "So you're saying… if he never eats human flesh, he won't fully transform so he won't become an evil monster we need to kill?"

"Go vegan, stay human," Dean wiggles his brows, inviting his brother to share the humour. Sam easily refrains, but he can't so easily dismiss the fact that Dean is right. If the guy's not evil, then he doesn't deserve to die.

Travis is already shaking his head. He stands and his posture is aggressive and tense. "So what do we do? Sit and hope and wait for a body count? Fact is every rugaru I ever saw or heard of took that bite."

Sam turns to Travis. "If there's a chance—" Travis snorts dismissively and Sam clenches his jaw. "If there's a chance," he repeats, "I say we talk to him, explain what's happening. That way he can fight it."

This time, Travis out-and-out laughs. "I'm sorry, boys. I'm sure he's a stand-up guy, but it's pure, base instinct. Everything in nature has gotta eat. You think he can stop himself 'cause he's nice?"

"I don't know," Sam's voice is firm and calm, "but Dean's right. We can't kill him unless he does something to get killed for or else we're no better than the things we hunt." Travis is glaring at him but Sam refuses to back down. He's a hunter too, Goddamn it, a good one. His opinion deserves the same kind of respect as Travis' does, or Dean's…or Dad's.

Dean pushes away from the counter, dumping the last of his coffee down the sink. "Either way, none of us are hunting anything until we get some decent shut-eye. Six hours isn't going to make any difference to Jack but it'll sure help my brain feel better."

Travis turns his sneer on the older Winchester, "What's the matter, boy? Feeling old?"

Dean's answering chuckle is bittersweet. "Only by about a half-century or so."

"Okay," Sam breaks in. "We'll meet up again at seven, grab something to eat, and plan our next move."

"If he turns while you are getting your beauty sleep then I am going to kick your asses to China," Travis growls and Sam has no doubt the old hunter would do it—or maybe something worse. "One bite's all it takes, and our man Jack's headed there on a bullet train so if someone dies then it'll be on you." He stabs his finger at them. Sam doesn't do anything but Dean nods, as always willing to accept the responsibility for other people's lives . Then Travis wheels out the door, slamming it hard behind him.

"Dibs on the shower," Dean says as if nothing happened.

"What the hell was that, Dean?" Sam's question stops the guy from disappearing into the bathroom. "When did you become all Mother Teresa?"

"Yeah, sorry 'bout that." His brother rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "Travis wasn't going to listen so it was stupid to bring it up."

"That's not exactly what I'm asking, Dean. When did you become all live-and-let-live?" Dean is quiet, thoughtful. He looks away and Sam can see the underlying all-over stress his brother's carrying, but he doesn't back down. He wants an answer and he's got six hours to get one.

Eventually, Dean gives this little half shrug. "I saw so many awful things downstairs…" he starts and Sam braces himself for whatever tale his brother's going to tell. "Maybe I just don't want to add the image of Jack Montgomery being burned alive to all the rest."

"Burned alive?" Sam swallows.

Dean's expression is rueful. "Ten bucks says it's going to be fire."

"No bet," Sam responds. He watches mutely as Dean goes in to take his shower. Burned alive… What a horrible fucking way to go.

It goes down almost exactly the way Dean said it would. They meet Travis for dinner and he agrees to let them talk to Jack, but a couple hours later they can't find him at the motel. They race over to the Montgomery's but they're too late. Travis has been eaten, not even bone fragments left. They kill the creature Jack's become with fire and rescue the screaming wife. Turns out Travis was threatening her because she was pregnant—threatening her right in front of Jack, the idiot. It's no wonder the guy hulked out.

So Travis is dead, Jack is dead, and the wife is hysterical.

She clings to Dean and cries on his shoulder. Dean should've looked awkward and uncomfortable like he always does with emotional females, but Dean's weirdly okay with it. He's not supposed to be okay with it because Dean's never good with victims unless they're, like, four-years old. He always leaves the emotional aftermath to Sam to clean up, but not this time. This time, he's just holding Michelle, making soothing sounds, and letting her get it all out of her system.

Sam stares at him and silently goes to the store for more Kleenex.

It takes them all night, but they manage to calm Michelle down and explain to her what her husband had been, what their child could be. Amazingly, she doesn't call them nuts.

"After what I saw?" she says with a disbelieving hiccup. "Jack was a good man," she says. It's not the first time she's said it, and Dean, like he has the hundreds of times before, agrees with her. Jack had been a good man, could've maybe continued to be a good man if only…

For the whole six hours it takes for Michelle Montgomery's parents to arrive, Sam looks at this man, his brother, who he's known so well for so long, seen in all sorts of fucked-up situations, and watches him be so fucking understanding.

Once again he thinks about bringing out the silver knife.

"Let's go to Memphis," Dean says after they wave a final good-bye to Jack's widow. "We should see Graceland at least once before we die… again."

Memphis is close to Carthage and Sam can't find any news that would point them in the direction of the next falling Seal, so he shrugs agreement. He needs some time to adjust and Memphis makes as much sense as anywhere else. It won't be for long, he thinks.

Five days later, they're still in Memphis touring Graceland. It's jaw-droppingly awful and yet somehow awesome at the same time. "And I thought demons had bad taste," Dean says in the middle of the billiard room. "You think that Colonel Parker might've been a demon, Sam? That would explain a lot, wouldn't it?"

In a weird way, it's almost like Dean's finding excuses to stay in Memphis. They'd already checked out two haunted cemeteries, one potential cursed object, but done nothing about anything. Now, they're spending the day at Graceland. What's next, Sam wonders, the Grand Ole Opry?

"Dude, Apocalypse? Sixty-six seals?" he protests when Dean suggests a tour on a Mississippi riverboat. "Any of these ringing a bell?"

Dean smiles crookedly. "It's not like they can do anything without us," he says in response.

It's a frigging bizarre thing to say and Sam's just about to call him on it, but there's a glint in his brother's eyes that dares Sam to ask. So he doesn't. Even as he kicks himself for being a coward and an idiot, Sam doesn't ask. Instead he finds a line on a possible werewolf hunt in Pennsylvania, with a furry wolfman and everything, and tries to convince his brother that it's just the kind of hunt they need to get their rhythm back; a nice, simple, black-and-white hunt. Instead, Dean suggests a visit to Ernestine and Hazel's bar where they can maybe see ghosts of long-dead hookers.

Sam stares at his brother. "You go," he says, but he knows Dean won't go by himself.

The only thing the same about Dean is the nightmares, the restless shifting and soft whimpering, the almost-silent crying. It drives Sam nuts having to listen to it, knowing there's nothing he can do to help except let his brother talk about Hell and Sam isn't ready to hear about it yet. He's realized he might never be ready. It has to have been awful and the more he tries not to imagine what happened to his brother, the nastier his imaginings become until he's the one trying to drink himself into a stupor at night.

The thought pounds in his brain that Lilith did this. Lilith sent Dean to Hell to be tortured and warped. And Lilith is still out there, scheming and living and enjoying herself.

He phones Ruby while Dean's lined up at a shack selling Pulled Pork BBQ, a Memphis specialty and pretty damn good too, Sam's forced to admit.

"Hey, Sammy," she says in greeting and Sam grits his teeth at the diminutive. "What's up?"

"Can you meet me in Memphis?"

She laughs. "Is that a song or something?" Sam growls and she backs down. "Yeah, sure, you know I can. When and where?"

He just has time to tell her the name of their motel before Dean's sauntering back with their hoagies. Green eyes slip down, tracking Sam's hasty cell phone drop, sculpted brows dip in a small frown, but Dean says nothing, just hands over the sandwich.

"So I'm thinking tomorrow we should hit Sun Studio. I could use some new Johnny Cash."

Sam looks at him in resignation. "There is no new Johnny Cash, Dean. The man's dead."

Dean shrugs, "Whatever. Never seems to stop us."

Sam waits until Dean is snoring lightly, more passed out from too much booze than sleeping the rest of the just, but it's enough to get him out the door unnoticed. Ruby's waiting in her Mustang and Sam levers himself into the passenger side. They don't say anything: nothing much to say. This isn't a romance. They're not friends. They're allies fighting a common enemy. Not that there are any demons in Memphis to fight right now, but Ruby likes him to be prepared, to be safe, and he doesn't like to be weak.

What they do… he knows it's not the proper thing, not… not right, but it's the best he can do given the circumstances. And if his conscience nudges at him and tries to tell him that he's not hunting alone anymore so there's no need to use Ruby, he's had lots of practice ignoring that voice. It's the same voice he heard at Stanford, the one that used to tell him pick up the damn phone and call his brother already. He swallows a sigh and shifts in his seat and tries not to think of this as a betrayal of his brother.

"Dean says you have a hidden agenda." The words pop out of his mouth before he can censor them. "He doesn't trust you."

Ruby looks at him, dark eyes large and shuttered. "Yeah, well… your brother's never been a fan of mine." She's unconcerned, as she is about a lot of things.

"He says that you lied to me before and you're lying to me now," Sam drags it out and puts it between them.

Ruby puts on her turn signal and pulls over to the sidewalk. "We don't have to do this, Sam. It's your choice, always. I promised you that." She had, back at the beginning. "So if you want to run back to your big brother and trust him to take care of this," meaning the Seals, Lilith, everything, "I'll drive away right now and you can go back to the way it was. No hard feelings."

"I'm not a little kid," he grinds out.

"I know that." She smirks and glances down at his lap. "Man, do I know that."

"Ruby…"

"I'm just saying." He shifts uncomfortably on the seat, not liking the reminder of where nights like these usually end up. Her smile widens, "Most guys would brag."

He's ready to snap at her but she's got such a playful look on her face, like being here with him makes her happy, that Sam's anger drains away. "I'm not most guys," he says mildly and her smile softens in response.

"I know that too." And she does. She's always treated him not as John's son or Dean's brother, but as Sam, a hunter in his own right. "So what's it going to be, Sam? I can take you back," her voice trails off.

He should go back. His logical mind knows that trusting a demon, even one as harmless as Ruby, is probably a bad idea but, fuck! Ever since he found out he had demon blood in him, he's felt like it was a disease pumping through his veins. He can't scrub it out or drain it, so what he does with Ruby, what he's learning how to do? He's doing to try and take this… this curse and make something good out of it. For the first time since the visions started, for the first time since he learned what had been done to him in his crib, he doesn't feel like the demon blood that taints him is completely evil. He wishes Dean could understand that he's stronger, more in control, and he's gotten closer to catching Lilith than he ever would have done on his own.

Besides, it's not like he thinks Ruby has only good intentions, or is a truly good person, but neither is she evil. She's never done anything like what they saw Meg do, or Azazel, or even Ava back in Cold Oak.

It's that realization that tips the scales.

He can do this, he thinks. He can walk this tightrope and prove to Dean he knows what he's doing. He'll just be extra-vigilant with Ruby, try to dig more information out of her. He'll use her just as he planned when this started. Less partner, more tool. He keeps his face turned away so she can't see the calculation going on in his eyes.

"Nah. We're good." He nods confirming his decision to himself. "It's all good." Ruby's nod is carefully lacking in emotion: no relief, no triumph, and no 'I told you so'. Nothing to make him change his mind.

They're both being so cautious with each other that they don't notice the car following them.

Dean watches as Ruby's car pulls into the parking lot of a motel. He pulls in to bar next door and waits. The hex bag worked perfectly; she didn't even look over her shoulder. Or maybe she was just so anxious to get Sam behind closed doors, to convince him that turning into a blood-sucking monster was perfectly justifiable, to even suspect tonight would be different. Or maybe she's so sure of her hold on his brother that the idea of Dean following them doesn't bother her. She always was arrogant. Of course, what he can remember of Dead Dean's history proves she was right to be so self-assured: she laid down the trail and Sam followed along like a well-trained hound.

He can't believe it took Sam so long to phone the bitch.

He pulls out the knife—Ruby's special demon-killing knife. He'd lifted it from Sam days ago. Although it was more a matter of sharpening it and never giving it back. He remembers killing her. He remembers the knife sliding in and the demon inside her flashing and dying. He'd felt no joy then, since it had happened too late to change anything, this time however? This time, he's looking forward to it. A lot.

He knows he should deplore the corruption inside himself—Alistair's Apprentice come to life—but he's sure-as-shit going to enjoy this.

He waits for half an hour, making sure the narrow walkway between bar and motel is little used, before he gets out of the Impala and goes to stand there to wait some more. Ruby will have to walk right across it in order to get to her car yet it's close enough to the room that she should still be a little night-blind.

He stands casually—just a guy trying to clear his head after one round too many—until he sees the light spill from the opening door. It's Sam. Dean eases back, letting him go by before pulling the knife. His brother looks buzzed, full of energy and unnaturally alert. It's the way Sam looked in one of his future memories, before he went off to confront Lucifer and it reminds Dean of cokeheads after a hit. Especially the way Sam bounces past him, completely oblivious.

Dean almost rolls his eyes in disgust; you'd think being pumped full of demon's blood would've made him more aware.

The light shuts off. He hears the clicking of a door latch, the soft footfall. Even those sound cocky to Dean. She's halfway past him before she looks to the side and by then it's too late. The knife is sinking in deep. He angles it upwards, automatically looking for liver or lungs, and turns it a bit to make it easier to pull out after. He waits until she stops flashing under her borrowed skin then he lets her drop, nodding in satisfaction.

The bad guys are down one MVP, perhaps even the game winner, because it took Ruby over a year, a fake sacrifice, and Dean's death for her to worm her way into Sam's circle of trust and there's no way another demon will get that close again… probably.

"Dean!"

Ah, crap. Inevitable, but still, crap.

He puts up his hands. because he gets that Sam is pissed. He even understands why. By killing Ruby, Dean's just proven how little he trusts his brother's judgment, so Dean knows Sam's going to hit him and it's going to hurt, but he deserves it.

Sorta… maybe.

"Let me explain—" he begins but Sam doesn't even hear him. He grabs the knife from Dean's hand and Dean lets him. He doesn't even back away when Sam crowds into him.

"What the hell? What do you think you're doing?" Sam pupils are blown wide and his breath is freshly minty from the scrubbing his brother had done to cover up the ash and copper scent that would've been left behind. His brother… drinking demon's blood…

Now Dean's feeling pissed off which is why his response comes out a little more cutting than he'd originally planned. "I don't know, Sam. Doing my job maybe. Y'know, saving the planet, saving you."

"I didn't ask you to," Sam growls. "Do you have any idea what you've done?"

Dean snorts. "Yeah, actually. Better than you." Dean's forgotten the first rule of dealing with people who are fucked up: they generally aren't rational.

"Interfering, self-righteous, smug bastard! You just fucked everything up!" Sam shouts and Dean feels the knife slide into his own guts.

The second rule is that they have shitty impulse control.

"Jesus, Sammy," he whispers. He grabs Sam's hand, keeping the knife in, trying to contain the bleeding. From experience he knows that the location of their hands indicates a possible hit to his kidneys or his liver, maybe his spleen… His intestines might be perforated as well.

He's fucked up, in other words.

He sees the comprehension come back into Sam's face, sees him realize what he's done. There's remorse, sure, but there's also anger and resentment still bubbling near the surface. "Dean?" he asks, sounding unsure and a little suspicious. As if Dean's faking having a knife stuck in him.

"I'm thinking a hospital would be a good idea," he suggests. "Unless you want to finish the job?" The sad thing is, looking at his brother's face, Dean knows Sam not really sure what he wants. He does know how Sam's going to respond however.

"Jesus Christ, Dean. Of course I don't want to… I don't want you to die."

Exactly what Dean thought he'd say.

"Keys, right pocket," Dean says. "It's two rows in, 'bout four cars up. I'm just going to stay here."

Sam's finally looking panicked. He lets the knife go in order to dig his hands through his hair. Dean tightens his grip to keep it from falling out. He tries not to flinch when his brother digs into his coat pocket but Sam has to know that every movement jars the knife buried inside him and that it hurts like a son of a bitch. Or maybe not, considering that Sam's eyes are still blown. At least his baby brother is scrubbed and polished. He doesn't look like a junkie at all. Nothing for hospital security to be suspicious about. Except for having stabbed his brother. Kinda hard to explain that one away.

When Sam leaves him to look for the car, Dean decides that this 'give me a bullet to bite on' machismo crap isn't for him at the moment.

First he leans himself against the nearest wall, then he kinda slides down a little, like until his knees touch cement. He should probably lie down, he thinks, try to get the wound above his heart, but getting back up would be a bitch. He'll just stay here and hope that he's done, that it's over. One demon bitch down, one Lilith-killing tool and vessel for Lucifer out of the picture so Apocalypse averted—lots and friggin' lots of deaths averted including theirs. Even though the son of a bitch freakin' stabbed him, he's still going to put this in the 'win' column.

He kneels there, feeling the warm liquid seeping out from around the blade in his gut. Sam had stabbed him, over a demon.

This was so not a win…