Spy Guy: Here's an update. :) In the immortal words of Sheriff Burke, Happy Fucking Valentines Day.


Chapter 3: In the Bar.


The ensuing pause seemed endless. Sam could hear his heart pounding in his chest, could hear the world around him getting louder and louder as the moment drew on. He shouldn't have called. This was a mistake. He'd tried so hard to cut himself off from everything around him, and here he was, opening the gates that would let people back into his isolated world. He felt his hand begin to tremble again, but for some reason, he couldn't bring himself to hang up. There was some part of him waiting for Bobby's answer, wanting to hear more of his voice. Growing up, Bobby had been somewhat of a father to himself and Dean, and later on, an invaluable asset during hunts.

How had he repaid him? By ignoring him? By abandoning him?

"Sam?" The man replied, his voice more tentative and meek than Sam had ever heard it. "Is that you?"

"Hey." Sam said, his own voice shaking more than he intended. "Ye-yeah." He cleared his throat. "It's me."

Another pause.

"I thought you were dead, ya idjit!" Bobby shouted through the line, and Sam flinched. "You didn't answer any of my calls, and no one's seen you for months. The last I heard of you was from some hunter who said he saw you talking to a goddamn voodoopriest out in New Orleans! Sam, you should know better!"

He wanted to hang up. He wanted to just drop the phone and bury his face in his hands...but he knew that Bobby was right. Going to see the priest had been a terrible idea…and more than that, it had almost cost him everything. In the end, when everything was all said and done, he still wasn't any closer to bringing Dean back.

"Bobby please-"

"Tell me you've given up." The man demanded. "Tell me you're done."

"No." Sam said. "I'm not done Bobby, and…and I probably never will be. You're going to have to accept it or I'll hang up."

But, he hadn't yet. He wasn't sure if he even could at this point. His hand felt glued to the phone, his body frozen in place.

"Then you won't be getting anything from me." The other man growled. "Sam, I just can't help you throw your life away. Do you think that Dean would like how—"

"I found someone who looks just like Dean!"

Sam tried to calm his breathing as he waited for Bobby to reply, his skin suddenly clammy and cold. He should hang up. He should forget that this had even happened, and go back to being alone.

"What did you do?"

The man's voice was low and full of venom. Sam could almost see his face; he'd seen it many times before when his dad and Bobby had gotten into a bad fight.

"Nothing. It's not really him."

It can't be.

"Then what?" Bobby asked. "A shifter? Did you seriously call me about a shifter, boy?"

Yes. Yes he had. He had called him about a shifter, or something like one. Why? Because he couldn't face having to stab his brother with a knife, or burn him to death, or cut off his head. Because he was a coward unfit to hunt anymore, because he had such a significant glaring weakness…his brother. He'd killed so many things over the past few months, but this-this one single, pathetic shifter-had reduced him to a trembling kid again.

"I can't do it, Bobby."

"What? You can't kill a shifter? You've done it before."

"No…I can't kill Dean."


"Don't do anything stupid." Bobby had said. "I'll be there in a day, and then we'll figure this out, alright?"

Back in the motel, Sam sat on the edge of the sagging, broken bed, swallowing down a greasy hamburger that tasted like nothing in his mouth. In the background, the news was playing on a small television set, its picture fuzzy and sound muffled. Sam had been trying to pay attention to it-he was on a hunt, after-all-but his thoughts kept wandering.

"Don't do something stupid."

Easier said than done. He was torn between fear and anger, between wanting to kill the thing with his brother's face, to being crippled by the thought. His instincts screamed at him to do something even though he knew it was a terrible idea.

There was a thought that kept scratching at the back of his mind...a thought that kept pushing and pushing no matter how hard Sam tried to ignore it. He had no proof that this thing was a shifter. Shifters couldn't hold their forms for too long, and Tom Hanniger had been born and raised in this town. If a shifter tried to stay in the same form for too long, their skin would start to crawl, and they'd rip it off to escape the pain. Sam had seen it before...it wasn't pretty.

There was a soft voice in the back of his brain, whispering about the possibility that Tom wasn't a shifter at all...saying that, maybe, somewhere along the road, Sam had lost his mind.

Choking down his last bite of burger, Sam wiped his hands on the bedspread, and grabbed his coat. He needed an ice-cold beer to slow his mind down. Maybe something stronger. Much stronger. He hated the times when his thoughts got the better of him. When dark notions leapt from the shadows and tried to consume him. When Dean was around, he had had a distraction, but now, with nothing to hold them at bay, he found thoughts leaking in, whispering to him.

Whispering...


Sam found himself at the same bar as the previous night, hunched over the counter, eyes focussed on a paper heart taped to a wooden support beam across from him. He had to really get over this. He had to.

But he couldn't.

Everything had been a mess before yesterday, but at least there had been constants in his life. He had known that Dean was dead, and that it was his job to bring him back.

Now...

There was a group of men to his left, taking shots of whiskey and scoffing at the upcoming holiday. Sam recognized a few of them from the night before, all of them much older than himself, with silver hair and wrinkled faces. It wasn't long though, before a younger man walked up to them, with curly dark hair and brown tweed jacket. He hovered a moment, before one of the men turned and glared at him.

"Doc Miller, you just going to stand there, or you going to say something?"

The younger man faltered a moment, his fingers wrapping tighter around his glass.

"I'm sorry Mr. Burke, but y'know, the town's all shook up-"

"Harry Warden's dead." The man snapped, finishing another shot in one gulp. "I shot him myself. It's a copycat. Just some sick fuck."

"They never did find his body." The man to Burke's left murmured. "He didn't die in the cave-in, despite what the reports said."

Sam heard someone enter the bar, and suddenly, everything fell silent. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and a strange chill pass through his body. Slowly, he turned to look at the newcomer, to see the man that had so quickly disrupted the peace.

And his beer bottle fell from his hand.

"It's the Hanniger Kid."

"What the hell is he doing here?"

There he was, sidling into the bar with a familiar bow-legged gait, green eyes darting about the room. He was dressed in a dark coat over a thick sweatshirt, worn jeans and heavy boots. But, his hair was almost black...too dark to be Dean's. Sam hadn't noticed it before-because the paper had been printed in black and white-but now it was all too obvious, and his gut twisted. Shapeshifters didn't make errors like that. They made perfect copies of the person they were impersonating.

Sam had to struggle not to flinch as the thing sat beside him, leaning over the bar, closing his sunken-in eyes and taking a deep breath. Monster or not, he didn't look well. Maybe his skin was starting to crawl, and he wanted nothing more than to rip it from its bones...or he was human, and sick, suffering from a cold, or the flu.

Either way, Sam didn't have time to think about it.

Shouting erupted in the bar as one of the men seized Tom by the hood of his sweatshirt, and punched him in the face. The younger man reeled back, trying to protect himself from the sudden onslaught of blows.

Sam was on his feet in an instant, pulling the old man away from his target, dodging his continued punches until the rest of the bargoers managed to hold their friend back.

"What the fuck?" Tom cursed, wiping at the blood running from his nose.

Sam froze.

The voice...Tom's voice...it wasn't right either...not low enough to be Dean. Not rough and broken.

"He's back because of you!" The old man snarled, struggling in his friends' hold. "You were responsible! He wants you!"

Tom reeled back as his attacker managed to work his way free. Then, suddenly, another man grabbed Tom by the front of his shirt, pulling him close, and hissing in his face,

"You're in the wrong bar, kid."

"Hey!" Sam found himself shouting, forcing the man away from Tom. "He didn't even do anything!"

Tom's second attacker sneered at him.

"You're not a local, are you, kid?" He snapped. "You don't even know what happened here."

"I do." Sam snarled. "He made a mistake. That doesn't give you an excuse to gang up on him!"

Sam wasn't sure why he was protecting the thing that had his brother's face. Maybe it was because he wanted answers, maybe it was because he wanted to deal the blows himself...

Or, maybe it was because he wouldn't have let those men hurt Dean.

"Red, come on!" Burke shouted, pulling at the man's shoulder. "Stand down!"

"Why the hell should I?" The man, Red spat. "We all know why Hanniger's back! He's going to sell the mine. Then there's all this Harry Warden bullshit going around! And now, he's back in town! It doesn't seem right, sheriff."

He turned to Tom, eyes narrowed.

"It doesn't seem right."

Sam found himself caught up in another wave of fighting, trying to pull Red-who was just as tall as him, with twice the muscle-away from Tom, who was barely managing to hold his own. Red growled like an animal, forcing Tom into the wall, and Sam couldn't ignore the loud *thunk* his head made against the wood.

"Stop!" Burke screamed, placing himself between the two men. "Goddammit, why don't you know when to stand down?"

Tom swayed a bit on his feet, using the wall heavily for support. With a shaky hand, he reached up, tenderly touching the back of his head. Sam watched as he drew away, his fingers covered in blood.

"Harry's going to kill you for good this time, you hear me?" The first man spat.

"Fuck off, Hinch." Burke said. "Can't you see he's injured pretty bad?"

"I'm fine." Tom slurred, pushing himself away from the wall.

"You might need a hospital."

The man scoffed.

"I'll be fine on my own."

Sam watched as Tom took a few shaky steps, before faltering, and somehow, Sam was there to steady him when he did. The man looked at him with familiar, confused eyes, before accepting his help, and taking a few more steps.

"Could I trouble you for a ride?" Tom asked as they approached the door. "I can't really drive like this."

"No problem." Sam found himself saying.

And for a moment, he could pretend that Dean was back, and they were stumbling back to the hotel room after a long night fighting monsters.

But...this wasn't Dean, and the monster he was supposed to be fighting was sitting in the passenger seat of the impala.

Tom had to be a monster...he definitely wasn't Dean.

Sam couldn't forget that.