The Winchesters from the TV show Supernatural belong to Kripke Enterprises Inc. and the CW, not me. I write these stories for my own entertainment and no money is involved, damn it.
A/N If you want to know how the Winchester obtained their supernatural "gifts" you should read "Sons of the Morning" for the explanation.
Walt and Roy Get What They Deserve
Chapter 4
In the Devil's Garden
Stanza IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
The broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men
The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot, 1925
Dean stood outside Elroys, wrapped back up in his blanket, and waited for the Sphinx to come back with another trophy. He thought about Sam's voice, coming out of the night, telling him to "Wrap that up."
He nudged Walt's head with the toe of his boot. Thinking about what he had to do now, he went to the trunk of the Impala. He knew there was nothing in there to use to wrap the head up but he got out the salt and gasoline to take care of the rest of the body. Putting his choices down he eyed the soft glow of the single light in the bar.
"What the hell," he thought and walked up to the door. It was locked so he knocked, laughing softly as he did.
After a moment he heard the door being unlocked and opened and Elsie stood in front of him.
"What do you want, Winchester?" she whispered and glanced over her shoulder. Ron and Paul were like frozen statues in the dim lit bar, their eyes glinting with the light.
"You got a couple of burlap bags? Or even big plastic ones. Either will do but I prefer the burlap." He saw her breathe in sharply.
"You think I should help you out, Winchester?" she growled. "Hide your own bodies."
"Come on, Elsie. You know they were assholes. They would have killed me and my brother without a moment's hesitation if we hadn't brought back up. Do you want us to get out of here or not?' Dean stared directly into her eyes
"They thought they had a right to murder anything that wasn't them. They were the kind of guys who used people's dogs for target practice because they were just animals and they were the kings of creation." Dean's lips twisted. "Hurry up before the Sphinx gets back."
There was a scraping sound in the gravel and Dean looked over his shoulder at the Sphinx with its new trophy and then back at Elsie. "Too freaking late, lady. Would you go find those bags now, please?"
Dean motioned at the Sphinx to stay put.
Elsie turned and headed for the back of the bar. Dean walked toward Ron and Paul; both men were still frozen in place. Dean glanced at the whiskey bottle Ron had in his hand and Ron followed his eyes then reached for a glass. Pouring the drink he set it on the bar as far away from him as he could reach without it looking like an insult.
"Why you guys ever thought this bar was a good idea is a mystery I don't have time to solve." Dean tossed back the drink. "Remember, now you know enough to be dangerous. Don't be stupid too. Listen to Elsie."
Elsie was back and handed Dean a couple of burlap bags. He started back out to wrap up Sam's bloody prizes. He turned and found Sam, not the Sphinx but Sam, standing in the doorway watching him.
XXXXXXX
They dragged Walt's body to the end of the parking lot and lit it up. The flames shot up into the night sky and embers floated on the weak breeze. They were going to have to stand there until the fire went out to keep from catching the prairie's dried grasses on fire.
"Where's Roy?" Dean asked.
Sam waved in the general direction of Orion's Belt. "On a rise about half a mile away. He sure ran as far and as fast as he could. Didn't do him any good."
A half hour later Dean kicked at what was left of Walt's body. There were still bones intact and he knew it might take as much as another hour for them to burn. He ran some more gas over it and the fire sprang up, full of energy again. Just then, off in the distance there was a siren. Both Winchesters threw their heads up.
"Shit, little brother, time to run!" Dean gathered up what he could and they headed for the car.
"Who the hell would have called that in? " They loaded and slammed the trunk.
"Don't know, Dean." Sam answered.
Just them Elsie came out. "Go!" she yelled. "The fire tower saw the flames and called us for spotting. Fire Service is on the way probably with that Deputy that was here. Run, the pair of you!"
Someone reached over her shoulder. Dean couldn't tell which Riddley it was. "Elsie, let 'em be. The cops will take care of them"
Elsie rolled her eyes and pushed the hand off her shoulder. "Fools, the both of you!" She went back inside.
They got in and ran south, away from the sirens, with the headlights off.
"Damn, Sam, we are so screwed." Dean pounded on the steering wheel in frustration. "Walt's body is most likely identifiable and they'll find Roy's when the sun comes up. Without a head or spinal cord; that's going to draw attention for sure. Probably hit the papers too."
"Too bad," Sam said. "Especially since I will have to come back to bind the spirits."
"What the hell do you mean?" Dean turned his head momentarily to stare at Sam.
"The spirits are trapped there for now because of the violence of their deaths. I need to go back and bind them or they'll start a lot of trouble around that bar. It's not where I want them to be." Sam acted as if this explained everything.
"We're going to get back to the motel and then you are going to fill me in on this mysterious plan of yours, Sam. You've rewritten the rule book and I want to know what's going on from now on out."
XXXXXXX
Garth was still there when they finally worked their way back north to the motel cabin, sitting at the table they had all been gathered around twelve hours earlier.
"How'd it go?" he asked.
"Not all that well," was Deans' reply. "Walt and Roy are dead but we got run off before we could deal with the bodies right. All kinds of a trail left behind and three witnesses; two of them not even in the life. So shook up they won't know when to stop talking." Dean threw his jacket on the bed.
"Might as well have waved a sign; Sam and Dean Winchester over here."
"Damn." Garth shook his head. "Right back on the Most Wanted list again. Didn't you guys just get off?"
"I've lost track a bit but I think we're supposed to be dead again." Dean replied.
Garth looked over the room. "Gotta go. Things to do, monsters to gank, calls to make." He stood and stretched his long, lanky body, joints popping.
"Thanks for all your help, Garth. You really saved our asses this time." They all shook hands and Garth was out the door. They heard the truck start, followed by the sound of one of Garth's annoying music choices.
Dean eyed his brother. "Start talking, Sam. What's this big plan of yours?"
"First, where are the skulls?" Sam looked around like they were going to appear in the middle of the room
"Out in the trunk, leaking gore all over my stuff."
"Sorry. I need to separate the skulls from the spines. Can I use a machete or is there something better?' Sam asked seriously, like Dean had expert knowledge in the disassembly of bodies.
"Christ, Sam! Bite 'em off for all I care."
"Totally uncalled for, you ass. That was just nasty." Sam glared at his brother. He could tell from the look on Dean's face that he wasn't going to get any further without telling Dean the plan.
"I'm going to use the Sphinx form to travel to and time walk around the Devil's Garden."
"First I'm taking the skulls over to Plitvice and hiding them some place to dry for a couple of hundred years". Sam pulled his piece of Travertine out. "This is going to act as my travel guide. They should get all nice and moss covered by then."
"I'll get them and take them back about 10,000 years and plant them in one of the Travertine dams. I want them to get welded into the dam with the Travertine so that Walt and Roy can see the skulls but know that they can't touch or save the bones. They will have to just watch as the bones dissolve into the water."
"What's the point, Sam?' Dean asked, honestly baffled.
"I am going to psychically chain these spirits to their spines and take them both to Plitvice. I'll drop the spines in sight of the dam face so the spirits are chained there like dogs to a stake. Then I'll let them know that when the bones in the spines turn to dust and the last of the skulls dissolve , they will go straight to hell."
"They can stay there and howl for, I'm guessing, a thousand years, before the last of the bones disappear. That'll give them time to learn to be sorry they ever shot you"
"Damn, Sam, that's inventive," Dean said "and really cold. I didn't know you had it in you."
"No one hurts you and gets away with it. No one but me, I guess." Sam hunched his shoulders and looked into Dean's eyes. " You sacrifice your life and your body for them and they hate you and hunt you down."
"No big deal…" Dean started.
"Shut up! Damn it, you make excuses for everything anyone's ever done to you. You're loud, crude, lascivious, kind and generous and the closest thing to a saint walking the world today. You'd let them lynch you if you thought it would save another soul." Sam stopped.
"You done yet?" Dean, sitting on a Kitchen chair, looked at his empty hands. "It's all I have Sam. All I can offer in trade for the things I've done. What happens to me isn't important. "
"Not true," Sam snapped. "You're what's important; at least to me. Walt and Roy can suffer for a thousand years and it won't be long enough. I think we can use them as a teaching tool. Anyone else touches you and I'll drag them to the Devil's Garden to see Walt and Roy. "
"And what do you say when they call you a monster?" There was silence in the room.
XXXXXXX
In the night Dean heard the Impala's trunk open and figured that the Sphinx was out there working on the plan. He looked over and Sam's bed was empty.
He lay watching the moonlight move over the ceiling. Was Sam a monster? Had he turned into something to hunt? A thousand Hunters would answer yes. He had killed men, the line no Hunter was supposed to cross. Humans were supposed to be left to human law.
He settled more comfortably into the bed, his arms folded under his head. He thought of the story of Ishi that Nixkamich had told them in the mountains. The Yahi tribe had been hunted to extinction in California in the eighteen hundreds.
Their crime was being Indians and, according to the law of the time, Indians weren't humans. Not only were they fair game, the law encouraged 'Indian Hunters' to track them down and kill them with a bounty of 50 cents a scalp and $5 a head, man woman or child. The 'hunters' of the time were so efficient that by 1865 few Yahi were left alive and they went into hiding for the next 40 years.
When Ishi emerged from the California hills in 1911 he was the last of his kind. When he died at 55, five years after coming out of hiding, the culture and the language of his people went with him.
Dean wondered who the monsters were then. If he and Sam agreed that they only killed evil, then was Walt and Roy's evil excused by virtue of them being human? The men who hunted the Yahi would be called murderers today. The law would track them down. This was too confusing. The law of the time said it was legal to kill the Indians because the Indians weren't human, they were animals, savages.
So where did that leave Sam and Dean? Was Sam an inhuman monster? Yes. Hunter law said hunt him down and kill him. Human law said Walt and Roy were innocent because the Winchesters were demonstrably alive so no murders were committed.
Dean decided for himself that evil should be punished and innocence should be defended. When men shot birds out of the trees in the middle of their song just to prove that they could make the shot that was innocence assaulted.
He rolled over in the bed. His gut said that he needed to protect Sam. That Sam was the innocent here, no matter what he looked like.
XXXXXXX
"Dean, wake up." Sam pushed at Dean's leg with his booted foot.
"Stop it, bitch," Dean growled. "What'd you want?"
"I want your ass out of bed. Come on. I brought you coffee and questionable donuts. Move it, jerk." Sam pushed again then went to the table and popped the lid on his coffee.
Dean rolled over and yawned, scratched his head and set up. "What time is it?"
"Seven in the morning. I'll give you fifteen minutes to get ready then I'm dragging you to the car." There was a rustling noise as Sam fished around in the donut bag. "I'll also eat all the donuts so move it. I want to get down to Elroys and bind those spirits so we can leave town. "
Dean yawned again and stood up, dropping the blankets. Still scratching he headed to the shower, grabbing his duffle on the way. He thought he could feel Sam's eyes following him.
After his shower he stood in front of the mirror and realized that he was showing a very faint glow.
"Crap!' He muttered. "Got to remember to turn that off." He realized he was getting comfortable in his new skin and that could lead to trouble. He made a conscious effort to turn it down.
Back out in the room he grabbed the donut bag out of Sam's hands. "The rest are mine." He got his coffee and they headed for the car.
"I need to get the bag out of the trunk, Dean." Sam told him. He took his key and got the bag and casually tossed it in the back seat. "The heads are already gone, by the way."
"Jesus, that thing better not leak on the upholstery," Dean complained. "We better not get stopped. That would be real hard to explain away especially if they are looking for a couple of murderers."
After a couple of minutes they were on the road to Elroys again.
Nebraska hadn't gotten any less flat in the night. You could drive for miles and nothing changed. The telephone poles flashed up to you and were left behind. That was just about the extent of it. Elroys rose up in the distance like an island on the ocean.
Slowly the bar got larger. They then noticed the police cars gathered in front of the building.
"Ah, hell," Dean exclaimed. "I know they were going to make a big deal out of this. This has got to be the most excitement they've had since the last prairie fire."
"How the hell are we going to do this, Sam?"
"Drive past and when we get around to the back of the rise I left Roy's body on; stop and let me out. I'll bind Roy first then I'll circle back for Walt.
The road curved and hid them from the sight of the cop cars. Sam bailed out, took the bone bag out of the back seat and felt around in it for Roy's spine. Dean had no idea how Sam knew which one was Roy's.
Sam held a spine in his hand and tied the bag on to his belt. He looked at his watch. "Give me a half hour then drive back up the road past Elroys. Keep going and I'll meet you along the road."
Dean knew the Sphinx was coming out. "Don't get shot, Sam."
Sam waved him on, crouched down and disappeared into the tall grass.
XXXXXXX
A/N Dean's musings in the night about the morality of Sam's actions developed out of discussions between me and Kinikia, another writer. Your input and opinion on the question would be appreciated and taken into consideration in the denouement of this story and the development of the next story in this sequence. Thanks. Leave a review and I'll reply.
