Author's note: I think we're past the halfway mark now! \o/ Thanks for sticking with me. Looks like I'm targeting a revised deadline of 1/15/2009 to post the final chapter. (However, due to the holidays, the next update won't be posted until the weekend after Christmas. Happy holidays!)

Previously

Sam fingered his sleeve. It wasn't ripped. "I think I just tore my stitches," he said. "It's okay. I'm okay."

Dean rummaged in his uniform pocket. He remembered a piece of cloth wadded in the bottom of it when he'd tucked Sam's stolen spell book there. Pulling out a red bandanna, he shook it out and grabbed Sam's elbow to draw his arm closer.

"Dude, it's probably already stopped bleeding," Sam protested.

Dean ignored him, wrapping it around his brother's upper arm. "I don't care," he said. "This is in case we get separated again. I'd tie a bell on you if I thought I could hear it." He tied it off and stepped back. "This is like a red cargo flag, so I can see you better."

"How about we just stick together, instead," Sam suggested, though he left the bandage in place. "I think we're pulling back anyway."

Dean nodded. It was a two-day battle, he remembered. If everyone else was out of ammo too, the regiment ought to be done for the day, until the ammunition wagon could bring up a re-supply when they made camp for the night.

"Let's see if we can find Griffith," he said. Maybe, just maybe, the war was over for Corporal Leamon Griffith. And the Winchester boys could go home.


Chapter 7 – September 19 1863, 11 am

"Look familiar?"

Sam had been searching for Leamon Griffith, not studying the landscape. He raised his head a little and twisted to look where his brother faced.

He saw trees. Lots of trees. Pines and oaks and black maple saplings. Sam turned slowly and scanned the ground carefully. The terrain was uneven but unremarkable. He saw underbrush, flattened in places, exposed roots… and corpses.

A dead horse. And dozens of dead men. Broken, bloody, some pressed into the earth, trampled. Sam knew if he looked closely, he would see some soldiers with wedding rings, others who were only boys. He swallowed. He didn't want to look closely.

No matter how much death, how much slaughter he'd seen in his years of hunting, the sight still made his chest tight.

"Sorry, Dean," he said, shrugging, lifting his eyes again. "Should it look familiar?"

"This is where the battle started this morning," Dean told him.

Sam didn't bother asking him how he knew.

Dean's voice was roughened by smoke and Sam noticed then that his brother wasn't too steady on his feet. "Here, sit," he ordered, steering Dean toward a tree stump. At Dean's glower, he changed his expression to make it more of a suggestion and Dean grudgingly folded.

Dean hated hovering, though. Sam knew that, so after surreptitiously checking for any obvious bloodstains, he decided Dean was just shaken up, maybe mildly concussed. He shoved Dean's canteen in his hands and left him to recover in peace.

There were other men in need of more help. A lieutenant limped toward him, but shuffled past without stopping. Blood streaked the side of the man's uniform along his ribs, but he seemed ambulatory enough to stagger toward the road they'd left just after dawn.

"He'll be alright," a voice came from behind him. It was Leamon. "The field dressing station ain't far now."

The next wounded man they saw wasn't as fortunate.

"Help me?" This soldier stumbled toward them and then fell to his knees. His hands were covered in blood and cupped in front of his stomach, trying to hold his intestines inside. Before they could reach him he toppled completely and lay on his side, twitching helplessly.

He looked young, vaguely familiar. One of the men in Griffith's squad?

"Water, please…" the boy croaked, both hands still digging into the hole in his belly.

"Here you go, Johnny." Leamon knelt to unfasten the boy's canteen, but Sam stopped him with a hand to his arm. "You shouldn't give water when there's an abdominal wound. I can help you get him to the aid station."

Leamon pulled away from the boy. He tucked his head down by his shoulder, his voice lowered so Johnny wouldn't hear. "They can't help him there. They can't do no more than slap a dressing on you there and send you back into combat."

"What about – there's a hospital right? A field hospital? You have doctors there."

"He's gut-shot, Sam."

"I can see that!"

"Even if he lived long enough to get there – and it's near a mile away – the surgeons wouldn't do anything for him. That's a mortal wound. There's nothin' to be done when you're gut-shot." The bitter words were forced through clenched teeth.

"Griff?"

Leamon turned his attention back to the boy, raised his head and unscrewed the canteen, and let some water trickle over his lips.

"We made them Rebels run, didn't we, Griff?" Johnny asked weakly.

"We sure did," Leamon said with a tight smile. "You did a good job out there today. Held your ground like a man. Your daddy woulda been proud of you."

The boy's eyes fluttered shut, lashes the color of coal against skin the color of chalk. His chest continued to rise and fall, breathing shallow and erratic.

Griffith led Sam aside. "That fella there is John G. Bennett, a good neighbor of mine. We enlisted together a year ago," he told Sam. "He was just 19, the same age as my sister Lydia. I used to tease him that he was sweet on her. Johnny never did get up the nerve to say anything to her."

Leamon swept at the corner of his eyes with the heel of his hand. "He never will have a sweetheart now. Never see home again. So if the last thing he asks for is a drink of water, I'm damned well gonna give him that much."

"Griff?" The boy called out feebly.

Leamon dropped to Bennett's side again, and took his hand. "What is it, Johnny?"

"You'll come back for me, won'tcha? After you kick the Rebs off the field?" Bennett stopped to cough, face screwed up in pain. "You'll see that they mark my name when they bury me? And tell my Momma where she can come find me; take me home and bury me next to Pa when the war's over?"

Leamon looked around and Sam followed his gaze, noting the fallen log nearby, a hollow tree 20 feet to the south. He realized Griffith was fixing the position so he could return to the spot. "Sure, Johnny," Leamon soothed his friend. "You know I will. H Company looks out for our own."

Bennett sighed, and Sam wished he could say that the boy died with a look of peace on his face. But he didn't. His features were pinched in agony in his last moments before his fists slowly uncurled and fell away.

"Johnny was a brave lad. He deserves to be laid to rest with his kin," Leamon said somberly. "Maybe I can come back, find him again." He blinked back tears and turned to Sam. "Get the ones who can walk moving toward the field dressing station." Griffith gestured over his shoulder.

"And the ones who can't walk?" Sam asked quietly.

"If anyone ain't hurt too bad, and can help the others get back, let 'em try. If not, just bring 'em as close to the trail as you can, in case we can get an ambulance wagon through these trees. Not that there's much chance of that…"

Sam nodded and turned, but Leamon stopped him, clutching at his sleeve. "Look, I don't know how I got you stickin' to me like my shadow anyway, but since y'are…" he broke off, gnawing his lip.

Sam waited.

"Just - don't let me die behind enemy lines. Alright? If I fall, well, can you try to find my brother Lew? He's here – he's a lieutenant with the 44th. We – we haven't talked in a year. But I have to believe he'd come for me. Wouldn't just leave me here to be rolled into a mass grave."

A shiver crawled down Sam's spine. "You have my word."

Griffith nodded his thanks, straightened his musket strap over his shoulder, and walked away.

And that promise right there snapped Sam's attention back to the whole reason he was there. He and Dean both. He squinted through the haze. His brother was just one of hundreds of men in Union blue uniforms, but Sam found him easily, always would recognize him, even in a crowd. He saw his brother moving among the fallen soldiers too, the ones who would never get up, and realized that he was re-filling his cartridge box with their unspent ammunition.

Sam admired that about Dean, more than he would ever admit aloud. Dean had a gift for living in the moment, doing what was needed to survive. Sam, though, he struggled to resist the urge to lose himself in his thoughts, to just sink down at the bottom of a tree and close his eyes and try to understand how they could possibly be in Chickamauga, Georgia, in 1863.

He couldn't stop his thoughts from churning, didn't want to, even while he was searching for more wounded soldiers.

He'd expected some risk in the ritual. Had to be risky, because it called for iron to protect the user. Not to mention the fact that their father deemed the spell book 'toxic' and too dangerous to have around. This wasn't a run-of-the-mill summoning. He'd deliberately sought something more powerful than the simple séance he'd used to bring Father Gregory to him.

The spells in this journal were darker. They promised a way to cross a divide over time and space.

That was exactly what Sam was looking for.

Somehow, demons like old Yellow Eyes and Ruby seemed able to appear when and where they wanted, without relying on corporeal transportation. Sam wanted something that powerful. Most spells to summon spirits required something of the host nearby. He wanted to be able to call forth someone by name and intent alone, no matter where they were.

He wanted a way to summon Ruby.

In the months since… since he'd died and Dean had traded his own life for his brother, Sam had scanned every volume in Bobby's library. He'd contacted any hunter who knew anything about demon lore. Spent sleepless nights exhausting every lead Internet search engines had to offer.

It didn't matter if he had eight months or eight days left. It didn't matter because he was out of ideas. He had nowhere else to look for a way to break Dean's contract.

Nothing.

The only hope he had left was Ruby.

She was the only link he'd found to saving Dean. And she couldn't be trusted.

He needed a way to control her, like the Reverend LaGrange's wife had controlled the reaper. A spell that would both summon Ruby to him and bind her to his will.

Mojo that powerful was dangerous. Sam wasn't stupid. He knew better than to leap in unprepared, buoyed by nothing more than naïve hope. He wouldn't try Ruby yet. He'd take it in small steps. See how the ritual worked summoning a simple spirit by the power of its name alone. Learn from that, adapt it, and experiment with some other spells in the journal. And then, when Sam was ready, he would summon Ruby.

He was more than eager to collar the black-eyed bitch.

But Dean couldn't know that she was the reason he wanted this case.

When Sam had read the words of summoning, when he had named the spirit, he'd expected to come face to face with Leamon Griffith.

It went without saying he'd expected to see Leamon Griffith in 2007. Not 1863.

1863. Where a private in bloodstained Union blue was refusing to set aside the regiment's colors so Sam could check his multiple injuries. The young man's arms were rigid, both hands locked defiantly around the flagpole. Sam gave up and just wrapped a cloth around the man's scalp wound, his thoughts still on the spell and Dean, his eyes mindlessly tracking his brother.

With a jolt, he realized that Dean had stopped moving from corpse to corpse. He was standing frozen over a body.

Sam sent the standard-bearer to the rear and he made his way to his brother's side. A redheaded soldier was sprawled motionless in front of them, just skin and bones in tattered gray cavalry uniform. One foot still wore a dusty boot; the other was covered only by a much-darned sock. Dirt streaked the trooper's thin cheeks; no hint of the whiskers or stubble so prevalent on his peers. He looked barely fourteen years old. A child, still clutching a double-barreled shotgun in one loose-flung hand.

"I shot him." Dean's voice was raw, shattered, and Sam knew it wasn't due to the smoke.

Dean hadn't knelt yet to check for a pulse. Sam knew he was still summoning the strength to do that, still gathering himself tightly together so that he wouldn't unravel if his trembling fingers found no sign of life.

It was a small thing, but it was something Sam could spare him, and Sam did it without thinking, dropping to his knees and setting his long fingers gently against the boy's pale neck. Neither man spoke. Sam sat back on his heels and looked up. "He's alive, Dean."

Dean met Sam's look, eyes conveying what his voice could not, and then he bent, scooped up the boy in his arms, and began carrying him back to the aid station, Sam at his heels.

To his credit, the army doctor didn't object when Dean lowered a Confederate soldier to the ground at his feet. Instead, he paused in arranging a sling around someone's elbow to glance down at the boy, who was beginning to stir. "I'll get to him next," he said wearily. "You're alright?"

Dean nodded, and Sam thought he probably wasn't lying much. He looked liked he'd gone a few rounds with a poltergeist, but their usual remedy (booze, a hot shower, and 12 hours of solid sleep) wasn't really an option here.

The doctor turned to a pair of Federal musicians, one a bugler and the other a drummer by their gear, and gestured toward another man waiting on a stretcher. A bloody blindfold covered the patient's eyes. "Take him up to the regimental field hospital," he told them. "It's on the main wagon road, then a half-mile north at Cloud Church."

Sam saw Leamon was kneeling beside the wounded soldier, talking to him quietly. He squeezed the man's shoulder and stood back when the litter bearers approached.

Griffith came over to stand beside Sam, and the doctor turned to them next. "What about you two? Either of you wounded?"

The corporal was watching the men lift the stretcher, a worried look on his face. When he realized the doctor had spoken to him, he shook his head. "No. I'm not hurt."

Sam saw that Dean was waiting on his answer, as well as the doc, and he took a moment to think about it. His healing shoulder had flared in protest when he'd tackled the bayonet-wielding soldier, but that pain had mostly subsided. The bleeding had stopped. He'd had enough experience with infection to recognize a low-grade fever was simmering, but it wasn't anything to worry about.

"I'm fine," he said.

"You two match. Almost like cattle brands," the doctor said, amused, pointing casually at the scrape on Sam's cheek. The boy Dean had brought was now struggling to rise, and the doctor steered him toward a chair.

Puzzled, Sam looked over at Leamon, and saw a red welt cutting a right angle down his cheek and curling toward his sideburns. His own skin felt tight across his face in the same place.

Dean arched to stretch his back, the muscles no doubt giving him grief after carrying the boy, and then he reached over to offer Leamon one of the canteens he'd collected from the dead. He gave their scratched cheeks a curious look, but if he was going to comment on it, he was interrupted.

An officer came riding up to the field dressing station. Not in a hurry, he reined in his horse and dismounted. He was probably someone important, Sam guessed by the embroidered eagles on his shoulder insignia. He didn't look much older than Sam, despite the thick wooly beard. With his high forehead he looked more like a Yale-educated lawyer than an Army colonel.

"I'd like a word with the prisoner, Dr. Higbee," he said, a light Kentucky lilt to his tone.

The boy had regained consciousness; he was alert enough to sit upright. The doctor was winding a bandage around the boy's head; when he finished, it stood out against his reddish-orange hair like a white cotton crown. Higbee nodded. "Of course, Colonel Croxton," he said, and moved aside.

The colonel rested one hand on the hilt of his sword and looked down at the prisoner, eyes narrowing in study. The boy's face was splattered with an equal mix of dirt and freckles; he squared his thin shoulders and looked up, unafraid.

"Just how old are you, son?" Colonel Croxton asked.

"I'm Private Matthew McDonald, First Georgia Cavalry," the youth answered proudly. "And I'll be fifteen my next birthday." His chin tilted up in defiance. "How old are you?"

The colonel pressed his lips together in a smile. "Old enough, boy. Old enough…." He considered Matthew's threadbare appearance, and asked, not unkindly, "You don't have slaves at home, do you?"

"No, sir."

"Then why?" Colonel Croxton asked. "Why do you fight?"

"Because you're here," was the boy's simple answer.

"Not sure I can blame him, entirely." Sam heard Griffith's voice low, near his elbow. Too low for the colonel to hear. They stepped further back, away from the interrogation. Found a clump of trees and eased themselves down to the ground to lean against it.

"He's a Georgia boy," Leamon explained as Dean joined them. "We're invading his land. He's just defending it. Probably thought being a soldier would be a glorious adventure, an honorable action."

Sam glanced at Dean and thought. Dean's been a soldier his whole life. Since he was four years old. And it was never about adventure or even honor for him.

It was about family.

"So, why do you fight?" Dean asked.

Leamon rubbed his jaw. Thought a minute how to answer. "You heard of the Underground Railroad?"

Not many did, at the time, Sam supposed. But he nodded. Dean did too.

"One of the lines runs through Steuben County, where I'm from," Leamon went on. "Lew's got a friend there, Marion Butler. His house was one of the stops on the line. I saw my first slaves there when I was 16."

He paused, a long unbroken minute, and then twitched, shaking himself free of the vivid memory. "We mostly never knew when they were smuggling a slave or two out of the county. But one time, it was about six years ago, he had a big group. About 28. So they needed our help. There were women and children too." His eyes darkened, remembering. "I saw their scars. I heard their stories. Children sold away from their mamas. I'd never really thought much about slavery before that. Anyway, we gave them food. Escorted them to the next station on the way to the Detroit River and Canada."

"So, when an abolitionist like Lincoln asked for volunteers to rein in the slave states, you enlisted," Dean suggested.

"I should have then – in '61, with Lew and Butler. But, no, I didn't. Not then, and not for that reason."

"No?"

"No." Leamon's hand drifted up to the thin chain around his neck, and Sam saw that it held a locket. Something that could carry a piece of tintype or a cherished lock of hair. Leamon noticed Sam watching his movement and his hand dropped back to his lap. "I enlisted," he told them, dropping his eyes, "because I'm a coward."

"Corporal!" Colonel Croxton's shadow fell across them. "I need a runner to carry a message to General Thomas."

Griffith scrambled to his feet. "Private Winchester, here, he's a courier from HQ", he said.

"Winchester!" Croxton barked.

Dean used his musket to lever himself to his feet, clearly a little stiff, but he managed a crisp salute. "Sir!"

Croxton passed him a folded sheet of paper. "You can find the Kelly farm? On LaFayette Road?"

"Yes sir!"

"On your way then! No reply is expected." Colonel Croxton returned the salute, and then turned to his adjutant with further orders.

Sam took a step away when Dean did, his eyes wide with worry. They'd separated countless times while working a case, that wasn't the problem. But they'd almost always had cell phones to reach each other, had a mutual motel room to meet back at, or had a plan to rendezvous according to a code applied to the local phone book.

Dean turned to his brother, voice lowered so no one else would hear. "The 74th is pulling back. But we don't know where they'll bivouac yet. So after the company settles for the night, slip away to the field hospital; they won't re-locate it. You heard where it is?"

Sam nodded. "But… are you okay?"

"I'm fine! I'll meet you there after dark. I'll find you." Dean tucked Colonel Croxton's message in his uniform pocket, gave Sam a quick pat on the chest, and started trotting west toward the road.

Sam felt cold iron pressed over his heart – the key dangling from the rawhide thong around his throat. He remembered then that Dean still had the journal. If he had several hours R&R to recover from the morning's action, he'd have liked to spend them studying the mysterious rituals and often cryptic notes in the margins.

The book had had been several owners over the years, if the handwriting in the various spells was anything to go by. He remembered that the ink and script had changed again after this ritual, and Sam wondered, belatedly, if the owner had attempted the spell and disappeared. If he'd never returned.

Sam was a Winchester – he was used to things not going according to plan. But this? This was something he didn't think possible.

The ritual they'd performed was more than just a summoning. It was black magic - a binding spell. Binding the one summoned to do his will – that was what Sam needed. For Griffith, it was supposed to be straightforward. By his name, summon and bind him; command Leamon's spirit to depart. If this binding spell had worked, then maybe when he summoned Ruby, he would have power to command her, too.

But with this ritual, 'summoning' apparently didn't mean what he'd expected. Sam worried now what else 'binding' might mean, and how this might go wrong too.