Chapter 7
"Hi Mama!" Corey exclaimed as he flew into the room and climbed up on her bed with a little help from Dean, gently giving her a hug and a kiss before settling down beside her. "Sam brought me to see you."
Meredith smiled at the boy and slipped her non-IV arm around his little shoulders, pulling him close and kissing his head. "That was very nice of him."
"Daddy won't like it." Corey said. "He said you're sick, and you need sleep."
"Apparently I slept for a couple of days." Meredith said. "I'd rather be awake and hang out with you."
Corey smiled, and snuggled closer. "Good."
"I thought you might like some time with him." Sam said. "Considering."
Meredith smiled gratefully at him. "Thank you. Did you find anything?"
Sam nodded. "Yeah. There's an old cotton mill on the edge of town. Looks like the kind of place a djinn would like. Dylan and Rowan said they'd come here after school, which shouldn't be too much longer, right?"
She glanced at the clock and nodded.
"So, I figured Corey can hang out here with you and Dean and I can go check out the mill."
"Will you be okay here by yourself?" Dean asked.
She nodded. "Yeah. I've got my call button if I need anything, I've got my kid to keep me company until my other kids get here, and as long as nothing happens...elsewhere, I should be fine."
"Don't get too attached." Dean cautioned, nodding toward Corey. "I know how easy it can be to get pulled in and want to stay. I almost did."
"I'll be fine, Dean." she assured him. "And if not I have no doubt you'll be able to snap me out of it."
Dean wasn't sure if she meant him literally or her version of him, but he would definitely try to get her thinking clearly if she decided she wanted to stay with her son. On impulse he placed a kiss on her forehead before following Sam out of the room, and promised they'd be back as soon as possible.
"Why'd he kiss you, Mama?" Corey asked.
Meredith smiled. She knew exactly why he had kissed her. She had a feeling this Dean was quickly developing deeper feeling for her now that he knew the truth, but that kiss was purely for her benefit. "It was just a friendly kiss. Like a brother kissing his sister."
"Or Dylan kissing Rowan?"
"Yeah." It was exactly like that.
%%%
"So," Sam said. "You and Meredith."
"Shut up, Sam." Dean shot back. "It's not real."
"No. We're not real." Sam reminded him. "You and Meredith are real."
Dean rolled his eyes. "It's not me though, Sammy. It's her Dean."
"Yeah. The real Dean. Admit it. You like the idea." Sam said. "You wish she could stay."
"No." Dean argued. "And it doesn't matter what I want anyway. She can't stay."
%%%
Meredith had never told Jake the truth about Hanna. Kim wasn't even sure he knew that Dean was the friend that had died and left her sister so heartbroken. Actually, she was pretty sure he didn't because that was something he would have mentioned. His reasons for being suspicious of Dean had nothing to do with his resurrection because Jake had no clue that had even happened. She wasn't sure, but she thought her husband was afraid that Dean would hurt Meredith. She knew that would never happen, not intentionally, but Jake really didn't know that much about Dean.
As she pulled up outside the local sheep farm, all the way on the other side of the county, she realized that she would probably have to tell her husband the truth at a some point in the near future. And Travis too. They would need a cover story once they found Meredith, and Jake and Travis weren't stupid men. Meredith would be at least partially drained of blood and Dean would have killed the djinn with a highly unusual weapon. They could spread a false story for the public, but those closest to Meredith would probably require a bit more real information.
And now she had to sneak onto a farm in the middle of the night and slit a lamb's throat to save her sister. She wondered, as she got out of her car with a knife in her hand, how that wasn't extremely disturbing to her.
Once she found the lambs she didn't waste any time with picking one. If someone caught her out here she was in big trouble. She simply grabbed one, took a deep breath and sliced it's throat open with the blade. She gagged a little as she caught the blood in a jar, but was rather impressed with her ability to do what she had just done. Was it a bad sign? Probably, but oh well.
She screwed the lid on the jar once it was full and hightailed it back to her car. The other animals were putting up a racket and she would be stupid if she thought no one was going to investigate. The front door of the house opened just as she got back in her car and pulled away from the fence. Was this the sort of thing Sam and Dean had to deal with on a regular basis? Should she have taken the dead lamb with her?
Oh well. It was too late now, and all she really cared about was saving her sister.
Dean wasn't back yet when she pulled back into her own driveway, but Jake was waiting for her when she dashed across the street and into Dean and Meredith's house. She froze in her tracks when she found him in the living room, her brain frantically searching for a way to explain the bloody knife in her right hand and the jar of blood in her left.
"Jake!" she practically screeched. "What are you doing here?"
"Looking for you. I woke up, and you were gone." he said, and then his eyes drifted down to the items in her hands. "And now I'm really worried. What have you been doing?"
She opened her mouth to lie to him, but the truth came out instead because she couldn't come up with a believable lie. "Killing a lamb to save my sister."
"Excuse me?"
"My answer's not gonna be any different the second time around." she said. "Let me get cleaned up a little and I'll explain everything. You probably won't believe me, but I'll explain anyway."
"Okay." he said hesitantly and sat back down, not sure what to do.
When Dean came home Kim had washed her hands and the knife, which was sitting on the kitchen counter with the jar of blood, and had given her husband a brief explanation of what was really going on in the world.
"You expect me to believe that?" Jake asked.
"No." she said. "But it is the truth. Sam and Dean hunt monsters. They saved us from a killer ghost, and Sam's not here right now because he's dealing with a pack of werewolves somewhere in California."
"And you want me to believe a genie took your sister?"
"Well, it's not Robin Williams." Dean said, alerting them to his presence. "They don't grant wishes. They just drop you into a dream world and make you think your wish has come true while they feed on you. Either your blood or your fear depending on the type. This particular djinn is currently playing vampire with my girlfriend, and that jar of lamb's blood in the kitchen is what's going to stop it."
"Are they at the mill?" Kim asked, completely ignoring her husband.
"The djinn's there." Dean replied. "And he's got two other victims hooked up to blood bags, but I didn't see any sign of Meredith."
"Why would he keep her separate from the others?"
Dean sighed. He had a pretty good idea. "To keep me from finding her. I'm pretty sure I've done something in the past to piss this particular djinn off, and now he's getting his revenge."
"How do you piss off a djinn?" Jake asked.
"What's the easiest way to piss anything off?" Dean countered.
"Hurt its family." Kim said. "You and Sam have killed djinn before."
"Took out an entire family of the blood-sucking kind, and a mother/son pair of the fear-sucking kind." Dean said. "Apparently Brigitta has a cousin or something that we missed. That's my best guess anyway."
"Brigitta?" Jake repeated, completely lost.
"Her father attacked me, and we killed him so she and her brothers came after us." Dean explained. "We killed them too. Apparently there's more to the family tree."
"It doesn't matter why this djinn took Meredith." Kim said. "All that matters is that it has her, and we need to find her. And I think we could use some help."
"I have an idea." Dean said.
"What?" Kim asked eagerly, willing to do whatever he asked her to.
"I don't know if she managed to get out of the dream earlier or not, but if she did the djinn's probably dropped her back in by now." Dean said, pulling out his phone. "If she can get out again maybe she can do what Cas did when Rowena had him."
"Dean, Meredith's not an angel." Kim reminded him. "She can't just pop into your dreams and give you clues. Besides, didn't you say that almost killed Cas because of whatever Rowena poisoned him with?"
"Yeah, but that's not exactly what I meant. I managed to get through to her on the phone earlier. Maybe I can do it again."
"How is that possible if she's in another world?" Jake asked, still completely lost.
Kim explained while Dean dialed. "She's not really in another world. It's a dream. When the djinn had Dean he kept seeing this girl in his dream world that ended up being another one of the djinn's victims in real life. The real world can bleed into the dream. I wouldn't have thought a phone call would work, but there's still a lot about the supernatural world that I don't understand."
"Well, a phone call didn't work this time." Dean said, hanging up. "I got her voicemail again, but there's still another way I might be able to get to her."
"Which is?" Kim prompted impatiently.
"African Dream Root. It worked with Charlie, but it was a different kind of djinn. I don't think that'll matter though."
"What's African Dream Root?" Jake asked
"Look," Dean said, trying not to snap at the other man because he understood that this was all very new and confusing to him. "We don't have time for Hunting 101 right now. Eventually that djinn is going to drain all of Meredith's blood and she'll die. I have to be able to find her before then, and we have no idea how much blood she's lost already. I'm not trying to be rude here, but if you could just stop asking questions and let me do my job I'd really appreciate it."
Jake wasn't sure exactly how to respond to that so he simply shut up.
Dean quickly explained how African Dream Root worked while he mixed the foul tasting drink, adding a strand of Meredith's hair from her brush, and then made himself comfortable on the couch after gulping the concoction down. A little while later he was sound asleep.
"Now what?" Jake asked.
"Now we wait."
%%%
Dean woke up in an uncomfortable chair in a hospital waiting room. "This can't be good."
He found his way to a nurse's station and asked the woman at the desk where he could find Meredith Mitchell. She directed him to a room in the psych ward.
"Also not good." he muttered as he followed the signs on the wall.
It took a few minutes, but he finally found the right room and checked to make sure no one else was there before he went in. Aside from Meredith and a nurse the room was empty.
The nurse gave him a smile that said she recognized him when she looked up and saw him standing in the doorway. Meredith was asleep and she was checking her vitals to make sure everything was okay. Dean assumed this was the hospital he had taken Meredith to after Hanna had shot her, and wondered if this was one of the same nurses. She didn't look familiar, but he had seen a lot of people over the last decade. Not all of them stood out in his mind.
"She seems to be doing just fine today, Mr. Winchester." she said. "The Mitchells are pretty lucky to have friends like you and your brother. I'm sure Meredith's sister and husband are relieved to know that you two are here so often when they can't be with her."
Husband? Was she still married to Jake in this dream? That made him wonder what wish the djinn had granted her because he knew that wasn't it.
"Well, you know." he said. "The Mitchells, they're like family to us, so of course we're gonna do whatever we can to help."
The nurse smiled. "Well, I think it's wonderful. A lot of the patients in this ward aren't so lucky. Let me know it you need anything."
"Thanks." he said as she walked out of the room.
He went in and sat down on the bed. She looked so peaceful asleep with her hair in her face. There was an IV line in her arm that looked like whoever had put it in had screwed up on the first try and he wanted to hit whoever had hurt her. But instead he just reached out and gently pushed her hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear like she did so often. He didn't want to wake her, but he didn't have any choice.
"Mere." he said, giving her shoulder a gentle shake and hoping he wasn't causing any pain. He didn't know what kind of wounds she might have. "Wake up, baby."
Her eyes fluttered open and she smiled at him. "Hey. Where's Sam?"
Dean faltered for a moment. Why was she asking for Sam? "Uh, Sam's in California."
She looked confused for a moment and then he could actually see the pieces click into place and her confusion turned to joy. "You're my Dean?"
"Well, yeah, but I guess it depends on what you mean by that exactly." he said. "I'm guessing there's a dream version of me running around somewhere?"
She nodded. "Yeah. He and Sam are out trying to find the djinn. We thought maybe if we figured out where it's hiding we might be able to find a way to tell you so you could find me faster."
"He's at the cotton mill, and he's got two other victims." Dean said.
"So...why are you here if you know where I am?"
"Because the djinn's probably keeping you somewhere else." Dream Dean said as he and Sam walked into the room. He looked at Real Dean sitting on the bed and gave a slight shake of his head. "God, I wish this was weirder than it is."
"You and me both." Real Dean agreed.
"It's weird for me if it make either of you feel any better." Sam piped up.
"Not really." both Deans said.
"Why would the djinn be keeping me somewhere else?"
"Revenge." Dream Dean said.
Real Dean nodded in agreement. "That's my best guess. I think it's probably one of Brigitta's relatives. He took you to get back at me, and now he's keeping you separate from the others to make it harder for me to find you."
"That's what we were thinking." Sam said, taking the one chair provided for visitors. "We were hoping we might be able to contact you somehow once we found the djinn, but it didn't work, so we've been looking into the djinn. Trying to figure out who it is, and where it might be holding Meredith."
"Yeah, but that's not easy when she's here." Dream Dean said.
"That's why I'm here." Real Dean said, looking back at his girlfriend. "I need you to help me out, Mere."
"How?"
"Did you get out?"
She nodded. "That's how I ended up here. I stabbed myself in the heart, and I guess the djinn twisted it so that I missed, and they dropped me in the psych ward because they thought I was going crazy. Apparently it was all very sudden so Kim called you...them."
"Okay, well, I need you to get out again." Real Dean said. "I used African Dream Root to get here, and I can use it to come back, but I need you to wake up and try to look around a little. Any little detail might help. Can you do that?"
"I did it once already."
"Do you remember anything from the first time?" Sam asked.
She shook her head. "No. The djinn was right there when I woke up and I barely had time to realize I was awake before he knocked me out again."
"Then let's try again." Real Dean said. "I'll give you an hour. I don't know what that translates to here, but I promise I'll be back."
She smiled at him, reaching for his hand. "Haven't I already told you not to make that promise?"
"Have I ever not come back?"
Dream Dean couldn't help but see the love between the two and it made him feel awkward as Real Dean leaned in to kiss her, a real kiss and not just a peck on the cheek, and then pulled out a knife and stabbed her in the heart.
And that's how a Winchester shows his love. Poor Meredith. I kind of feel sorry for Dream Dean too. He's falling in love and he can't even enjoy it because he's not real. And major points to Kim for handling killing a lamb and telling her husband the truth so well. The truth telling I'd have been fine with, but the lamb killing would've been a little less easy for me. Okay, a lot. It was fun to get to see that side of her though. These girls don't mess around when it comes to family. ~SG
