Chapter VII

Real Universe

Two weeks earlier

"Bobby!" Sam called out. "Bobby! Dean's awake!"

Sam glanced back at Dean, grinning elatedly, his hands gripping Dean's biceps.

And then it died away.

Sam frowned, forehead scrunching together with bewilderment. Dean's eyes were different as they glowered at him. They were still the green he knew, but they were full of something he had never seen in his brother, something that didn't fit on his features quite right. The rush of happiness in his body was suddenly dampened, his heart dropping to his gut.

His eyes were...

They were darkened with something far beyond rage and loathing, lines of a snarl the only expression breaking through the cold and dead look on his face. It sent chills down Sam's spine.

This wasn't his brother.

Sam released hold of him and began to back away, heartbeats beginning to race as his insides spasmed with icy trepidation. But Dean—the thing—shot up and gripped his hand painfully hard, taking advantage of his momentary weakness of confoundment and fear, and twisted it in one swift motion before Sam could even begin to think about retreating his arm defensively. The crack resounded throughout the room, raising a gritted cry from him as sharp, excruciating pain fired down through his arm and down to the tips of his fingers.

In that moment, Bobby wheeled in fast and, prepared and wary of any positive occurrences (for good reason, Sam realized now) as always, had had the quick thinking to carry a rock-salt gun with him. He had never been more grateful for his surrogate father's typical, conditioned pessimism. "What the hell is going on here?!"

"Bobby, it's not him," Sam choked out warningly, teeth clenched against the waves of pain shooting up his arm, tingles of numbness settling into the tips of his fingers. His wrist was definitely sprained, and he had had enough of these injuries to know this was a second grade sprain, which meant it would need a splint or a cast. It was beginning to display signs of discoloration and swelling already, but at least they knew it didn't possess anything more than human strength, albeit it was human strength that was fueled by a boundless, deep rage that Sam could descry deep beneath his brother's green eyes. It didn't show any indications of having any sort of supernatural traits yet either.

But this couldn't be Dean.

Bobby aimed the gun at the creature. "Get the hell away from him now, you stupid son of a bitch!" he growled threateningly.

"I told you never to fucking touch me," it hissed, and it seemed to barely heed Bobby's warning, or if it did, it gave no indication of acknowledging it, its eyes blazing with fury and abhorrence and disgust. Its grasp began to tighten around his sprained wrist, causing Sam to clench his jaw further against the pain. "It's your fault you didn't listen."

Bobby fired the rocksalt shotgun at its chest, and it released its hold on Sam's wrist instantly as it fell back with a pained, choked groan. Sam pushed himself to focus through the gradually fading dredges of agony, long enough to catch the gun Bobby threw over to him with his good hand, the other cradled to his chest, and knock the weapon's rear hard into the thing's head. It went down like a rag doll, jerking before its eyes rolled into the back of its head.

"It ain't stayin' down long," Bobby reminded, staring at the limp, unconscious body. "Get the ropes. We'll tie it up, and then I'll take a look at that hand of yours."

Sam watched the unconscious creature contemplatively, which was trapped in ropes to a chair. There was a visible goosebump on the creature's temple. Its chest was bleeding, spots of red seeping through his brother's skin.

This wasn't exactly the most secure and effective way to hold it captive, but currently, there wasn't any way to transfer the creature down to the panic room, which was the best place to keep it trapped since it wasn't anything that the wards in the room would affect anyway. Bobby couldn't go downstairs due to being confined to a wheelchair, and Sam couldn't carry a one hundred and eighty pound body down two flights of stairs with only one usable hand. Cas wasn't picking up the phone, possibly busy and engrossed in his search for God, so he couldn't come and use his angelic mojo to teleport the thing down.

However, for now it would have to do. They would take all the precautions, keep all the doors locked, weapons hidden away and out of the creature's reach should it escape, and be on the ready. Hopefully by then, Cas would have already shown up.

There were several things that they needed to figure out about the entire situation at hand.

Firstly, what was it that took his brother's body?

Secondly, what and who was playing this twisted game with them?

Thirdly, what was happening in the other world? Where was it that Dean was sent to? Was that where this monster originated from?

It began to stir, groaning in pain from the headache it most likely had. It seemed far too human, even if a very twisted and aggressive one at that. Its head lolled back, forehead scrunching together in its struggle to awaken as well as in pain from its injuries. After a moment, its eyes finally opened slightly, half-mast gaze absorbing the surroundings. It immediately sobered and straightened up rigidly, gaze roaming around on alert.

"Morning, sunshine," Sam said with a huff, a hint of snark in his tone.

The creature's eyes shot to him, narrowing furiously into a glare. It was only after a moment that the expression fell into something blank, a realization dawning on his face.

"You're not Sam," the creature scoffed out the statement. "You're not entirely pathetic. Not banged up either. So what the hell are you?"

"I am Sam," he answered, tilting his head as mild confusion flashed through him. Something didn't seem right about those words. Why did it think he wasn't Sam? What did that matter to it? Why did it expect him to be banged up? Not much room currently to think about anything else besides obtaining answers, he stored it away to ponder on later. He stood up from his chair and slowly began to circle around him. "The question is, what the hell are you?"

It didn't look at him, but when he reached behind it, its head turned warily. Sam leaned in, a strategy to further intimidate and agitate by being close, yet at an angle from where he couldn't be seen.

"Holy water and salt don't work on you. Neither does iron. So this is not a demon or a ghost possession," Sam explained. "Then I tried the demon-killing knife, which should work on angels too, but that didn't do anything either. You can't be anything else we know of, because that's still my brother's actual body. So what are you?"

The thing smirked, in a way so deeply unlike his own Dean that it startled him slightly.

"I'm what's going to make you wish you were dead once I get out of these ropes."

He had heard threats like that a million times before, even by monsters wearing Dean's face, and it always left him unfazed.

Yet there was something ineffably disturbing and dark about this one's very air.

"Cas told me that Dean's consciousness has been transferred to another body, possibly even another world," Sam said, picking at the edges of the cast on his sprained wrist. "Do you… do you think this could be Dean, but from that other world that our Dean went to? Like a—a body swap or a consciousness exchange or something? I mean, his consciousness would have to go somewhere too, right?"

"You ain't wrong, boy," Bobby conceded. "But we can't be sure of that either. It's nothin' more than theory."

"It's the only thing that makes sense," Sam argued. All the tests he could think of checked out, and he had no supernatural powers at all. None that he'd shown of so far, at least. His physical strength was merely at human level. "He's as human as he can be, but he just acts nothing like the Dean we know. He also didn't think I was me. Said I wasn't as 'pathetic' and banged up." Bobby seemed to have the same idea about the implications behind those words, judging by the line between his eyebrows, a disturbed expression on his face.

They both glance back at the man who was supposedly Dean's psychopathic and twisted variation from an alternate universe. He was staring at them, eyes colder and deader than a corpse. It was creepy as hell. Sam wondered, supposedly if his theory was true, what could have turned this Dean into this monstrous, violent person that he was. Was he born like this? Was it something gone wrong in his brain in the beginning of his life, an inherent loose screw that made him this way? Or did something change him throughout his life? Some major, circumstantial difference between their two worlds that screwed him up in a way he could never imagine his own Dean to be?

Bobby looked back at Sam. "Yeah… the only thing unhuman about him is...well, everything besides having any supernatural qualities."

Sam snorted. In all honesty, that sounded just about right. He straightened to his feet from where he was leaning against the wall and walked towards Dean, Bobby following on his wheels behind him. The abyss-like glare followed him in particular, which seemed to indicate that Dean's enmity and vitriol was mostly directed towards him.

Could it be that it was something Sam did?

The things he had already done here?

Could Sam be the reason for that major, circumstantial difference between their two worlds?

"We think you've switched worlds with our Dean," Sam stated as he stopped in front of him. "Cas told us that our Dean's consciousness has been taken to another universe. We think you're from that universe he's been taken to."

Dean tilted his head, hostility in his every movement. "You think that makes a difference?" he sneered, smirking in that way again that made Sam's skin crawl. "You're the same monster that I shoulda put down as soon as I saw blood all over its face, the same disgusting, demon-screwing filth that he was."

Sam flinched before he could suppress the impulse to, heart jolting with pain like a bullet had just been fired between his ribs, and he knew it would stay wedged for a while now. Bobby must have noticed his reaction, because he placed a consoling hand on his arm.

"And you know something?" Dean smiled coldly, his green eyes just as frigid. "In every parallel godforsaken universe out there, that's all you'll ever be."

Sam set down the first aid kit on the ground, kneeling down before Dean. He felt the crevassed gaze follow him, burning holes into his soul. The permanently etched snarl, full of loathing, curled at his mouth.

He reached out with his non-sprained hand for Dean's overshirt to pull it off his shoulders, but his brother jerked his shoulder away, spitting out threats in a voice dripping with acid, "You try that, and I'll make sure to chop both your hands off when I'm loose." Sam felt the skin on his hands grow heavy again with his impurity and the weight of his sins, the way it did every time Dean showed any indication of not wanting to be touched by him. This one seemed to be particularly grossed out by him, so much so that he got the feeling the threat wasn't entirely an empty one.

"Your wounds could get infected," Sam reminded him. He reached out again. "It's best if you let me help you."

"Keep your filthy hands off of me."

Sam looked away, his heart shriveling at the sheer hatred and disgust in Dean's tone. He exhaled nasally and composed himself after a moment, glancing back at him. "I'll call Bobby over."

He pushed himself to his feet, picking up the first aid kit. He turned around and began to exit the library.

"An old bastard in a wheelchair and a worthless freak with a gimp hand," Dean drawled out, somber amusement in his tone. "You really think you'll be able to keep me here when I'm free? You think you'll be able to stop me from putting you both down like sick dogs?" Hearing Dean talk like that made Sam sick to the chest. This wasn't his brother. This didn't sound anything like the Dean they knew.

He didn't look back at him.

"We know we will," Sam answered, sure and convicted.

With that, he walked out.

Sam leaned back in the chair, running his hands over his hair. There was a book open on his lap about alternate universes authored by a well-known former hunter in the community. So far, he hadn't found anything of use to them. His eyes were dry and sticky from the lack of blinking, and also begging to close down from the lack of sleep for nearly twenty-four hours.

The book was slid out of his lap. He barely noticed the sounds of wheels moving across the room, but Bobby was suddenly there, taking the book from him and closing it. Sam forgot to note the page number, and before he could protest, Bobby was admonishing him, "Not a word, boy. You're going up to the guest room upstairs and getting some shut-eye. That's that."

"Just a few more pages, Bobby, and then I'll go," Sam bargained. "I promise."

"Fine," Bobby begrudgingly accepted. "If I come back in ten minutes and see you here, then legs or no legs, I'm kickin' your ass, ya hear me?"

Sam laughed lightly. "Clear as crystal."

Sam's eyes flew open to a heavy, suffocating weight over his face. His vision was full of darkness as he heaved and gasped heavily, thrashing and trying to shove his arms with all of his might against the intrusive object cutting off his airways. When that didn't work, he reached further behind for the source, his fingers finding skin and flesh. He gripped it tightly, trying to remove it, but the arm wouldn't budge. The lack of oxygen was beginning to make him light-headed and weak. He kicked out as hard as he possibly could at wherever, hurling all of his energy into it.

His feet connected with something, likely to be an abdomen, and an angry, pained grunt emanated from the perpetrator. The weight lifted slightly for a brief time. Sam felt his legs being trapped down, although with much effort and difficulty due to his constant struggling. He took the moment of weakness and distraction and, now having an idea of the bodily position of the offender, aimed higher with his fisted, uninjured hand, this time for the throat. He missed, but his attacker's grip loosened in trying to dodge the attack.

The knife under his pillow was undoubtedly removed, but Sam then remembered his pocket knife in his drawers, fortunately on the side of his non-sprained wrist. His lungs were tight and aching, wheezing desperately for air he couldn't receive. There were black spots dancing in his vision. His hand scrambled frantically towards the night drawers, searching for the handle.

"Oh no you fucking don't," the familiar voice hissed.

Dean.

Fuck. He must have gotten out of the ropes somehow, even though Sam had checked and removed all of the hiding places he knew on his body for anything that could help him escape, that could cut into the thick ropes. Either he must have missed something, or Dean found some other way to free himself. Even so, he kept all the weapons (besides a few kept close to Bobby and himself) and lockpicks hidden away and locked all the doors. Kicking them in, which would have to be numerous times due to the strength of their locks, should have been difficult with the wounds on Dean's lower chest. He doubted that was what Dean had done, however, because they would have heard the noises.

He supposed Dean had always been far too smart and innovative. In a time like this, Sam really wished he wasn't.

Dean let go of the pillow, hurling it away. Sam hungrily gasped in all the air he could for the brief moment, coughs wracking his body, hands shaking. Dean grabbed his collar, hauled him up and slammed him hard against the headboard, knocking all the air right out of his lungs again and causing his head to spin. "You thought you could keep me tied up?" he snarled into his face, one hand shooting up to clutch a handful of his hair tightly, the one wrapping painfully around his sprained wrist, emitting a gritted cry of pain from him. "Something like you?"

"D-Dea—" Sam wheezed out, a wave of vertigo from the shortage of oxygen and agony making him lose coordination as he began to loll away. He was too far from the drawers now, where his only saving grace in this situation resided.

And then sharp pain exploded across his jaw, head snapping to the side. Sam groaned, blinking hard, his wrist still hurting from the pressure exerted on it. The same pain burst across his face again. His body was still weakened and trying to recover from nearly being strangled to death, but he needed to move if he was going to get out alive. There was no way he could lay there and just let it all happen.

Sam went straight for his injured chest. Dean dodged it successfully, whacking it back against the headboard. Dean re-assigned his grip to his casted wrist, tightening it until Sam went nearly breathless from the agony again, teeth grinding together as he choked down the scream through it. He breathed hard, sweating beading on his skin, feeling cold and dizzy.

"You, I'm going to kill, slowly and painfully. The old man down there? I'll give him a quick, merciful one. I mean, I don't have much against him." Dean smirked, tilting his head, still pinning his legs down and his arms against the headboard. "He just kinda pisses me off. Especially when he tried to shoot my head off back in my world. And for what? Some sick demon-fucker like you?"

Sam guessed this Dean wasn't all that different from the movie villains his own Dean criticized, the ones that loved to yap before they tried to murder or incapacitate someone. He headbutted him hard when he was close enough, giving it all.

That blindsided him, catching him off guard. He groaned, jaw set, as he covered his bleeding nose. Sam slammed his feet against his rock-salted chest hard, throwing him back and eliciting a grinded scream from him, and swiftly flipped to open the drawers, swiping the small knife off from it.

Dean recuperated far too quickly, grabbing Sam's legs in an attempt to drag him away. Sam flipped abruptly and hurled his armed hand as rapidly and as hard as he could down on his opponent's thigh. Dean yelled angrily, face contorting with anguish. Sam ripped it out and stabbed him into the flesh of his shoulder, tearing out another clenched scream, "Fucking piece of shit!"

Sam rolled off the bed, dropping to the floor, gasping. He lifted himself up and half-staggered and half-ran to his bag, grabbed the sleep-inducing injection he got a couple of hours ago as a precaution for a prospect exactly like this.

Dean was glaring at him, full of blazing abhorrence that still put a dull ache on Sam's chest. He was gripping his thigh and shoulder, still breathing heavily from the agony. "Don't you fucking dare," he warned furiously, a note of threat in the tone of his voice, but he had already lost the fight.

Sam jabbed it into the side of his neck.

...

Alternate Universe

Present

Sam felt empty.

Just empty.

Dean was gone, and he had had no fight left in him to stop him, the internal exhaustion and terror (terror most of all, as ashamed as he felt about it) choking all of his arguments down his throat. Some part of him knew he should naturally feel something about not having to worry about any further pain at the hands of someone he could never dare fight (hurt) ever again, but his heart was blocked to even the mildest emotions of relief.

To anything other than pure and utter hollowness and fatigue.

Sam swore off hunting because sometimes he still felt the throb of craving something so vile and disgusting that it made him sick of himself. Maybe Dean had always had a point there.

He was still bruised and weary, and much of his skills that were required for hunting must have rusted by now to some extent. He was sure that his sedentary body wasn't too suitable for the job anymore, and his father taught him that if you're not fit, then you're not fit for hunting.

But those were unimportant. Those were things he could build back up one day.

The real reason was that he didn't trust himself to go out there and not make things worse in the world instead by trying to make them better, the way Dean kept saying he would.

The way he already had.

So he said his goodbyes to Dorothy, whose lips curled into a watery smile for someone so unworthy of her bittersweet tears, hugged him one last time and kissed his cheek in a way that made him miss a mother he didn't remember getting cheek kisses from.

And then he drove to wherever in a car that still held dark shadows as well as memories of his brother, that smelled more like putrid alcohol now than the faint scent of leather and gunpowder that had permeated the air once. Still held echoes of a flat, deadened voice talking impersonally about work, of harsh insults and belittling quips and taunting jibes at his past instead of laughter and harmless teasing and dumb sibling fights about the best comical characters.

He ended up in Garber, Oklahoma and got himself a job as a bus boy at a bar, serving drinks and mopping floors and wiping counters and tables. It helped get his mind off of everything that he didn't want to think about, things like the scent of sulfuric blood and his hands wrapped around his brother's throat in a hotel room and glowing towers of ominous light.

Things like heavy blows raining down on him and tasting blood in his mouth, like crude words that drifted across his thoughts nearly all day long and felt like knives stuck in his chest, the glint of violence and hostility in green eyes that he had tried to quell by offering himself to let it out on.

Things like Dean packing up his bags and leaving, because he had finally had enough of having Sam around, because all Sam did was make him suffer even when he tried so fucking hard not to make him angry, not to make things worse. He did everything he could to not screw up at the little things, because he had already screwed up in all the big ways now and doing the little things better was all that was left, was the only way to show Dean that he wasn't all bad, that he wasn't entirely a fuck-up.

He kept falling back to this idea that maybe if he could make Dean believe that, he would believe it himself too.

But Dean was gone, so he supposed he didn't do a lot of right with those little things either.

He supposed nothing he could ever do would have changed the way Dean saw him, not with that darkness that he carried back from Hell inside of him.

Not with the things Sam had done.

He couldn't really figure out what was more pathetic, him wishing that Dean was still the Dean that loved him before everything became so horrible and dark, even though he lost all right, all worth, to have him back.

Or him wanting Dean back even as he was now, with all the blood and sorrow and anguish that came with him, because at least that had meant that Sam still had enough worth for Dean to keep around with him.

At the bar, he had a nice co-worker named Lindsey, who knew him by the name Keith instead, who looked at him somewhat warily at times because of the bruises on him.

"You're not secretly Batman, are you, Keith?" she had joked the first time she felt comfortable enough with him to point it out.

Sam had forced a smile and said, in a half-hearted attempt to reciprocate the friendly banter, "You got me. Was it that obvious?"

As much as he tried to sound normal, he saw her grin wear off slightly. Not quite in a disturbed way at his strange, unfeeling tone (or at least he hoped), but something else he couldn't quite bring himself to look at long enough to see, his gaze darting away.

When a glass bottle of whiskey fell and shattered to the tiles of the floor, he jolted like he was shot, his gut clenching with terror and his heart beginning to speed as he frantically glanced around for the danger, and took too long to compose himself when his mind finally caught up and realized that nobody was hurling whiskey bottles to the ground because they were hammered out of their minds and pissed at him.

She never tried to point them out again

That night, he dreamt of Jessica after many months. She took his hand in hers and told him she missed him, and Sam ached inside at the sight of her beautiful face.

And then she told him she was dead because he was in her life. And then she told him that there was no point in trying to hide himself away because his past would catch up to him, that people closest to him were going to die again, that he would always end up making things worse.

He tried to tell her he wouldn't. Not this time. He wouldn't make the same mistakes again, because he knew what he wouldn't ever do again. This time, things would be different.

"Same song, different verse," she said, in that sweet, gentle voice that he often craved to hear, even as the words felt anything but. "Things are never gonna change with you. Ever."

Lindsey asked him if he played darts. She eventually insisted on a deal that if she won, he would have to buy her dinner and tell him his life story. Sam agreed and threw all three of his darts dead-center on the board.

"Now...with..." The muffled words filtered into Sam's ears.

"Very mysterioso," he vaguely heard Lindsey say. "I like it."

But Sam's attention was caught by the TV hung up on the wall. The news anchor on the screen named John was talking about spring hails, lightning strikes and fire. They were showing media footages of what was happening to the world, all of it happening because of him.

"—the town of Tully? Tonight, John. Locals say that what started as a torrential hailstorm late this afternoon suddenly turned to massive lightning strikes that triggered the fires now consuming more than twenty acres here along the Route 17 corridor. County officials are advising all Tully residents to prepare for what could become mandatory evacuations."

The bartender turned the TV off and commented, "Damn, is it me or does it seem like the world's ending?"

The burning shame flooded through the abyss inside of him.

...

"Kid, it's damn good to hear your voice," Bobby's whiskey-gruff voice came through on the other line, and he sounded genuinely uplifted and relieved. Sam felt something loosen its grip around his lungs. It had been a long time, and he supposed the way they had left his house the last time he and Dean ever went there had, no doubt, left Bobby worried. Sam hadn't had a cellphone in the last couple of months until Dean got him one a week before he left. He still couldn't understand why he did. The best reason he could come up with had been to keep track of him when he wasn't entirely on a leash anymore.

Sam felt good too at the sound of his voice. "Yeah, me too," he replied. He smiled slightly, and it was the first real one he had in a long time.

"I've been sick with worry since you left, to tell you the truth," he admitted, and it was a testament as to how much he really had been, because Bobby never said things like that. Bobby said things like, don't die or I'll kill you myself or you damn idgits trying to give me a heart attack or you two sons of bitches are gonna be the death of me. He never said, I've been sick with worry. "The way that boy has turned into a monster… if I had my legs, boy, I never woulda let him take you away like that that night."

"I chose to go with him too, Bobby," Sam told him, mouth twisting into a remorseful half-smile. He never wanted Bobby to feel like that all these months, like he was responsible for stopping his brother. It wasn't as if he could have anyway. The burden of what Dean had become fell on him (and how he had failed, he thought to himself contemptibly). "That was in no way your fault. You couldn't have stopped me."

Bobby stayed silent. And then said, "Yeah… that's the part I never got, you know. And I was pissed at you for a long time for being such a goddamn idgit."

"I had to do it," he said softly.

"You didn't," Bobby countered, sounded slightly breathless with something Sam had never heard in his voice. He didn't think he ever realized the toll it all had on Bobby. "You coulda let me shoot him with that shotgun where it don't kill. Find a way to get that disease outta him."

"There's no cure, Bobby," Sam told him, certain as he could be. It was an entirely unique case, after all. Not a lot of people in this world crawled out of hell still human, came back with such darkening effects on a mind and soul, so there wasn't a lot to find on it out there that would aid them in any way. Human souls in hell that transformed into demons due to severe torture were a similar case, and Sam had tried to use that to search for a cure before he discovered that there were none for them either. In the end, he asked Cas, who confirmed what he already knew. Powers of a higher being such as an archangel, perhaps, would certainly fix it, but it wasn't as if any such creatures had any motives to. "I asked Cas. He was sure of that."

"It was at least worth a goddamn try to find another way, kid."

"There was no other way."

"So you go with him and you let him use you as a punching bag?" Bobby sounded angry, but Sam knew he was just hurting. It was the same pain he heard brimming in his quivering voice the day he saw Dean's fists diving into him over and over with his own eyes. "Why, boy?"

"He needed it. I deserved it," Sam replied as if it was that simple, and it was.

Bobby didn't say anything for a long while. When he spoke again, it was in a voice that was a little too forced and a little less than steady, "That ain't true, boy," he said, his tone weighed with carefully controlled emotion. "Not in the least. So get that bullcrap notion out of that thick head of yours before I whack it out of you."

...

Sam told Bobby about Dean leaving, and about how different he seemed in the days before he did. He told him about Dean apologizing for everything before he left, about how he gave his car keys to him.

"I try not to think about it too much, you know?" And then Sam scoffed derisively at himself, because he knew he ended up thinking too much about it anyway. These past two weeks, Dean had done a lot of things that he used to do before he changed, before Hell and Sam's bad decisions ruined it all. He thought of every gentle touch, every concerned word, every caring order given for the sake of his own well-being, the kind gestures and the occasional innocent (even if forced) teasing with no underlying taunt (sometimes he found them, but he couldn't entirely tell if it was just him or not) over and over, despite his wariness and disbelief of its genuineness. "I mean… it's happened before. H-him pretending to… I never got the point of it. I don't know. Maybe it was just some kind of a sick entertainment to him back then. But Bobby, it was different. This was different."

Bobby sighed, like he already knew where Sam was going, but asked anyway, "What you tryin' to say, boy? Spit it out."

Sam swallowed, brows furrowing together as he looked down at his palm on his lap, eyes tracing absent-mindedly over a jagged, glass shard scar. "I-I don't know. I just… I just wonder sometimes if it was… real, this time… you know? Like maybe… maybe, somehow, he was really coming back this time."

"That ain't possible, kid. You know that better than anyone."

"But maybe something took it out of him. I-I mean, that could happen, right?" Sam told him hurriedly, heard himself huff out a laugh in this desperate, pathetically hopeful way. "He gave me his car, Bobby. His car. He was acting almost exactly the way he used to before I…"

"I think he stopped caring about that car when he stopped caring about you, son," Bobby told him, his gruff voice soft in a way it had never been, but the words still stabbed him in the chest like a knife. "And I don't think anything that powerful gives enough of a damn about us to help us like that."

Sam went back to visually tracing the scar, trapping his bottom lip between his teeth as the sorrow and disappointment made his heart drop heavily in his chest.

Bobby wasn't wrong.

In all these months, Dean had never said or done anything to indicate he felt anything for that car anymore, once nothing less than a home to them. There wasn't anyone or anything out there, no supernatural being and certainly not one with powers as strong as that, that they meant anything to. If there was a catch, then nobody had shown up to tell them about it yet. Until then, there was no reason to believe there was any external force involved.

"I don't know what's making him act like that, boy. I can't give ya an answer for that," Bobby told him, something of a rueful grimace in his voice. "I just know that it ain't real, and I know you really want it to be, so you're tryin' to find a reason to believe it. My two cents? Don't trust in it, 'cause somethin' like that won't ever go away on its own."

He gave a small nod, jerky and tentative, even though he knew Bobby couldn't see it. Perhaps it was more to himself than anything.

He had already known what Bobby was telling him now, tried to tell himself that too whenever he began to fall for all those mind tricks, but he guessed he just couldn't fucking stop wanting to fool himself into believing his irrational hopes. He felt his throat clog with emotion, jaw clenching tight to control his quivering chin, and his features twitched into a doleful frown to stop it from crumpling.

He didn't say anything for a while, staring down at his lap. Swallowed down the hard lump that was making his throat ache as he pinched at his burning eyes. He only spoke when he was sure he could without his voice cracking. "Yeah," he finally said, sniffed slightly. If Bobby noticed, he thankfully didn't saything. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

And then he told him about the revelation omens. Bobby promised to send a couple of hunters to look into it.


Author's Note: Hello! I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter, and that everyone was in character (except psycho-Dean, of course. But still, I hope it seemed believable given the circumstances of that universe) I hope the fight scene was okay. I kind of struggle with those, so I hope it was believable. As you can see, the story is going in a similar direction as to how it went in season 5, but with a few changes and twists that I hope you might find interesting. One of them is pretty predictable. Maybe both of them are, idk, but nevertheless I hope you will like it! :D

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to:

Type40Treklock

jensensgirl3

shadowhuntingdauntlessdemigod

Lizaloves

PutMoneyInThyPurse

Pie Love Luci

hend eslim

Kas3y

ncsupnatfan

VirchowsTriadDuet

Elliesamdeangirl

sam x dean

LAHH

lina89

Yuki x Machi

bunny

O'MalleytheAlleyCat

Skyisthatguy

lala

Marissa-Clare

for all of your WONDERFUL reviews! They mean the world to me and I appreciate them more than I can put into words. Thank you so very much! And thank you very much to all those who tagged the story or me as an author into their favorites/alerts. Thank you to all those silent readers who gave my story a chance and read up to this point! I hope you will continue to read until the end. :) Thank you. You're all amazing!