First, sorry for the delay in posting. It has really been the week from hell. I can count the number of hours I have slept in the last five days on my fingers, and still have a few digits left over. (sniffs) It is short, I know…but I finally have a little time off, so we'll get back into the swing of things quickly. In the mean time, Dean recommends Metallica's Ride the Lightning CD as a soundtrack to this fic so far. Hehe.
Sunrise saw Dean sitting on the rickety wooden steps of Bobby's porch. The rising red orb of light staining the hulking metal shells and banishing the shadows of the night. So many times in his life Sam could recall the methodical movement of Dean's hands on a gun. It was one of his first childhood memories, which said a great deal about their early years.
With his back to Sam, and dressed again in a thick red and white flannel shirt, Dean didn't look as if he had spent the last four months being tortured by a demon wearing his brother's skin. It made Sam hesitant to move any closer, knowing that as soon as he saw the sun touched face of his brother, that safety net of familiarity would crumble.
The hunter in Sam told him to back off. Dean was dealing with things in his own way, and in time, he would come to Sam. The brother in him felt torn. He knew Dean better than anyone. He knew his brother and his stoic nature. Left to his own devices, Dean would just build another fortification over the rubble of its predecessor. But Sam knew that a castle built on uneven ground would only stand strong for so long. Better perhaps if he forced Dean into clearing away the debris first.
"You always were shit at sneaking up on people." Sam smiled. Trust Dean to sense his little brother's turmoil and seek to bridge the gap between them. "You remember that skin walker in Ohio? You tripped over your own feet, and it nearly made a Twinkie out of you."
"I was fourteen." Sam huffed, taking a seat on the steps, careful to leave a distance between himself and Dean. Dean had yet to look at him. Sam wasn't sure if that were a bad thing or not. "And I'd just hit a growth spurt. I suddenly had beanpoles for legs. They got in the way." Sam hadn't been the most graceful teenager. It had annoyed him at the time, especially because Dean had never seemed to hit that awkward, lanky stage. To Sam's mind, one minute his brother had been small and childlike, the next he was fully-grown, muscular, and possessing a catlike grace neither Sam nor their father shared.
"I remember when you got taller than me. Christ that pissed me off. Got over it. Thought I could get over anything. Guess I can."
Sam frowned. It seemed these days as if the only topics Dean ever spoke to him about were the hunt, the car, and dude, get your fricking hands off my cassettes. Reminiscing usually required some form of alcohol. It was possible his brother was still on a buzz from whatever cocktail of drugs Joshua had pumped into him, but somehow Sam knew it went deeper than that.
"So you don't hate me then?" The words were light hearted but even Sam could detect the vulnerability in his own voice. Dean, with his built in Sam-o-Metre would find it impossible to miss.
Bruises ringed Dean's eyes, deep shadows that made his gaze so intense; Sam had to force himself to maintain eye contact. He tried a smirk, a hint of the old Dean peaking through the cracks in his mask. "You're still using the Get Out Of Hate Free card you scored after hitting me up with those Metallica tickets."
Sarcasm. Once Sam might have cuffed his brother upside the head. He no longer dared. Just frowned and wished to god the demon had taken the time to beat some sense into his erstwhile sibling, instead of just beating him senseless. "That's bull, and you know it. Christ, Dean." Sam snapped his fingers an inch from Dean's face, eliciting a startled flinch. Dean scowled, but Sam wasn't done. "You can't stand to be near me. You told me you hated me, damnit."
Dean blinked in confusion. "I did?" Sam nodded. "Was that before, or after I went all Randle McMurphy on you?"
"After."
Dean made an 'oh' type nod before sighing. "I don't hate you Sammy. I'm just…"
"Confused?" Sam put in gently, silently contemplating the ironic turn of events that had him rejoicing at the hated nickname.
"Pissed!" Dean exploded, his fingers curling around the weapon in his hands. The last time he had ever heard Dean so angry, back before Stanford, the motel mirror had ended up in pieces, and it had taken Sam three hours to pick all the glass out of Dean's knuckles. The weakness that should have forced his brother into bed rest sapped his ability to vent.
And Dean liked to vent. It didn't happen very often. The pressure inside of him was always well controlled, but occasionally he needed to let of stream. Hence the drinking. And the sex. And the occasional bouts of extreme violence. Disabled from all three, Dean was left with only one outlet, and Sam willingly, happily, stepped forwards to take up the slack.
"With me?" He could take pissed. A pissed Dean was a predictable Dean.
Sam jumped up to his knees when Dean forced himself to stand, leaning heavily on the banister. "Fuck, no." Hissed Dean, his whole body shaking, whether with weakness or rage, Sam was afraid to guess. He held out one hand hesitantly, ready to catch Dean if he fell, but unwilling to force contact between them.
"The demon? Believe me, Dean. We're all gunning for the bastard here. There's a fricking queue for his head. Between the three of us there won't be enough left of him to sit on a thumb tack."
In turning his head to look at Sam, Dean forced himself off balance, held upright by sheer willpower alone.
"Me!" The word was short, sharp. Desperate. An explosion that shook the foundations of the world Sam lived on. Of all the stupid, irrational things…but of course- two perfect words for summing up his brother. Instead of laying the blame where it was deserved, on Sam and the demon, Dean went and blamed himself.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid-
"I fucking failed, Sam! You, Dad. God, everyone. Protect Sammy, hell, I couldn't even protect myself. Damnit!" The willpower faded, and he would have dropped to his knees if Sam hadn't lurched forwards and caught him. Sam's fingers brushed the soft skin on the underside of Dean's wrist, and that minute contact was enough to kick Sam's tail spinning psychic abilities into action.
Working as it had so many times under the demon's command, Sam wasn't aware of what was happening until he felt something inside Dean give way, and images filled his head faster than he could interpret them. Through the pounding of blood in his ears, Sam heard Dean gasp. It sounded a hundred miles away, and the pain behind his eyes was so intense, it took a second for Sam to recognise the noise as something coming from Dean, and not from his own head.
The images vanished as quickly as they came, leaving Sam cold, sweating, and already missing the pulse pounding adrenaline that had pumped through his blood. Feeling increasingly sick, he realised that the body in his arms trembled violently.
The demon had done that to his brother.
Sam had hurt him without even meaning to, unable to control the abilities that were slipping from him and spiralling out of control.
With dread and guilt -anguish- circling above like vultures, Sam gently eased them both back down to the porch, slowly untangling himself from Dean in order to give the other hunter the personal space he always craved.
It came as a surprise then, when instead of pulling away at the first opportunity, Dean held on, still shaking, his head buried in Sam's stomach. He wasn't sobbing, afraid or clinging, but simply holding on, overwhelmed.
Needing comfort almost as much as he needed to give it, Sam curled over his brother, sheltering them both, his cheek against Dean's soft hair. Even huddled as he was, simply being close to Dean made Sam feel safe. The older hunter wouldn't have lasted two rounds with a paralysed turtle, and flinched at sudden movements, but he was still Dean. Whatever darkness had gripped him before had faded. Dean was safe. Dean was home. Dean needed protecting from Sam.
In the face of Dean's dry eyes, Sam felt the need to shed a tear for them both.
John watched them through the window Dean had obliterated earlier in the day. The headache that had wrapped itself around his brain was no better for the aspirin Jim had forced him to take, nor for the whiskey Bobby had washed them down with. Standing by and watching his sons in pain had only added force to the sledgehammer attacking his skull.
Protect his boys. Mary's boys. The charge was written in his blood, and was perhaps his biggest failure. He was a hunter, a leader, and a father. Why could he excel at the first two, only to fail so completely at the last hurdle? It burned him.
The rising summer sun had wrapped his children in a golden glow, and from a distance, John could almost pretend that they were fine, safe, ordinary boys. Boys who had grown up with teddy bears and train sets instead of handguns, who weren't handed the car keys at eleven and told just drive, Dean. Get us out of here, before their father passed out in the back seat.
"It hurts, doesn't it?" John had been left alone with Caleb. A foolhardy move, in his opinion. Joshua was driving Missouri to Lawrence, for a meeting she would not divulge. Jim and Bobby had begun the exhausting task of re-enforcing the hard worn protection spells around the yard. John's hands weren't stead enough to do either. It irked him.
The rouge hunter was still bound to the kitchen chair, having made no attempt at escape. Both his eyes were shadowed from Dean's second right hook, and the deep blue gaze was strangely sad. "You want to protect them, you'd give anything. But damn it John, if you do, you'll be undoing everything you have ever fought for. Everything you have ever bled for, everything they have ever suffered for."
A chair scattered as John spun, turning his back on the silent silhouette of his sons to face the man who had taught him to fear the dark, and everything in it. "What, Caleb? What will happen? You're so fucking sure Sam's going to bring about the apocalypse, yet you've told us nothing. Damn it all, he's my son! You tried to kill my child. A boy who has fucking worshiped you since he was old enough to ask 'when are we going to see uncle Caleb again?'"
"Do you know what I would give for it to be anyone but Sam?" Caleb shouted right back, showing an anger John had unconsciously wanted to see. The cold, brutal truth had been delivered in the appropriate manner, but he needed to see something. Caleb was his fucking mentor. They'd bled for each other, gotten drunk together, driven thousands of miles through wind, sleet, snow and heat waves. Caleb had been one of the few he had trusted with the boys…ha, what a fricking joke that had turned out to be!
"Did you know? About Dean? Did you know the demon would use Dean to get to Sam?" Cold fury uncurled itself and reared a head ugly enough to stop the dead in their tracks. If Dean figured it, and John strongly suspected he did, then the knowledge would break his eldest far more efficiently than anything that bastard could have done. Dean's life had one meaning, and one meaning only. To be the downfall of his own cause for existence…
"God no." Caleb was white, and John couldn't help but believe him. Couldn't help but need to believe him. "No John, I swear to god I didn't know it would come after Dean. You have to understand, this thing is a nasty son of a bitch, but it's old, really old. And smart. It never has the same M.O. Never hunts in the same place twice- I had no idea that you were hunting it, that it had killed Mary. God!" He laughed bitterly. "It was my job to protect Sam from the damn thing; you really think I would have helped you as much as I did if I'd have known?"
John didn't know. Maybe. Yes.
"You telling me you've never tried to take it out before? You're immortal." A passport to unlimited hunting if he'd ever seen one. It explained why Caleb took what seemed at the time to be irrational risks. Risks that had saved John's ass. And his boys'.
Caleb nodded sharply, a touch of irony tilting the corner of his lips.
"Yeah, once. Yorkshire, England. End of the nineteenth century. One minute we're squaring off in a cave in July 48, the next thing I know, it's winter, and thirty years have passed. I heal fast, John, real fast, but the bastard did a serious number on me. Skulls aren't meant to be pancake shaped."
The visual made John's skin crawl. He opened his mouth to say something, try and offer some sort of condolence, but was saved by the ringing if his cell. Recognising Joshua's number, John flipped it open and took the call.
"John." Joshua's tinny voice echoed around the kitchen, setting both hunters on edge. "I just got a call from a friend of mine. Jefferson is dead."
God. No.
He couldn't form the words. Couldn't think. Fuck!
"It gets worse…fuck, John…someone, something, it went to the Roadhouse. Jesus, it killed them. Ellen, Jo, Ash…all of them. Seventeen hunters in all."
John grunted, couldn't do anything else, his fingers barely steady enough to end the call. He met Caleb's gaze across the kitchen, and he was slicing through his bonds a second later.
The battle lines were drawn. They needed all the soldiers they could get.
TBC
There, that wasn't too evil an ending, was it? No lives on the line, no immediate danger/angst/owies. I think we may have even started a little healing process. What fun is that? (wanders off to undo all the nice healing). In the time being, now that I have some downtime, I plan to get a little fic reading done. I've been severely lacking for a good few weeks, so if anyone has any recommendations, send 'em my way!
Till next time, hugs, cookies, and please review!
