This road trip – for lack of a better term – felt different from the other one.
Sam couldn't explain it, not really, although he was sure he could list some explanatory factors. For one, there was a decided difference between going to Whitefish and a cabin where he and Dean had felt safe in order to do some basic research, and going to Lawrence and the place where his mother had died and where the apocalypse had almost happened. Keates was once again hanging his head out the back window and Sarah was curled up in what was usually Sam's spot in the passenger's seat, cross-legged with her hair knotted up on top of her head. She'd brought a stack of books on both hell and purgatory with them, which were currently balanced between them on the bench seat. She'd brushed Sam off when he'd asked her why she wasn't bringing anything on heaven, and he'd shrugged and let her do what she wanted. It wasn't as if they couldn't go back to Montana for more books as needed.
But Sarah was quiet in a way she hadn't been before, and at first Sam had been okay with writing that off by the fact that they'd left in the middle of the night, that this was unusual, to put it mildly, but he had a vague feeling that there was more to it than that.
"Talk to me," he eventually murmured, glancing over at her just as the sun began to rise on his left. "What's bugging you?"
Sarah sighed, and then let the journal she was reading close over her thumb and clicked off the flashlight in her other hand. "I know… I know that this is basically typical for you," she began, looking anywhere but at Sam. "but this… this idea of death not being permanent, of heaven and hell and purgatory and God knows where else being… permeable places that it's possible to just skate in and out of–"
Realization dawned for Sam. "you're thinking about your mother."
Sarah was silent for such a long moment that Sam thought she wasn't going to answer. She did, though, and the words tumbled out, filling the car along with the dusty orange light of the sunrise. "There's so much I didn't get to say to her, Sam, because she didn't want us to say goodbye, she didn't want to make it official or maudlin or campy, so we just pretended that we could go on the way we always had done, and I didn't want to upset her, so of course I went with it, and I never said goodbye, and I never thanked her, and I never made sure she knew how much I loved her, and if I could just have one chance, just one more chance–"
Sam cut her off, his own eyes now fixed on the road. "You don't want it. Not like this."
"Wh – what?"
"Sarah…" Sam sighed and leaned back just enough that his head brushed the top of the seat. "It's not life. Take it from someone who's come back from the dead twice now, it causes more problems than it solves. Heaven and hell really should be impermeable. It would have solved a lot of problems."
"Then why are we doing this, Sam?" Sarah demanded. "You know I don't begrudge you this shot at getting Dean back. Hell, I practically put the idea in your head. But why is this okay, if it wasn't okay that he brought you back, or that Castiel brought you back?"
Sam shrugged. "It wasn't okay when Cas did it. And it definitely wasn't okay when Dean did it, not with how much it cost. But… if what we're starting to think happened is what happened, then Dean isn't dead. He's just trapped." He hesitated, then continued. "I am absolutely not trying to diminish the pain you feel for your mom. You know I would never do that." he looked over at her, and she was watching him with solemn eyes, but he could tell that she believed him. "But if Dean is trapped in hell or in purgatory, if his death wasn't natural, then it wasn't before his time and I owe it to him to bring him back. And if he's in heaven, then of course I'm going to leave him there."
Sarah winced and looked away at the mention of heaven, but she didn't speak.
"Can you forgive me?" Sam asked.
"What?" Sarah's head snapped back around, and her eyes widened. "Sam, there's – there's nothing to forgive! I was never angry with you, of course I wasn't. This is just… a little out of my comfort zone. I just wanted to understand." A beat of silence passed, and then Sarah extended her hand and brushed it across Sam's shoulder. "We're good. I promise."
"Okay," Sam said quietly, facing back to the road. "Anything interesting in those journals?"
Sarah shrugged and straightened up in her seat. "Not much. I mean I think it's all interesting, because it's new to me and stuff, but specific to our quest involving reapers, no, there's not much. Where are we, by the way?" she added, glancing out the window as another mile marker sped past.
"A wonderful little stretch of Montana State Highway 83 between the towns of Bozeman and Livingston," he replied. "We're making good time – we have about twenty hours to go. We'll stop around six tonight, get actual dinner, and land in Lawrence around noon tomorrow." He glanced over at her. "That sound okay?"
She waited a moment before nodding, and he saw it. Something had dimmed in her eyes, and he felt a pang in his own chest for her. It was awful, he knew it was awful, to have a flash of hope for even that split second, and then lose it again. Of course he knew. He had felt it when he had remembered the devil's gates and then failed to open them, he had felt it when the eighth demon had rejected his deal, he had felt it when Ruby had told him what he had already known – that he wasn't getting Dean back from Lilith.
He reached his hand out, but he didn't place it on hers. He just held it there, suspended in the gold light seeping its way through the windows on his side of the car, and waited.
Sarah looked down at it, then up at him, then carefully marked her spot in the journal she was reading. Then she reached out too, and wound her fingers through his, and brought his hand down to rest in her lap.
"Yeah," she said. "That sounds okay."
Dean had never been the type of driver to spare much respect for little things like the speed limit. He'd had to charm his way out of his first speeding ticket when he was sixteen and in Indiana, and had failed to charm his way out of one for the first time when he was nineteen and in Florida. Both times Sam had been in the passenger's seat, and he had tried to scold Dean for not taking the first ticket and had laughed his ass of when Dean had been forced to take the second one, and Dean had shoved his shoulder and muttered about what a bitch his little brother was, and that he'd fuck up and get a ticket one day, and Dean would be there to see it. Sam had never gotten a ticket, though, not once – whenever Dean tried to give him shit about it, Sam would always retort that he at least paid enough attention to notice a speed trap ahead. For a all that, though, Dean had taught Sam to drive, and so of course Sam had developed the same healthy disrespect for the speed limit. The difference, Sam always argued, was that he took the extra half-second to learn where the cops were strictest.
Between that, and the understanding cooperation of both Sarah and Keates, they made it to Burlington, Colorado, at around three in the afternoon, where they decided to stop for the night. Sam hadn't been
"Tell me about the town," Sarah murmured as they crested one of the rolling hills and there it was, Lawrence, spread out below them.
Sam sighed, flexing his fingers around the steering wheel. "I don't know much. I don't think it's where my dad was born, but it's where he settled after getting back from Vietnam. He got a job as a mechanic. Not sure how he officially met my mom, given that the Cupid set them up."
"And your mother?" Sarah prompted.
"The Campbells have apparently been in Lawrence for a while. My grandparents decided to semi-retire from the life when Mom was a teenager, but I think they'd always lived here, I don't think Mom was raised on the road like me and Dean were. But she still hated the life." He paused, then sighed. "When she found out that me and Dean grew up hunters, she was devastated. But… anyway, she and Dad got married and bought a house here. And that's the house where she died. From what I gather – and you've read parts of my dad's journal – he avoided the state of Kansas entirely for a while, and he never worked a job in Lawrence. But when… when my psychic thing was acting up for the first time, I had a vision of the family who lived in my parents' house in danger, and I dragged Dean back."
"To the same house?"
"Yeah. He… it was hard for Dean. He was four, almost five, when Mom died, and he remembered parts of that night. Flashes. He remembers the fire, and he remembers carrying me out of the house."
"Wait – Dean carried you out?"
"Yeah." Sam nodded. "He handed me to Dean and told Dean to not look back, and then he went back into the nursery to try and help Mom, I guess."
Sarah let the silence stretch out for a moment, then asked, "And the job you worked here?"
Sam ran a hand through his hair. "There was… there was some sort of evil spirit in the house, I don't know, and it turned out that the spirit of my mom was holding it off. But it had started to wear her down after, I don't know, the twenty years or however long it'd been, and… it was just fucking shit up. And…" he took a deep breath. "I don't remember much of the last time I was here. Because… it wasn't… really me."
"Lucifer," Sarah realized.
Sam nodded. "I remember flashes, but he kind of was in charge of whether or not I was awake. Until that last moment."
Sarah whispered, "oh," and Sam was glad that she didn't ask any more questions. He didn't tell her that with the route they were on, they were going to be passing Stull Cemetery. That just wasn't a conversation he wanted to have.
In the end, though, it turned out to not be his decision.
Because it was late May, almost summer, in the Midwest, they had all the windows rolled down. The sky was grey, but it was warm – muggy. Dean had always hated that word for some dumb reason. In any case, the windows were all rolled down, and Keates was lazing around the bench seat in the back, his head hanging out the window and his ears flopping in the slipstream caused by the car. And suddenly, Keates changed.
He sat up straight on the seat, ears perked up. Sarah shifted to face back and draped her hand over the top of the seat. "Keates? You okay, buddy?"
Sam would have turned back too, but they were navigating this narrow stretch of two-lane highway, winding through the rolling hills. So he heard, rather than saw, Keates's nails scrabbling against the worn leather of the seat as the dog shifted and hauled himself out of the back window of the car.
"Keates!" Sarah screamed, shifting like she wanted to fling herself into the backseat and jump out after him.
"Stop it – stop!" Sam ordered, slamming his arm across her waist to pin her to her seat while his other hand jerked the wheel around and skidded to a stop on the shoulder of the highway. He threw his door open and slid out, and Sarah clawed her way across the seat to follow her out rather than open her own door. When Keates had landed, he had rolled a little before scrambling upright and darting off away from the road.
"Dammit, Keates," Sarah gasped, taking off after him at a run. Sam dove back into the car to retrieve his gun, removed the safety, and tucked it into his back pocket before racing after her.
Sarah caught Keates just as Sam was rounding a tree to find them. "Hey – you!" she snapped, lunging forward, grabbing Keates's collar and pulling him up out of his run. "What were you thinking?" she demanded, dropping to her knees beside him and gripping the fur of his face so she could stare into his eyes. "What the holy hell, Keates? Why would you do that? Why?" She shook his head gently.
Sam knelt down beside them and wrapped an arm around Sarah's shoulders and felt her shake. "Shh," he soothed her, while he dropped his other hand onto Keates's head. "Keates, what happened?" he asked, making sure to keep his voice quiet so as not to upset Sarah further. "You don't just take off like that for no reason."
Keates had quieted with Sarah's hands on him, but now he turned his head to focus again on Sam and barked, just once, before darting his eyes around them and then refocusing on Sam. Sam hadn't noticed until then that they were actually on some sort of path – that the grooves for tire treads were clearly visible around them. This was a road, or had been at one point, and Keates had jumped out of the Impala to run down it.
"Let him go, Sarah," he said abruptly, standing and pulling her with him.
"W – what?" she gasped, hair flying as she faced him, eyes wide.
"He's onto something." Gently, Sam wrapped his hand around Sarah's fingers where they still clutched at Keates's collar. "Let him go. We'll be right behind him. It doesn't seem like he's hurt."
Sarah looked from Keates to Sam, and back again, and then swallowed hard. Sam felt her fingers loosen as she released Keates's collar, and he drew her back. The dog's eyes darted between them for a moment before he huffed and took off at a gallop down the road, away from the highway. Still clutching each other's hands, Sam and Sarah followed. Sam slipped his free hand to the gun at the small of his back and drew it out, releasing the safety and bracing his finger on the trigger guard. He saw Sarah's glance dart to it and her brow furrow, but she didn't say anything.
The road wound through brush, mostly dead now so close to June, and Sam felt his heart pounding. Something was itching just under his skin, something familiar, but he didn't recognize this place – he was almost sure of it
And then they rounded the last bend, and Sam stumbled to a stop.
There before them was a rusted-out gate, hanging open, a sign reading "no trespassing" hanging from its bars.
"What?" Sarah demanded, skidding to a stop with him.
Sam didn't look at her as he whispered the words. "Stull Cemetery."
He could feel it the moment that Sarah recognized the name; she gasped, and her fingers tightened around his.
Keates ignored them both and raced into the graveyard, circling around a few times in the blank, grassy area in the center and barking furiously at the ground. Slowly, Sam stepped through the gates, leading Sarah with him.
The sound of Keates's barks was shrill, cutting through the late morning air, and Sam could feel his pulse beating in his temples. He barely remembered that day, just barely – Dean's voice promising not to leave, the fire licking at the edges of his mind as he forced Lucifer back, spreading his arms wide for that one last moment of fresh clean air before–
The breath rushed out of him, and he stumbled. Instantly, Sarah was there, pressing herself tighter into his side, smoothing his hair off his forehead. "Sam?"
"I'm fine," he told her, brushing her hand aside and blinking hard before looking around. The graveyard was the stuff of horror films – overgrown plots with cracked grey stones, gnarled trees and twisted branches and dead leaves everywhere. "Keates, can you – can you sit, buddy?" Sam asked distractedly, and after a moment the dog stopped barking, although he didn't sit, and he didn't stop growling down at the ground.
Sarah shivered and didn't move from her place tucked in close to Sam's side. When she spoke, Sam didn't hear her at first.
"What? Sorry."
"We could probably do it here," she murmured without looking at him. "The spell."
Sam tore his eyes away from the patch of ground that had so interested Keates. "You think?"
Sarah nodded. "Keates… the night we found you, I was walking Keates, and he took off towards the street, exactly like he did just now. It's like he knew. And if he thought that this place, this place, was important enough to jump out of your car for, then… he's probably on to something. Besides," she hesitated, then plunged ahead. "The spell doesn't call for a burial site, after all. Just for the place where blood was spilt. If… if Lucifer hurt Dean like you told me, he probably–"
"Bled all over the ground," Sam finished for her, as something constricted in his chest. "You're right."
And just like that, just like that, it was real, they were here, they were going to do this. "Stay here," Sam said hurriedly, dropping her hand and starting back for the gates.
"Wait – don't leave me here!"
"You're safer here," he told her, bracing his hands on her shoulders so he could meet her eyes. "Do not think for one second that I would leave you here if you weren't. Listen. This is the kind of place that demons wouldn't dare enter, not after what's happened here, but there's nothing to stop them from circling. And that car – it's not a very subtle car, and they probably already know we're here. So yeah, stay here. Keates!" he threw over his shoulder, and the dog hurried up to them. "Protect her. I will be back in two minutes, I promise. Okay?"
Sarah bit down on her lip so hard Sam was worried that she'd draw blood, but she gave a quick, terse nod. "Just… hurry."
"Two minutes," he repeated, then hurried off. He broke into a run as soon as he reached the gates, and made it back to the car in a time that would have made his dad proud. In seconds he was back behind the wheel of the car, shaking his hair out of his eyes, and throwing the car into gear.
Dean had driven down this road, he remembered as he took the curves too hard. Dean had been down this path, certain of his own death, and the bastard had decided to blast Def Leppard.
When Sam pulled into the graveyard, Sarah was standing right where he'd left her, arms wrapped tightly around her middle, Keates pacing nervously at her feet. Her head jerked around when she heard the rumble of the car, and her eyes tracked the movement of the car until Sam drew it to a park off at the edge of the small meadow in the middle of the graveyard. He stepped out, slamming the door behind him, and she rushed to join him as he strode around to the trunk. "Here's what we need to do," he told her. "Get into my journal – in the glove compartment – and find an entry from around the end of December 2008. There should be sketches of runes that bind reapers." Sarah nodded jerkily and hurried around the car; Sam heard the door open and the sound of rustling from the glove compartment. For his own part, he found the only angel blade they had left after two of them had disappeared into purgatory with Dean and Castiel, the one he had taken from Uriel. He tossed it to the ground beside the back left tire, along with the bough from a cedar bough they had pulled from a tree somewhere in Wyoming and a steel canteen. He dropped a crucifix into the canteen, heard it splash in the water, and began muttering the blessing over it.
"Found it," Sarah said breathlessly, appearing beside him with his journal in her hands, a page marked by her thumb.
"Et in virtu Spiritu Sancti," Sam finished, withdrawing the crucifix and tossing it back into the trunk before screwing the lid back on the canteen. He turned to Sarah. "Okay. Okay," he muttered again, slamming the trunk shut and placing the canteen on top of it before scanning the few trees in the graveyard. He finally spotted one with a few branches thin enough to meet the purpose, and half-ran over to the tree to snap two of them off. He didn't notice Keates at his heels until he almost tripped over the dog after turning around to return to Sarah. "Here." He handed her one. "These runes? They bind reapers. We're going to replicate them here on the ground, big enough to cover pretty much all of this area. You follow?"
Sarah nodded, tucking her hair behind her ear with her free hand. "Keates," she called, and the dog trotted up to her side, eyes darting nervously between her and Sam. "sit," Sarah ordered, pointing at the patch of ground right beside the car, and Keates only hesitated for a moment before obeying.
Sam and Sarah made quick work of the runes, neither speaking, and Sam could see how Sarah's brow was furrowed, how determined she was to get this right. A rush of warm gratitude swept at his insides, and he forced it down. He would thank her later.
Sam finished slightly before Sarah, and when she joined him back at the car with a smudge of dirt across her nose, he took the angel blade and held it out to her, handle first. "You hold onto this," he ordered. "If anything looks like it's going to go to shit, use it. Don't hesitate."
Slowly, Sarah reached out and took the weapon. "I've never…"
"Stabbing motion," he told her. "Very simple. You'll be fine. Okay?"
"Okay." Sarah nodded once, tightening her grip on the handle. "Yeah. Okay."
Sam reached out and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah," she reassured him. "It's just… a lot."
He nodded. "What do you say we get it over with and get out of here?" He waited to see her smile, then collected the cedar rod, the water, and the slip of paper on which he'd written the incantation for the summoning, translated into Latin.
Sam closed his eyes for a moment, remembering but trying not to remember too much, before he stepped over to the patch of ground where Lucifer had used his body to beat Dean within an inch of his life as Dean promised not to leave Sam. Swallowing hard, Sam knelt.
"Si ambulavero in valle umbrae mortis, non timebo mala, quoniam tu mecum es," he began, unscrewing the canteen and drizzling the holy water over the wood, making sure to rotate the rod so that it was evenly coated. "Veni ad me, in tempore necessitatis meae angelus mortis, et adiuva me, ut intelligam. Fero tui scientia et artes praecipio tibi coram." He closed the canteen again and gathered up a handful of the earth, dry now with the coming summer. "Quam ego loquor ad te, et in saeculum et in aeternum, te mihi in adiutorium," he intoned, rubbing the dirt all along the cedar, feeling the mud form. Once it was completely coated, he finished the incantation, "Per os meorum, fortitudo mea voluntas Dei gratia, praecipio tibi coram me."
With that, he stood, leaving the rod on the ground and drawing Ruby's knife out of his jacket, eyes narrowed as he looked around.
The air was still.
"Maybe…" Sarah stammered, "Maybe it was the wrong kind of cedar?"
Sam felt his shoulders slump, and something was prickling at the back of his eyes, crawling its way up his throat – that couldn't be it, they couldn't have come so far just to be wrong, just to have to give up again–
He turned, to say something to Sarah, what he didn't know, but in the next moment he was curling his arm around her waist to shove her behind him and brandishing the knife. Sarah squeaked and Keates was barking again, madly, but that didn't seem to faze the dark-haired woman standing a few yards away from them.
"Noisy, isn't he?" she asked, one eyebrow raised, shoving her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket.
Sam lowered the knife, but only slightly. "Tessa."
"Sam Winchester." She strolled a few steps forward, and Keates barked again. Sam could feel Sarah pressing closer to his back, and he reached a hand behind himself to take hers. "What, are we here to deal? Is that why you bound me? Last time I saw Dean, he wanted me to call my boss to yank your ass out of the pit. We in reruns?"
"Not… exactly." Sam made a decision, and tucked the knife back into his jacket. "Keates," he added in a whisper, and the dog shifted from barking furiously to a loud and steady growl.
Tessa tilted her head to the side. "What, then? You're here to ask me to help you mess up the natural order one way or another, so let's have it out."
Sam took a deep breath, and he could feel Sarah slightly relax the death grip she had on his fingers. "Dean is missing," he told Tessa, whose mouth twitched. "When he killed Dick Roman, something happened, we're not sure what, and he's just gone. I need you to find out for sure where he is, and help me get him out. Please."
Tessa snorted a laugh. "And why – why – would I want to do that?"
That pulled Sam up short. "What?"
Again, Tessa advanced on them, and Sam's hand twitched for Ruby's knife again. "The last time I tried to help you, I wound up being tortured by Alistair. Or did you forget that part? Did you forget that I had to babysit your brother as he stumbled around playing Death for a day, fucking up the natural order? Hell, I got possessed by a fucking Grigori demon because of some stunt your father pulled. So why on God's green earth would I want to help anyone named Winchester? What has it ever gotten me except pain?" she demanded, eyes hard.
Sam's throat tightened. She was right, of course she was right. "I'm sorry," he began, but he didn't get much farther.
"Because Dean Winchester is still alive," piped Sarah, stepping out from behind Sam, much to Keates's dismay. She ignored her dog's increased growls, though, and held her head up as she addressed the reaper, whose eyebrows appeared to be in some danger of disappearing into her hairline. "We know for a fact that Dean is alive, and that he's not in heaven?"
Sam did a double take. "We do?" he asked, but Sarah ignored him, although he thought he might have seen her swallow hard. In any case, she kept her eyes fixed on Tessa, so Sam watched the reaper too.
"If Dean is alive, and yet trapped in either hell or purgatory, then that's a violation of your precious natural order, isn't it? So is the fact that he's got an angel with him. Angels don't belong in hell or in purgatory, you should know that." her voice might have been shaking, or Sam might have been imagining it, but either way she took a deep breath and went on, "If you're interested in the status quo, if you're interested in keeping things the way they should be, then you should be interested in getting a living man back to earth. Right?"
Tessa's lips twitched. "I like you," she told Sarah, "even if you're playing with big girl toys." Her eyes darted to the sword in Sarah's hands before she looked back at Sam. "fine."
"Fine?" he repeated, sucking in a quick breath.
"I'll do it, because your little girlfriend is right, and because it's only a matter of time before Eve's family starts making a fuss over him." Tessa rolled her eyes. "Your brother and his pet angel are in purgatory."
Sam took a step forward. "You're sure?"
Tessa snorted. "Please. Anyway, like I said, I'll do it, but not for free."
Sam's hand tightened around Sarah's. "What do you want?"
The reaper jerked her chin at the angel blade. "That. Tax-free. It doesn't do anything for my peace of mind to know that Sam and Dean Winchester are walking around with one of the few weapons in existence that can kill my kind. There's shit starting to go down that it doesn't seem like you've noticed yet, and in the meantime, I want to be able to defend myself."
"Done." Sam didn't even hesitate, and Tessa smiled.
"Good. And we're doing this on my terms, so listen up." Tessa folded her arms across her chest and looked at Sarah like she was sizing her up. "There are reapers who can just grab your hand and spirit you away into purgatory. I'm not one of them; it's above my pay grade. Best I can do is open the portal for you."
"Portal?"
"There's a few of them all over the world. The closest one to us is in Maine, in the Hundred-Mile wilderness. Meet me there at this time tomorrow, and I'll open it for you. Twenty-four hours after that, I'll open it again so you can get out. Do we have a deal?"
Sam nodded. "You can have the blade after you get me back topside."
"You must think I'm an idiot," Tessa scoffed. "I remember what you and your brother did to Bela Talbot. I want it upfront."
Sam opened his mouth, whether to argue or to defend himself he didn't quite know, but again Sarah cut him off. "You open the portal for us and we give it to you before we step through into purgatory."
"You're not coming," Sam snapped without looking at her.
"I am too coming–" Sarah began to protest, but this time Tessa cut her off.
"It's just as well if you don't. Fine, we'll do it this way. I drop Sam in purgatory, and you – what's your name? Never mind, I don't actually care – give me the blade."
"And how do we know you'll actually get me back out?" Sam asked, eyes narrowed.
Tessa rolled her eyes. "Because Death is going to know that I talked to you. And for reasons passing my understanding, he's always had a soft spot for the two of you, especially Dean. I don't pretend to understand it. Anyway, he'll make sure that I keep my word. And if that fails, you don't actually need a reaper to open the human portal from the inside." She held her hands out. "Even if I screw you, you win. See? All I want is that blade. So. Do we have a deal?"
Sam looked at Sarah, who was staring up at him. She raised her eyebrows and tilted her head to the side, and Sam could hear her voice in his head: Well, it's not as if we have any other options.
"Yes," he heard himself say. "Yes, we have a deal."
"Good." Tessa clasped her hands together and gave them a smile like a knife blade. "You have twenty-four hours to meet me in the center of the Hundred Mile Wilderness; you should be able to just make it. Pleasure doing business with you."
Sam blinked, and Tessa was gone.
"Good," Sarah muttered, businesslike, then tugged on Sam's hand and led him towards the car.
"Sarah – wait." Sam pulled her up, forcing her to a stop. "What did you mean, we know for sure Dean wasn't in heaven?"
Sarah opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, and then said, "I will answer that. I promise I will. But not now, okay? We just don't have time right now." She saw Sam open his mouth to interrupt her, and hurried on, "Listen, we're also going to need to figure out what Tessa meant by saying that there are things starting that we can't see – shouldn't we wait until we have Dean and Castiel so we can all try to figure this out together? A full set of fresh eyes, all at once?"
Sam studied her, with her wide eyes and open face and honest expression. If it could hurt him or Dean, really hurt them… Sarah would tell him now. He knew that much about her.
"Okay," he said slowly. "We'll sit on it. Ready to go?"
"Yes, but here's how I think we should do it," she began as they strode towards the car, keates loping beside them. "It's a long drive, isn't it?"
Sam quickly calculated the miles in his head. "Following speed limits, about twenty-seven hours."
"And with you driving?"
"Twenty-three if we're lucky."
"Okay." Sarah stopped at the driver's side door and squared her shoulders. "Here's what I propose. You drive through the states with lower populations, so for like the first half, and then you let me take over so you can get some sleep."
"Sarah…" Sam was already shaking his head.
"Listen," she implored. "You're going to be in purgatory for twenty-four freaking hours, and you want to drive for twenty-four hours prior to that? I don't think so. After all," she pointed out, "you handed me an angel blade without much instruction on how to use it. I think I can handle driving your car."
Sam tried to swallow down his indecision. This wasn't his car, it was Dean's car, and Dean had never let anyone else except Sam drive it after Dad had given it to him, aside from Andy Gallagher, and he didn't exactly count, but Dean had let Meg drive the car because that was what they had needed to do in order to–
But Sarah was right. If he wanted to be worth a damn in purgatory, he had to be awake.
"Fine," he told her. "We'll trade off when we get to the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. Keates, go do your business," Sam added, and Keates yipped once before darting off into the woods. Sam faced back to Sarah. "Are we good on food?"
She shrugged. "We can go through a drive-through or something. We'll be fine. Sam… we got it," she told him, smiling. "We found a way to him. We found a way in."
"Yeah." Sam tried to smile, he did, but all he could think about was Ruby, and Lilith, and the way that everything had gone so wrong the last time he'd tried to get Dean back. What if it wasn't worth it, what if–
"Why are you making that face?" Sarah demanded.
"I just…." He breathed in deep and closed his eyes. "I fucked this up so bad the last time I tried to get him back, Sarah. I don't want to risk that again–"
"Hey," Sarah soothed, and before Sam could move she had stepped up to him and cupped one hand around his cheek and pressed a finger to his lips. "Shush. It's okay. It's not like last time. It's not. You're not alone this time. You have me, you have Keates, you have a plan, and you don't have archangels gunning for you to fail. It will be all right. We will go to Maine, and you will get your brother out, and we'll patch him up as much as he needs patching up. It will be all right. The world will not end this time. I promise. I promise."
He stared at her, feeling the war in his chest – leaving Dean to die, disappointing him again, breaking the world again, getting him back…
"Listen to me," she breathed. "Would I let you fail? Would I let anything happen to you?"
Sam listened to his heart beat twice, then whispered, "No."
"No," she agreed. "It will be all right. Okay?"
Sam smiled faintly. "Okay."
"Good." She released him and walked around to the passenger's side. "So are we going, or what?"
It was, Sam realized as he opened the door and slid in beside her, the third time she had said that to him. He had followed her every time.
Even with Sam's driving for more than half of the way, and even for Sarah proving to have more of a disregard for traffic laws than Sam would have guessed, they barely made it. Sam's heart was still racing as they got out of the car, knowing that they wouldn't be able to drive any farther, and linked hands again to make it the rest of the way on foot. It was the middle of the day again, and somewhere above the old-growth forest the sun was shining, and fading through the branches. Sam couldn't shake the feeling that the forest felt like it was a trap of old souls.
"This is it," Sarah said, not looking up from the compass app on her phone. "This is the geographic center of the forest. What time is it?"
"Eleven fifty-eight," Sam answered, feeling his gut fall. "We're two minutes late."
"You don't think…"
"Over two minutes?" came a voice from behind them. They both spun around, and Keates began to growl again, at the sight of Tessa, leaning up against a tree, inspecting her nails. "In my business, things very rarely happen exactly on time. I think I can forgive you." delicately, the reaper stepped over the gnarled roots of the tree and strolled over to them, coming to a stop about three feet away. "So. Who's ready to start this crazy train?"
Sam tightened his grip on Keates's leash. Sarah had insisted that taking the dog might help, and even though Keates wasn't trained as a sniffer, they figured it wouldn't hurt to give him Dean's scent anyway, just in case. Sarah knelt down and wrapped the dog up in a hug, kissing the top of his head and ruffling his ears before she let him go and stood. Once she had fully risen, and met Sam's eyes, her lower lip trembled.
"Oh, no," Sam whispered, stepping close to her. "Listen to me," he told her, cupping her face in both his hands. "You wait for no longer than twenty-four hours, do you understand me? If I am not back by this time tomorrow, you take the car, and you go home. The keys are still in your pocket. You do not wait. You do not hesitate. You go, Sarah. This isn't worth your life."
Her face had drained of all color, and she began shaking her head. "Sam – no, you can't ask–"
"I'm not asking," he cut her off, shifting one of his hands to raise a finger and press it against her lips, just as she had done to him the previous day. "I will do my best to get Keates back to you, I will…" he hesitated, then plunged ahead, figuring that now was as good a time as any to address this thing growing between them, "I will do my best to get myself back to you, you have to know that. You have to know that you are important to me. Beyond important to me. That's why I'm telling you that after a certain amount of time, it will not be safe for you to wait here, and that then you will have to go. Do you understand?"
"Sam…" To Sam's horror, a tear slipped from Sarah's eye and rolled down her cheek to wet his hand.
"I'm sorry." He brushed it away with his thumb. "But I need you to promise me. Promise me."
Abruptly she had moved, and she was pressed tight to his chest, and her arms were wrapped around his neck, and her breaths were warm and quick against his chest. "You promise me," she growled, her voice muffled in his shirt as he wound his arms around her waist. "You promise me that you will do everything and more to get you and your brother and my goddamned dog back, Sam. You promise me that you will be careful, that you will be safe, that you will keep your damn focus. I will not lose you. Not now."
"I promise," he murmured. She wasn't quite short enough for him to rest his chin on the top of her head, so he pressed his cheek into her hair instead. "I promise."
For just a moment, Sarah held him tighter, and he could feel her hand fist into the back of his shirt, and then she let him go, and stepped back, and rubbed her hand across her face. When she emerged, her jaw was set and her air was businesslike. She turned to Tessa, who had watched their little scene from a distance. "Where are you leaving from? Here?"
"Here's fine," Tessa nodded, and extended her hand to Sam, who glanced at Sarah one more time before stepping up. Keates trotted forward with him, nudging at Sarah's hip as he passed her, and Sarah took a moment to wrap her hand around his tail before letting him go. "Take my hand, Sam," the reaper said.
Sam wrapped his fingers around hers and made sure that his other hand had a firm grip on Keates's leash. Off Tessa's raised eyebrows, he said firmly, "We're ready."
She looked him up and down one last time before nodding, and then she closed her eyes. Sam forced himself to keep his eyes forward, to not look back at Sarah, as Tessa breathed deep and the night air started swirling around them, bringing with it leaves and twigs and whispers and clamors and – now – a bright blue white light. Sam flinched but did not move back as the light grew larger, as it stretched and widened, and became a hole through which he could see a forest, a different forest, not the same one in which he had been standing. He could feel he leash tremble in his hand, and he knew that Keates was shaking.
"It's ready," Tessa murmured, but Sam hadn't needed her to tell him that. He looked back at Sarah, one last time, and even though she pressed her hand to her mouth and there were tears leaking down her face, she nodded. She nodded at him.
Sam faced forward, and took a deep breath, and climbed through the portal, Keates at his side.
He thought he saw a flash through the trees, but it wouldn't be the first time he had imagined something in this place. He turned back to the vampire he'd just killed, stared passionlessly at the head lying a few feet away from the body, black-red blood seeping over the dead leaves. It hadn't wanted to tell him what he needed to know, and his patience had not outlasted its usefulness. He wiped the machete clean of blood on the vamp's clothing, and then stood, tucking it away in his jacket. Something was slipping inside him, he could feel it – he was beginning to lose something he'd sworn he'd never lose again.
It didn't matter, though. Nothing really mattered, not in this place, nothing except getting out. And if he had to sell his soul to do it – well, been there, done that. Nothing new.
The blue-white light he'd thought he'd seen earlier flickered, and he turned to study the surrounding forest. That light was unusual, even by the standards of this place. Maybe it was Cas. Maybe it was another angel come to find him.
Dean Winchester drew his angel blade, and started towards the light.
