Disclaimer/Spoilers: See Chapter 1
A/N: I'm back and all moved into my new apartment and start a new job next week. \o/ In more exciting news not only do I bring you a new chapter but I have bits and pieces (some big pieces) already written of chapters 10, 11, and 12. So there's a possibility of them not taking as long to put out, though I make no promises.
This chapter involves a bit of a time jump, so if y'all curious about actually reading the things glossed over here feel free to request them, and I'll add them to my list of "Reader's Choice/One shot" stories.
I hope y'all enjoy the story and remember to review. It feeds the muses and is the only thing fanfic writers get in return for taking time to write and post stories.
Fixxxer
Just when all seems fine
And I'm pain free
You jab another pin
Jab another pin in me
Dean tapped his pencil against the table as he let his mind wander from its current task back to Nebraska; the devil's trap bullet made it easy to capture one of the seven demons. Considering that particular trick was lost somewhere in the late fifties when the Men of Letters were wiped out and not used again until sometime in 2013, it's not surprising the demons weren't expecting it.
Once they had the demon they wasted no time sending the son of a bitch back to hell. The rest of the night played out similar to the original timeline: the remaining six demons attacked, made a mess, and were exorcized. The only exceptions were Tamara left with her husband still alive instead of burning his corpse, and Ruby never showed up; at least he hadn't seen her, and Sam made no mention of her.
Dean couldn't decide how he felt about that.
On the one hand, he was keen on keeping Ruby as far away from his little brother as he could. Of course, Sam wasn't an idiot—most of the time—and without the demon deal for her to hold over his head, his brother was more likely to kill Ruby than work with her. On the other hand, not knowing where she was or what she was up to made him itchy.
That, of course, wasn't the only thing scratching at the back of his mind. In the original timeline Isaac had given him a bloodied nose when the man had taken him by surprise outside of the house Sloth touched. Dean had neatly avoided that incident this time around only to get worse when Isaac sucker punched him after the whole incident at the bar. He couldn't help but remember something Sam had said—his Sam—about people trying to alter the past and the timeline working to right itself. Time wasn't a sentient thing that could make choices, at least he was pretty sure it wasn't, and it was such a minor detail that he was sure it was nothing, but it kept gnawing at him.
Dean glanced across the small motel table where his brother was deep into his research on their current monster of the week. Something called a naveath, as Sam had informed him a few days ago, a psychic shapeshifter that could take on the form of someone from a victim's past to distract or lure them in. The naveath then used its very large claws to rip the victim open and consume their soft, nougat-y center.
He was less than happy to be going after anything with psychic abilities—the last thing he needed was something rooting around in his head. Going after it, however, was proving more of a challenge than they had expected. They knew what it was and they knew how to kill it; what they couldn't seem to do was actually find the damn thing. According to the lore he and Sam had dug up, the thing hunted at night in wooded areas. There was only one decently wooded area in the little podunk town, and they had spent the last three nights scouring it with no luck.
Dean rubbed the back of his neck, taking a deep breath. Maybe once they killed this son of a bitch they would head over to Bobby's and take a day or two to recharge. Since the deadly sins demons, he and Sam had been running hard for about three months with almost no downtime in between jobs. He knew his brother was starting to feel it: the younger hunter had passed out dead the moment they'd gotten back to the motel this morning.
Getting waylaid by Gordon Walker's henchmen, Kubrick something and random throwaway guy number twenty-five, a month or so back didn't really help matters. Thankfully this time around Sam hadn't been suffering from a terminal case of bad luck, courtesy of one rabbit's foot. After a bit of a scuffle, they let Kubrick and his partner go; he hadn't wanted to, but Sam insisted. It worked out well enough, because Dean gave Kubrick a message to pass on to Gordon.
Soon after that he and Sam made their way to Cicero, Indiana, where Dean found himself faced with the possibility of another reunion he was not prepared for. Seeing Ben and Lisa again, even from a distance, had hurt deeply. He wasn't sure if it had been providence or pure luck that he got sick and had to leave all the legwork to his brother, including interviewing witnesses. Dean had been all but useless for the whole thing, only able to help at the very end after Sam figured out what was going on and prepared to go after the changeling mother . . . thing.
The sickness—or whatever you wanted to call it—was something else to add to his long list of things that struck him as odd. It had hit rather suddenly, dug in deep. His temperature flared high and his head and chest pounded so hard he was convinced there would be physical cracks. Then, after a few days, it disappeared just as quickly. Dean was sure it was an odd bug, but he couldn't help recalling Azazal's words about burning out, but demons lie, and he was sure it was nothing.
On the up-side, he'd only had a few other violent flashbacks since Nebraska, and that was more than a month and a half ago. His hope was that the flashes were just the memories of his original timeline merging with the new ones and would stop happening as things settled down, as they were more than a little annoying. They hit like a freight train and left him rather disoriented. He'd been lucky so far that Sam hadn't been around to witness them.
"—might be the best place to start."
Dean's eyes shot up and back to his brother. "What?"
Sam let out a long-suffering sigh. "Are you even listening?"
Dean scoffed. "Of course I am."
"Really? Then what did I just say?"
"You asked me if I was listening." Dean gave his brother a cheeky grin, which was countered with a bitch face, and suddenly Dean wondered whom Sam had picked that expression up from. It wasn't from Dad. Their father had many expressions: angry, passive, deadly, pleased, the Dean-I-love-you-but-I'm-going-to-smack-you-into-next-Tuesday-if-you-don't-quit—he used to take particular pleasure in drawing that expression out of their father. But in all those expressions, there wasn't really a bitch face. At least not like the one his little brother had perfected so well over the years.
Samuel—their mother's father—now that man could do a bitch face. Maybe it was a genetic thing that skipped a generation. Can the bitch face be genetic? Or maybe it was the name: maybe all Samuels were born with the innate ability.
Dean shrugged to himself, returning his attention to his little brother as the man slid something toward him. It was a map of the town, marked up in various locations to show where the victims lived, where the bodies were found, and other useful information Sam felt important. Dean's eyes shifted to the forested area on the map and noticed a small area circled a few times. He gave Sam a questioning look.
"I think that might be where the naveath is." Sam leaned over the table, gesturing to the circled area.
Dean glanced back down at the map; it was as good a bet as any. "All right, sounds like a plan." He slid the map away and closed his own laptop. "We still have a few hours till dark and"—a wide, shit-eating grin split his face—"I remember seeing a pool hall on the way into town . . ."
"Why can't monsters ever hunt in broad daylight in the middle of a wide-open field or an abandoned parking lot where they're easy to find?" Dean groused as he shoved an offending tree branch out of his way.
They'd been trekking through the woods for a good part of the night; the air was heavy with rain that he was sure would break open at any moment, but Sam couldn't resist the smile that pulled at the corners of his mouth. "You're just upset because you lost a game of pool to a guy that was probably born before the game was even invented."
Dean threw a glare over his shoulder. "I didn't lose. I let him win. Felt bad for the dude."
"Uh-huh." He couldn't help but take pleasure in his brother's misery. "And I'm sure you let him take you for two hundred and fifty dollars as well, right? Admit it, Dean, you got hustled . . . by the Crypt Keeper."
Dean fixed his brother with a hard glare. "You are aware I have a loaded pistol, right?"
Sam held his hands up in capitulation but couldn't help the grin that stretched across his face. His brother turned back toward the path, grumbling something Sam was sure should never be repeated in polite company, or any company.
"How much fur—" Dean paused as thunder cracked overhead and the sky let loose with thick drops of rain. He released a bone-weary sigh and rubbed his thumb over the bridge of his nose. "That's just . . . awesome."
"At least it's not as humid anymore."
Dean narrowed his eyes, clearly not finding the comment anywhere near helpful.
Sam cleared his throat and pointed ahead of them. "The clearing should be about two miles or so that way." He watched his older brother turn and head deeper into the woods. The forest had already been hot and muggy when they first came out, promising a miserable night. It had been their hope to find the shifter before the rain rolled in, but navigating through the thick underbrush of the small forest was taking longer than they had planned, and it appeared Lady Luck was not on their side. Sam brushed his dripping hair away from his eyes and followed after his brother.
They spent the next twenty minutes walking in silence, straining to hear anything unusual over the sound of the storm now rolling overhead. Sam was debating whether to suggest they call the night a bust and head back to the motel when Dean stopped abruptly and lifted a hand. Sam tilted his head, listening for whatever it was that snagged his brother's attention; it took a moment before he could just barely make out the soft sound over the thunder. It was a wet crunching and slurping sound; Sam pressed a hand against his stomach as he realized it was the sound of something thoroughly enjoying its meal.
Sam mimicked Dean's movement as he knelt low to the ground, carefully shifting the underbrush to get a better look at the clearing on the other side. The naveath was psychic, so it wasn't very likely they were going to be able to just sneak up on it. Unfortunately, the only way to kill it was to remove its head with a silver blade, which meant they had to get close to it, implying that one of them was going to have to distract it while the other went for the kill.
Sam was about to suggest such a plan when Dean beat him to the punch.
"You distract it—I'll go around," Dean whispered in a voice so low Sam could barely hear it despite being next to him.
Sam gave a mute nod; did his brother really just ask him to be bait? Not that he minded. He preferred it, actually, as Dean had a habit of getting thrown around a lot, mostly due to his ability to really irritate people or things and his inability to shut his mouth when he should. Sam was surprised, nonetheless, that his overprotective brother had made the suggestion. He shrugged internally and shoved the thought aside for later analyzing. There were more pressing matters at the moment, and his brother was already moving into position.
Sam pulled his machete from its sheath; the blade wasn't technically pure silver, as a pure silver knife made for a rather poor weapon. Instead the blade was stainless steel coated with pure silver, which more often than not was enough to get the job done. Sam took a deep breath before standing and pushing his way through the underbrush, into the clearing and in full view of the naveath.
He swallowed uncomfortable as the naveath locked its eyes on him. The creature was bald with disproportionately large ears and sharp, jagged teeth barely hidden behind paper-thin lips. Its clothes were ragged and torn, covered liberally in blood and . . . other things from its latest victim.
Sam shifted his stance so his feet were slightly apart and his body at an angle to the creature. He licked his lips, looking for something to say, when he realized with a startling clarity that he could only recall playing the part of bait once, maybe two times before. The job normally had gone to his father or Dean, usually Dean, as he was particularly good at it.
"Well, you ugly son of a bitch," Sam finally bit out, trying to channel his older brother's snark-the-enemy-into-submission tactic; he cringed internally as his voice gave the slightest shudder, and he blamed it on being soaked rather than any unease he may feel about going up against a psychic shapeshifter with very big claws. "Don't tell me you're full already."
The shifter gave him a bloody smile and made to stand when a loud snap of a tree branch echoed from behind it. The naveath whipped its head around to where Dean stood just five feet from it, blade raised. All three of them froze, waiting to see who would make the next move. The shifter's eyes snapped back and forth between the two brothers as if trying to decide who was the more imminent threat.
Having made its choice, the shifter stood slowly; the air around it rippled as its shape began to change. Distantly Sam realized that the creature didn't physically change its form as much as it altered the perception of those around it.
In a matter of seconds the repulsive creature was replaced by a young woman in her mid- to late twenties with short red hair and pale-ish skin. Her ragged clothes changed into a blue/purple flannel shirt overtop a grey T-shirt with a clown on it and words Sam couldn't quite make out from his angle, along with dark blue jeans and untied work boots, all of which were stained with blood.
The girl the naveath choose to mimic was one Sam had never seen before, he was sure of it, but that wasn't what surprised him. It was the way the blood drained from Dean's face, the way he took a halting step backwards away from the creature. The machete that had been posed to land a killing blow was now lying tangled and forgotten between his fingers. Dean's lips formed around a name Sam wasn't familiar with, at least not in relation to the person standing between them.
Dean watched in mute fascination as the naveath shifted and changed its form, clothes mending into a whole new outfit: familiar red hair appeared where there had been none, framing a familiar face covered in a sickeningly familiar pattern of blood.
A sudden heat slammed into him, ripping the breath from his lungs as he stumbled back.
"I was raised on Tolkien, man. Where are my White Walkers and my volcano and magic ring to throw in the damn thing? Where's my quest?"
Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that the person standing in front of him wasn't her. That she was alive and well and blissfully unaware of the things that went bump in the night. But the face staring at him obliterated all sense and logic, leaving him scrambling against the drowning rush of memories and regrets. He was sure his head was going to burst from the onslaught of his own private hell opening up before him.
"Tell me what happened. Why are you bleeding?"
"I, uh—I got shot. Did you know Dental floss works great as stitches? I only passed out twice, and I'm pretty sure my wound is now minty fresh."
The naveath jerked its head to the side, causing a loud crack that filled the air. "Dean," the creature purred. "Aren't you happy to see me?"
"C-Charlie." He felt a rush of dizziness slide through him, and before he could blink she was standing so close he could smell her fetid breath brush over his rain-soaked skin.
"It's your fault I'm dead."
"Charlie, I don't know what the hell is going on, but you need to listen to me. Give whoever that is whatever they want. You understand? Charlie?!"
"I can't do that, Dean."
"You and your well-meaning little brother. I died to save you, Dean. You, who destroys everything you touch." She tilted her head to the side. "Like poison." She ran a finger down the side of his face.
"I don't care. What I care about is not getting my other arm broken . . . or dying."
Dean wanted to flinch, move away, deny everything this Charlie lookalike was saying, but instead he found himself rooted, unable to do anything more than gasp for air that refused to pass his lips. He was poison—everything and everyone that got close to him got killed . . . or worse.
It was his fault she was dead, and it was his fault the world had been destroyed by the Hollow Men. What if he couldn't fix it? What if everything he did, had done, only made it worse? What if, despite everything, the word still burns?
She trailed a finger down to his chest and then splayed them flat against his breastbone; he could feel his heart thumping painfully under her hand. Before he had a chance to think, she dug sharp nails into his flesh and shoved him backwards with inhuman strength.
Stars burst in front of Dean's eyes as his head slammed against something hard and unyielding. In a blur of motion, the naveath was on top of him, digging its claws into his chest; a strangled cry of pain forced its way past his clenched jaw. The pressure in his skull increased, fighting for attention against the splitting pain carving its way through his torso. Black dots clouded his vision, pressing him toward oblivion; just as his hold on consciousness began to slip, the pressure disappeared and the claws were ripped from his chest.
Dean rolled onto his side, curling around the pain as he pressed his hand against the naveath's claw marks. Distantly he could hear movement, the sound of fighting mingled with echoes from his past still thrumming through his head. He knew he should get up, help his brother, but he couldn't seem to find energy for anything beyond pressing the memories down.
He wasn't sure how much time had passed before he realized that the fighting had stopped and the only noise left rumbling through the forest was the sound of his stuttered gasps and the thunderstorm still rolling overhead.
The following minutes passed in a blur of motion too fast for him to properly register and left him feeling more than a little nauseous. One moment he was looking at the ground pressed against his cheek and the next it wasn't; the grass and dirt had been replaced by the hazy sight of his brother's worried face. Dean blinked, realizing that his brother's lips were moving, but the ringing sound in his head seemed to be drowning it out.
Dean made a clumsy swipe at Sam's hands as the younger man cupped his head. "'m fi' S'm. 'roun' 'oke my 'all." A frown creased his mouth; he was pretty sure that sounded way more coherent in his head.
"What? Dean!"
Dean winced as his brother's voice pierced through the ringing in his pounding skull. He grabbed a fistful of Sam's shirt, using the younger man to haul himself off the cold, wet ground.
"Whoa, hey! Easy, man." He felt Sam scramble to help him, which was good considering he wasn't completely sure he would have been able to accomplish it on his own just then.
Dean pressed the back of his hand against his mouth, willing his dinner to stay where it belonged as his stomach twisted and rolled, unhappy with the change in orientation. He waited a beat, and then he let his hand drop, temporarily satisfied that no meals would be making an unwanted appearance.
"Dean?" Sam squeezed his shoulder gently. "You with me?"
"'m good," he muttered, the words still more slurred than he cared for.
Sam made a noise under his breath, something that sounded vaguely like disbelief. "Hardly, you're bleeding and I think you have a concussion."
"'eah ha'ver"
Sam frowned. "Red Heifer?"
Dean pulled his head back. "Wha—?"
"What?"
Dean squinted at his brother, sure that what he'd heard couldn't possibly be what his brother actually said.
Sam tilted his head to the side. "I thought you . . ." He shook his head and reached out to try and get a look at the back of Dean's head.
Dean jerked his head out of his brother's reach, immediately regretting the action as the world tilted on its axis and threatened to drop him off the side if he didn't hold on tight enough. He bit back a moan threatening to spill out and pressed a hand to the side of his head, hoping it would help keep the world still.
"Dean . . ." Sam sighed heavily. "We still need to burn the naveath's body."
Dean looked over Sam's shoulder to where the now decapitated creature lay, looking more like the demon love spawn of Gollum and Voldemort rather than . . . Dean swallowed thickly, willing to keep the memories lurking just below the surface that threatened to drown him at bay, at least for a little while longer. He tore his gaze away, turning back to his brother, who was looking at him like he was expecting an answer.
"Dean?" Sam cupped a hand against the side of his neck. "I'm gonna burn the body real quick, and then we can go back to the motel and fix you up, okay?"
Dean wrinkled his nose. "Fixed up? 'm fine."
"Dean . . . you're bleeding, remember?" He stated it like it was something Dean should have already known.
Dean looked down at himself, seeing the five claw marks on his chest that were bleeding sluggishly. "Huh." He dabbed a finger against his chest. That was probably something he should've remembered, but his head felt so packed with things at the moment, and the wounds didn't really hurt. At least he didn't think they did, though they'd probably be sore in the morning or whenever his brain and body decided to catch up with each other.
Sam frowned at him, worry pinching his face. "Just . . . don't move. Stay. I'll be right back."
Dean resisted the urge to reply with a woof, knowing it would do little to convince his brother he was fine. He was having enough trouble trying to convince himself. He blinked lethargically as he watched his brother set fire to the monster; despite the rain the creature burned quickly, and it didn't take long before Sam was at his side once more. At least it hadn't felt very long.
"You okay?" Sam kneeled down in front of him, one hand on his shoulder.
"Mm, you gotta stop asking me that." His chest had begun to ache and his head felt cracked, which it probably was, but it was nothing new. Just another day on the job.
Sam took his arm silently, helping him to his feet. Dean grabbed a fistful of Sam's sleeve as the world tilted drunkenly. After a moment he started to nod his head but stopped mid-motion, opting instead on a simple, "I'm good."
Sam pulled Dean's arm over his shoulders as they trudged back through the woods, heading toward the car. Dean chose not to say anything about it, as he wasn't sure he'd make it all the way back without the support, not that he'd ever admit it out loud.
"Dean," Sam broke the silence with a soft but curious tone. "Who was that girl? The one the shifter turned into?"
Dean pursed his lips into a thin line, once more pressing down the memories that threatened to spill out. He should've known his brother would ask—he wouldn't be Sam if he didn't. "She's . . ." He cleared his throat. "She's nobody." The words cut him deeply even as they stumbled past his lips. She wasn't nobody; she could never be nobody. She was like a little sister, one that he had failed to protect, one who had died senselessly trying to save someone who didn't deserve that kind of devotion.
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