Jess had wanted to stay. Knew what seeing Dean, head bowed, bruised and battered in the courtroom had done to him. The memories it was dragging back to the surface. She held him while he cried himself to sleep. Kissed him softly, and covered him with a blanket as he finally slept, emotionally exhausted. In the early hours, he woke, thirsty. He rolled over and stared at the empty sheet next to him, and padded on the balls of his feet through the hotel suite. Jess was feeding JD, her blonde hair gleamed in the light from a side lamp. He leant against the doorway, letting the aura of the moment wash over him, savouring it. The scent of lilacs (he had to give Gabriel Angel his due, the detail he went to make his guests comfortable was amazing) mingled with the subtle smells of his infant son. Baby powder and the warm milky smell of a tiny baby. He knew the next time he smelt lilacs he would see this image, remember the overwhelming need to protect at all costs and in that moment he felt closer to his own father than he ever had in his entire life.
Jess raised her head and seeing him she smiled. He crossed the space quickly and softly kissed his son's downy head.
"Can I have one of those," she murmured softly, "and then maybe a drink?"
"Hm. Hot or cold?"
"The kiss or the drink?"
"Your kisses are always hot." He grinned. "Sorry that sounded so Dean." His easy smile faltered and the anxious look returned. "Oh God, Jess, what are we going to do? It's all gonna come out. It's all gonna get dragged up and I don't see how it can stay secret this time. I…I don't..."
"It will be OK Sam. He will be OK, so will you. And when we get him home, I'll hold your coat while you kick his ass into next week."
He gave a reluctant laugh, and ran his huge hand through his hair. "I think I'll let you loose on him instead."
"You got through this once, you can do it again."
"I feel like a frightened, lonely 14 year old, all over again."
Jess handed JD to him, and he dropped a muslin over his shoulder and rested the sleepy boy against him, rubbing his back.
"But you're not," she said softly, standing and slipping her slender arms around his waist. "And we have a whole army ready to fight your corner. To fight for all of us." She was right, of course. They were a motley crew, but between them all… they made a powerful resource. He sighed as she continued, "And tomorrow, is going to be a long and painful day, I know, but I believe in you, Sam Winchester. You just have to believe in yourself too."
JD burped loudly and christened his father's shoulder.
Joe Lomax was a worried man. He was running way off page. His career was his whole life. He had always, as long as he could remember anyways, wanted to be a cop. Initially it had been his ambition to be just an ordinary cop, but he had shone, first at school, then at college and his criminology professor had not only suggested that a career as a federal agent would be more appropriate, he had actively paved the way by using his connections to get him a fastrack interview. In short, Lomax had everything he had ever wanted and more, and it had all fallen so neatly for him, that he could scarce believe his luck.
When he had been partnered with Henrikson he had thanked his stars, the Gods, fate, whatever it was that had give him such a boon. Henrikson was widely admired and respected, it couldn't have been any better.
But now, he was worried. Now, he had to make a choice. Henrikson had confided in him. They were working off the books. He could do the expedient thing, or he could do the right thing. He shrugged. It wasn't really a choice was it. It all boiled down to one thing and one thing only. The reason he had wanted to be a cop in the first place. His childish dream, to be one of the good guys who stopped the bad people, had evolved into his adult resolve, to use the law to protect and serve the not so bad people, by catching the slightly badder people. So it wasn't really a choice, and so Joe Lomax worried as he picked up the phone and dialled the Sioux Falls PD. So he worried when he asked for the Sheriff, and so he worried some more when a pleasant sounding voice responded. "Sheriff Mills."
"Gordon Walker? As in the Nighthunter?" Kali's face was a study of a shocked expression.
Sam nodded. He swallowed hard. This was a subject he had hoped would stay buried, along with his parents and the other victims.
"Your brother was the Nighthunter's accomplice?" Her cool professional demeanour had returned as smoothly as ever. Her husband gave her an admiring glance. Her intelligence, intellect, and sheer damned strength of character were what made him love her so much. She was, in short, fucking awesome.
Sam shook his head. "He was… his victim." He dropped his eyes, it still hurt. Even after nearly a decade. "He used me to make Dean go with him, he had no choice, we both knew he would kill the other if we didn't do as we were told. That's why they gave us both immunity."
"Jesus. You! What was your involvement?"
"I wasn't there when he… during any of the killings, but he used us to cover his tracks…" Sam's eyes seemed huge as he lifted his head. So much sorrow it seemed to leak out into the room and infect them all. "He made us dig the graves…"
"Oh my God."
"In the end, Dean managed to trap him. He… "
"Your brother outsmarted the Nighthunter… the guy is renowned as a genius." It was the first time Gabe had spoken and his voice held a mixture of incredulity and respect.
Sam gave a little smile, a hint of pride sneaking into his voice. "My brother is capable of so much more than anyone ever thinks he is."
"I'm beginning to get that…but all this, all this trauma… it's enough to break anyone. They may well use this against him. This never hit the press, how did it stay secret?"
"We got lucky, the arresting officer was a Sheriff… Jody Mills. She made sure because I was a juvenile that my name was never released, and that meant not giving out Dean's either. By the time the Fed's took over, she'd tracked down some of Dad's friends, and got us a damned good legal team. All the hearings were held in camera. To protect me initially, and then when they realised Dean was just another victim, the main charges were dropped within a few weeks, the rest were cleared with a plea deal. We were treated as witnesses from then on in."
"If there's the remotest chance that they can use this, they will."
"He was just protecting me, you have to understand, he was always protecting me, right from the very beginning… Our father was a broken man, a good, brave, loving man, broken by grief. It's taken me a long, long time to come to understand that. I hated him for years, years wasted hating a man who was just trying to do his best. Dean always tried to tell me, and I didn't get it. Couldn't. I blamed him. It made me so angry. And Dean just kept on looking out for me no matter what…"
"You don't have to justify yourself, Sam," Kali smiled at him, encouragingly. "No-one here is judging you… or your brother. I just need to know everything. Anything they might use."
Sam held her eye this time and nodded. He took a deep slow steadying breath. "Ask away."
She shook her head. "Start at the beginning… I'll not interrupt unless I need to. Just give me the chronology, as you remember it."
He shrugged. "Ok, so right back in the beginning, some guy decides Dad has conned him, felt he'd been short-changed at the garage. Some repair work, I don't know the detail of it. Dad's having none of it, throws the guy out of his workshop and refuses to give him his money back. So this guy, well he doesn't take no for an answer. Dean says he remembers Mom talking to this 'friend' of Dad's, giving him coffee and offering him dinner, until Dad comes home and then… well Dean just remembers it all getting real loud and the man didn't stay to dinner."
"A few days later, someone broke into our house, set a fire. The way Dad told it, Mom grabbed me and he grabbed Dean, only the fire had taken real hold in my nursery… Mom managed to get me to Dad, and he shoved me into Dean's arms and shouted at him to get me out of the house. He tried to get back to Mom, but she was trapped, he couldn't reach her. The floor gave way and he ran out, barely made it himself. Dad never got over it, he became convinced it was the man from the garage. For years it was just us, dragged from pillar to post by his determination to find this guy. A whole childhood focussed on one thing. Revenge. Dean bore the brunt of it. Protected me. Dad increasingly lost the plot, so Dean and I, we only really had each other, we became each other's entirety."
"Then Dad disappeared. It was the day after Dean's 15th birthday. He left us breakfast, $157, and a message saying he'd be back in a week. That was it. No goodbye. He just vanished. At the time we thought he would be back. He'd been gone for a few days many times, a couple of times as long as a week so … well we waited... Dean went out everyday, looking, trying to find him. The credit card maxed out paying for the motel room, after four weeks, and there was still no sign. In the end, we were there for months: Dean used a set of faked ID's to make out he was my much older brother, got himself a job in a garage and enrolled me in school. He's always been great with anything mechanical… in another life he'd be an engineer, designing solutions to the unsolvable… but…he never stood a chance… not really."
The sigh was long and pained. She waited patiently for him to continue.
"So, Dad was missing. School broke for the Summer and we packed up a backpack each and left town. We were beginning to get noticed. Dad always taught us to avoid the attention of the 'authorities'. He was convinced they were 'infiltrated', typical paranoid bull shit. I think in reality, he sort of knew he was unravelled and they would take us away. He loved us. Truly loved us, but he was never gonna win any parenting awards. He always told us that the authorities would separate us, and to be honest… we knew that credit card was a fake… they would have arrested Dean. It just wasn't an option."
"Then, we got a phone call. A man, said he knew Dad from his army days. He said Dad had written to him, asked him to check on us. Dean was suspicious at first, but this guy, he clearly knew Dad, told us stories about the good old days in the marines, so we agreed to meet him. Dean got us bus tickets and we met him in a diner just near the bus station. He had Dad's journal, and a letter, to Dean and me, that he said Dad had sent to him." Sam cleared his throat. "It was short, typical Dad, written on a piece of paper ripped from the journal, just telling us to be good, and he knew who had killed Mom and he was going to get him. He would be back as soon as he'd 'done what he needed to do', but it was too dangerous to take us with him. It had been postmarked from about a hundred miles south of where we last saw Dad."
"So this old army friend, he offered us a place to stay until Dad came back, said we'd be safe with him and he wouldn't feel right letting John's sons fend for themselves. We said we'd stay a week or two, but the months passed, he fed us, clothed us, enrolled me in school, and offered Dean a job. Dean settled quicker than I did. Having someone take over, he relaxed and life was good, I started doing really well at school, thinking about college. Dean was making good money." Sam shook his head and smiled fondly. "Dumb shit was saving it all, for me. My college fund."
"But gradually I began to realise there was something… off. I didn't know what it was, but I knew Dean was hiding something. He changed. Started getting snappy with me. Sending me to our room straight after dinner to study. He started running me to school, collecting me straight after. He was working so hard, I just figured he was tired, but when I tried to talk to him, he shut me down. The only other time I ever saw him this way before was when Dad went through a spell of coming home really, really drunk. Dean got so hard on me, rode my ass over chores, made me go to bed early every night… so that when Dad came home, I was out of the way, so that it was Dean who bore his frustration and not me… that's when I figured it out. He was protecting me from something again."
"But for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what. Life was so good. We had a home, structure. Things were going great. Then one night. One night, I woke up. Middle of the night. I heard a scream. A long drawn out scream. Then nothing. I figured it was some kind of bad dream. But then when I woke up again, Dean wasn't in his bed, and when I went downstairs, I found him scrubbing the kitchen floor. He was crying… his face was bruised and …" Sam swallowed hard, and ran his hands through his hair. The memory of seeing his brother, his strong, ever snarky brother on his knees covered in bruises crying on the floor, as he scrubbed blood from the tiles, even as it soaked into his clothes and covered his skin...He jumped slightly as a hand gripped his shoulder, looking up in surprise to whisky coloured eyes full of compassion.
"Take your time, Sam."
He sighed and Gabe removed his hand and moved to the sideboard, the sound of chinking glasses and pouring fluids loud in the silence. He took a swig of the amber fluid in the tumbler handed to him and winced as he sucked it through his teeth.
"That stuff is $400 bucks a bottle," Gabe muttered, "you could at least pretend I'm not tryna poison you." Sam set the heavy tumbler down with a roll of his eyes and a spluttered laugh. Gabe grinned at him. "That's better kiddo. It's in the past, now finish telling Kali, so she can help you keep it there."
Raphael Angel stared at Adler. He tapped his fingers impatiently on Winchester's file on his desk. Dean Winchester really should have been the gift that kept on giving, except... Adler, who seemed to be fast proving to be a liability rather than an asset, had let his underling go off half-cocked and failed to take full advantage.
"So," he said slowly, "My half brother managed to get himself picked up by a serial killer's apprentice… and yet you didn't manage to take advantage of the situation. You let them get taken… alive … both of them… by the police… and now… now my idiot brother is insistent on keeping Cas at home."
Adler swallowed. "Roman is keeping him sedated, as soon as we can convince Michael to..."
"We?" Raphael was all the more terrifying for just how quiet his voice was. "WE?"
Adler loosened his tie and ran a nervous finger inside his shirt collar, as if it were strangling him.
"I wanted him dead, Adler. He was travelling with a man, who was arrested as a juvenile for involvement in over 20 deaths and you managed to let him live… So now, I can't have him dead. Everybody and his dog knows he is alive and safely ensconced in his childhood bedroom, and Michael has decided that because of what happened to Luci ( your brilliant solution to his near escape from that mental institution, I might add, yours ) that he will keep him here and hire staff to take care of him. I don't think another suicide is going to be the answer, do you? Even Michael might find that just a little suspicious. And how long do you think Michael is going to buy the need for sedation? He barely trusts Roman as it is, because he was PiC at the asylum. So Adler? You tell me. Any great ideas floating around in that grey vacuum you call a brain? Hm? Well Adler? "
"We… erm… maybe an accident… if he were allowed up and about, got off his bed… fell down the stairs or… a reaction to the drugs?"
"Up and about… oh yes, brilliant Adler, we let him speak to Michael… that will work! Not to mention the assorted medical staff." Raphael shook his head, simmering like an impending geyser. "I am leaving on a business trip the week after next Adler. You have 9 days to come up with a solution, and it had better be neat, and it had better be above suspicion. Do you hear me?"
Adler shifted uncomfortably. "There had to be another angle…" he thought. Inspiration flooded his brain and adrenaline flooded his blood. "Would it work? Oh my God, that was it. So simple. Would he have told him? Surely that sort of thing doesn't come up in casual conversation…"
"What?" His bosses harsh voice cut through his process, as he noticed the lift in Adler's shoulders and the return of some of his self-assured snideness.
"The DA managed to convince the judge that Winchester was returning to the old MO. That's why they remanded him in custody." Adler said very slowly, still letting his thoughts run.
Raphael's voice was dripping impatience, but he nodded. "She convinced him it was a natural progression for Winchester to continue to use Walker's methods, but with the intention to maybe make the kill himself…or use Cas in some way."
Adler's grin was nasty. "So…"
Raphael stared at him, waiting for the punchline, "So?"
"We let your brother find out. We have him isolated here. The nurse… she says he can hear… take in what's being said… If we get Roman to adjust the dose, just enough to let him surface a bit, we can…"
Raphael nodded with sudden understanding. "We can convince him that he was every bit as vulnerable as we said he was, and lead him to believe he was being groomed... Adler," his voice held a modicum of respect for the first time in many, many weeks, "You are despicable."
