"Some beastie got your tongue, brother?"
Jed was trying to think, trying so goddamn hard, kept turning his mind over like turning a key in ignition, hoping to hear the starter grind away. His damn fool mind kept choking, of course it did, how could he be blamed? Jonah had teeth like a cottonmouth, like a coyote, like some predator from a grisly scene on a PBS nature show. Piranha, his mind supplied again. That wasn't helpful.
Caroline might've said wampus beast or wendigo or skinwalker. She might've recited one of those bloody verses from Revelation that Jed had always assumed had been written while some prophet was lit as hell - see it rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. Jed knew a few otherwise sensible folks who would've started talking Area 51 and X-Files, which Jed had watched diligently, he got the appeal, but there was just as much feverish wishful make-belief in that stuff as there was in religion. What did that leave him with?
"Go ahead and say it," Jonah said. "That m-word I know you're thinkin'. Say it."
Jed shook his head. Said, "What the hell happened to you?"
"Happened," Jonah said, no longer grinning, thank god - or God, if he was running with the biblical interpretation - "ain't the word I would use. It's what I did, Jed. It's what I became, what I made of myself. I fuckin' finally made something of myself. See?"
Movement flared off the side of Jed's vision, would've had him jumping out of his skin were he not already about as startled as he could get. The dealer had flipped over his chair, was charging Jonah with his own teeth bared and a fluorescent ray catching all the tints of them, the chipped edges and sharp canines - all in a flash. He might've been trying to sink a fist into Jonah's kidneys, wasn't clear before Jonah had grabbed him by the wrist. Grabbed him without turning his head, without looking down, or even blinking. He twisted that wrist in some cruel and exaggerated fashion that caused a crackling like kindling. A great gasp and a shuddering groan, and the man collapsed to his knees. Jonah still held his wrist, gave it another crank that caused another louder crack, a greater bone to break. Jonah's face was calm and cruel. The dealer's buddies had been half out of their chairs but the first crack of bone froze them in place and then they just watched it happen with hang-jawed disbelief.
Jed was still shaking his head, feeling more foolish by the second. All the rest of his body stood stock still, but his skin was tingling on the cusp of pain and inside he could feel his spine and ribs and sternum and heart and innards all quivering like a mold of jelly fresh plopped on the plate. "Please." His mouth was so parched it felt like he'd had a towel stuffed down it. "Please. Tell me. Tell me that this is some sick fuckin' joke and this is you screwin' around because you're still mad and I'm sorry I didn't look you up for all those years, I was meanin' to but I was scared, so scared of what mighta happened to you and then it would be my fault, and I'm sorry, Jonah, I'm sorry."
Jonah looked him in the eye, said, "Don't need your apology. I am so far beyond all that, you got no idea." He dropped the arm of the dealer who collapsed on his side with a high whine filtering through his gritted teeth, rocked back and forth like a carrion beetle on its back, good arm clinging to his broken bones. One of his buddies stood, started a slow sideways shuffle towards him that was almost comical to Jed's half-hysterical mind. Jonah paid him no concern.
Jed swallowed hard, hurting. "Tell me. Tell me who you are. Tell me what you are."
The other man behind the table spat the word out - "Monster." - but neither Jonah nor Jed paid him any mind.
Long moment of silence, then Jonah said, "You're gonna find out eventually. I've been born again, in a matter of speaking. I've been baptized. I don't know the words for what I am - Or maybe I do, I don't know. I do know I'm not – what I was. But I'm still who I was." He looked Jed square in the eye again. "Lilah Carson was my mother. Jacob Carson was my father. Just like they were your momma and daddy. They made me, just like they made you, and I was born into this family just like you were, I'm denyin' none of that. And we were kids together, and we went trompin all over the woods and buildin' forts in Uncle Harley's house and fishin' in his river, and to tell you the truth, I always hated fishing. You tried to make me happy in this stinkin' little miserable town, tried your best. And I left and I missed you. So fuckin' much and I never once told you. So no matter what I am, we had that life, nothin' can change it or wipe it out. I'm still your brother. That's who I am. But. I'm something so much more and I'm somebody else's now, too. You're just gonna have to get used to that. Sorry. I know you never liked to share."
Jed stared back, mute. His innards had stopped shaking, turned to lead, weighing him down so his feet were nailed to the floor and he couldn't move. Not an inch to save his life.
Jonah sighed. "Whatever." He looked back at the elk head mounted on the wall, flicked an amused glance down at the dealer rocking and groaning and gurgling on the floor. "You don't have to be afraid of me, Jed." And then, after a beat, and softer, "I won't hurt you. No-one's gonna make me do that, not against my will." He slanted his eyes back, and his expression was complicated now, complicated like a person is complicated, meanings twisted and tangled together. "I got value to 'em , I'm a big part of somethin' so much bigger...Don't think they'd try, but... Like I said I'm still your brother. But there's some things that I have to do tonight you ain't gonna like. You ain't gonna like it one bit. Now, about that federal agent you just so happened to walk in with..."
o
He talked to Susanna, got confirmation that Sam had come round here, had asked around about him, had left - she thought she heard sirens soon thereafter passing by, and that was it.
Dean got a table. He was drinking bourbon again. Had meant to order beer but he'd caught sight of the bottle in Susanna's hand and asked for the Jim Beam Black instead.
He'd also ordered a pulled rib on rye, was squeezing the botle of barbecue sauce over the meat, the dark purple-ish brown meat that looked nothing like what he thought of when he thought of ribs: the rich red intercostal meat with the rib bones gleaming like piano keys when skin has been freshly flayed.
He made his eyes lift from the meat, fix on the waitress - well, her tight-packed ass in jeans, feathers of her hair sweeping the small of her back where her shirt was riding up over an intricate latticework of ink - instead. The house band covering the Stones again, a slow-burn rendition of Paint It Black streamed through the general din of bar chatter and blurred all voices into the bass and electric chords. Now and again, a striking scrap of conversation reached him. "I fought two fuckin' civil wars in two fuckin' other people's countries and I ain't fightin' a third on behalf of fuckin' anybody..." and "Whadya mean V. Tech wouldn't let you in? With the brains on you.." and "Look, we all know with the robotics takin' over those jobs ain't ever comin' back..." and the band -
I could not foresee this thing happening to you
He got another call from Jody, her talking with highway noise in the background and him picturing her white-knuckling the wheel with both hands, phone cradled by her shoulder. He gulped thickly, bourbon hitting him hard, maybe because it'd been a while since he'd had the hard stuff in his mostly empty stomach. Had to ready himself for the questions he was sure she was going to ask, the how did you boys think splitting up was a good idea, haven't you ever seen a single slasher flick, why did you let your brother out of your sight, where the hell has your head been at questions.
Got a surprise when she said, "I got some news for you, I think. I've been looking into your case. Seventeen men missing and only nine bodies come back...and the bodies that've been turning up haven't been doing so corresponding to the order they were taken in. Now what does that tell ya?"
He swigged bourbon again. "That the others are being kept for some purpose while some are gettin' the boot off the island, or whatever. In pieces."
"Bingo," Jody said. "Also: shit. What's this Alpha of yours doing with these people? Harvesting them? Turning them? Other than blood-slaves and self-replicating, what the hell do vampires want?"
"I don't know," he said. "But I've had a run-in with some of his minions, and they weren't just fangs. Think this might be bigger than vampires..."
"Yeah, so, get this," she said, and his heart clenched at the familiar phrase. "I widened my search, looked for other nexuses of disappearances and savaged bodies turning up. And it's not just Burnside. I found other towns where it's looking like the same damn crapstorm: one's down by the border in Arizona, this border town that's basically run by this motorcycle club that makes Sons of Anarchy look like a sitcom, and they're constantly getting into turf wars with the Narcos, and so the violence has been chalked up to that...but otherwise the gang's been quiet, no drive-bys, no blow-outs, no public killings, which is unusual for them. Then there's this podunk riverfront town in Mississippi...''
"Yeah," he said, "I get it. This douchebag's a big fuckin' player. I just don't know what's his game yet. But when I track him down, I'll get it out of him -"
"When we track him down," she said. "Because he's probably got Alex, and god, I can't even think of what he might be doing to her. Or Sam."
"Right," he said. Swallowed again. "Jody, I'm. I gotta go."
He lowered the phone, picked up a potato chip and used its edge to scratch lines in the barbecue sauce on his plate. Sometimes, it helped to have something in his hands. Fidgeting, for a few seconds turning something over - a socket wrench, a pen, an empty USB-stick - between his finger and thumb could take the edge off. He'd heard it explained by one of those self-help audiobooks: worrying things with your hands could be a physical outlet for anxiety, anger, wanting to scratch somebody's eyes out just for looking at you. Wanting the Blade, the killing stroke never more than a fingertip away. With his other hand he was tapping his phone gently, gently against the edge of the table.
He wanted Cas to get here already. He could steal his burger. He could say, "You're still down for killing me, right?" and make Cas frown that concerned petulant frown. Say something so goddamn literal and stilted about emojis or cat penises or Atlantic City or whatever and he wouldn't even care if Cas was doing the awkward routine on purpose just to make out like nothing had changed with them.
Cas might tell him again that what he had done was for the right reasons, what a good role model he was, and coming from Cas, who had seen him inside-out, rotting soul and putrefied meatsuit, seen him in Hell and in Purgatory and what remained of him when he got back, it might actually mean something.
Then he'd ask Cas to promise him again, once more, with feeling. Help me, Castiel, you're my only hope. Or whatever the fuck he needed to my time comes, put me down, a mercy kill or however you need to think about it. Considering how they first got acquainted, it would have the sweet ring of irony to it. Hey, didn't you once say you could throw me back into Hell?
It was cruel, he got that, he'd been on the other side enough times. He understood that Cas had all this inexplicable, battered, ill-advised affection for him and he was grateful for that, he was. Just not grateful enough not to take advantage of it.
He thought about how he'd like to have Charlie here with him. About whether her arm was still in a cast and how her blood had looked on the back of his steady, steady fist and how she'd forgiven him and then taken the first pretext to run as far from him as she could get. Smart girl. You say you're sorry? Then prove it.
The tabletop came slowly into focus in front of him, wasteland of brown and black woodgrain, river of salt running through a scratch. Dusting of tapped-out cigarette ash. His eyes were burning. He rubbed them then forced his eyes up and saw Sam standing a few feet from him. Sam holding his laptop under one arm, in his other hand that poison green apple, thumbnail still picking at the bruise. The green ones weren't meant to be eaten raw anyway, they were meant to be baked in pie, what the hell was Sam's problem? Other than that he was wearing a white shirt with those stupid pearly buttons and was leaking blood dark as barbecue sauce from a hole in his abdomen, frowning down at Dean. Dean blinked, rubbed at his eyes and blinked again. Felt sorry for it when he'd made the image of Sam go away.
He wished Sam were here. He wished that he could rage at him for being gone until Sam cut him off with that righteous bitchface of his and told Dean to stop being a fucking jerk, please, won't you just talk about what's really eating at you, and he wished that after a few hours of mutual sulking they would be able to just walk past it like they always do.
This fantasy might not have been based on their relationship in recent years, but. Fuck it. It was what he wanted.
He thought about getting in touch with Crowley, Crowley might know something, a big player converting human souls en masse to be bound to a different realm, Crowley should be on top of this and should really share what he knew with the team. The team on which he had recently made very clear Crowley wasn't exactly a valued player in any band-of-brothers sense. Shit. Yeah, he could see that had had a downside. He might never have cracked open The Art of War With Monsters (though they had it prominently displayed on a shelf in the bunker's war room and he did mean to get to it sometime) but he could totally pass long con 101 and he did understand that you're not supposed to tip your hand until you've milked the mark for all they're worth. Then he'd blown it for the sweet satisfaction of putting that look on Crowley's face, make him feel what it was like to be had. Bonus: to get Crowley out of his face, remove the temptation of what was after all just one more shiny self-destruct button - there'd be some strange mixed-feelings on that one, but you'd have your reason, get it done, no remorse.
But did it really matter?
After all, he'd broken this...thing they had off any number of times - in fact one of the first things he'd said to Crowley when he woke up warm and cozy in his memory-foam deathbed was, "You know I'm not stickin' around, right?"
"We'll see about that," Crowley had drawled, but Dean could make out that faint fucking delicious glimmer of hurt in the corner's of his eyes. "Once you've had time to properly think over everything you owe me now."
"And you also get that our kind aren't exactly big on gratitude?"
"Our kind," Crowley said. "Might I congratulate you on finally reaching a measure of self-acceptance."
Crowley, of course, had meant the exact mocking opposite: what are you?
What Dean was, what he had with Crowley - no, all he had with Crowley was tearing anonymously through dives, dodging hints and insinuations about commitment and permanence and making something of himself, while stringing Crowley along for - what? company?
Embarrassing. Right. That was the word he'd chosen for that whole circus. That was all it was.
Still, it would be something if after that last time he'd admitted to yanking Crowley's chain, after that last bridge he'd burned, he could still use Crowley.
He said oh fuck it and he raised his phone and he speed dialed Crowley. No answer, of course. He left a long, loud, obnoxious voicemail demanding Crowley show his face and not telling him why. He swilled down the last of his bourbon, exited out the back. In the alley, he straightened up, still breathing hard, and started to walk. He forced himself not to think. Every time a thought started, he forced it down. Every time a memory started replaying, he hummed until it went away. Walked blindly down the alley.
Right on the backhand of Burnside's good parts was the bad side of town, end of the alley opening onto a backstreet that was like some downscaled version of those urban-decay post-apocalyptic wastelands, buildings half-shells with broken windows and peeling condemned posters, burnt-out cars, overflow of trash and ditched shopping carts, the odd half-skeletal cat leering out of the blackest shadow like that kind of behavior would entice anybody to feed them.
Dean was casing for a car worth hotwiring, just until he got the Impala back. Of course, then it occurred to him that he'd left the duffles behind in Jed's Chevy, no way to proceed without them. Shit.
Not-thinking had its upsides and downsides. Upside: he felt like he was holding it together better. Downside: he forgot his invaluable, incriminating gear in some ex-lawman civilian's car. Which maybe did detract from the upside a bit.
While rethinking everything he'd done this evening he stumbled over an obscenely fat rat that'd skittered out from under an abandoned tire. Then, faint on the wind he could hear something, sounded like a howl.
He looked up, on the block to his right could see a long shut-down factory, looked a good four stories, and he could see a figure, up on the ramparts, arms flung out wide for balance like he was Nik Wallenda about to walk the wire.
Dean started to run as the figure - tall, a man, and he was screaming Sam inside his head even though he had no reason to think it would be, that was just a default panic response- spun, started swirling his arms, and overbalanced. Hung in the air for an instant, as if floating weightless, before he plummeted. In the next second Dean heard the slam-smack of impact go off like a bomb, like it should rattle the windows and draw a crowd of hundreds, with news crews and maybe a helicopter, to the scene.
Dean didn't stop running even though he knew what to expect, there were few ways a person could die that would be new to his rodeo. And sure enough there the body was, beside the tires of a camo-painted Jeep, big nicotine-yellow coat zipping up the body, but Dean didn't need to open it up to know all that was left was chunks of jagged-edged bone and gristle mashed inside his bag of skin. He was already leaking blood from every orifice, and it looked engine-oil black in the night, he was leaking like an oil train derailed, about to catch fire. Bleeding into a long straggle of beard that looked like a maggot might plop out of it any second, and he had just been some old homeless dude who couldn't hack it any longer. Or -
It was the stench that gave the demon away, even over the rank stench of this backstreet, sulfur so thick on the air that when Dean inhaled he could feel it slither up inside his nostrils practically like a Khan worm, wriggling its way through his smelling system, bombarding its cells so brutally that klaxons sounded the alarm. His senses picked up on this just a second too late to save him from the chain slung around his neck, instantaneous inability to breathe, pipes pancaked, vision shot, lungs feeling about to pop from panic. Bare seconds while his brain was still in working order.
He got the switchblade out of his boot, had to turn it over in his numbing hand, then missed on his first strike back. Only on the second did he sink it into thigh meat, the sciatic nerve if he was lucky, give it a good twist. Must've been lucky, because the chain slackened, and he rolled his head to the side, dropped and rolled out from under the demon's hold. He moved to push himself up, the shadow of the demon falling over him as he made it too slowly to his hands and knees.
He hadn't quite made it to his feet before the demon had yanked knife from knee and recovered. Also of note, the demon was fucking huge - was possessing big Ed from the bar, that was why.
A kick to the face had the usual effect: his ears ringing, his mouth tasting like warm pennies. His jaw clicked and ached when he worked it open, spat a string of blood to the pavement. Again, didn't get the chance to push himself to his feet before he was ripped backwards, the back of his head cracking the windshield as he thudded onto the high hood of the Jeep.
Spine shuddering against the hood, his fingers scrabbled and squeaked against the icy aluminum. He raised his head as far as he could manage, blinked blood from his eye, blood running thick from his left temple.
The sonofabitch met his gaze. Lunged forward, and it wasn't the most gracefully executed lunge, the demon must not be accustomed to the bulk of Ed's meatsuit.
Dean dodged the double-fisted blow, rolled right off of the hood onto the street with his palm smacking into a puddle of homeless dude's blood, spat another mouthful of blood to the asphalt as he pushed up on shaky arms and worked himself up to standing.
Dean felt it when his skin split, when the demon's fist still clutching the chain hit and the crack of bone shook so hard even the ringing in his ears was stunned silent.
He went flying again, met a big glass window that took him into the factory. Glass breaking all around him, tumbling and twisting through the whirl of glittering shards.
It took a fair amount of effort but after he landed he continued the roll, made it onto his back. His surroundings were still making like a whirlwind for a second while Dean struggled to catch his breath and hey, he was feeling pain again, it had finally gotten a raise to the top corner office of his consciousness. Now he had to work to suppress the renewed raging of his obliques, the new injured rib, the fresh pain shouting out from a half dozen other places throughout his body.
He breathed in that whiff of sulfur cutting the general air of decay as the demon sauntered toward him. This was the last straw for his lungs, which decided to say fuck this noise and reject the bitter dust-choked air they were being subjected to pulling in, make him gag, go into a harsh coughing fit.
He hadn't recovered from the coughing when he turned and ran. He was going to do this right, he was going to kill the demon, of course he would, but he would not lose control now. So he ran into what had been a factory for manufacturing equipment for when mining had been all about tunneling under mountains, drills and good old fashioned dynamite. There'd been parts of drills left to rust on the belts, barely recognizable chunks of rust-cracked metal and by what backstreet fluorescence filtered in their shadows were even harder to recognize, the distended shifting shapes of them making for decent camouflage. He ducked around one row of belts, cut between another, then rolled under another, needed to get some distance, some perspective. The demon continued his slow stalk, probably figured Dean was panicking.
He was stalling, letting his lungs recover a second. Now seemed a good time to get caught up on that pre-fight banter they'd missed out on.
"You ain't another one of Abaddon's ex-groupies, are you?"
"That poser-bitch? No fucking way, dude, I would never follow someone who was all slogans and stump speech, no policy proposals, no plan..."
"Fuck," Dean said, and now he was really pissed-off, not even the kind that was craving murder, the kind of pissed that had him rolling his eyes and slamming doors and bottles around. "What is it with everybody having to have plans and principles? Whatever happened to just random destruction and death for its own sake?"
"Wow. You've been one of us and, man, you still don't get our kind. What's the point of getting a second life if you don't stand for anything?"
"You expect me to believe Crowley sent you?"
"Why not? Shit. You honestly have a hard time believing he could be over you?"
"I think sending one thug with a chain ain't his style."
"I took initiative."
"And you're dumb enough to think he'll thank you for it?"
"No. Did you hear nothing I said about taking a stand for the greater good?"
"Dude, I can't even die. Kill me and there's only one person you'll be doin' a favor and it sure as fuck ain't you."
"Oh really? Then why don't you step the fuck up here and take it?"
Dean had to oblige him. Ditched caution, stealth, took him at a head-on run. After all, he'd recently worked out his latest mantra, which was actually the same-old mantra he'd known all his life: get it out on the bad guys, get it out on the bad guys. If he tore this pure black-hatted bastard apart with his bare hands (no teeth, see? he had limits) he would be less likely to do it to somebody who didn't quite have it coming. Fuck abstinence, fuck denial, it was all about letting the hunger out in controlled bursts. He was in control, he was in control, he had it all under motherfucking control -
Lower level piece of shit, definitely. They were really scraping the bottom of the barrel for the ones to send up against him since Abaddon, since Cain and it was boring, made him miss Purgatory all over again, made him feel stupidly invincible, which of course he wasn't, and he should try to remember that but it was difficult in these moments -
He straddled the demon on the floor and the thing inside Ed was still laughing even as Dean gained the upper hand, but the laughter cut quickly enough to gasps and gurgling, and Dean might've popped at least one finger against its cheekbone, hammering away at the thick ridges of Ed's skull, but hey, no more pain, the wasteland inside him had been swept blessedly dead quiet.
When the demon stopped moving beneath him, Dean pushed off the ground, used the momentum to make it all the way to his feet, his eyes moving back into a patterned sweep of the immediate area. Wrapping his left arm around his middle, he limped farther into the factory, stretched to grab the end of a loose hanging pipe. He yanked a length free and spun, clocking the demon across the head with an amusing bong of metal on bone right as the sonofabitch was lurching toward him. Then he rotated the pipe in his hand, rushed forth to jam the jagged end through that t-shirt and pad of muscle and splintering bone, popped a lung and whatever else was in between, pinning the demon to the crumbling drywall just to the right of the shattered window.
When he was satisfied that the asshole wasn't moving again, Dean staggered back, dropped his hands to his knees to keep himself from going all the way to the floor, gaze eating up the screaming demon speared to the wall.
"Never get tired of doin' that," Dean rasped, texture of the words like burning sand in his gullet, his throat bruised. He straightened, his left arm once more wrapped tight around his midsection, thinking c'mon, c'mon to the Mark, which maybe he shouldn't be doing but the opioid effect had been nice while it lasted.
He was still in good enough shape to get the hell out of Dodge, but he wasn't looking for any more unfinished business. He didn't have the demon-killing knife. That was on Sam, he hoped. But an exorcism, old school - he could do that. Let him confess to Crowley, who sure as fuck hadn't authorized this and wouldn't be pleased whatever he felt toward Dean at the moment.
But wait. Why should Crowley get the satisfaction of delegating to some other incompetent minion the task of taking this fucker apart when if he had just answered Dean's call in person they wouldn't be having this issue? He had his Colt in his waistband now with six rounds of devil's-trap bullets, he could put one between Ed's eyes so the demon would have no escape and there were plenty of implements in this factory he could improvise to -
The demon made the decision to cut out before Dean made up his mind. He pulled out the Colt, got off a shot that went through Ed's left-hand ribs but the demon had clawed up into his throat and passed by the point of no return. He was forced to stand by, watch the thick sooty smoke swirl and rush upward -
"He-elp…me."
Dean jumped and dropped his eyes, saw fresh blood bubbling from the lips of Ed, just bartender Ed now, dying, shot and impaled against the wall.
"Ple-ease."
Dean took a step back, shook his head, croaked, "I…"
Ed's eyeballs were bloodshot, bulging, looked likely to pop right out of their sockets, and his pupils had grown huge, taking in too much.
"Close your eyes," Dean said. Coughed.
Ed, beyond hearing, choked on one last agonizing gurgle of breath drawn in, and his head dropped forward silently on what should be the corresponding exhale, a dark line of blood trailing to connect his mouth and the factory's carpet of dust.
Dean averted his own eyes, the harsh drag of his own breaths now clogging his ears. Glass shards from the shattered window crackle-popped like corn under his boots as he turned. He threw a hand up against the window frame to maintain some semblance of balance and had to snatch it back again to avoid the broken glass slicing him up even more while making his way out.
The fight had of course marked up the Jeep, only vehicle he'd spotted in this vicinity that looked likely to make it around the block. Anyway, there was still the matter of the duffle bags in Jed's car so he would have to double back, take the riskier move of nabbing something from the bar's front lot. Or not. Not while it was this busy and bright. He'd have to get walking. It was getting colder, snow was seeming an iron-clad guarantee. Fuck. He was pretty much fucked either way and fresh out of people - things - to take it out on.
Maybe it was because he was feeling so raw in that moment, so humanly permeable, that that was the moment it happened. Or not. What did he know?
He is aware of what is happening to him overlaying what he thinks is happening to him. Dean imagines an onion, getting eviscerated by a paring knife. You slice and slice, filleting the layers, and the onion will make you cry before you know what is happening, so he pats himself on the back for the metaphor.
One layer, and the truth is that he is running.
Two layers, and the truth is that his fever is back, brain fever - one of those illustrated classics comics he read to Sammy had some colonial adventurer in the Congo coming down with brain fever, whatever the hell that was, and that sounded like his situation. The brain fever, not the colonial or the Congo, he wasn't that sonofabitch Kurtz, now was he, and when had he read that story, one of the few high school assignments he'd ever completed - was it while he was at that boy's home, was he...
Three layers, the onion's core plops out like an organ, and the truth is that he is being hunted.
He runs. Branches nick his arms like razors, but he doesn't worry over it, the razors are only figurative. It is so cold the mouthfuls of muddy air and icy fog hurt his throat and lungs as he swallows, his eyes searching for light, for an out from these pines and their claws, from this dream he knows inside and out, from before it came real and long after.
He knows he won't make it, he will never make it. He is not stupid. His ears are sharp, prey animal-sharp which is different from predator-sharp though how this is he doesn't know. He is seeing from one side now: as prey, game, a game to them. He hears the howling, the one unmistakable sound. He will forget his brother's voice before he forgets their howls.
No use to hurry - they had him before he ever took off running and they'll have him when it's over.
Over. Over is when they take his sight and take his voice and sometimes take both leave him in the mute black where he can still hear them still feel everything they do to him and can't even cry out against it. They give him his voice when they want to hear him scream when they want him to talk when they want they want they want and when he realizes what they want he will refuse to give it to them but there really is no use.
Over is when they make him talk. That onion again, filleted skin by skin, they make him tell them everything, a slow flaying, fears, shames, secrets, loves until he can't bear the sound of his own voice peeling and slicing and carving out himself and feeding it to them in ribbons. He will do this until they leave him with nothing to himself and they are telling him how they are going to use what he's fed to them tell him he's done this to himself then they leave him alone to scream in the dark until he gives up his voice once more and still it isn't over.
Still, he runs. Soles of his feet ingrained with blood and dirt, too raw to steady his legs while crossing the unforgiving woods.
But he needs.
Needs to go where there's light and his brother's face. To tell him at least. Tell him. What. The muddy forest air now feels like nothing but mud filling his lungs and he can't draw breath to speak and there really is no use.
But he runs.
He falls, and this is good because it means things must be over. He is right - everything goes black, screen sliding right, just like in the movies. Lights out. It's for the best.
Soft snow scatters across his face as he opens his eyes. He's lying on a street corner, in a gutter swollen with snow. Touching his cheek gingerly, his skin comes away clean of blood and the woods.
Where is he? He had hoped for Purgatory, as a reprieve from dreams of hounds and Hell, surely he is owed a reprieve, he took his turn as prey and now -
It's a stupid question. He is in Burnside, the Appalachians, a deserted backstreet. Only, he can't remember how he came to be on this road. Did he fall during a bad fight? Is the demon waiting to finish him off - see the look of peace on his face when it drinks his blood - no, that's vampires with the blood drinking, he should know. There should be vampires somewhere round here, that was the general idea of this - vampire-bat-signal-radio, now if only it came with one of those CNN chyrons he could know what...
Springing to his feet, he groans as the bones in his legs and arms crack and pop beneath his weight. Stiff, like he'd been dead a while.
Sighing, he glances around and feels his ears roaring louder and louder as he does.
Sam. Sam is here. Or not here, but standing right across the street. Half in shadow, storefront awning hanging over his head piled with bricks and bricks of snow. So Sam is the point of this vision, obviously and redundantly, when is Sam not. What, did the Alpha think Dean would need a reminder of what he is looking for, what is on the table - when is Sam's life not on the table? When has Dean looked for anything else?
The Mark burns. Dean swallows. His ears roar like snow-swollen rivers.
He tries to say - Give him back.
He will have to cross the road to get to Sam, which is the set-up for the lamest of jokes and an accurate metaphor. Cross roads, cross streams, it is almost as good as his imaginary onion, as the snake swallowing its own tail.
The bitch is, this is not about giving him what he wants, this is about taunting him with what he can't have. He stares hungrily at Sam who is wearing what can only be called his resting bitchface, a look Dean has not seen in much too long. Lately it's been all dewy eyes and tentative mouth treading so carefully and making him feel like more of a monster.
He stares at Sam with tender, bone-deep yearning and it makes him feel human, the way they are supposed to keep each other, to keep...
In the street, in the snow, he sees a body, come between them. The spill of blood, arcing to either side of it, like dead angel wings. The pristine white backdrop makes the sheen of blood beautiful. Not that it matters, because men and angels are both dropping like flies these days and he and Sam can just walk around the corpse like they walk around everything else.
He crosses the street. The snow is still falling, much too much, but neither snow nor body get in his way. Sam is here. Sam is dressed in black jacket, scarf, black pants, a regular undertaker. Death. Behind him, a church. That is new. It is made of stone and stained glass, stark and serious in the white winter light. Balanced on the edge of a mountain, it has tiny wooden doors and an old, rotten cemetery. Dean tries to adjust to the new altitude while his eardrums pop.
You want to know what I confessed in there? Sam asks him. His voice cold, clean of tears.
Not really, no - It is not a sensitive thing to say but this is his vision and that means it has to go the way he wants it to. He inhales the smells of winter, the pine, frozen sky and the woodsmoke from some faraway cabin.
I want you to come for me. I don't care what you are. I don't care what you do. I just want -
This isn't my brother talking, he echoes to Sam, who shakes his head. Mute, tearful now. My brother still thinks he can save me. My brother always thinks -
You'll do what you have to do, Sam says. And I will never forgive you because there's nothing to forgive.
More fucking candy-coated cliches, Dean says. Can't you give me anything else?
You won't like it, Sam says. It's not good being alone, is it?
That's not an answer. Dean wants to shake him. Wants to cling to his shoulders, before he vanishes again.
He doesn't get the chance. He surfaces.
Surfaced, in the alley, all the way up the alley like he'd stayed on his feet the whole time, walking. He was still on his feet, nevermind the state of his skull or ribcage. He felt fantastic. Fucking Mark, high of the kill, finally kicked in.
He was standing close to the bar, the back exit where he'd come out, red graffiti on muck-brown brick - Hang in there, baby, enclosed within a wobbly attempt at a heart. Weird uplifting message for a bar's back alley, for this town, for this part of the country. Not that he was judging, he was just tired, tired of all this -
He heard a crash, some collision of body or bodies and wood or glass, followed up by a hoarse, manly scream, then - crack, a rifle shot. Shit.
Had he not just learned a lesson about not-thinking, he might've barreled in, but he had, so.
On one hand:
He had made a resolution to stay away from bar brawls while he had the Mark and thus far stuck to it.
He had killed one of the bartenders and facing his coworkers and patrons so soon after would be distinctly awkward.
He had blood on his hands and blood spotting his other good winter jacket (shit) and had walked only a block and a half from two dead bodies. Now was the time for stealing the getaway car, not diving straight into the next highly public showdown.
He needed to find Sam. Nothing going down in that bar was likely to take him one step closer to Sam.
The Mark was burning again. His hands were shaking. The sound of violence had sparked that craving, all over again. Siren song.
Other hand:
Jed and Susanna were in there and he really did feel obliged to them, felt he owed them better than an unceremonious ditching and also protecting the people of this town was sort of supposed to be his job. Fuck smart, it was the right thing to do.
The right thing to do. Right.
One hand a hairsbreadth from his Colt, with the other he pushed the bar's rear door inward and he re-crossed the threshold, under the neon red exit sign.