Demon's Year
Chapter Ten: Six Months
Time for more of "Mystery Spot"! Again, some dialogue comes from the episode, while some things are more... inspired by it, I guess. Whatever. It was saddening to write some of the things I did, but what comes next is part of what makes "Mystery Spot" one of my favorite episodes. Enjoy!
"You killed two people and traumatized a third."
"Oh, come on! Those dicks had it comin' to 'em!"
"Still doesn't make it right."
"Who ever said anything about right?"
—Sam Winchester and Loki the Trickster, "Journey: Gone Crazy"
"Heat of the moment!"
The alarm clock went off and Sam slowly sat up in bed. Dean grinned at him as he tied the laces on his right boot. "Rise and shine, Sammy!" he hollered gleefully over the loud music.
Sam stared at him, looking confused for a moment.
"Dude," Dean said to him, nodding at the alarm, which was still blasting away loudly. "Asia." He grinned some more.
"I know what it is, Dean," Sam sniped with his usual bitchface, only it didn't last. He looked away, but Dean caught a glint of something like… determination? Huh.
Dean shrugged it off and mouthed along to the chorus of Heat of the Moment, heading for the bathroom while continuing to bob his head in time with the music until it snapped off. He looked across the room, but Sam was busy getting dressed.
"Cheater," he said, but Sam ignored him. Whatever. Dean turned away and started brushing his teeth.
Twenty minutes later they set out to walk to a diner Dean had spotted on their way into town the day before. It was about five blocks away from their motel, but it was a nice, bright sunny day, so there really was no need to take the car.
Sorry, Baby. Maybe we'll go out for a drive later.
Dean tried making small talk with his brother, but Sam only spoke long enough to give details on the missing professor they were going to try and find before his mind was up in the clouds. It didn't seem to be coming back down anytime soon, either. Dean scowled and continued to the diner in silence. Sam bumped into an old man leaving the diner as they entered, and Dean caught a flash of metal as he dropped something in his hand into the trashcan. Had those been keys?
Dean began to wonder what was up with his brother as he picked out a booth. Sam slid into the seat across from him and set his eyes on a middle-aged man eating pancakes with syrup at the bar.
Weird. Dean looked up at a board listing the diner's specials. "Hey, Tuesday," he said with a grin. "Pig 'n a Poke." He looked over at his brother, fully expecting some kind of exasperated reaction.
Sam didn't reply.
"Sam, what's up with you?" Dean asked him, worry overtaking his annoyance.
"Just another day of being caught up in my time loop," Sam responded absently.
What the fuck was that supposed to mean?
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Dean asked.
"Like Groundhog Day," Sam said, barely even glancing at his brother. "It's been Tuesday over and over and you die every time."
A middle-aged waitress bearing the nametag 'Doris' walked up to their table. "Are you boys ready?"
"Yeah," Dean said with another glance at his insane brother, "I'll have the special, side of bacon, and coffee, black."
"Nothing for me, thanks," Sam said, still watching the guy with the pancakes.
"Lemme know if you change your mind," Doris said before walking off.
Dean watched Sam silently, still feeling really confused. Why would Sam be talking about being stuck in a situation like Groundhog Day? And what did he mean that Dean died?
Doris returned with a small tray in one hand with Dean's coffee and a bottle of hot sauce. "Coffee, black —"
"Thank you," Dean said.
"And some hot sauce for — oh! Crap!"
The tray had tilted, sending the bottle towards the ground, but Sam's hand shot out and caught it, setting it on the table. He never once looked away from the man.
"Thanks," Doris said before walking away.
"Nice reflexes," Dean commented.
Sam ignored him some more.
Doris returned with Dean's food, which he enjoyed well enough, but Sam's weird behavior kept distracting him. Why was he watching that guy?
"So," Dean finally decided to try, "you think you're caught in some kind of what again?"
"Eat your breakfast," Sam said, not even sparing him a glance.
A moment later, the man his brother had been eyeballing stood up and left the diner. Sam pulled a bag out from his jacket and rose, as well.
"What's in the bag?" Dean asked, but Sam, once again, didn't reply. Instead, he started to head out of the diner, and Dean began to think he was following that guy like some kind of creepy stalker. What the hell? Grabbing some money from his wallet and throwing it on the table, Dean rose and quickly followed Sam out of the diner.
He caught up just as Sam grabbed the man by the shoulder and slammed him against the fence. "Hey!" the man cried out. "Hey!"
Dean was surprised to see that Sam's bag had been holding a wooden stake with blood on the end. He held it up to the man's neck.
"I know who you are," Sam said to the man, "or should I say what?" Dean wasn't sure he'd ever heard Sam sound so angry outside of some of his worst arguments with their father as a teenager.
"Oh God," the man gasped, "please don't kill me."
"Sam?" Dean asked, but Sam continued to ignore him
"It took me a long time to put it all together," he practically snarled at the man, "but I finally got it and it's pissing me off that it didn't occur to me sooner."
"What?" The man sounded terrified, trying to lean away from the stake in Sam's hand.
"It's your M.O. that gave you away," Sam said shortly. "Going after pompous jerks and giving them their just desserts? Your kind just loves doing that, don't they?"
"My kind?" the man echoed, voice pitching higher as he continued to panic. "Look, man, my name's Ed Coleman, my wife's Amelia, I have two kids!"
"You're lying!" Sam shouted. "There's only one creature powerful enough to do what you're doing, making reality outta nothing, sticking people in time loops! You'd pretty much have to be a God, or at least a trickster." A trickster? Seriously? "Only a trickster would make me forget to use my abilities to figure it all out."
"Abilities? God, I sell ad space!" Ed cried. "Please just put the stake down!"
"No," Sam said. "I know what you are, I can feel the difference! We've killed one of your kind before!"
Ed Coleman froze, and then he wasn't Ed anymore.
It was the same Trickster they had dealt with before. Loki.
"Actually, bucko," Loki said with a grin, "you didn't."
What the fuck?
"Why are you doing this?" Sam asked, voice hard, but still managing to sound brittle in a way Dean hadn't heard since Jess had been killed.
"You're joking, right?" the Trickster asked. "Your brother tried to kill me last time! Why wouldn't I do this?"
Sam looked close to snapping. In fact, Dean suddenly noticed that Sam looked a lot more tired than he had the day before. "So, what about Hasselbeck?" Dean finally forced himself to speak.
"He said he didn't believe in wormholes," Loki answered, "so I dropped him in one." He grinned brightly up at Sam and Dean with a short burst of laughter, clearly thinking that they should be amused by what he had done to the man. "Then you guys showed up. I made you the second you hit town."
"So this is fun for you?" Sam asked, grip tightening on the stake in his hand. "Killing Dean over and over?"
Sam was really serious about that, Dean suddenly realized.
"Okay," Loki said. "One: Yes, it is fun. And two: this is so not about killing Dean. This joke is on you, Sam. Watching your brother die every day. Forever."
Sam's jaw worked. "You sonuvabitch," he said in a low voice that Dean knew betrayed just how angry he was.
"How long will it take you to realize," Loki said, "you can't save your brother no matter what?"
"If I kill you," Sam replied, "then at least I'll have a real chance." He lifted the stake slightly to drive it into Loki's neck.
"Whoa, hang on!" Loki said quickly. "I was just playing! You can't take a joke? Fine, you're out of it. Tomorrow, you'll wake up and it'll be Wednesday. I swear it."
Dean watched as Sam stared at the demi-god.
"You're lying," he said. "You're not done."
Loki narrowed his eyes at Sam for a moment before grinning.
"You're right," he said. "I'm not." Then he snapped his fingers and everything went black.
"We're gonna go back in time!"
Sam opened his eyes and sat up. Dean was over at the sink, spitting into it, apparently having finished brushing his teeth. He rose up and spotted Sam. "You gonna sleep all day?" he said with far less cheer than he had during the never-ending stream of Tuesday.
Wait. Sam blinked and turned to look at the alarm clock.
W-E-D
"It's Wednesday?" he asked, feeling shocked.
Dean stepped away from the sink. "Yeah," he said. "Wednesday, which usually follows Tuesday."
Sam didn't understand. Loki had said he wasn't done, hadn't he? "No Asia," Sam said stupidly, still trying to process everything.
"I know," Dean said glumly. "This station sucks. Turn it off, would you?"
"No," Sam said, "I think this is the best music I've ever heard. Haven't you heard anything so wonderful?"
Dean stared at him, emotions tilting between weirded-out and worry. "Okay, dude… how many Tuesdays did you have?"
"I don't know," Sam said, getting out of bed. "I lost track." He frowned. "Wait, what d'you remember?"
Dean considered for a moment. "You were pretty whacked out of it yesterday," he finally said. "And Loki, the Trickster, we ran into him, but… that's about it." He shrugged.
Sam nodded and quickly started changing. "We're leaving," he said.
"What?"
"Pack your stuff," Sam ordered, not caring that he was being a douche and using his powers on his brother when he pretty much never did. "We're getting the hell outta here."
Dean headed for his bags. "No breakfast?" he asked.
"No," Sam said. "No breakfast."
Dean was done before Sam and headed outside to pack up the Impala and check out. Sam was shoving the last of things into his duffel when he heard a gunshot.
Dread froze his insides. "No," he whispered, dropping his things and running out of the room and down the stairs to the parking lot. He caught sight of Cal as he ran away before he spotted Dean.
He'd been shot. He was dying. "Oh, God, no!"
Loki really wasn't done. Sam pulled Dean close, closed his eyes and waited.
Nothing happened. He was still here, still holding Dean.
"No," Sam whispered, "no, not again, it's not Tuesday, Dean, please hang on…"
He already knew it was no use. He pulled back slightly, watching the light fade from his brother's eyes and felt tears escape from his own.
"DEAN!" he screamed out with a broken sob. "I'm supposed to wake up…"
Sam learned a lot about himself during the following six months after Dean's death. He didn't like what he learned, but he used it to his advantage. After all, what good were things like a conscience or morals when there was nothing to live for? The thought that he was worse than his father crossed his mind once, but he pushed it away. Dean was dead, in Hell for the rest of eternity, and Loki was responsible.
Nothing else mattered except finding the demi-god. Nothing.
Sam burned Dean's body that first night on the outskirts of the small town. Thursday found him tracking leads on Loki. Same with Friday, Saturday, Sunday and the following Monday. Bobby called him, tried to get him to come back to Sioux Falls so he, Ellen and Jo could help him, but Sam refused. The darkest corners of his mind demanded he do this on his own.
When leads on Loki were dry, Sam found other things to hunt down. He destroyed a poltergeist in Nebraska at the request of Missouri Mosely in early August. She tried to talk to Sam after telling him about the job, but he didn't have time for small-talk, and he certainly didn't have time for a psychic, however well-meaning, to tell him he was going to go off the deep end at the rate he was going. "I'm fine on my own, Missouri," he told her firmly before ending the call. The poltergeist tried everything in its arsenal to stop Sam from banishing it, but Sam retaliated with his own psychic abilities and cleansed the house of its presence.
There was a vampire nest in Austin that he took out all on his own by setting fire to their hideout and then decapitating any vamps that escaped the blaze. There had been fifteen vamps in that nest.
Sam ran into the FBI while tracking a shiftshaper in Tulsa over Labor Day weekend, but escaped with only a single bullet to the chest. Thankfully, he managed to slow its speed down enough that it only just pierced his skin and nicked one of his ribs, cracking it. It still hurt like a bitch, but Sam knew better by now than to let his emotions cloud over the state of his body. He forced Henricksen and Reidy to fall asleep on the spot, not particularly interested in killing the agents. After all, it wasn't their fault that Dean was dead or considered a fugitive, and neither man had ever tried to actively kill him in the past. They were just a nuisance.
He killed the shapeshifter, drove himself back to the motel he was using one-handed, removed the bullet himself with the tweezers from the first-aid kit, and then stitched himself up without using any kind of pain reliever. He did pour some alcohol over his ribcage to sanitize the wound and prevent infection, barely wincing at the burning sting as the liquid slid between the black sutures.
Sam slept the required amount necessary to keep his body in good condition. He ate the requisite amounts of food to sustain his weight and energy. He cleaned his weapons regularly. He went out on Hunts. He tracked the Trickster. There was nothing else in life but that.
He ran into Gordon Walker, escaped from prison with a few of his buddies sometime in late September. They had, apparently, found a good-sized supply of the drug that had been used on him back in Baltimore by the demon Buck, but they hadn't been able to use it yet. When Sam learned that the group of Hunters had tortured Danielle's family and friends to try and find him (there was a flash of regret that he had ignored every phone call and voicemail from anyone and everyone before it was gone again), he forced them all to kill themselves and set fire to their base of operations. He didn't feel any guilt at all, only a continued hatred that burned so coldly that he felt little else.
Ruby started following him during month three, but after two weeks of telling the demon to go away, he forcefully pulled her knife from her hands and killed her, dumping her Jane Doe body in a ditch and driving away. He didn't need her or any revenge on any demons. He was going to find Loki and get Dean back. That big-shot demon he'd heard about was going to have to wait to try and kill him because he had many, many better things to do with his time.
Not that demons didn't try to track him down and kill him, anyway. Sadly, for them, none of them succeeded. Many were stabbed with Ruby's knife. Three were given the privilege of being shot with the Colt. Only one was actually exorcised, and only because it had the balls to try and possess Sarah Blake of New Paltz, New York. She survived the exorcism, but Sam didn't stick around to talk.
The Trickster left false trails and dead-ends all over the continent. Sam drove to Canada for a series of grocery-store accidents that were too 'freaky' to be average. He even went to Mexico once, but there wasn't a trail to follow from there, either. The demi-god seemed to be enjoying this game of cat-and-mouse too much to end it.
Sam couldn't imagine hating anyone or anything as much as he hated Loki.
Bobby tracked him down physically during month four after, but Sam refused to speak to him, even forced him to leave just by thinking it while stating that they had nothing to talk about except Loki's whereabouts. Ellen and Jo came sometime after that, but left when their pleas for Sam to listen to them and stop moving across the country to find the Trickster with the determination of a fucking Terminator went unanswered.
By month five, everything started to blur into long days and nights of loneliness and solitude. Sam only continued his perfunctory actions of self-care because he knew that once he found Loki and convinced him to bring Dean back, he would need to be in good shape for his brother's sake. No one, and nothing else mattered but that. Dean was in Hell so many months earlier than he was supposed to be, and even if Sam couldn't save Dean when the real time came, at least he could try and save his brother now.
"Sam," Bobby said on his voicemail in month six. "Sam, I found him."
The Broward County Mystery Spot hadn't changed at all in the six months that Sam had been on the road looking for the Trickster. Well, apart from the various items Bobby had drawn and placed on the floor.
"Hey," Sam said softly, and Bobby whirled around, a weary but glad smile breaking over his weathered face.
"It's good to see you, boy," he said, striding forward and wrapping his arms around Sam.
"Where's Ellen and Jo?" Sam asked in lieu of returning the hug.
"Tracking some demons down in Texas," Bobby answered, stepping back with a small frown on his face. "How're you doin'?"
"I'm fine," Sam said with the barest hint of a shrug, because he was fine. "Why am I back here? Loki left this place back in July."
Six months.
"I found a ritual that's supposed to summon him here, since it's the last place we know he was at for sure," Bobby said, stepping back a little more and gesturing to his various supplies.
"You have everything?" Sam asked.
Bobby shook his head. "Still missing one thing," he said. "We need blood. Human blood."
"How much?" Sam asked.
"Near a gallon," Bobby answered grimly. "And it has to be fresh, too. Also, we do this tonight or we wait another 50 years to try again."
Sam remembered a time when he would have reacted to such statements with dismay, but things had changed. He had changed.
"Fine," he said. "Wait here, I'll go —"
"What's wrong with you?" Bobby cut him off, features suddenly twisting in dismay, and it suddenly occurred to Sam that he hadn't used his empathy once since Dean had died, but the thought was brushed aside as Bobby continued, "We'd have to just about bleed a person dry to get that much blood, and you're just gonna do it without a care?"
"You said this will summon him," Sam said flatly. "We're summoning him, Bobby, and then I'm getting Dean back."
"You really think Dean would want to come back and find out you'd killed a man to do it?" Bobby asked incredulously.
Sam felt anger that burned hotter than the ice that had consumed him the last six months. He narrowed his eyes at the man he had considered a better father-figure than the real one he'd had growing up. "You call me here," he said, "tell me what to do and then say I can't do it?"
"Sam —" Bobby started.
"Are you going to help me or not?" Sam's voice rose for the first time since Dean's death. "Don't you want Dean back?"
"Of course I do!" Bobby exclaimed. "But not this way. Not like this. Sam, I called you here because me, Ellen and Jo are fuckin' worried about you and we wanna help, but not like this."
"Then leave," Sam snapped. "Leave the instructions, get the fuck outta here and I'll do it myself."
Bobby shook his head. "I can't let you kill an innocent."
Sam set his jaw stubbornly. "You can't give me a way to fix this and then tell me not to," he said lowly.
Bobby's shoulders slumped. "Kill me, then," he sighed.
Sam blinked and felt his jaw drop slightly. "What?"
The emotion he felt seemed foreign after everything he'd done the last six months. The walls in his mind dropped —
"You're not Bobby," he whispered.
"Excuse me?" Bobby said, frowning in concern at Sam.
"You wanna know what my biggest mistake was during those infinite Tuesdays?" Sam asked, slowly stepping forward and pulling out Ruby's knife from the sheath he'd strapped to his belt, the Colt tucked securely in the back of his jeans should the knife fail him, and the blood-tipped stake tucked into his jacket for added security. "I never used my empathy, and you know why? Because Loki tricked my mind into thinking more about Dean's situation than the reality around me until he gave me the one little tip-off that brought me back to my senses."
"Sam — " Bobby took a step back, holding his hands up in a placating manner.
"I've done things that I'm supposed to regret doing," Sam continued. "Things that I normally wouldn't do the last few months. I felt like some… I dunno, some sort of soulless monster, killing things in my way without considering the moral consequences like I normally do. I have done nothing but make logical choices that are supposed to bother me because it puts innocent lives at stake and I haven't cared. At all." Sam looked around the room. "You're not real. You look and feel real, but there was always something slightly off about Loki's emotions compared to every other monster I've sensed, enough that the fake things don't quite measure up to the real." He raised the blade. "End the illusion now."
Bobby gaped for about two seconds, and then he swirled into nothingness. Sam barely managed to sense Loki before there was clapping behind him. He whirled around to see the demi-god with the same inane smirk on his face.
"Well done, Sammy," he said, slowly walking forward and looking for all the world like an amused game show host rather than a fucking demi-god. "I gotta say, you are definitely the most interesting human I've ever messed around with."
Sam still held Ruby's knife in front of him, feeling everything as the walls he'd constructed in his mind fell to pieces. He remembered how Danielle had felt when she had broken down, sobbing in his arms as her shields had completely collapsed. He remembered how he'd understood that she hadn't cried once after her husband's untimely murder, how her shields had turned inward as she closed off from everyone and everything because the shock of what had happened was far too great to handle.
He had done the exact same thing after Dean's untimely death, and he had reached his breaking point, at last.
"Please," he whispered, voice breaking as all those suppressed emotions rose to the surface with the force of a tidal wave. "Bring him back."
Loki's smile slowly fell and was replaced by an oddly serious expression Sam hadn't ever seen before on the demi-god's face. "There's a lesson you still haven't learned, Sam," he said, voice uncharacteristically somber. "Don't you realize that you can't save your brother when his Deal is up?"
"I still have a chance," Sam retorted desperately. "If I kill the demon holding his contract —"
"And what are your chances of doing it, realistically?" Loki cut him off. "You can't trust anything a demon tells you, no matter how nice she seems or how reliable the intel she provides you with may be."
"A chance is still better than no hope," Sam said imploringly, "and without you, I have neither. Please, bring him back. Or just — send me back to that Tuesday — I mean Wednesday and we'll leave you alone and go somewhere else, anywhere else but here."
"You'd really abandon a Hunt?"
Sam nodded, feeling a tear escape and slip down his right cheek. "I swear it," he said softly.
Loki stared up at Sam and sighed. "You are too hopeful," he said. "You do realize that, don't you?"
Sam smiled sadly. "That's just who I am. I have to believe that I can find a way out of all of this."
"I'm trying to do you a favor, Sam," Loki said after a few moments had passed. "Things are better this way."
"No," Sam said, "they're not. You've watched me, haven't you? Seen the things I've done?" Loki nodded. "How am I better without Dean? How is it better that I lose him in July rather than trying to save him before his time runs out in April?"
"I don't know that you really want me to answer those questions," Loki replied, a new note to his voice that Sam had never heard but couldn't make himself analyze. He closed his eyes, trying desperately to keep from crying. That didn't seem to stop the tears from continuing to escape and sliding down his face, though.
"This stopped being fun a long time ago," Loki finally said. "You are such a fuckin' downer, Sam Winchester."
Sam opened his eyes. "What does that mean?"
Loki raised his right hand and smiled slightly. "I don't believe that things will go any better when April comes and Dean still goes to Hell," he said, "but if you're willing to have false hope in a such a shitty situation no matter what I do or say, then I guess I can't stop you." Then he snapped his fingers and Sam fell into a void of nothingness.
TBC...