Chapter Nine

It was the longest two minutes of Sam's life. It was bad enough to know that his brother wasn't breathing; it was worse to know that he couldn't do anything to fix it.

Back in Coon Rapids, Dean had chosen Bobby to be the one to keep an eye on his pulse and to start CPR the second his heart stopped. Sam had agreed with Dean's decision at the time, but at that moment, standing uselessly at the foot of the bed, he regretted it. He could only watch as Bobby pressed his fingers against Dean's neck waiting for him to die. Sam wanted nothing more than to shove Bobby out of the way, kneel at his brother's side and breathe life back into him before he was too far gone to save.

He saw Bobby jump, heard him whisper, "That's it." He felt dizzy and lightheaded as Bobby pinched Dean's nose closed, tipped his head back, and gave the first two breaths. His own chest ached when Bobby pressed his hands against Dean's sternum and pumped his heart five times. Again and again, and then Bobby checked for a pulse.

"Damn it!" Bobby shouted, and Sam almost jumped out of his skin.

Bobby's movements became more frantic, the breaths he was giving became deeper, the chest compressions became more violent. He checked Dean's pulse once more. "Come on, boy! Breathe!"

Sam didn't know if Bobby was talking to Dean or to him, because at that moment, neither one of them was doing what he said.

He couldn't believe they'd let Dean talk them into this. They'd been so stupid; they'd given in too easily. They hadn't spent enough time looking for another way, and standing above his brother's lifeless body, Sam knew. Knew there'd been another way, there had to have been, they just hadn't found it. And now his brother was dead, he'd died exactly the way the cardiologist had said he would, and this time there was nothing Sam could do about it at all.

Bobby gave two more frantic breaths and then pulled away. Sam looked at him in shock, his heart hammering against the inside of his chest, his lungs heaving and his whole body shaking.

"Bobby!"

Then Dean's back arched up off the bed and he took a deep, gasping breath of his own.

Sam raised a trembling hand to his mouth and dragged in a gulp of air.

"He's back," Bobby announced unnecessarily as his shoulders slumped in relief. When he looked up at Sam from the opposite end of the bed, there was a tired, shaky smile on his face. "We got him."

Sam gave Bobby a smile of his own in return. "So did it work?" he asked, breathlessly. "He's gonna be okay, right? Is Holman gone?"

Bobby glanced around the room nervously. "I don't think we'll know that til ..."

A shift in the light above Dean's sleeping form caught both of their attention, and suddenly, there was something else in the room with them. It was right between them, kneeling on the bed on top of Dean, straddling his hips, with its fingers wrapped around Dean's throat.

Coy Holman wasn't gone.

It hadn't worked. Dean had almost died, and it hadn't fucking worked! And Holman was still killing him, strangling him right in front of them.

Sam lifted his shotgun, aimed it directly at the back of Holman's head, and fired.

Nothing happened.

Bobby ducked from the salt pellets that scattered past his head, then spun back to face Sam. "Iron! You need iron!"

"What? Why?" Sam asked in confusion, falling to his knees and digging through the duffel for the pearl-handled Colt.

"Mara, Sam! He's a mara! Shoot him!"

Sam didn't even take the time to get off the floor, he just spun back toward the bed, aimed the gun, and fired. Holman dissipated into the air.

The people in the next room over banged on the wall they shared, the same wall Sam had just buried a bullet in. Bobby leaned over the bedside table and smacked the wall twice, and the pounding stopped.

Sam climbed back to his feet shakily. "A mara? Like a nightmare demon mara? How do you know that?" he asked as he stumbled forward.

Bobby nodded slowly. "Kills 'em when they're sleeping, sits on their chest, and has black eyes."

"But he's not possessing anybody!" Sam argued.

"Maras don't have to. They're still demons, but they can pick any form they want." Bobby sighed. "I guess he picked his own."

"He's a demon? Coy Holman is a demon." Sam never released his grip on the Colt, in case he needed to use it again, but he did let his head fall forward into his hands. A few seconds passed, then he snapped his head up and threw his arms in the air. "What the fuck, Bobby?"

"I don't know," Bobby answered. "But we know for sure that he went downstairs when you ganked him the first time."

Sam rubbed his forehead with his fingers, trying to soothe away the sudden ache behind his eyes. In a way, it made everything easier, because it all suddenly made sense. Every piece of the puzzle that hadn't quite fit now lined up perfectly. "He's what David Harrison summoned in the cemetery that night. And that's why there's no trace of him in eight and a half years. He wasn't here."

But in another way, it made this job a whole lot harder, because there was no way that they knew of to kill a demon.

Then there was a dark shadow forming above Dean's chest; Sam shot it and it disappeared, but it renewed his sense of urgency.

"We can't hold him off forever. We've gotta get Dean out of here."

"No," Bobby insisted. "We gotta find a way to finish this. We ain't lettin' this happen again."

"So what do we do?" Sam asked.

There was another series of knocks from next door, which Bobby answered the same way he had before.

"You can exorcise a mara, same as any demon. It'll break 'em apart and send 'em packing. But we can't do a normal exorcism, 'cause he can climb right back into Dean's head to get away from us."

"A mara," Sam breathed. "Feeds on fear, doesn't it?" He looked down at Dean, thinking about how scared Dean had been of doing this, how scared he was of Holman, how afraid he'd always been to even admit just how scared he was. "Fucking perfect!"

And there was no more time to think, because Holman was back and reaching for Dean's throat again. Sam lifted the Colt to shoot him, but he suddenly had another idea.

"Make him a better offer and get 'lucky' enough to have him take you up on it."

There was no time to run it past Bobby, and he seriously doubted that Bobby would agree with it anyway. He could always ask for forgiveness later, but there was no time to ask for permission.

"Coy Holman!" Sam called out. He dropped the gun and stepped forward until he was standing right next to the bed, between it and the wall.

"What are you doing?" Bobby hissed, but Sam ignored him.

"Coy, look at me!"

Slowly, very slowly, Holman turned his head. The soulless black eyes bore into Sam, raking over him exactly as they had years before. The demon's left hand rested against Dean's chest, but neither of his hands were around his throat, and Sam was going to take what he could get. What he was doing was dangerous and probably stupid, and he knew that. And there was a huge chance that it was going to backfire and blow up right in his face spectacularly, but he didn't care. He'd already watched his brother die once that day, and he was not going to stand there and let it happen again.

The smile that made its way across Coy Holman's lips was inhuman at best, irredeemably evil at worst. "Sammy," he whispered throatily. "Little Sammy Winchester."

"It's Sam," he corrected automatically. He nodded his head toward Dean. "Leave him alone."

"What in the sam-hell are you doin', boy?" Bobby demanded again.

This time Sam acknowledged him, but only by raising a single finger to silence him.

"And who is going to make me?" Holman asked.

"I'm the one you wanted right?"

"Sam!"

"When you came here eight years ago, you didn't want Dean. You wanted me, right?" The sleazy, lecherous smile was all the answer Sam needed. He opened his arms, held his hands out to his side, and stepped closer to the bed. "I'm right here. You want me so much, then take me. But you let Dean go, and you leave him alone."

"I appreciate your offer," Holman answered with another smile. "I think I've heard it before." He looked down at Dean with an expression that turned Sam's stomach. "I don't think I'll be letting your brother go, because he and I have so much fun together." Holman's head snapped up. "But I'm not above letting you join the party."

The air in the room seemed to sink into itself.

Bobby blinked away the dark spots that suddenly danced across his vision.

Coy Holman was gone.

Sam lay sprawled where he'd collapsed, the top half of his body across the bed, his feet on the floor, and his left hand wrapped around Dean's wrist. Bobby rounded the bed quickly, but he already knew there was no point in checking; Sam was in the same condition Dean was, with the exception that Sam didn't have a circle of fingerprint bruises darkening around his throat.

Bobby could see what Sam had done at the last second, though, and even he had to admit it was good thinking. He'd used his last shred of consciousness to grab his brother's arm, to connect with him in the real world, in the hopes that they'd stay connected in whatever dreamworld Holman had cooked up for them. Maybe it would make it easier for Sam to break through to Dean than it had been for Bobby to do it all those years earlier.

There was another knock on the wall from the room next door. Bobby growled and pounded back.

Then he sighed and pulled Sam's feet up onto the bed, careful to not disturb the hold he had on his brother. And then, because there was nothing more he could do for either one of them, Bobby picked Dean's Colt up from the floor where Sam had dropped it. He perched himself on the foot of the bed and settled in to watch over them both until they returned from wherever they'd been taken.

Sam blinked and looked around. He wasn't surprised to realize he was standing in the basement he and Dean had found the day before. Holman had killed all of his victims in this basement when he was alive, and based on what little Dean had told him about his last encounter with the spirit, he'd killed all of his other victims in a dreamworld version of it. A nightmarish copy of a real world torture room that only Coy Holman could control.

He was surprised at how real it all felt, though. He could see his breath in the cold, damp air, and the only light that broke through the darkness was what little managed to shine through the filthy, broken windows. There was a heavy odor of mold, rot, and decay mixed with an earthy, coppery smell and something else, something musky, the origins of which Sam didn't even want to think about.

But the worst part was that Sam was alone.

He knew that Dean had to be there somewhere. Holman had said he wanted Sam to "join" the party, so he'd want them to be in the same place. He didn't know how long he had until Holman showed up, but he had to take advantage of whatever time he had. First things first, he had to find Dean. His heart and stomach both sank when he realized that he knew exactly where to look.

He walked toward the door, unsure of what he hoped for more. Part of him wanted to find Dean in that room, grab him up and get him the hell out of this place. But part of him hoped Dean was nowhere near it. If this was Holman's world, then that room would be filled with the 'toys' Sam had read about. And the thought of any of them having been used on Dean made his blood run cold.

He turned the knob and pushed the door open slowly.

The huddled figure in the far corner of the room answered every question he had and confirmed that most – if not all – of what he'd feared was true.

"Dean!" he called out as he ran across the rough concrete floor. "God, Dean!"

The only answer he received was a weak moan, one that sounded completely out of place coming from his brother's lips.

It also sounded far too young.

"Dean?"

He knelt down beside him and reached for his shoulder to roll him to his back, but Dean reacted first, flipping himself over and scooting away. As soon as he saw Dean's face, Sam understood why the voice had sounded so strange. He hadn't heard it in eight years. It was undeniably Dean lying on the floor in front of him.

But it was equally undeniable that Dean was no more than nineteen years old.

"What the hell ...?"

Sam jerked his hand away and sat back on his heels, looking down at himself quickly. If Dean was only nineteen in this place, then it would stand to reason that Sam should be only fourteen, but he didn't feel that young, and what he saw when he looked confirmed that he wasn't. He was the same height he was at twenty-two, and he was wearing the same jeans and shirt he'd had on in the motel room.

But Dean wasn't. Dean was in this world exactly the same as he had been the first time – the same age, wearing the same clothes, and Sam guessed being tortured the same way. But Sam's appearance made no sense. If Dean had been turned into a kid again, then why was Sam still a man?

"Dean?" he said again, gently reaching out and touching his shoulder. Dean flinched away, backed himself against the wall, and buried his head in his arms. It almost broke Sam completely to see it. Dean shouldn't act like this, not ever.

It was dark enough in the room that he couldn't see much, but Sam knew that Dean was hurt, and hurt badly. What was left of his shirt hung on him in tatters, and Sam could see streaks of blood and the lines of shallow cuts all over his chest. He was covered in bruises, the black and red and purple standing out from the paleness of Dean's skin even in the dim light. There were angry red marks around his wrists and dark stains on his jeans that couldn't have been anything but blood. Sam wondered what other injuries Dean had, the ones that Sam couldn't see, but at the same time, he found himself grateful that he didn't know.

Even at nineteen, there hadn't been much that could reduce Dean to a sobbing mess in the corner.

"S ... Sammy?"

Dean's confused, hesitant and years-too-young voice pulled all of Sam's attention back to him.

"Dean, hey. It's okay. I'm here. It's gonna be all right now."

"No!" Dean erupted from the floor, scrambling away from Sam, pressing his back into the concrete wall behind him. "No, you can't! Aren't supposed to!"

Sam didn't understand Dean's reaction. "No, Dean, it's okay."

"Leave you alone," Dean mumbled. "Leave Sam alone, leave him alone, leave him alone!" Dean threw his head back and screamed at the ceiling. "You leave him alone!"

Sam grabbed Dean's shoulders before he could get any further away from him. "No, Dean, listen to me."

Dean continued fighting against him, trying to pull away. He was shaking his head, and his words were coming out as a broken, confused jumble. "I'm here ... you're not ... he said ... promise ... if I gave ... run, Sam!"

Sam had to get this under control, and fast. Stepping into this nightmare hadn't calmed Dean's fear like Sam had hoped. If anything, his being there had made it worse. And suddenly Sam understood, understood why Dean had traded himself for Sam all those years ago, understood why Dean was so terrified of Holman.

He was scared of the bastard because of what it had done to him, whether he admitted that or not, and he had every right to be. But he was equally as scared that, if given the chance, Holman would do the same thing to Sam. Dean's fear of Holman wasn't solely for himself, and it never had been.

Sam tightened his grip on Dean's shoulders. "Dean. Dean! Look at me! Look!"

Dean's eyes finally focused on his brother, and he pressed a shaky hand against Sam's cheek. Fresh tears made their way down Dean's face. "No, Sammy. No, I tried. I ... couldn't. I didn't ... tried not to fight ... so sorry ..."

Of course Dean had fought. Sam had never doubted that. But hearing Dean apologize for it, hearing him say he should have just taken whatever Holman did to him, made Sam's blood boil. And knowing that he was the reason for it, that Holman had used a threat against him to force Dean into submission, was almost more than he could take.

"He didn't bring me here, Dean," Sam explained. "I came on my own. To get you. Don't you remember?"

"No no no," Dean muttered. "Need to run, Sammy. Run away ..."

"What do you see, Dean?" Sam asked as calmly as he could. "What do you see when you look at me? Do I look the way you think I should?"

Dean studied Sam's face for a few seconds, then shook his head slowly. "No, you're ... you're ... wrong."

"Wrong how?"

Sam had been trying to ignore that his older brother was suddenly four years younger than him, that he all but towered over a big brother who was suddenly much shorter than him. But now that he understood how Holman worked, the fears that he was playing on to keep Dean under his control, he knew that he couldn't keep ignoring it. He had to call Dean's attention to it, because he had to take advantage of it.

"You're big." Dean's eyes widened. Sam tried his hardest to pretend that he didn't see the streaks of red on Dean's face or the puffiness around his eyes that told him Dean had been crying for a long time before Sam had found him. "When'd you get so big, Sammy?"

"This isn't the real world, Dean," Sam said softly. "It's not happening the way you think it is. Holman's not even human. He's a mara, a nightmare demon and we're here to get rid of him."

Dean only shook his head, and Sam continued.

"I'm not fourteen, Dean. I'm almost twenty-three. And you're twenty-seven. We're not kids anymore. This is an incredibly realistic and vivid nightmare, that's all. It's a nightmare that Coy Holman is controlling, but it is not real."

Sam heard Holman laughing behind him. "You'll never convince him of that," he said. "Not again."

Sam saw the way Dean shrank back from the sound and spun around. Holman stood in the door, blocking what little light was filtering in from the outer room, but it didn't matter. There was light in the room now, as a hurricane lamp that sat on an old wooden table flickered to life. Sam forced himself not to look at Holman's 'toys' on the walls, because he didn't want to see which ones dripped with his brother's blood. And he wouldn't let himself look at Dean, because he didn't want to find those injuries he hadn't been able to see in the dark. Holman licked his lips as he started moving toward them.

Behind him, Sam could hear Dean whimpering in fear, and that was more than enough. No one made Dean sound like that. Sam pushed up from the floor, drew himself to his full height, and put himself directly between Holman and his brother's huddled form on the floor.

"Get the fuck away from my brother." Sam's voice was low, cold and deadly.

Holman stopped dead in his tracks when Sam stood up. His eyes traveled all the way from Sam's feet to the top of his head, but the lust and evil intent that Sam had expected to see, the looks he remembered Holman giving him eight years earlier, weren't there.

"This is not right," Holman muttered.

Sam decided to press whatever advantage he had at that moment, holding his arms out to the side and stepping forward. "What, you don't like what you see? You brought me here."

"No, you should not be like this."

"Like what? Unafraid of you? Standing up to you?"

"Tall!" Holman declared, stepping back. "I brought you here, and this is my world. I get what I want, Sam, and I want little boys. You are meant to be the child you were!"

"Yeah, well," Sam shrugged and glanced back down at Dean on the floor. Seeing the blood, the bruises, the rope burn and cuts he'd known marred his skin, and the burns, bite marks, and torn jeans he hadn't seen and hadn't wanted to, triggered something in Sam. He felt it surging through him, both familiar and not. Protectiveness, but augmented with a power that he'd never felt before. He didn't understand where it was coming from, didn't know if it was his psychic thing or something else, but he really didn't care. He'd use whatever means he had at his disposal to finish this. He hadn't been strong enough to save Dean the first time, but there was no way he was going to fail him again.

"Maybe I'm stronger than you."

"My world," Holman repeated. "This is my world!"

"I'm not afraid of you," Sam continued. "And I'm not going to let you hurt him again."

"No, this ... this is not right," Holman sputtered. "This is not the way it's supposed to be. You can't do this!"

"Scared, Coy?" Sam asked. Eight years of fear, anger, rage, hatred, all of it directed at this thing standing in front of him. He let it all show in his voice. "A mara. That's what you are. I killed you eight years ago, sent you to Hell, just so some stupid kid in a cemetery could summon your ass back as a demon."

Sam stepped forward as he talked, and he had to admit to himself that he took no small amount of pleasure from the fact that Holman backed away.

"What are you?" Holman asked. He was shaking his head, but Sam didn't know and didn't care if it was in denial or in confusion. "How ... how are you doing this?"

"Bet you thought you had it made as a demon, didn't you? You've gotten off on other people's fear your whole life. Thing is, though, if you feed on fear, and if people aren't afraid of you? You lose your power. You're nothing, Coy. You're just a mara. Just a nightmare. Nothing but a stupid dream."

"You stop this, Sammy. You are not supposed to be able to do this!"

Sam shook his head, and a smile made its way across his lips. He knew it wasn't a pleasant smile, dripping with hatred the way it did, but he really didn't care.

"No, I'm supposed to be fourteen and scared shitless." He stopped walking and lifted his hands to his sides. "But I'm not. I'm twenty-two and pissed as hell."

"If you don't fear me for yourself, fear for your brother. What I can do to him. What I already have."

"You can't do anything to him, because you're never touching him again. I won't let you."

"Do you have any idea what I can do to you?" Holman asked. "Look at your brother, Sammy. Ask him what I can do."

Sam glanced back for only a second, but it was long enough to see that Dean was no longer whimpering and cowering. He was still sitting on the floor, with his back against the wall, but he was watching Sam with eyes that were fully aware and spoke of quickly forming understanding.

"And you can't do anything to me," he answered, turning back to Holman. "Because Dean won't let you."

"Look at him!" Holman demanded. "He can't even stand up. How is he going to stop me?"

"You really don't understand what you've gotten yourself into, do you?" Sam shook his head. "You wanted to use us against each other, but you can't. Not when we're together. Because we won't let you."

It was true, every word. They would protect each other, bolster each other, and weaken Holman's power together. And Sam could see from the look on Holman's face that it was already working.

He didn't understand how he knew the things he did, and he wasn't going to mention them to Dean, but he felt the power growing inside him just as he could feel it sliding from Holman's grasp. Just a little bit more, and Sam would be able to take control completely.

"I'm done with you, Sammy. You need to leave now."

A flash of light exploded around them, but when it faded, Sam was still there, still standing between Holman and Dean, and still smiling.

"You wanted me here, Coy. You're just gonna have to deal with me."

He could hear Dean behind him, grunting with the effort of pulling himself up on the wall, and he risked another glance over his shoulder. Dean was still nineteen, still hurt, still shaking and probably still terrified, but he wasn't broken anymore. He was ready to do what it took to protect Sam, just as Sam was going to do everything in his power to protect Dean.

It was time to end this.

He may not have understood where the power was coming from, but that didn't mean he wouldn't use it. Both because he could, and because he had to. Holman had controlled this place for too long, and Sam wasn't going to allow it anymore. He wasn't going to let him hurt Dean, and he wasn't going to let Dean be afraid. He sure as hell wasn't going to let Holman win. And because he wasn't going to let it happen, he knew, somehow, that it wouldn't.

The world around them was changing.

It started with the flame from the hurricane lamp, but it was growing, spreading across the room, illuminating the dark corners, chasing the shadows and nightmares away. Holman's 'toys' were disappearing from the wall one by one.

"No!" Coy screamed. "You aren't strong enough to do this!"

"Are you so sure of that?" Sam asked. "Don't I look strong enough to you?"

The transformation was done; the darkness was gone, replaced by a comfortable orange glow. The room was empty now, except for the table and the lamp on it. It was just four walls, a floor and a ceiling, just a room in a basement like any other. There was nothing to be afraid of there.

Sam stood his ground in Holman's basement of horrors, and Dean was on his feet just behind Sam's left shoulder. Sam opened his mind in a way he'd never been able to before, and suddenly he didn't just understand Dean's fear, he felt it, exactly as Dean had since he'd first seen Holman in their motel room that night. He felt every moment of terror Dean had experienced at the monster's hands, and every doubt and fear that he'd been left with for more than eight years. And then he felt Dean push it all away.

Dean stepped forward, came to a stop at Sam's side, and started to change.

Sam would have helped if he'd needed to, but he didn't, because Dean was doing it himself. Sam stood aside and watched as Dean's hair darkened and his face hardened, watched his brother's youth fall away and the last bits of innocence and confusion disappear from his eyes, watched him age, until he was twenty-seven again. The blood, bruises and other injuries that covered his face and body hadn't faded, but if they were evidence of the scars that Coy Holman had left behind, then they probably never would.

The marks on Dean's body weren't what mattered to Sam, though. Dean was on his feet, standing tall and ready to fight despite them, holding his fear at bay and prepared to protect his brother at all costs, and that was what Sam needed. It was what they both needed, and it was what they were giving each other.

Sam turned back to face Holman once more.

"You're in our world now, motherfucker."