There was no way in hell he could be in his body, because it didn't feel like a body. It felt like lead. He was able to open his eyes, wincing against the grit of dried tears and blood. He coughed once and nearly sobbed at the pain in his chest. Breath forced itself in and out of his lungs reluctantly, scraping up and down his torn throat. He moved his head minutely, cautiously stretched his shoulders off the ground and back again, not certain at this point if moving his arms or legs would be a good thing. He decided to wait it out, take stock of his physical state, make certain everything was still attached. The lack of pain in his arms and legs almost scared him, or was it that the rest of him hurt too much in comparison? There was another mild cough, a groan, and he forced his eyes wider, blinking away the grit since he lacked to strength to move.
Some time passed before he braved movement, lifting his head off the ground slightly and eyeing his chest. His shirt was ripped, his torso colored with bruises. No wonder breathing hurt so much. He let his head thump back lightly, and regretted it. Wiggled his fingers slightly, feeling them scrape against the ground, feeling the feathery dust stick to his grimy fingertips. Fingers curled into tame fists, which led to bent elbows, which led to arms gingerly pulled into his body, wrapped into his chest as he rolled to his side and balanced, his harsh breathing the only thing keeping his head from spinning, keeping him from blacking out. He focused on his breath, then realized it wasn't helping, that the darkness was coming. He heard one voice, his name muttered in a frantic tone, an angry curse, and felt rough hands on him before his consciousness once again gave way.
*********************
Dean opened his eyes groggily. His wrist hurt like a son of a bitch. He couldn't move it. That was the first thing he thought about, which wasn't a good sign because he was generally pretty good about ignoring pain. Even breaks, once broke, didn't phase him much, unless he was moving. That was it. He was moving, and he was pretty sure he wasn't supposed to be.
"Hey. You awake?"
Even his grogginess couldn't hide his surprise at seeing Tyler sitting beside him at the wheel.
"I said you with me?" Tyler reached out and touched his arm.
The contact shocked Dean into consciousness. His head snapped up. "Tyler?" Events tried to fight through the fog and was lost in translation. "What happened?"
"Damned if I know." He shook his head, pain carving lines across his face. "Found you out in the woods, there. Can't find Sam. I swear I looked everywhere, Dean, but I can't find him."
"We can't leave him," Dean muttered, trying to raise a hand to his head.
"That thing. . .that thing on the van, what was that? Did you see it out there? Did it do this to you?"
Too much going on. His head was buzzing. "Dammit. I don't know, Tyler. Gimme a minute, willya?" Dean grimaced and rubbed at his rib. "How'd you get the van running?"
"Stout machine."
"Well get this stout machine back there and look for Sam!"
Tyler shook his head quickly. "No. You need a hospital."
"I need my brother!"
"That thing probably already has him."
"No, it. . ." Dean shook his head gingerly, "It isn't like that."
"Look. We need help. Even if he is alive, we can't find him with you like this, you know that!"
"I do it all the time." Memory forced its way back into Dean's mind. His brother, his little brother, leaning over him and hitting him over, and over, with absolutely no regret in his dark face.
Shit.
"Just don't get it these days. And it's getting worse," Tyler was saying. "Sharice 'bout bit my head off earlier today, and she just doesn't do that. It's like a permanent full moon or something, people all going nuts." He looked sidelong at Dean. "Sam went nuts, didn't he? Jumping outta the van like that, hitting me."
Dean raised his good hand and probed at his forehead. His fingers pulled away stickily. No wonder he was dizzy. At this rate, he'd be entered in the record book for number of head injuries accumulated in a week's time. His brain should be dripping out of his ears.
"We need to get you to the ER, get them to look you over."
"No. Dammit, no! If you won't look for Sam then just take me back to Bobby's." God, he felt sick. . .
"Listen, son. . ."
Dean glared at him. "You're not hearing me. I said, no!"
"Your head's bleeding and your wrist looks the size of a tennis ball. Your shirt's ripped and your chest is about the color of my late mother's blackberry pie. We're going."
"There's no time!"
"You'll make time." Tyler glared back at him pointedly.
"I'm gonna tell you this one time and one time only, so you listen good," Dean shot daggers back with his tone, seeing the anger and shock in the other man's eyes. "Sam's in trouble."
"Dean, you've got to tell me what's going on. What's wrong with your brother?"
"I don't know."
"Whatdya mean, you don't know?"
"I mean I don't know, Tyler!" Dean yelled, and regretted it. He hit the door with his fist, trying to bottle up the fear he felt, the urge to just bawl, his eyes narrowing, keeping himself in check.
He sighed into his hand. "Please – just get us back to Bobby's."
****************************
The rest of the drive was silent. Dean's thoughts cleared enough to make him feel really, really scared, more scared than he'd ever felt in his life. Sam was possessed.
I have news for you, oh brother of mine. What makes you think I'm possessed?
He wasn't possessed. He was – no.
No. His brother wasn't evil. Dean refused to acknowledge the thought.
He looked over at Tyler. The man deserved much more than he was getting. He had a quirky sense of humor and an uncanny knack for piecing together a puzzle. Hell, he'd probably make a good hunter when it came down to it. He was sharp and stubborn. But he was also a man of intense faith. He even had a bible on his dashboard.
Dean gestured to it. "That so you can say your Hail Marys right before the wreck, or is something to pass the time with while they're using the jaws-of-life to pry you out?"
"There was a service before I came out here, just a little remembrance. I had it with me. You think I always drive around with a bible on the dashboard or something?"
Dean gave a semi-embarrassed half-shrug.
"Reading and driving'll kill ya," Tyler added.
"Among other things," Dean muttered.
Tyler just gave a long-suffering sigh. "I really wish you'd tell me what's going on with you people," he said.
They pulled off the road and down the dirt lane, passing carefully underneath the bent salvage yard sign. "I think you're about to find out," Dean said, reaching for the handle before Tyler had a chance to stop. There was a large shadow in the front window. Sam's gangly shadow.
Waiting.
Dean didn't want to think about how Sam got there so fast. How he got there at all.
Tyler noticed as well, and turned off the engine. "Hang on." He grabbed Dean's arm, preventing him from making a hasty exit. "I'm not gonna like what I find in there, am I?"
Dean's face softened into sympathy. "No. Stay out here."
"Should I take this bible in?" Tyler was already getting out, ignoring Dean's request.
There wasn't time to argue with him, and from what little he knew of Tyler's character, he realized telling him to stay behind was about as practical as putting a condom machine in the Vatican. "Pretty sure Bobby has a few in there."
"Well, that's good to know, at least."
"But we may not can get to them. So it wouldn't hurt." He noticed the van had better hinges than his car. The door closed silently.
They crept onto the porch, Dean signaling for silence with a finger to his lips. Adrenaline kicked in, and he felt a rush of energy that he fought to keep at bay. He shooed the older man behind him, and peeked in through a window. Nothing to see. His breath caught in his chest as the door slowly creaked open, and he heard Sam's voice.
"Dean. Finally! Where've you been?"
Tyler straightened, giving Dean a look, and was about to walk in, but Dean held him back. "Wait."
"Why?" Tyler whispered. "He's in there! Maybe he'll talk some sense into you and take to you to the damned ER!"
"That's not Sam."
"Come again?"
"Look, just trust me on this, okay? And do exactly what I say, when I say it."
Tyler gave his head a shake. "Boy, we're gonna have a long talk when this is over."
Dean managed a smirk, and creaked the door wide open. He cautiously walked in.
They were in the study, Sam and Bobby both. Sam had one hip on Bobby's desk, his arms casually folded across his chest, his face gloating. Bobby was sitting in a chair in front of him, gagged, tied. He looked right pissed. The absence of his cap lent an odd sense of vulnerability to him, like the exposed scalp was his Achilles heel.
Dean felt Tyler stop directly behind him, and Dean blocked him with his body from hurrying to Bobby's side.
Sam gave a sigh and pushed off from the desk. He walked behind it, running a finger along the books and other odd items. "Truth is, I'm surprised you made it here at all. Quite a beating, huh, Dean? Still feel like the powerful big brother? Embarrassed that the pipsqueak took you out?"
"Wait, Sam did this?" Tyler muttered in surprise.
Dean just shushed him. "Not really a pipsqueak anymore," he said out loud. "But still pretty damned obnoxious."
Sam chuckled and grinned. "Yeah, I'll take that." He picked up a pen, studied it, and flipped it over and over his fingers with extreme dexterity. That had nothing to do with the demon, that was purely a Sam gesture, one that Dean had tried to copy because seriously, the way his brother could flip pens was pretty cool. "'Course the big bad ass older brother routine gets pretty old, don't you think?" Sam continued. "All this protecting and guarding and blah blah blah," he waved a hand through the air, "don't you get tired of it? Aren't you tired of no one taking care of you?"
"I can take care of myself," Dean said, wondering where the conversation was leading.
"Sure you can. Like you did out there in that field. If what's-his-name hadn't showed, you'd of bled to death."
Dean smirked. "It wasn't that bad."
"No?" Sam actually sounded disappointed. "Then I didn't do my job, did I?" And he lunged.
The last thing Dean was expecting was another attack from his brother. He slammed against the wall and fell to the floor. The impact jarred him, and he felt himself rolled over. Sam's hands pressed down on his shoulders, and he leered at him sickly. A commotion averted Sam's attention, and he raised a gun, pulling it seemingly from thin air. "Back off!"
Tyler had taken advantage of the distraction to hurry to Bobby. He obeyed, his hands in the air as the gun targeted him.
"Sam," Dean said, and found the gun aimed in his face.
"No. No words from you." Sam rose, the gun still aimed at Dean. Dean stayed where he was, prone on the floor, eyeing Sam's every move, his every breath. The head cocked impossibly far to the left, and he cackled, then aimed the gun at Bobby.
"No!" Dean cried out, right as it clicked.
Empty.
Bobby opened his eyes, breathing heavily against the gag. Dean slowly pushed to a crouched position. He noticed the bruising over Bobby's right eye, along his cheekbone. Damn it! Bobby didn't deserve this. Hell, no one deserved this.
Sam laughed like a delighted child, then stilled. His head snapped to the other side, tilted almost to his shoulder as he listened. He craned it around, and looked at Dean. "Playtime's over," he said. "Sorry, bro. Things to do, and all that." He gave a shrug that was almost apologetic, and ran out of the room.
"No! Sam, wait!" Dean took off after him, but to his amazement, Sam was nowhere to be seen. He was gone. Just – gone.
Dean dashed from point to point in the yard but there was no sign of his brother. "Dammit!" he yelled at the darkening sky. "What the hell are you doing to him!" The thunder answered, low and trembling with power. Dean stormed out to the road, glaring at the heavens. "Where is he?" he screamed out in fury. "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?"
**************************
Dean walked back in to find Bobby untied and rubbing his wrists, and Tyler red-faced with fury. "Will the two of you tell me what the hell is going on?" he insisted.
"That about sums it up," Dean muttered, cringing as his shouted words were thrown back at him.
Tyler just looked baffled, and pissed.
Well, what was he supposed to say? Men like Tyler didn't need to know the truth. They needed to sit in a church pew and consider donating to a charitable cause. Or just settle down, or get caught up in their science to the point where that was their only existence. Only, Tyler had done that, and it led him here – why wasn't he married, for Christ's sake? Why couldn't Dean just send him home to a loving wife, use his family as a tool for guilting him out of this mess? Or why couldn't he be one of those guys that just ran away when things got tough, why was he still here asking questions? Dean sighed and rubbed his own aching wrist, cringing at the swollen pain. He sagged, suddenly remembering how much breathing hurt. The adrenaline had ebbed, and he again felt the nausea take firm hold. The room swam.
"Shit," Bobby muttered, catching Dean as he tilted to the side.
Dean felt himself being steered to the couch. He didn't have time to feel embarrassed before he was laying back on cushions with Bobby peering into his face. "You okay?"
Dean winced as Bobby prodded his ribs, and felt his shirt being lifted. He heard Tyler describe how he'd found him, felt the cushions raise as Bobby ran for his medical kit.
"We have to get Sam," he muttered. Sam was gone again. . .how the hell did Sam even get back here in the first place?
He heard Tyler scoff, "You're not going anywhere," and felt the cushions give a moment later. The sting of antiseptic on his cheek jerked his focus back.
"Bobby. . ."
"Dean, listen to me," Bobby said. "To get Sam, we need you. And you can't do anything like this, now try to relax and let me fix you up."
"You sound like him!" Dean tried to glare at Tyler, who hovered over him. "This is a conspiracy." His words lacked conviction.
"While you fix him I'll call the cops," Tyler said.
"NO!" Dean rose in a flash, grabbing Tyler's wrist. "You can't."
"The hell I can't! He beat you up, didn't he? Your own brother did this to you. Cain and Abel. That's what this is."
"Sit down, Tyler. The police can't help." Bobby wrung out a cloth into a bowl of water.
"What are you talking about?"
"I said, sit down." Bobby scowled at him. "Just sit and listen."
Tyler sat on the edge of a chair, wringing his hands impatiently.
Bobby straightened and helped Dean sit up. "Take your shirt off," he said gently, and Dean complied, grunting. The bruises were dark. Prodding showed that nothing was broken. "Sam pulled his punches, looks like," he said after several minutes.
"Sure doesn't feel like it," Dean muttered. His head still swam and pounded, and his entire body ached, but he felt better than he had two hours ago.
"Still, it's good. Means he still has some measure of control, because you know he could've killed you."
"And you say not to call the cops?" Tyler asked, and stood again like that was his next course of action.
Bobby looked at him levelly. Dean tensed, waiting. "He's possessed, Tyler," Bobby said. That was it. Straightforward. "There's an evil spirit in him."
Dean didn't contest this, not yet. He watched Tyler's face with concern, seeing it flutter from humor, to disbelief, to incredulous. "Bobby Singer. What on earth have you been drinking?"
"It's true. What you saw, it isn't Sam."
"No, what I saw is some punk kid who apparently gets his kicks beating people up!"
"It's not like that!" Dean said, rising to the defense. Didn't matter the situation. No one talked about his kid brother that way.
"From where I'm standing it's very like that!"
"Then I suggest you sit down!" Bobby said sternly.
Tyler remained standing, but his posture loosened slightly.
"Look," Bobby said, "I appreciate you bringing Dean back here. We can handle this from here on out. Why don't you go back to work, and I'll give you a call."
"You'll give me a call? So, you're saying you don't need the radars? My bit is done, so you're just gonna drop me off without telling me what my services were for?"
"You know what they were for."
"I know I found something big. I know there are things going on that's even bigger. Now, you can tell me, or I'll simply follow you. I doubt you'll stop me. Better yet, I'll call the cops. They'll find your brother. You want that, or not?"
'Tell him, Bobby," Dean said quietly.
"What?"
"Trust me. He needs to know, anyway."
Bobby scrubbed at his face. "I hope you know what you're doing," he muttered.
"Oh, you're doing it. I'm backing out." Dean smiled slightly.
"Once an asshole. . ." Bobby gave a put-upon sigh, and spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully. "Tyler. I know you're going to find this hard to believe, but I swear to god every bit of it is true. If you're serious about this, you need to know what you're getting into. I suppose you've seen enough."
"I haven't seen enough," Tyler countered.
"Trust me, you. . ." Bobby paused, and started over. "You're a man of faith. So you know that just as there are angels among us, there are also demons. That energy source you detected in Wyoming — that was a gate that led to Hell." He let this information sink in.
Dean watched Tyler's face slowly pale. "Hell?" he asked, dubiously.
"That gate was opened. There are things walking the earth that shouldn't be here. There's a force that's been unleashed that's being sucked into the air, into the people, into everything. That's what we're fighting. That's why all these things are happening."
"A Hellgate?"
"Yep."
"A Hellgate?"
Bobby was losing Tyler, Dean could see it. "You know it's true," Bobby insisted. "Just stop and think about it."
"No."
"You're a scientist, for god's sake! Put the pieces together."
Dean could almost see the computations running through Tyler's head, hear the battle inside as he stood slowly. "No," he said again, this time more firmly. "I can't. I can't – my mind won't go there." He turned and walked behind the chair, then hesitated, and leaned to brace himself on the back. "Do you know how hard it was for me to have faith in anything?" he asked quietly. "I believed the world ran in an organized system. Everything lending a hand to each other. Plate tectonics. Thermodynamics. Photosynthesis. The water cycle. Everything influences everything else, everything has a reason, a scientific method. Even when I try and track tornadoes that come from a blue sky, I know there is a scientific reason for it.
"I'm no philosopher. I'm not as pragmatic as the atheists, and sure not as confused as the agnostics. I can believe in science as things being made as God intended. But this – this I can't get my head around. I read my bible, I know what it says. God made the heavens and the earth. Angels fell." He looked up. "Why is it that I can believe in God, and not the devil himself?"
"Where's hope in believing in the devil?" Dean asked quietly.
Tyler's eyes met his. Dean could feel his own thoughts reflecting off the man, but from a different standpoint. "I've told you before, and I'll tell you again," Dean said in response to the unasked question. "I've seen it. I've seen the demons, the urban legends, the dark things that would make Stephen King cry for his mama. I've seen what these things can do, and every time I had to wonder if there was really something else out there, some kind of good going on so all this – this shit – would make sense.
"I have faith too, Tyler. I have faith that if I don't sleep with a knife underneath my pillow, I won't wake up. I have faith that if something bad can happen, it probably will. Faith is the result of what we see and accept. The only thing left is hope, and if you have to believe in the devil for that, rather than these so-called angels, then we're all screwed."
Dean could see that his statement had startled both men. Tyler was mulling over his words, but Bobby looked at Dean as though he'd caught a sudden glimpse into the man's soul.
Terrific, Dean thought. Mental note: Next time? Shut your fucking mouth.
"Son," Tyler suddenly said, "you've seen an angel, haven't you?"
Dean's mouth worked for a moment. "My brother thought he did," he said. "But it turned out to be a spirit."
"Angels are spirits."
"Not this one." Dean winced and shifted so that he was sitting up. "You know what this one did? This angel? He sought revenge on the wicked. Now that sounds real poetic until you find out the way he's doing it. He's telling these innocent people to commit murder. These innocent people now have ruined lives, so where's the divine justice? Is that your idea of an angel?"
Tyler nodded thoughtfully, and walked around the chair. Dean noticed that despite the man's earlier agitation, something had calmed him. He didn't dare call it belief. "I read something once," Tyler said, "something that stuck with me, something that made me believe more in my fellow man and what they were capable of. Thomas d'Aquino asked, 'Where are the angels?'. And the answer was this: Angels are not where. They just are. They are where they act, where they love. You're right, what you saw probably wasn't an angel. But I do think you've seen one. I bet it just didn't have wings."
Dean swallowed, wondering how it was that this man, who really wasn't that much older than him, was suddenly getting to him, reading him, understanding what he needed to hear. He had the uncomfortable feeling of being pried open. "Yeah, I've seen those angels," he said, his voice shaking. "I've seen them taken, and abused. My mom, she was an angel. My brother. . ." he looked down suddenly, then away.
"Dean." Tyler slowly walked to him. "Has anyone ever sacrificed everything to save you? Everything?"
Dean's face worked, and he felt the tears sting. Damn him. Damn him! He was worn down. That what why this man was affecting him, he was worn down and scared and hurt. "You need to stop. Now." The threat was a meager one.
Tyler nodded. "And I bet you've saved people too."
"I said, stop." His quiet voice wavered.
"I bet you put your life on the line. You know what that means?" He was standing right over Dean, and he leaned down with all the majesty of Moses himself. "That means you're their angel. So tell me, Dean. What's the difference?"
And for some reason, some strange, stupid reason that he insisted to himself had nothing to do with the past few weeks and life and death and angels and resurrection. . .
Dean broke.