Demon's Year

Chapter Eleven: A Changed Man

Okay, time for some plot and stuff! This chapter finishes up what little was left of "Mystery Spot", plus some character development or whatever. Also, a little bit of Gordon and co. Enjoy!


"Sam needs you more than you know. He's lost, Dean, and no matter what lies ahead, I don't think he'll make it there in one piece without you."

Rachel Nave, "Demon Blood"


Dean finished gargling and spit into the sink as the alarm clock turned on.

"We're gonna go back in time!"

Sam sat up in bed, staring at Dean with a wide-eyed expression he wasn't sure he'd ever seen before. "You gonna sleep all day?" Dean asked with a slight scowl.

Sam swallowed hard, and Dean was surprised to see his little brother's eyes shining like he was seconds away from crying. Dean wasn't sure he wanted to know what was bringing on the latest bout of emo, so he said, "Turn off the radio, would you? This station sucks," but Sam was climbing out of bed, practically running towards him, and then Dean was engulfed in his brother's long arms. "Dude —"

"Please say it's Wednesday," Sam whispered in a voice too close to breaking for Dean's liking.

"Yeah," he said slowly, hugging Sam back in hopes that it might help to calm his brother down. "Wednesday, which generally comes after Tuesday." He frowned, recalling the conversation with Loki the day before. "How many Tuesdays did you go through, Sam?"

Sam just squeezed Dean tighter. "Enough," he mumbled before pulling back. "Wait, what d'you remember about… Tuesday? Yesterday?"

Dean frowned some more as he thought over yesterday's events. "You seemed pretty whacked out of it," he finally answered, "and we ran into Loki, the Trickster, but that's about it. Are you okay, Sammy?"

Sam sniffed and nodded, looking away. He seemed incredibly distraught, and Dean began to wonder if they really did need to hash things out like two pansy guys in a crap romantic comedy or whatever. "Sam —"

"We need to leave," Sam cut him off, not-so-discreetly wiping at his eyes as he grabbed a set of clean clothes from his duffel and started changing.

"But if Loki's still here —"

"No," Sam said quietly, but firmly. "We're leaving, Dean. Just — pack your things, all right? And — don't leave the room without me."

Well, that was a weird request, but Dean figured he could indulge his crazy little brother just this once. "Fine," he said. "What about breakfast?"

"We can grab something in the next county over," Sam said as he dragged a clean shirt over his head.

Dean began packing up his things. "Are you sure you're okay?" he asked again. Sam glanced over at him. "Just… you seem spooked. Did something else happen during those Tuesdays?"

Sam swallowed hard and shook his head. "Bad dream," he answered, eyes going strangely distant for a moment. "That's all."

Dean frowned and narrowed his eyes, but tried to find something lighter to say to try and break the tension. "Clowns or midgets?"

Sam rolled his eyes, and the mood finally began to lighten after that.

Once they had the stuff all packed and ready to go, Dean led the way downstairs to the Impala. They tossed their things in the trunk, checked out ("You don't need to follow me everywhere, Sam." "Shut up, Dean."), and hit the road.

"You know," Dean said sometime later (five counties over plus a state line seemed a safe enough distance to try and broach the subject), "it's not like us to abandon a job like this."

"I know," Sam said, staring absently out the passenger window, "but we can't kill him, Dean. He's too powerful."

"Fine," Dean said, "but I still wanna know how I managed to not kill him the first time, y'know?"

Sam blinked, and Dean watched as his brother's eyes went a little distant. "There's something… something about that first time we met him — but I forgot… or he made me forget?" He blinked a few more times and sighed. "I think he, I dunno, duplicated himself back at that university."

"What, like Danton Black?"

Sam's brow furrowed in confusion.

"You know, the villain Multiplex?" Dean said, but Sam still wasn't getting it. "Don't you know anything about DC comics?" Sam still looked confused, and Dean sighed in exasperation. "Whatever. I still don't like just running away with our tails between our legs."

"I know," Sam said quietly, "but I'm not letting him take you away. Not again."

Dean frowned, but Sam hunkered down in his seat, signaling that he was (for once in his goddamn life) done with talking, so Dean focused on the blacktop in front of him and stepped on the gas, speeding down the road and away from the place that he feared might feature in Sam's nightmares.


"Different?" Ellen asked. "Different how?"

"I don't know," Dean answered over the phone, and he sounded incredibly frustrated in a way that only Sam could ever make him. "It's just — it's been an entire month since we ran from that Trickster, and Sam…" He gave a small groan of frustration. "He's a lot quieter, but sometimes I kinda feel like he's suddenly forgotten how to Hunt with a partner. You shoulda seen that poltergeist we took out at Missouri's request two days ago, it was like I wasn't even there to help place all the bags in the corners of the house to banish it. And he's…"

Dean fell silent. "He's what?" Ellen pressed.

"Sam used to be so angry, growing up," Dean said quietly. "After L.A., a lot of that went away, like he was learning to let go of everything from the past and move on, being open and all that good stuff, but lately his temper's been flarin' up again. He gets angry when I don't agree with him about something —"

"Like Ruby?" Ellen suggested.

"— or about this demon that tracked us down last week," Dean said, voice becoming tighter. "Sam wanted to just shoot it with the Colt instead of doing an exorcism, even when he said he could tell that the human trapped inside was still alive. Ellen, something happened back in Broward County and Sam won't tell me anything. I don't know what to do."

Ellen sighed and leaned back in her seat in the small diner she and Jo were eating lunch at in Rock Springs, Wyoming. Well, Jo was supposed to be there, but she hadn't shown up just yet from her morning research at the local library.

"Sam always comes clean with you, Dean," she told him, running a hand through her hair as she looked out the window for the pick-up she and Jo were currently sharing. "You've told me about times in the past when he's stewed over something for a while before opening up. This is probably no different from that, only this time you're wanting him to talk about supposedly watching you die over and over again in countless different ways. Something like that can't be very easy to get over too quickly, even if you're right there beside him."

Dean didn't say anything for a moment. "Look," she finally said, "just give your brother time. I'm sure he'll be fine."

"Yeah," Dean said after a moment. "Yeah, I'm sure you're right." He didn't sound particularly relieved, and as Ellen flipped her phone shut, she couldn't help but feel like maybe she'd let Dean down by not having any real answers.

Sam would open up in time, she had learned that much over the last year. The only question was when?

"Mom."

Ellen startled and looked up. "Jo, it's about time."

"Mom, we've gotta leave now," Jo said quickly, pulling on her mother's arm and looking incredibly worried.

"Leave? Jo, what's goin' on?"

Jo glanced around the diner as though she was expecting someone evil to come walking through the front doors at any moment. "I'll explain once we hit the road," she finally said, "but we've gotta now right now."

Ellen was incredibly confused, but she grabbed her bag and followed her daughter out of the diner and into their truck. "Drive," Jo said tersely.

"Honey, what's goin' on?" Ellen asked again as she pulled out of the parking lot and headed for I-80. "Which way?"

"Doesn't matter," Jo stated before saying, "towards Bobby's place."

Ellen took the eastbound ramp and headed onto the freeway. "What's goin' on?" she asked once more.

"I saw Kubrick just outside the library," Jo said, "and he wasn't alone."

The asshole who had threatened her daughter. Ellen couldn't help but want to turn right the fuck around, but there was an odd note to her daughter's voice that made her keep driving. "Who was with him?"

Jo hesitated for a moment and then said, "Gordon Walker."

Ah, crap.

Ellen knew Gordon's history with the Winchesters better than she knew what had happened during John's final hunt with her dead husband. The man had been told by a demon that Sam and the other special children were supposed to be soldiers in a demon army bent on destroying the world, and had thusly decided that Sam and all the other kids like him had to die. Thanks to him, one boy named Scott Carey had eventually lost his life to Kubrick's gun, and Gordon had managed to land himself in prison. He wasn't supposed to be in Wyoming of all places.

"We need to find out what happened," Ellen eventually managed. "How he's outta prison when Dean said he had a nice, long sentence."

Jo nodded from the passenger seat and their truck sped down the road.


"You wanna tell me what all went down back in Broward County?"

Sam looked up at Dean as his brother shut the door of their current motel room, stuffing his cell phone in his pocket. The question had been hovering on the tip of his brother's tongue for the last month after they had left Loki to his business and minded their own, but Sam had done everything he could to avoid talking about it, focusing on finding things for them to Hunt, or looking into the powerful demon that held Dean's contract and wanted Sam dead.

And with good reason. There was no way Dean was going to like anything he had to say about Broward County, or those alternate six months on his own. Many of the details were blending together into what felt like a long-lasting nightmare, but how could he tell his brother that he was capable of far worse things than their own father? John had at least had two children that he still needed to look after as much as he could manage.

Unfortunately, Sam had been having nightmares from all the not-talking, and he'd already learned after Jessica's death and everything in L.A. that staying clammed up didn't help him or Dean.

He opened his mouth and said, "I don't wanna talk about it, Dean." Figures.

Dean didn't say anything, but Sam could sense his anger and worry were on the verge of reaching their limit. Well, had reached their limit, because the next words out of Dean's mouth were, "Well, tough."

"Excuse me?" Sam spluttered, turning a confused glare to his brother. "Dean, I'm busy trying to figure out where this vampire nest could be so we can do our job, and you wanna talk?"

Dean scowled. "You've been off since the Mystery Spot," he said bluntly. "And don't tell me you're trying to find the nest when I think you already know where it is."

"What?" Sam said incredulously. "No, I don't, Dean. Would you just leave me alone?"

"What happened?" Dean asked sharply, clearly set on ignoring anything Sam said that wasn't an answer to his questions. "And don't say it was nothing but Tuesdays of me dying over and over again, because that's not enough to get you acting like this."

"Acting like what?"

"Like Dad."

Sam froze at that. "I'm not —" he started to deny.

"Tell me," Dean cut him off shortly. "You stopped hiding things from me a year ago, Sam. What happened to make you start doing it again?"

Sam averted his eyes. "I can't do this right now, Dean."

"And you think I wanna?" Dean asked. Sam looked back up. "Maybe it escaped your attention, but the last couple of jobs we've been on, you've not only taken charge, but solved them in two days or less! And I know you haven't been doing butt-loads of research late at night cause I've been drugging your drinks" — Sam glanced down at his bottle of water and shot Dean a scathing glare, which he ignored — "so all I can think is that you already know what's happening before-hand, and that's supposed be impossible since your stupid visions stopped with Azazel's death." Dean grabbed a chair from the other side of the small table Sam was sitting at, plunked it down next to Sam, and then dropped into it, staring at his brother intently. "What happened with Loki that you're not telling me?"

Sam squeezed his eyes shut. He didn't want to tell Dean what he'd been like on his own, how dark and hopeless he'd been, feeling like his moral compass had been buried so deeply that not even his soul knew how to find it because nothing else but the hunt for Loki had mattered. He couldn't tell Dean about all those days and nights on his own, how he'd only taken care of himself because it was what Dean would want once he was alive again, how he'd either had nightmares of Dean in Hell or dreamt of nothing at all, the circles under his eyes getting deeper and darker because three square meals a day and eight hours in bed every night never left him feeling satisfied when the Trickster was probably busy devouring candy and getting a fucking laugh out of Sam's predicament —

Dean's cell phone starting ringing, and he startled and cursed before answering it. "Hello?"

He frowned as the caller started talking, and then his expression grew grim. "Thanks for letting me know. We'll keep an eye out. Take care." He shut his phone and his jaw worked for a second before he rose and stalked away.

"Dean?" Sam questioned warily. "What was that about?"

Dean took a deep breath before turning to face Sam. "Gordon Walker's escaped prison, Sam. Jo saw him with Kubrick in Wyoming not two hours ago."

Sam closed his eyes. A lot of the details of those six months on his own may be blurring too much for him to remember specific details, but this little tidbit had managed to stand out in spite of everything.

"He wants me dead," he said quietly. "He and his friends are trying to find that drug I got dosed with last year in Baltimore."

He opened his eyes at the simmering of Dean's emotions. "How long have you known, Sam?"

Sam swallowed. "There were more than just endless Tuesdays of you dying," he said. "There was… there was another Wednesday. You got shot, and then time just went on."

"Went on?" Dean echoed.

Sam took a deep breath as he slumped in his chair and ran a hand through his hair. "I went six months after that day, trying to find Loki so he could bring you back, and hunting other things when all my leads were dry."

Dean slowly approached Sam as he spoke and lowered himself back into his chair. "Six months?" he asked quietly.

"I ran into Gordon and his friends in… September, I think," Sam said. "They hadn't found an opportunity to track me down and dose me up yet, and I —" He broke off and looked away. "I did a lot of things during that time that I'm not proud of," he finally said. "I was worse than Dad without you, and I can't go through that again, Dean. I just can't."

He was hopelessly co-dependent, his mind said, but Sam wasn't crazy enough to voice that particular thought. Their lives were already fucked-up as it was.

Dean's eyes and emotions softened. "Tell me," he said softly. "Sammy, talk to me."

So Sam finally told him every last thing he could still remember.


Gordon sat in a corner of a bar, drinking a beer and pondering over the innocent crowd of civilians enjoying a Friday night of food, fun and booze. He and his crew had been trying to track down a demon named Derrick for information on a drug capable of subduing a powerful psychic like Sam Winchester, but apart from a small haunting on the outskirts of town, Rock Springs had turned out to be a complete waste of time. Why did it have to be so hard to track down a demon he had never seen before?

Kubrick entered the bar and headed over to Gordon's table, easing into a chair and glaring at the civilians around them. "I don't like it here," he stated after a few seconds had passed.

"It's loud and anonymous," Gordon said with a shrug. "Demons normally enjoy places like this."

"So why isn't this Derrick here, then?" Kubrick asked. "Seriously, I'd sooner expect a vampire clan to swagger in than this hard-to-find demon."

"Wyoming has had strange activity since Sam opened that Gate," Gordon replied. "And there's no vamps around right now."

"How d'you know?"

"Already checked."

Kubrick rolled his eyes, but appeared understanding, nonetheless. "I still think the demon's gotta be back on the east coast. That's where he was last year, and there's a chance he probably hasn't strayed much since then."

Gordon sighed and leaned back in his chair. "We don't know that for a fact."

"Yeah," Kubrick said, "but we do know that he was last in Baltimore, and that there's a convent not even a half-hour outside the city that was abandoned after a priest disemboweled eight nuns and then claimed a demon possessed him and made him do it. He said the demon's name was Azazel, which, according to that Brady boy is the name of the demon that killed John Winchester's wife and turned Sam into a freak. I figure there's gotta be something important about the area, otherwise there wouldn't've been demons there under Azazel's orders in the first place."

"But Azazel's dead," Gordon pointed out. "I heard from a guy who heard it from a friend of a friend of Ellen Harvelle that Dean shot the bastard with a special Colt built by the gun maker himself. Demons have no real loyalty unless another more powerful sonuvabitch comes along and beats them down."

"I still think Baltimore's our best lead," Kubrick all but grumbled.

"So why haven't Creedy and Carlton called in to say they found it?"

Kubrick didn't have an answer to that, and the two Hunters drank their beers in silence for another hour before leaving the bar and heading back to Kubrick's trailer to call it a night.

Gordon was silently contemplating Kubrick's obsession with Jesus (no way he existed with all the evil there was in the world) when his phone started ringing. He pulled it out of his pocket and flipped it open. "Hello?"

"We found him."

Gordon blinked and stood up straighter. "Seriously?"

Creedy chuckled over the line. "He wasn't in Baltimore or at that convent, but somewhere about five miles west, working in a factory. Also, he tracked us down, not the other way around."

Gordon frowned. "So what happened?"

"Showed up," Creedy said, "said he knew about us, handed over a portable cooler with nearly two dozen vials of the drug he claims was used on Sam, wished us the best of luck and then left. Couldn't even get a word in edgewise, it was that fuckin' fast. Anyway, Carlton's analyzing one of the vials, figuring out its chemical makeup and other shit like that, but I think the demon delivered the goods."

Gordon found that hard to believe. "He really just handed the stuff over without a care?"

"Oh, that was the other thing," Creedy replied. "Derrick claims there's a new player on the board who wants both the Winchesters dead, and all o' this was on her orders."

"Her," Gordon echoed. "You get a name?"

"Nope," Creedy sighed, "but if the demons want Dr. Frankenstein's monster outta the equation, then maybe that demon army thing was a load of hogwash, too."

"Or maybe Sam's existence hinged on that demon that created him," Gordon replied, "the one we know Dean shot and killed. New player, new rules. Either way, we got what we wanted. Now all we need is the boy."

"Walker, the Winchesters are anything but easy to track," said Creedy. "We got lucky in New York back in June, but you know how well that turned out."

Gordon remembered; the news that Sam had used his mind powers to make Kubrick and Creedy leave him alone hadn't been the most thrilling thing he'd ever heard. "So we lean on another civilian, one who's likely to still be in contact with the brothers."

"They don't stay close to civilians," Creedy said, "no one does."

"No," Gordon said quietly, "there's one I can think of."

"Who?"

Gordon grinned. "Why don't you two mosey on back to this side of the country? I need to double-check the FBI database, but I think we're finally in the free and clear to look into questioning the best friend of Danielle Young."

"Will do," Creedy said, sounding pleased. "You and Kubrick keep your heads down until we get there, all right?"

"Of course," Gordon said. "We're nearing our goal, this is a group effort from here on out. Drive safe, friend."

Gordon dreamt of revenge that night, of being the hero in his twisted dreams, of being the savior the world would never know to thank.

Sam Winchester was going to die.


TBC...