11- Never Ever
Sam knew nothing good was coming of it when Dean's blood started to smoke for no goddamn reason. Even with a sigil like this, it shouldn't have reacted like that. Sam went on with the plan, even though everything in him was screaming.
So the Mark was poisoning his blood somehow? Changing it? In no way was that a good sign. Dean had probably drifted away more than he had realized. Dean was so good at concealing his own battles that he was farther gone than Sam had known.
They had to finish this before he could consider its implications fully. But even while waiting for Dean to run in with werewolves on his ass, Sam was sure the Mark had come out and he was tearing into the wolves with his teeth when Dean finally came running in with a pack on his tail. So there was good news - his stupid plan had somehow worked, but why was he surprised? This was Dean's specialty - the dumbass plan that shouldn't have worked, and kind of didn't, but still somehow did. It was really close, and Sam knew he didn't get a heart shot on the werewolf coming after him, but at least it made him pause long enough that Dean got through the door without being bitten. So that was one win, although considering the reaction of the blood to the sigil, Dean probably couldn't get turned into a werewolf. His blood would probably poison it. Still, he didn't want to find out.
And Dean was continuing to hide things from him even though he asked that he didn't, not while fighting the Mark. But was he really expecting Dean, who had spent his life hiding his misery from everyone and pretending he was bulletproof, to fucking stop now? In spite of everything, Dean was still a stubborn asshole who didn't want to admit he needed help. Although, to be fair to him, who could help him? The answer seemed to be nobody, and Sam refused to accept that. There had to be something. He simply hadn't looked hard enough.
But they had to live through this to worry about that. And he really hated Dean's stupid, stupid plan.
"What's our guarantee you come back?" Sam demanded. "Tell me there isn't a chance of the Mark taking you over."
To his credit, Dean didn't lie. "There isn't any. But if it could take me over, it would have by now. I'm still fighting it. It hasn't won yet."
The yet part of that was bothering Sam immensely.
They had left while Jody was telling her people it was over. Sam had no idea what she was going to say about everything that happened, but she seemed to run a very tight ship. Whether they bought her explanation or not, they'd have to live with it.
Sam sat in the passenger seat, as he almost always did, and tried to ride out the impulse to punch the dashboard. Dean would kill him if he hurt the car, and not in a hyperbolic sense. He might actually take out his gun and shoot him, and frankly, Sam might prefer that right now. "If we draw out the Mark, how do we know it'll cooperate?"
"It gets to kill something? It's on board," Dean said, with no hesitation.
Yeah, that's what he was afraid of. "And how do we draw it out?"
Dean shot him a quick glance. "Ever wanted to beat the shit out of me? This might be your lucky day."
Sam scowled at him. "I'm not doing that."
"C'mon, I won't even fight back. Violence is the easiest way to get this thing out."
"No." It wasn't that offer wasn't tempting, because, come on - what younger brother hasn't wanted to kick the shit out of his older brother? But he didn't like so many things about this. And what if Dean never came back? His last memory of Sam would be him beating the shit out of him. No thanks. Been there, done that, got stuck in a cage in Hell for what seemed like an eternity.
Dean sighed dramatically, as if Sam was being the difficult one. "Fine. This thing really responds to dark magic. Throw a nasty spell. It'll come out."
Sam didn't like that any better. Dark magic was costly, in every sense of the word. "You can't just stop fighting it?"
He grimaced. "I don't know if I can. I'm afraid if I stop ... I won't be able to start again."
Sam stared at him, alarmed, but Dean kept his eyes resolutely on the road, jaw so tense it looked like he was trying to crack his own molars. "What does that mean? Is it that much stronger than you?"
"No. I'm just ... I'm tired, Sam. I'm really tired."
Okay, yeah, this was horrible. Dean was never too tired to fight. It made him wonder how difficult this had been for him. Sam had a feeling Dean had hid that part way too well. "What about hypnosis?"
"Isn't that bullshit?"
"No, it's basically putting a person in a trance. Some people are resistant to it, though."
There was a long silence, which neither bothered to fill. When they were parked in the motel parking lot, Dean finally broke it. "What about, um, using drugs?"
"What about it?" Sam studied Dean as he looked out at the parking lot, as if something fascinating was out there. He suddenly understood. "Holy shit, you know of a drug that brings it out?"
"Um, yeah. I've been ... experimenting with trying to keep it down, and I found one that made it come out. I still have no idea why."
Sam kind of knew this, but also, it was hard to separate it from Dean's usual vice hunt. Making people think you were bulletproof and not at all miserable was a full time job, and you needed lots of reinforcements to keep it going. "What was it?"
Dean muttered something, but Sam couldn't hear what he said. "What?"
He sighed, and seemed to brace himself, as if he knew what Sam was going to say. "Ketamine."
Sam knew instantly why Dean was reluctant to tell him. "Ketamine?" Sam exclaimed, horrified. "The animal tranquilizer? The club drug? When did you ... why ... did you inject it?"
"Oh, fuck no, man. It was a pill. I took it with whiskey."
This got better and better. "You took it with alcohol? How stupid are you? You could have stopped your own heart."
"But I didn't. I got a good night's sleep for once, and woke up ..." Dean grimaced, as if tasting something sour. "I woke up in a ghoul's lair, with a machete in my hand, ankle deep in blood. I don't remember finding them, I don't remember killing them. I just ... it just took over while I had a little vacation from reality."
And Sam knew nothing about this. Son of a bitch. Dean fell into a K hole, and the Mark came out. Fantastic. "When the hell did this happen?"
Dean rubbed his eyes, as if he didn't want to remember this at all., and certainly didn't want to discuss it. "After we took care of the poltergeist in Ojai."
Now Sam had the urge to punch him. Plant one right in his face. Feel his nose break under his knuckles. "Two fucking weeks ago? Were you ever going to tell me this?"
Dean scoffed. "Fuck no."
"I can't," Sam said, getting out of the car. He slammed the door harder than necessary, but he couldn't help it. He was fucking pissed.
Dean got out, more slowly. "Don't be a drama queen."
"Fuck you. You endangered yourself, you endangered me, you endangered countless people! You could have hurt someone else that night. You do realize that, yes?"
At least Dean had the decency to be ashamed, and looked down at the ground. "Yeah, I know. But the Mark filled in the memory gaps."
"Oh, did it? And it wasn't telling you what you wanted to hear?"
He threw his hands up, as if giving up. "Okay, fair, I don't know. I can only hope it didn't."
Sam scoffed. "Hope. Yeah, that's been working great for us." He ran his hands through his hair, and tried to tamp his anger down. It wasn't helping. And while Dean deserved to get the shit kicked out of him for this, could Sam do anything worse than what Dean had probably already done to himself? Part of him still wanted to try. "How much time did you lose?"
"About three hours."
Sam cringed. The damage Dean could do in three hours. Although that was probably nothing next to the damage the Mark could do in three hours. "Do you have any idea of the dosage?"
He nodded. "I do. Why?"
Sam hated to say it. But he did. "Because if we halve it, we cut the time the Mark takes you over."
"Oh, smart."
He glared at him. As if any of this, in any fucking universe, could be considered smart! "That was the first time you did ketamine, wasn't it?"
"Absolutely," Dean lied.
Sam turned his back on Dean, so he could silently curse him out without Dean reading his lips. If Dean were a normal person, he'd ask what possessed him to go out and do dangerous club drugs which were also date rape drugs, if he remembered correctly. But you know what? That might have been what Dean was after. Not date rape - forgetting. Falling into a K hole usually meant losing your memories while you were in there, and maybe forgetting a few other things too, at least for a little while. All Dean's vices boiled down to basically a lot of the same thing. He was in pain, he was plagued by nightmares that would make most horror movies look like rom-coms, and there was no escape. Not for him, not for Sam. This was their life, and sometimes Dean needed to take these "little vacations" to deal with it. Unlike Sam, who buried himself in books, and was sometimes so depressed he never wanted to get out of bed. Who was to say who was dealing with it worse? They were both fucked, and honestly, not well. The fact that they could pass for sane much of the time was a miracle.
As soon as Sam was sure he could look at Dean without needing desperately to punch him, he turned around. "Okay, so, our problem is now, where the hell do we find ketamine?"
Dean stared at him a moment, as if not believing him. "Dude, that isn't a problem." Deam walked to Ramon's room door and knocked on it.
After a few seconds, Ramon opened the door and peeked out cautiously. He still had a slice of pizza in his other hand. "Yeah?"
"Do you know where I can score some ketamine right away?"
Ramon thoughtfully chewed the pizza in his mouth before swallowing it, and saying, "How much and in what format? Smoke, drink, shoot, or sniff?"
Oh goddamn it. Having a normal brother was just too damn much to ask for, wasn't it?
Dean knew that Sam basically knew, but he still hated to confirm it for him. He never wanted to rub his face in his ... what did he call it? Experiments? Chemical wanderings? Getting really fucked up.
He wasn't addicted to anything - well, booze; he had to admit he was probably a functional alcoholic at this point - and he never did anything while they were doing a job, unless he needed a major painkiller for an injury. The job was the job, and he couldn't be compromised. Afterwards ..? Sometimes you needed a little something extra to sleep. Or live with yourself. Or both.
He had pretty much made it his life's work to never get Sam mixed up in this shit. It didn't matter if Dean did, Dean knew his life had already crashed on the rocks and was never getting repaired, but he knew Sam had a chance, so he kept any extra-curricular drug stuff to himself. Especially since the one time Dad caught him with some spare Vicodin, and flipped his lid over it. Hiding it from Dad and Sam both while growing up was difficult, although Dad was away so much, it was only a hit or miss risk. Sam, in his snotty teen years, found some pot Dean had hidden and insisted on trying it, and Dean got him stoned, only to discover that Sam was unbearably paranoid and anxious on pot. Dean spent most of the night calming him through a series of panic attacks. In a way, it was oddly adorable, and made all sorts of sense that Sam couldn't handle his weed, as he was an easy drunk too. But after that, Sam wanted nothing to do with drugs that weren't alcohol, or prescribed to him, and Dean hid his drugs better, or did them completely outside the house/motel room/hunter's shack.
But the Mark ... made things difficult. Sometimes he could down bottle after bottle of whiskey, and he couldn't feel it at all. Same with painkillers. If it didn't want him to feel something, he didn't. Other times, for whatever reason, it didn't give a fuck. He couldn't predict it, and had stopped trying. It found some of the harder and weirder drugs beyond its scope, so ketamine had a decent chance of working. Dean hadn't expected the outcome he got, which was waking up covered in blood, holding a machete, and wondering how the fuck he got into an underground ghoul lair, and oh yeah, when had he killed all these ghouls? His last clear memory was washing down the ketamine with his mediocre whiskey, and flirting a bit with the bartender, who had purple hair and a septum ring. It was unsettling - what happened, not the bartender - and he didn't like it at all. The Mark had memories of the time, and let him on them, but Sam was right - it was probably only showing him things it wanted to. Who knew what happened in between, in the gaps it didn't show. Which is why he returned to the motel, had a long shower, and threw away the blood soaked pants and shirt he'd been wearing that night. He decided to pretend it never happened, and therefore Sammy was never going to know about it.
Except he did now. Dean had expected the horror on his face, but the disgust was a little hurtful. But he'd probably deserved worse.
The Mark was eager. He could feel it in the back of his mind, like an excited little kid. Dean decided to go liquid, as it would absorb faster, and was less likely to be cut with something funky. Before Jason, the guy who was a friend of a friend of Ramon's who was a dealer, dropped it off, Dean all but lectured himself in the bathroom mirror. "Yes, I am talking to myself like a crazy person, but this isn't carte blanch. Do whatever you want to the motherfucker who's trying to assemble a monster army, but that's it. You get me? Don't you fucking dare go off script. If you ever want to get out again, stick to the plan."
But ultimately, he was just talking to himself. The Mark wouldn't or couldn't respond in any meaningful way, and they both knew it was only a matter of time before Dean surrender to it or it conquered him completely. The Mark only had to be patient, and it had existed since when? Since humans existed? Patience was its strong suit.
Dean pour the dose of liquid ketamine into his bottle of beer, because fuck it. Sam frowned, because he didn't like him mixing it with alcohol, but he did the last time. Why break from tradition now?
Sam left briefly, and Dean was actually hoping he'd stay away, at least until he turned. It was bad enough he'd have to see the Mark unfettered by Dean, but it wouldn't be the first time, would it? "Hurt him and I will find a way to kill us both," Dean warned it. Although he hadn't lied to Sam. He had felt more rested and calm after doing the ketamine, despite waking up to find he'd starred in a horror movie without realizing it. Dean was kind of looking forward to the feeling of being well rested that would come after.
But the stuff in between? That was going to be a bitch.
Sam made a phone call to the only person who might be able to help if the Mark spun out of control. He only got voice mail, though, so he didn't know if it would mean anything. But at least he tried, right?
Sam found it kind of funny, but he didn't want to go back to Dean's room. He knew that soon, it would be the Mark wearing his brother, and Dean would be sleeping peacefully in his own mind, blissfully unaware of the things that monster was doing in his skin. His skin crawled with the knowledge of it. It was like Dean when he was a demon, although somehow worse. The Mark had even less of a conscience, if that was even possible. He figured demons were as conscienceless as you could get. But nope, the Mark had proved that wrong.
Sam stopped by his room to see if there was something he could use on the Mark if it went out of control. Holy water wouldn't work, because the Mark was different from a demon. But Sam wondered what would happen if he combined a bunch of different purifying things together, in a kind of a slurry. Would it at least sting it, and not hurt Dean? A little research, and he filled a flask full of holy water, salt, and essence of peppermint and rosemary. It smelled pretty good. He just hoped it had some effect. He also packed more silver - knives and bullets. But he considered them last resorts. Dean was still in there.
Walking back to Dean's room, he was surprised by Jody's truck pulling into the lot. "I thought you might like to know, the werewolves seem to be back to human form again," she said, getting out of the truck. "Jenkins called me confused, and wondered why he was half naked in an empty swimming pool with a bunch of strangers. I tried to convince him he'd gone on a bender, but he didn't believe me."
Sam imagined that must have been disorienting for all the werewolves. It wasn't anywhere near a full moon. No one had been expecting to shift. "So they don't know what happened?"
Jody shrugged. "So far, it seems that way. I don't think Jenkins was lying. But now I don't know what to do with him. I mean, he's a werewolf. Is he a good guy or a bad guy?"
"That's ... tricky. Not all werewolves are bad. Most are, but still, there are a few that have learned to channel their hunger. You're going to have to talk with him and figure it out."
Jody sighed. "I was afraid you were going to say something like that. So what do I do, bring a six pack by his house, and ask, "Hey - eaten any hearts lately?""
"I didn't say it was going to be easy."
"Yeah." She glanced towards the highway, frowning. Sam couldn't imagine what it was like to maybe have to kill one of your own officers. That had to be a nightmare." Speaking of which, how goes our latest dumb ass plan?"
"It got way more dumb ass. But it's under way."
Jody raised an eyebrow. "How could it have possibly gotten more dumb ass?"
Sam knew ketamine - buying it without a license, taking it - was as illegal as fuck. Now, Jody was unlikely to arrest them, but he didn't want to put her on the spot either. "Nobody seems more willing to hurt themselves more than my brother, that's how."
"I mean, not to cast aspersions or anything, but has he ever considered seeing someone for that? Or you for that matter?"
That briefly took Sam aback. "Uh, what?"
"I mean, I know, you can't tell a therapist you hunt demons for a living or have been to literal Hell and back, but you can still talk to them about your feelings. It sounds dumb as shit, I know, but it actually helped me after ... well, you know. I mean, I had to tell the doctor my husband and son were murdered, I just left out the whole zombie part."
Sam nodded. They'd all been through some shit, and he knew therapy probably would be an answer for all of them. But Sam couldn't see himself doing that, and Dean certainly wouldn't. "Yeah. It-"
Sam paused, as the door to Dean's room opened, and Dean stepped out. Except, no, it wasn't Dean.
The Mark had ramrod straight posture, and eyes so cold it felt like you could get frostbite if you looked at him too long. He also had this awful smirk, that reminded Sam a little too much of the demon. "Oh, lady cop, you're back. Just in time to join the fun."
Jody scowled at him. "Winchester, don't ever fucking call me lady cop again, got me?" But after looking at him for several seconds, she took a step back. "Holy shit, who are you?"
"This is The Mark of Cain," Sam said, putting his hand on the flask in his pocket. Didn't know if it would work, and he desperately hoped they didn't have to find out.
"Oh, come on, Sammy, why be so formal? Just call me Dean."
"You're not him."
"Now, we both know I'm more him than either of you would like to admit."
Sam hated this fucking thing. If it wasn't wearing Dean, he would have loved to find out if he could punch it to death. And it probably knew that, which is why it was leering at him right now. "Can you find our sigil maker, or was this all a waste of time?" Sam asked, deciding to jump straight to the point.
The Mark rolled his eyes. "No fun Sammy, so goddamn predictable. Yes, I can find him. And if you humans weren't so fucking crippled, you could find him too. He's a vortex of bad energy, driving towards the center of town." The Mark pointed down the freeway, and then ended by giving Jody a finger gun, which was oddly creepy.
"Okay, I take it back," Jody said. "Your brother isn't the cockiest son of a bitch I've ever met. This one wins."
"Oh honey, I always win."
"Call me honey again and I break your nose," she snapped.
The Mark chuckled. "Be warned, I consider that foreplay."
She was reaching for her cuffs when Sam pushed in front of the Mark, and said, "You talk a big game, but we have no proof you can find this guy. Do it, or we find out how much ketamine you can take before you can't function anymore."
"Ketamine?" Jody exclaimed.
The Mark continued smirking at him, his eyes glittering like glass. "Fine. It ain't like I'm not gonna completely own your brother's ass in a month anyways. But you knew that, right?" The Mark went to the Impala, and leaned against the hood, like Dean never would. "Let's go kill us an asshole."
Sam was just sorry he didn't mean himself.
