They barely speak aside from a few 'are you okays?' from Sam and several pained snorts and aggravated grunts from Dean until the weapons bag appears on the path in front of them, half-zippered but looking no worse for wear. The brothers freeze, casting each other disbelieving looks before staring back down at the impossibility of the object in front of them.
"Sam…?" The name is a question on Dean's lips, but Sam doesn't have an answer.
"Gift horse?" Sam says eventually. Dean shrugs before taking a lilting step towards the duffle, bending slowly to examine it more closely. Sam tenses behind him, all the while realizing how ridiculous it is to be afraid of an inanimate object.
Then again, getting smacked clean across the face by a toaster thrown by a furious poltergeist tended to change that perspective a bit.
After a moment of careful scrutinization, Dean makes the executive decision to pick up the bag. It seems they both hold their breath without meaning to, just for one infinitesimal second. Because nothing ever goes this right for them, and they rarely find the things they've lost without paying for it later.
But nothing happens, except that Sam reaches for the strap, taking it before it fully rests on Dean's shoulders and sliding it across his own, even as Dean sends him a narrowed glare of protest.
"Dude, you're hurt. Let me carry it," Sam says, adjusting the bag easily over his shoulder. Taking the extra weight off of Dean turns out to be a moot point, because it isn't ten minutes later that they find Sam's backpack blocking the way in front of them, just waiting to be found.
And it makes no sense.
Because the paths they took had to have been different, the directions they went so opposite, that there's no way they could stumble across both of the things they'd left behind. One, maybe. But both? Impossible. But here they both are, somehow overlapping on this nonexistent path that seems to be leading them home and Dean doesn't know whether to be thrilled or terrified because this does not happen to them.
Still, there isn't as much hesitation this time when Dean bends to pick up the backpack, pulling it over his shoulders. Sam grimaces a little, makes a move like he's going to try to snatch the second bag too, but this time Dean's glare does manage to stop him. And they're walking again, pulled along by nothing that makes practical sense.
Nothing more than a feeling.
Everything seems lighter now. The sun in the sky filters down through the trees, illuminating patches of dust that spiral around their heads and twirl at their feet. The leaves of the trees are all soft edges, no longer the threatening, imposing shapes that had swiped Dean's legs out from under him and buried him alive. Even so, Dean casts nervous glances up at them as they walk, waiting for the illusion to be shattered. Waiting to be pulled back under.
"What if Lucifer is doing this?" he asks suddenly, adjusting the straps of Sam's backpack. He doesn't stop walking though.
"It doesn't feel like him," Sam answers, wondering how he's so sure. Wondering how they aren't dead.
"Okay." Is all Dean says in return. And Sam is about to ask what happened to the Dean Winchester who fights every battle, who wouldn't let such a stupid explanation go just like that, but suddenly there is a girl standing beside them, rubbing furiously at her eyes as if awakening from a long dream. Dean grunts a little as he pivots on his bad leg to face her head on, half-reaching for his gun. Sam stops him with a hand on his shoulder, a shake of his head.
"Dean," he says, bewildered. "It's Melanie."
Melanie Simms, latest victim of The Thing That Lives in the Woods, presumed dead, blinks at them in confusion.
"Hi," is all she says.
They find the rest of them along the way.
Every victim returned without a scratch, blinking in the center of their path. It is as if they are walking through a dream, five should-be-dead people floating along beside them with wide eyes, expressions that say they have just as many answers as the two hunters who have stumbled upon them. Sam thinks maybe they should be used to this kind of thing, walking with ghosts. But it's different this time, and Sam thinks that's a good thing.
No one speaks much. The victims simply latch themselves onto the group of unlikely nomads, falling in line and letting the invisible string around their hearts lead them the rest of the way.
And suddenly, after what could've been an eternity or simply an immeasurable moment of dreaming, sunlight cuts across Sam's eyes, reflected in the shape of a headlight. And they must be imagining it, just as they must be imagining everything else that's happened out here in this forest, but there it is nonetheless, the same illusion for all of them: the Impala.
Dean huffs out this breath that almost sounds like half a sob, but Sam would never call him on it. Not now. Not after the night they've had...or has it been longer? Once Dean catches sight of the car, his uneven stride quickens, forcing Sam and the rest of the group to stay his pace. Sam and Dean both half-collapse against the car when they reach it, Dean slapping his hands lovingly against her hood, letting himself sink into her frame.
"How?" he asks again, and Sam's answer is as unsatisfying as before.
"I don't know. I don't think we'll ever know."
"Do you think it's over?" Dean asks. He doesn't move from where he's flopped against the hood of his Baby, cheek pressed to the cool metal. He doesn't even seem to register the five extra people now in their midst, hovering around the Impala like a crowd of admirers.
"It doesn't make sense," Sam says, straightening up from his own slump against the car. He doesn't want to get too comfortable, or he knows he won't ever want to move again. "We didn't kill anything. We didn't...but it still feels over. It feels like whatever was here is just...gone. Led us out and then just...left."
"Hey uh...guys?" one of the victims steps forward, voice shaking a little. Bradley Adams, Dean's mind supplies. He remembers every name, every picture. The people who weren't supposed to come home. Bradley had been gone the longest- a total of seven days out in the woods. There's no way he should be here right now, standing beside the other four impossibilities without a scratch on him, not a hint of dehydration or starvation evident in his posture. "Is this real?" he asks.
Five pairs of wide eyes stare at the brothers expectantly, waiting for their worlds to come crashing down or to be restarted with a single jolt of knowledge: that they made it. That somehow, they're still here.
"Yes," Sam says with conviction, though Dean watches his eyes flick down to his fingers, counting all ten. "This is real."
Bradley closes his eyes. "How?" he asks.
"That's what we're trying to figure out," Dean says, finally straightening up against the car alongside his brother. "You've been missing for a week. All of you have been missing for at least a few days out here. Do you remember anything?"
All five strangers shake their heads.
"Dean," Sam interrupts, reaching over to nudge his brother towards the passenger seat. "Let's figure all this out later. Let's just go. Let's get everyone home." He slides the backpack from Dean's shoulders, eliciting a small groan from his brother, and watches as Dean limps pliantly to the side of the car he rarely frequents unless unconscious. He folds himself awkwardly into the familiar seat and melts into it a little, lets out a long breath. Sam motions to the group of strangers.
"Find a seat," he says. "It's gonna be a tight squeeze."
Dean watches from the rearview mirror as Sam shoves both the weapons bag and the backpack unceremoniously into the trunk. He feels it when Melanie climbs into the front seat beside him, nudging him gently until he shifts enough to make room for her. The remaining four people: Alex, Bradley, Anika, and Riley- Dean's mind ticks them off one by one- slide into the backseat, squeezed too close together in ways that strangers don't usually touch. No one seems upset. No one seems uncomfortable from lack of space. Their faces are peaceful, expressions as dream-like and disbelieving as the woods they'd just escaped from.
Perhaps the answers will come later, but for now, everyone is simply glad to be alive.
Sam slides in behind the wheel, starts the engine.
Dean knows he drifts, feels himself slouch against the window, feels his eyes flutter. He tries to stay awake, and he mostly succeeds, floating a little bit. They leave all five victims at the hospital, barely staying long enough to hear their somewhat hesitant words of gratification. Once the shock wears off, they will have endless questions. By the time that happens, Sam and Dean will be far away.
As it is, they pull back into the motel parking lot.
The walk to the room might as well be another trek through the woods, but when Dean tries to make a joke to that effect, he only gets an exhausted eye-roll from his brother, who is currently supporting more of his weight than Dean is apt to admit.
All things considered, the damage is less than expected.
Bruises, scrapes, a few deeper cuts that neither of them wants to admit might need stitches (but either way, it can wait til morning, right Sammy?), and one spectacularly rolled ankle. Sam catalogues and treats what he can while Dean sits on the bed, blinking owlishly and trying not to think about the fact that all their guns are still fully loaded; flamethrowers untouched; knives clean and bloodless. It's not that Dean necessarily craves violence. He doesn't need it the way he always used to think he did. But he understands that in their line of work, a job well done is synonymous with a used weapon, a downed body, and the faint hint of smoke wafting up in the rearview. The fact that none of those things happened tonight makes it impossible for his body to relax, even though part of him knows it might really be over.
"Okay Dean," Sam says, patting his brother's leg and closing up the first-aid kit. "Get some rest."
"Wait. Keep that open," Dean says, gesturing to the kit. "You next."
Sam has the audacity to look surprised.
Dean tries not to, but he remembers Hell. Remembers thinking that after he returned, nothing really seemed to go quite as deep as it had in the Pit. Cuts spewing blood, bones cracking apart, skin bruised to high hell, and it was never any cause for concern when he returned. It just didn't feel the same, and sometimes he'd be concussed into thinking that it would all restart the next day anyway, so what was the point in treating it? Dean doesn't know Sam's Hell, but he knows his own, and he knows there's a permanent scar on his right bicep from a swipe of claws he'd never told Sam about, an infection Sam never caught wind of that happened just a few weeks after Dean had gotten back from Hell. And he knows things are different, that they are different now. He knows that Sam will always be in the bed next to his when he wakes up, knows that Sam trusts him and that he trusts Sam.
But the point is that Sam could be hurt, and he might not even realize it.
"I'm fine," Sam insists, the Winchester knee-jerk reaction.
Dean rolls his eyes. "Sit down."
Sam sits, and then seems to wilt before Dean's eyes, the last of his energy sapped straight from the root, petals curling inward. Dean checks him over, relieved to find that there's nothing seriously wrong. Scrapes and cuts and bruises of course- like brother, like brother- but nothing that needs immediate attention. It is exhaustion, pure and simple, and Dean almost grins at the simplicity of that.
Door salted, lock tethered and lights off, they finally collapse into their respective beds, looking to let the last several hours slip quietly behind them into the night.
"How long were we out there, Dean?" Sam asks after a while, knowing by his brother's breathing that Dean is still awake. "How many days?"
"Doesn't matter," comes Dean's sleepy reply, muffled beneath his pillow. "We found our way home."
Sam thinks he's drifted off, but Dean speaks again after a long pause, turning his head so he can be heard more clearly.
"Sam?" he says. "I'm glad you brought that damn machete."
Sam snorts, rolls over. He doesn't have to say 'you're welcome.'
