Episode 21
In which Dean wonders if there is anywhere left to fall
Soundtrack:
Snow Patrol - Set the fire to the third bar
----------------------
Sometimes, for reasons Dean doesn't quite understand, things between him and his brother are strained.
Sometimes it's like they live in each other's skin.
Today they're strained.
Sam looks worn out, as if he is an elastic band pulled too tight and ready to snap. His cheeks are gaunt and there are dark circles under his eyes and thin lips. His clothes, never tight fitting at the best of times, drop from him as if they were still on the hanger.
It's not like Sam to look so thin, so tired, so crumpled. Dean wants to march him into Bobby's kitchen and start frying eggs, pour them down his throat and then send him up to bed and sit on him until he's slept enough so that he looks human again.
Sam didn't look this rough when there was a demon wearing his meat.
It makes Dean hurt to look at him.
He wonders how he looks to Sam, if he's as gaunt, as grey, or if he looks like he's been moved from cushy squat to cushy squat, fed good food and had the arguments fucked out of him by an Angel of the Lord, which he admits is what happened.
Dean wonders how he must seem, wearing a sweater hand knit by Magda in New York state, his old brown leather jacket lost in a bus crash in the ass crack of nowhere when he laid it over Duffy, the clumsy haircut from Zsu Zsu in the Queen of Sheba, the strained look he's had since Ben Constantine dropped his nuclear warhead of a bombshell, and in the place of the leather thong he's worn for years, Bridhe's bracelet with it's strange collection of coloured stones and golden charms.
Only two months have passed but it feels like the entire world has shifted between them.
It's not the longest that they've been apart without contact, it's not even close, but now there is a chasm between them that was never there before. What happened to Dean didn't happen to Sam, they have both changed, and he's not sure if it's been for the better.
Instead of the hunter, Sam looks like the hunted.
Dean breaks the silence between them. "Man, you look like shit. Did you eat at all when I was gone?" He puts his hand on Sam's shoulder, convinced he can feel the edges of the bone under his palm. "If I find out you are under another one of those starving to death curses and Bobby didn't deal with it, I'm going to kick his ass."
Sam's eyes are dark and angry, his mouth tightens. "You don't get to judge," Sam says and brushes his hand away as he goes inside and slams the door behind him.
"I tried," the girl from the stairs states, she's playing with her strange huge eyed doll, which is now wearing a dress made from one of Bobby's old shirts. "He doesn't listen much." She offers her hand, and it's so small in comparison to his own when Dean takes it. "I'm Ezraqueel. Castiel said that you knew about me."
"Yeah," Dean says, "so you're Izzy." And the child for a moment looks startled at the contraction of her name, and then she offers a smile, like Castiel's – the one that hides in the corners of his mouth and that Dean is getting good at identify. "Bobby taking care of you?"
"Apart from trying to send me to social services now and again," she agrees. "It took a while to convince him, apparently I should be wearing a suit."
"You're not Dominions?" Dean asks.
"No, I'm Thrones," she tells him, "Dominions fight the wars, we just live through them." Izzy looks so tired, bone driven and old although her body is clearly that of a child. Ben Constantine was a child who happened to be very old, Izzy is clearly very old and happens to be a child.
New Sammy, who usually gives Castiel a wary berth, doesn't react to her except to step out of her way.
It tells Dean everything he needs to know about her. "How has it been around here?" He asks. If he knows Bobby, he's either tried to exorcise her or ignored her completely. Bobby doesn't really understand things he can't hunt or use for hunting.
She smiles wistfully at that, "Bobby just shouts 'I'm calling social services.' He never does, just threatens to chase me off. I like it here, I sleep with the dogs."
"Man, he doesn't let you in the house." Dean shakes his head; he didn't think Bobby would be like that.
"The house doesn't want me there," Izzy says sadly, "but there's an old truck that he's carpeted and it has windows and a mattress. The dogs are warm and the cats come in when it rains." She offers him that jaded smile again, "I got a blanket and Copernicus is a cuddler, I like it." She sounds like she does too. "It's okay, Dean, you don't have to worry about me."
"Course not, you're a bad-ass Angel of the Lord."
Her smile gets a little broader and he can see it in her eyes. "Something like that," she agrees. "And Sam comes out to talk to me, he's been so sad." She looks tired again, like the weight of the world is on her shoulders. "I don't know how to make it better. I'm not much of an angel, am I?"
Dean squats down to look her in the eye where she's sitting on the stoop. "Kid, God doesn't ask that you succeed, only that you try." He's pretty sure that he stole the line from Castiel but he's happy to take credit, "and me, I can see that you're trying."
Izzy wipes at her eyes furiously, snuffling back tears. "Want me to go now? I mean, you're here and . . ."
"Do you want to stay?" He asks.
She nods through the coming flood of weeping. "Then stay, let's see about getting you in the house. Sleeping with the dogs, I don't know." He rolls his eyes for comic effect but she doesn't notice.
She throws her arms about his shoulders and presses her cheek against his. "I'm sorry," she sobs into his ear, "I'm so sorry." Dean doesn't know what she's apologising for but he soothes lazy circles on her back regardless.
**********
When Dean goes into the house New Sammy strolls in beside him like he owns the joint. He wanders into Bobby's sitting room, investigates the worn out couch with a long uninterested sniff and then finds the mat in front of the open fire, circles once, twice and then plops down and gives a body length shiver as he makes himself comfortable. Dean thinks it'll be five minutes max before he's snoring.
Bobby looks at the dog. "I don't let my dogs in the house." He says offering Dean a bottle of soda, it's open and Dean knows it'll be laced with holy water. It won't hurt him but Bobby likes to be careful. Bobby's been around, and it's a salve.
Bobby doesn't know where Dean's been.
Dean openly drinks from the bottle, "I'll pour some out for the dog if you want. I'm pretty sure he's clean though."
New Sammy eyes them with a black eye from under his fringe of grey hair and Dean knows that if Bobby so much as threatens him, the dog will tear his throat out.
It seems Bobby knows that too.
When Sam comes in, nursing a cup of coffee New Sammy tenses, his entire body ready to strike but he doesn't make another move. Dean listens for the sound of growling deep in the dog's throat but he doesn't hear it. He suddenly knows why Bobby trusts his dogs the way he does.
"So what you call him?" Bobby asks.
"Eoighn," Dean answers, "but I call him New Sammy."
Sam splutters on his mouthful of coffee. "What? Why?" He actually looks indignant. New Sammy doesn't look too impressed at his namesake either. He's lying on the mat under the broken devil's trap on the ceiling and staring daggers at Sam.
"He's like a Sasquatch: long, gangly and with floppy hair. It's obvious really." Dean tells him, and takes another mouthful of the soda, it's warm but that's okay. He's had worse. "Have you seen the size of his feet?"
"At least he's not dressed like a children's TV presenter," Sam says eying the jumper. Dean recognises the comment for what it is, an attempt to pretend that things are okay between them though they're clearly not.
"Don't diss the wool," Dean says plucking at it with forefinger and thumb, "thing was made for me by this lovely lady up in New York State," he doesn't mention that that lovely lady looks like a troll crossed with a shawl, with one eye and made a hobby of battering men with her walking stick when she felt like it. Sam doesn't need to know all the details after all. "It's warm."
"It's fugly." Sam continues, bobbing his head.
"I got one in the trunk just like it for you." Dean gives him a grin, although it's not quite true. Magda gave him two sweaters, and the other one is knit in a much worse bobbly wool and the image on it slays him.
"So where you been, boy?" Bobby asks sitting on the wooden chair beside the mat New Sammy has claimed, he reaches down to scritch the dog between his ears. New Sammy immediately decides Bobby is the best person in the world ever and he will never stop loving him, even if the world ends.
Dean sinks into the couch like it's quicksand with a sigh. "I have been everywhere." He answers, "Cas set up some kinda freaking underground railroad and I was the supernatural equivalent of Frederick Douglass." Out of the corner of his left eye he sees a quick movement, something long and spindly. "Bobby, you got brownies?" He turns his head to where he saw the motion but whatever it is has gone.
Bobby looks at him, "Not that I know of. Might be some mix in the cupboard though. Aint got that sweet a tooth."
"No," Dean corrects, "brownies, spindly little fuckers, about this high." He holds his hands about ten centimetres apart, "all teeth, not dangerous though, just a pain. Probably in the scrap yard," he shrugs, "You have no idea what I've seen," he shakes his head, "it's all true, everything."
"And," Bobby answers, "you're a hunter, boy, you seen all manner of dark and nasty things, why you surprised about some of the other things too?"
Dean is shocked for a moment before he realises that Bobby has a point. But then again nothing surprises Bobby any more.
"I saw a woman vomit a bird pellet, a real honest to god bird pellet. I thought she was pregnant, she was just digesting a frozen goose." He stops for a moment, "but man could she sing, and she did this little shimmy thing that made me think pregnant women are hot."
He looks at the dog, "I watched a fucking banshee of all things rip through hellhounds like they were just smoke. I watched a mugger shoot himself in the head because a fucking angel told him to do it. Didn't say a word, just lifted the gun and blam," he makes a motion with his hand to simulate the shot right at the temple, "and then it ate a fucking Twinkie like nothing had happened."
"Castiel?" Bobby's voice is nervous. He doesn't trust the angel and Dean can hardly blame him.
"No," Dean says, "you should see him when he's pissed though," he laughs to himself a little ruefully, "it fucks up the electricity, you can believe he's bad-ass when he does. He speared this hellhound like it was a fucking pickle, pinned it to the floor. It was fucking A, man."
Sam asks the question that hangs between them, "Hellhounds?"
"Yeah," Dean rubs his jaw and doesn't meet Sam's eyes. Castiel said Sam hadn't known but he didn't expect the fear.
"Did Lilith come after you?"
"No," Dean tells him, "just an upstart with pretensions." He shrugs away the question, "you know what demons are like." Sam doesn't need to know the truth, he already looks so ill and tired. The forces of Hell were just eager to please, but the idea that Sam might be sitting on Bobby's couch the way that Dean is now and that the imaginary dog at his feet is a black hellhound with blood red eyes making happy noises as he pats it, makes the bile rise in his throat. "Aint seen them since New York State."
"You know," he continues, changing the subject, "there's this doctor in Cali, looks like Angelina Jolie but man the mouth on her," he changes the topic, "she's like a fourteen on a ten scale, but you wouldn't hit it. Man, I don't think there's anyone that stupid."
"The crash?" Bobby asks, it's the first time he's interrupted him.
Sam's eyes go wild. Obviously he hadn't known about that either.
Dean rubs at the side of his mouth with his thumb, uncomfortable at their scrutiny. "Yeah," he sounds rueful when he says it, "stupid driver fell asleep at the wheel, knew it was a bad idea to let anyone else drive, but I gotta say, you get fucked up you can't do better for a healer than Hathor out in Cali. I got her number somewhere."
He doesn't mention that he has her token on his bracelet and he doesn't need the phone to call her. "Hit that and she'd kill you, but, man, you'd die happy." He offers his best grin, the shit eating one he saves for mischief, the one that makes him feel like he's at home.
"And the angels?" Sam's voice is a low growl. The question hangs like a storm cloud between them.
"Dicks, all of them. Well, not Cas, he tries but he don't understand shit, and it just gets more confusing, I mean he took me to this kid, this brat," he blinks, "the kid's some big thing in the Church. He has all these books, man, Sammy, you'd cream your pants at the front door, and he's like ten, and he's read all these books. He knows everything, but he's no better at explaining shit, and the only one who's got answers doesn't want to share in case he ends up owing something to somebody."
Dean lowers his eyes to the dog on the rug, the one watching his brother like prey. "I think Cas pulled in a lot of favours to give me time." He tugs on the cuffs of his sweater, wanting to worry at the ends but knowing that they're watching him. "I met Death," he adds, "she was really cool."
He sees the spindly motion out of the side of his eye, the right one this time, scrabbling up the wall. His head whips around but it's too fast for him. "Bobby, you sure you aint got brownies?"
Bobby looks confused and shakes his head. "You staying for dinner?" he asks instead, convinced Dean's going to leave again, that this is just him checking in, letting them know that after two months he's alright and they don't need to hunt him down. John used to do that too, and Dean knows it. "I have chilli left over from last night."
Dean's mouth waters at the thought, Bobby makes his chilli on Monday and makes enough to last through the week, so he doesn't make it often. But Bobby makes the best chilli in the world. If Dean was to sell his soul for a recipe it would probably be for Bobby's chilli. When asked Bobby just shrugs and says "been making it long enough" as if that answers the question at all.
"You must have known I was coming."
"Considering you phoned ahead," Bobby tells him drily, "it's uncanny, it's like being psychic." He goes into the kitchen, "I'll feed your donkey too," he answers, and pats his thigh twice in sharp staccato. New Sammy looks at Dean who nods approval before he follows him.
"I didn't know where you were." Sam's tone is vitriolic and he looks tired and angry. "I couldn't do anything, I was stuck here just in case you came back! You just took off."
"I needed time, Sammy," Dean says and fusses with the soda bottle in his hands.
"You selfish, son of a bitch," Sam is angry, there is a sickly grey flush in his cheeks under his overlong floppy hair. With the weight he's lost, he's looks more like a crane fly than a sasquatch. "You just left me here, you didn't even check if I was okay."
"I didn't need to," Dean is surprised he's raised his voice, "you see that kid out there, that one that Bobby's got sleeping with the damn dogs, she's a fucking angel. Castiel asked her to look out for you. That's just it, Sammy, you think because you're an anti-Christ candidate that you're the fucking be all and guess what, they don't give a shit."
He has to stop to take a deep breath.
"Yellow Eyes didn't care who did his dirty work, he marked off kids with psychic abilities, hunter brats from long lines of hunter brats, so he could do something in Hell that if he tried to do down there they'd just crush him like a bug. So he did it up here, and we were just unlucky."
Sam's hands are ramrod straight at his sides and his fists are spasmodically clenching. His jaw is white with tension. "Unlucky?" It sounds like knives on stone.
"Yeah, the angels don't care about you, they just want to stop Lilith and will do anything they can to see it happen. They don't care if they wipe out continents to stop her and you know that, you think that if you pinged on their radar they'd just tell you to stop?" Dean's angry too, it's that cold rage that's followed him since he saw Sam kissing Ruby all the way back in November. It's been two months since he saw his brother except for a few short, painful, phone conversations and Sam's still being pissy.
"And they care about you?"
"Apparently yeah, enough that there's a kid camping out in an old van to watch over you, because I asked them to and –" he turned his head, "what the fuck is that?"
"I didn't see anything." Sam treats it like a diversion. It's not above Dean to use it as one.
"S'that fucking brownie, I think, Bobby shouldn't have let them in the house. Little fuckers like to spread shit all over everything." He turns back to Sam, who is perched on the edge of an old armchair, Dean knows that chair well, the ass is long out of it, if he sits back he might as well be sitting on the floor with his legs sticking out of the frame. Bobby keeps promising to replace it, but it's been twenty years and he still hasn't.
"Sam, you know Mom made a deal." He has this image of Mom, crocheted white sweater and white jeans, white socks and Farrah Fawcett hair reaching down to take his hands to dance with him. She must have been pregnant with Sam, and Dean is glad he remembers it. "You know, she did that stinking deal with Yellow Eyes because she didn't think she had anything left to lose, but then maybe she figured it out, I don't know, I wasn't there." He sees a spindly arm at the top of the bookcase.
Dean drops the bottle on the floor and stands up.
"Dean. There's nothing there," Sam still thinks it's a diversion but Dean doesn't stop, he holds up his hand and signals him to be quiet and Sam responds with a sort of harrumphing noise that's barely loud enough to hear.
Dean can feel the fire burning under his skin, all the hairs on the backs of his arms are prickling and his skin feels cold, like electricity dancing. He uses that sense of wrongness, a thing he's not used to from brownies, to stalk along the book case. He's waiting on it throwing books at him but it's not paying any attention to him at all. With his left hand he lifts a commemorative paperweight and hefts it, wondering if it's worth throwing.
Sam makes that pissy 'I'm disappointed in you Dean,' sigh that he normally only reserves for either acts of complete stupidity or what Sam considers a lack of general knowledge.
Dean doesn't care, it's like stalking a rat. He remembers a rat that got into their motel room when they were kids and Sam sat on the bed shrieking "Don't kill it, don't kill it!" And the little fucker didn't want to be caught, or get out.
He watches the thing, it's a bit too big to be a brownie, he thinks, more the size of a baby doll than a Barbie, and waits for it to move, and when it does he grabs it with his right hand and takes it from the waist high shelf and slams it hard against the floor. It smells of rot and corruption and it's stinging his hand, like he's being electrocuted by its touch, and what the fuck, so he raises the paperweight and smashes it down on the thing's head.
It has yellow eyes and a forked tongue and Dean doesn't care what the thing is but it's going down.
He uses the paperweight, inviting people to see the world's biggest ball of yarn of all things, to smash it's skull as it hisses and spits and whispers.
It's only when he's stopped with the thing's blood, which is of all the colours in the universe hot pink, all over his face, that he sees Sam.
Sam hadn't believed him, and yet there is something that looks like an underweight four year old, all thin long limbs and claws, on the floor. It's head a hot pink mess of goo and boneshards on the floor boards.
"Well, fuck," Bobby says from the doorway. "What the hell is that?"
And Dean doesn't have an answer and that's worse than being the only one to see the thing.
"Dude," Sam stumbles out the words, "you just killed Dobby the House Elf."