A/N - Bless you all for your kind words about my friend.
So... a friend of my dad's, a good family friend, died four days later, after I posted the last chapter.
The family friend was not someone I knew as well, but still. I don't know what strange karma it is that I would lose 2 people FOR REAL just when I am writing about Dean grieving for his two dearest people (who are... dead? not dead? just lost? who knows?). But in a weird way it was very good to have this chapter to work on this week.
Of course it got too long, and then I spent half the day today arranging a super complex series of plane tickets and boat-crew replacements so I can get to Derek's memorial service next week, and I couldn't quite get the 2nd half of the chapter proofed in time to post it now. So here is the first half - essentially another road-trip chapter, but with a different companion this time. 2nd half up will be tomorrow.
Dean woke the next day in Kodiak's little clinic. He listened impatiently to the doctor droning on about irrelevant things like smoke inhalation and broken ribs and collapsed lungs and sprained ankles, and kept nodding obediently, paying very little attention. As soon as the doctor left, Dean snuck out to the hall, snitched some hospital scrubs to use as clothes, changed into them and headed out. To go search for Cas and Sam, of course.
But the damn sprained ankle hurt so badly he could barely hobble. He had to keep one hand on the wall, limping creakily along about as fast as a 90-year-old. As he crossed the lobby he tried to stop limping and hurry up to a normal walking pace, so the reception staff wouldn't notice anything, but as soon as he tried to hurry up he started coughing. Way too audibly. Coughing up blood again.
Several annoying nurses, not a single one of them as cool as Sarah, came zooming after him, and dragged him back to his room.
For the second try, Dean figured out where the crutches were stored, stole a pair and got as far as the side door. Again the damn nurses spotted him.
On the third try, Dean stole a just a single crutch (thinking he could hide that better), and went the opposite direction, limping downstairs and scuttling through a lab as inconspicuously as he could. The lab staff eyed him a little suspiciously and Dean scooted out a back door. It led to a loading dock that had a problematic set of little stairs down the side.
One of the more annoying nurses, a male nurse by the name of Kevin, pounced on him just as Dean was shakily inching down the stairs.
"Collapsed lung!" snapped Kevin. "Why do I have to keep reminding you! You had a collapsed lung just yesterday!" He shoved Dean into a wheelchair, and began wheeling him to the elevator and back to his room. "Smoke inhalation damage to both lungs. Continued bronchial hemorrhages. Two broken ribs. Badly sprained ankle. Repeat, BADLY sprained ankle which you SHOULD NOT be walking on AT ALL for SEVERAL WEEKS. Did you not notice how your entire lower leg is swollen up like the world's biggest sausage? Perhaps you overlooked the two-foot-long black bruise there on the side?" (Kevin pointed to the bruise.) "See? That jet black bruise there that's going all the way from your toes to your KNEE? Just for fun, let's picture how much sub-cue bleeding that represents, how much tissue got torn."
Kevin got Dean back into the room, manhandled him into the bed and propped up Dean's damaged leg up on the bed again, handling it surprisingly gently (Dean hissed with pain just the same). As Kevin got the leg back up on its pillow and nestled a set of icepacks around it, he droned on, "Punctured eardrum. Nosebleeds. Your freakin' eyes were bleeding, Mr. Winchester. Second degree burns just about every-damn-where. You are covered with blisters and you cannot tell me those don't hurt. You have a fever. Maybe just from all the burns, but still. Frostbite, and by the way it is a freakin' miracle it wasn't worse and another freakin' miracle that your fingertips thawed out okay, and the last thing they need is to get cold again. Nerve damage from the frostbite— I can tell you're having trouble holding stuff. Hypothermia. Did I miss anything?" He held out the TV remote toward Dean. "All settled? Would you like the TV on?
"I have to go find my friend. And my brother," Dean said, batting the remote away. "I don't want the damn TV. I have to go find them—" But he went into another fit of coughing. Kevin rolled over an oxygen tank for him while Dean choked out, "They're out there somewhere. I know they are, I know they're still alive."
Kevin sighed, fiddled with the O2 tank and handed Dean the mask. Dean grudgingly put it to his face while Kevin helped with the elastic band, and Kevin said, "Mr. Winchester. You never gave us a chance to tell you we're already looking for them. Your injuries were pretty obviously due to fire and some kind of a decompression. I don't think you remember this, but you were talking about your friend and brother all yesterday— all about your friend the pilot, and how he kept trying to fly despite some kind of wing damage, and how he dropped off your brother somewhere. Your plane must have had some kind of fire, right? And a wing was damaged? And the cabin depressurized?"
Dean nodded uncertainly.
Kevin said, "That's what we figured. So, the search-and-rescue teams are already out there. They've been combing the whole island, starting from Pyramid Mountain, where you were. Word is they even got the sniffer dogs out today, and they're going all over all the mountain trails where you came down. Every Joe Sixpack Fisherman on the island's got his eye out for that plane. Everybody's heard how you came staggering down off Pyramid Mountain from a plane crash and right to Iverson's cabin, because Iverson must've made the rounds of every damn bar on the island yesterday to tell the story. If that plane's anywhere on this island, we'll find it. Even the fishermen and the Coast Guard are out looking at sea. But you have got to leave the search to the pros. I'm serious. You cannot leave this bed. Okay?"
Dean thought a moment. If they were searching for a plane... they'd spot Cas, right?
He nodded slowly, and said, grudgingly, "Okay."
Kevin added, "The FAA's been by a few times. Nobody's reported a missing plane and for some reason nobody picked the plane up on radar. Anyway they're figuring your friend had a private plane and didn't file a flight plan for some reason. They're coming back later to talk to you. He a bush pilot, probably? Your friend? Alaska-cowboy-type bush pilot? What's he like?"
"Uh," said Dean. "He's..."
He's an angel. He's a BAMF. He's the best knife-fighter you ever saw. But, he likes fuzzy cows too, and cookies and dolphins, and his wings fluff up when he's happy... He has blue eyes... He loves having his wings petted, though he'll never say so.
Dean cleared his throat and said, "Yeah, he's an Alaska-cowboy type."
"What type of plane? We were all guessing, maybe a Cessna 210? Cause, you know, they have pressurized cabins but they're small."
"Yeah," said Dean. "Right. A Cessna 210. That was it."
"You remember what color it was?"
"White and gray and black," said Dean immediately. "White and gray and black. Tell them to look for white and gray and black. Please?"
Dean eventually convinced Kevin that he could breathe well enough to get through a few phone calls, and Kevin brought him a landline phone. (Dean's cell had gotten soaked in the drizzle, during the hike down the mountain, and was completely dead.)
Dean spent the next hour placing call after call after call to Sam's cell, and call after call after call to Cas's.
Neither of them picked up. Every call went straight to voicemail.
There were all kinds of plausible reasons why neither one was picking up. First off, it seemed very likely that both of them could just be out of cell range, because neither the redwoods of California nor the mountains of Kodiak Island were exactly known for superb cell tower coverage. Or... maybe both phones were just dead. After all, Sarah had taken the VW, and both Sam's and Cas's phone chargers (and Dean's, actually) were in the VW. Or... maybe Sam had landed in the river and his phone had gotten wet. And Cas's might have gotten wet in the Kodiak rain, just like Dean's. Or... maybe Cas had dropped his phone during the flight. Or... maybe Sam had managed to grab on to the top of a tree in the nonburning part of the forest (this quickly became Dean's favorite scenario and it really did seem quite possible) and later the firefighters would find Sam while they were checking out the forest, and they'd rescue him with a helicopter, but, in the meantime, Sam's phone had probably fallen out of his pocket and it was probably lying on the ground, right under the tree where Sam was sitting.
All kinds of likely reasons, really. It didn't mean a thing that neither of them was picking up.
Dean then thought of calling Charlene, Sam's witch friend with the knack for finding people.
But she called back half an hour later saying she "couldn't get a fix" on either Cas or Sam.
Dean managed to come up with a few more possible theories to explain that disturbing snag. (Maybe Sam and Cas were just too far away from Charlene? Maybe the weather was wrong for her to pick them up? Sunspots or... something? Maybe they were... underground? Well, there were lots of possible reasons.)
The next phase was several hours of phone calls to every California source Dean could think of, for information on the Great Redwood Fire, as the media were calling it. The fire was still underway, in fact, two days later now, but it was under control. Swift action by a couple teams of wildlands smokejumpers ("alerted by two women," Dean noticed in one news item) had managed to confine it— to "only" a hundred square miles. Sadly, the entire music camp had burned to the ground, along with several other nearby houses, but no deaths had been reported.
No deaths had been reported. That was good! That was excellent! Dean started in with calling the local fire and police departments, and told them all that his brother Elwood had been in the woods near the music camp and hadn't been heard from since. That got their attention in a hurry, and Dean gave them a full description.
But no six-foot-four, long-haired guys had been seen anywhere. Nobody had come limping out of the woods. Then there was a long, frustrating conversation with Dean trying to convince some dimwitted smokejumper about the obviously urgent need to send a helicopter to survey the treetops to find the tree that Sam might be sitting in.
The smokejumper listened patiently and promised over and over to "look", whatever the hell that meant, but it was pretty clear they weren't going to be sending any helicopters out to inspect the redwoods treetops for possible fire survivors. The fire chief finally got on the line and explained, very gently, that it was not possible to search that large a stretch of forested wilderness— and certainly not now, when half of it was still burning.
"He might've fallen into the river," said Dean helpfully, and again they promised to "look."
Dean had to settle for that.
He finally forced himself to call the local California morgues, too. Just to be thorough.
Nothing. No remains had been found.
Sam had completely disappeared.
Sarah, Dean finally thought. Sarah! I should call Sarah! It seemed ridiculous he hadn't thought of Sarah till now. Sarah would be looking for Sam too! Probably Sam was with Sarah right now! Probably they were trying to find Dean!
Then Dean thought, Cas too! I bet Cas flew back to rescue Sam— flew back in time or something!— and Cas scooped him up and they landed fine and now they're with Sarah and they don't know where I am.
Digging up Sarah's cell number took some doing, but Dean finally tracked down her Jackson friend, got the right number, and placed the call.
Sarah answered instantly, with a sharp, tight, "Yes?"
"Sarah?" Dean said. "It's Dean."
"DEAN? Dean! Oh my god!" Her shock and excitement almost vibrated through the phone. "I've been looking— I've been calling you— What's this phone number? Are you okay? What the hell area code is that? Where are you?" Dean had to grin a little at her flood of questions, and he was about to ask if Sam and Cas were with her, when she stole the words right out of his mouth, asking, "Is Sam with you? Cas too? Can you put Sam on? Is he okay?"
Dean's question died on his lips.
Sarah said, "Dean? Are you still there?"
Dean had to force himself to say something.
"I'm in Kodiak," Dean finally managed to say.
"You're... what? Where?"
"Kodiak, Alaska."
Silence on the other end.
Dean added, "It's an island. In the North Pacific. Cas flew me here."
"Cas... flew?" She paused, obviously trying to take that in. "Castiel... flew? With his wings? To Alaska?"
"Yeah."
Another little pause, and then she repeated. "Is Sam there?"
Dean stalled for a moment, but finally confessed, his voice gruff, "I was hoping he was with you."
There was a very long silence.
Sarah said, her voice suddenly much quieter, "Please tell me you got him loose from the tree."
"We did. We got him loose from the tree."
"Then... what happened?"
Dean couldn't think how to tell her the story, for he suddenly realized that if he said "Sam let go of Cas when we were five hundred feet in the air," it was going to sound to Sarah as if Sam had died. And maybe the rest of the story would sound like Cas had died too. And Dean really didn't want to give Sarah the impression that Sam and Cas were both dead, because that wasn't correct. So he sat there in the bed, staring at the ice packs around his foot, holding the hospital phone to his ear, his other hand knotting up repeatedly on the edge of his blanket, trying to think how to explain it to Sarah so that she wouldn't get the impression that either Sam or Cas had died.
And it suddenly hit him, as if for the very first time, that the reason it was going to sound to Sarah as if Sam had died was, in fact, because Sam was probably dead.
The knowledge crashed down on him like a ten-ton weight: Sam was probably dead.
Again he saw Sam letting go, and dropping away. That small half-smile on Sam's face. Again he heard Cas shouting, felt him desperately diving, trying to reach Sam, but just spinning out of control.
Sam had fallen into fire.
Hunter's burial, thought Dean, his mouth dry. If the body burned, the soul could not be brought back. Why had Dean not thought about this till now? Dad had taught them that from day one.
Sam had fallen five hundred feet into fire.
Sam was probably dead... and would not come back this time.
And Cas... "Cas crashed" wasn't going to cut it anymore either, was it? The Kodiak search team had just finished a third sweep of Pyramid Mountain and a complete fly-over of the entire island. If there had been an angel with an eighteen-foot wingspan anywhere on that green mossy treeless mountain, an angel with eighteen feet of those astonishingly dramatic white, grey and black feathers, they would have spotted him by now.
If Cas had been too hurt to walk and had been lying somewhere, they would have spotted him. And if he'd been able to walk, he'd have found Dean by now. There was only one real town on the damn island, and only one clinic, and Cas would have found it.
All of which meant Cas hadn't landed on Kodiak at all.
Which meant the truth, the actual truth, was that Castiel was most likely either lost in friggin' outer space— well on his way to becoming one of those miserable lonely comets for the rest of his life— or he had fallen into the goddam Sun and was already dead. One or the other. Lost or dead.
Sam was probably dead. Castiel was either lost forever, or dead.
Dean had been quiet for a long while now, the deadly, empty silence echoing through the phone line. He slowly became aware that he had not answered Sarah's last question, but he couldn't even remember now what she had asked, and he couldn't think of anything at all to say. His whole mind seemed to have gone completely blank, and he just sat there staring at his foot, hanging on to his blanket tightly with one hand.
Sarah said, her voice very gentle, "Dean. Can you tell me what happened?"
Dean took a shaky breath and managed to croak out, "We got Sam free, but we got caught in the fire."
Sarah waited. Dean drew another uneven breath. "Cas had to try to fly us out... but... he really can't fly, Sarah. I mean, he can take off but he can't steer, and his wing won't open enough and... We should've all died right there. Cas managed to fly us upwards a little bit... But we were too heavy for him. We started to fall back down. And he lost control. We were spinning. Spinning, and... falling."
Dean paused. Sarah was still silent.
Dean had to say it. He had to. He took a breath, and forced out the three words: "Sam let go."
Silence.
"On purpose," Dean made himself add. Sarah deserved to know. He added, "He saw we were too heavy."
More silence.
Dean stumbled on through the rest of it. "Cas tried to catch him but... he couldn't, he couldn't steer well enough, Sarah... but... he tried, he really tried, he tried so hard... He went zig-zagging all over. He just couldn't steer at all. It got totally out of control. He barely got me to Kodiak."
After a short, awful pause, Sarah said, her voice amazingly steady, "How high up were you when Sam let go?"
"Sarah, I'm gonna find him—"
"How high?" she interrupted, her voice perhaps a little bit less steady now.
Dean swallowed. "Above the trees."
Another pause.
She said slowly, "Do you mean... above the tops of... the redwood trees?"
The tallest trees on earth.
"Yes," Dean whispered, and after another of those awful silent pauses, he heard Sarah begin to cry.
It was excruciatingly horribleto hear. It seemed one of the most miserable sounds Dean had ever heard in his life. He knew she was trying like hell to hold herself together, trying to hide the crying, but Dean could hear it nonetheless, muffled little helpless squeaky gasps that she was trying to choke back. Dean's own breathing was getting just as ragged, the awful knowledge of it just crushing him now. It was getting very hard to breathe; it felt as if something enormous was pressing down on him from all sides. But he said, desperate to comfort her, "He might've survived, Sarah! We've gone through such crazy stuff and come out alive— you have no idea what that boy can survive, you have no idea the places he's been to and come out alive. He's been to Hell and come back, Sarah, I mean, literally. Cas too! I'm certain Sam and Cas are both alive, I just know it, I just have to find them—"
"Cas? What?" she gasped out. "Isn't Castiel with you?"
Oh, hell. For the entire call she'd been thinking Cas and Dean were both in Kodiak.
"No... he... dropped me here," said Dean. "He... We... kind of fell off the planet. He dropped me here on a flyby. He couldn't seem to land. He's... I don't know where he is. They've searched the whole island, but... I'm looking for him, Sarah, I'll find him, I promise." Goddammit, he could still hear those excruciating soft little sobs in the background, and Dean said hopelessly, "And I'll find Sam too, I promise, I'll find Sam too, I promise you, I promise, Sarah, I'll find them, both of them, I swear to you—"
At that point Dean's breathing got so ragged he started to cough, and then he couldn't stop coughing, and then he was choking up blood once again. Kevin the nurse came rushing back in and took the phone away and wouldn't let him use it again. Dean never got to say goodbye to Sarah.
Later, as Dean lay there sucking at the cool oxygen in the oxygen mask they'd stuck on him again, listening as Kevin took down yet another message from Sarah (who was now apparently calling every hour to check on Dean's condition), it finally occurred to him to try praying to Castiel.
Dean began praying immediately. As hard as he could, as long as he could, with all the concentration he could muster up. He begged Cas to call, or to get in touch somehow.
And finally he had the bright idea of suggesting to Cas, via the prayer, that Cas try to contact Dean in a dream. Castiel had managed to contact Dean in dreams many times over the past year, even while human. The dreams had been pretty confusing, of course, usually just baffling glimpses of a man in a trenchcoat who Dean had not been able to see clearly. But it had been contact. It was worth a try.
Dean sent out a new prayer about six times in a row— "Cas, if you can hear me, try to reach me in a dream!" Then he was got so excited about falling asleep, so eager to start dreaming, that he ended up wide awake for two more hours, staring in mounting frustration at the ceiling while trying to will himself instantly to sleep by sheer force of will.
Fatigue finally overcame him just past midnight.
He did dream. Terrible dreams of fire. He dreamed of the forest burning, their childhood home burning, Dad's funeral pyre burning... every miserable fire Dean had ever seen, all rolled together into one.
He dreamed of Sam falling, and of the terrifying flight. He dreamed of that absolutely surreal moment out in space... the tiny white moon gliding past so serenely, while Dean, bewildered and terrified and alone, lost all his air, choked on mouthfuls of blood, and realized he was about to die.
He dreamed of how Cas had saved him.
Yes, he dreamed of Castiel. But it wasn't a contact-dream. No man in a coat setting a hand on Dean's shoulder, no "Buddy" standing before him shaking Dean's shoulders, no Cas by a lake handing him a note. The dream was merely a memory of what had actually happened: Castiel lost in the ether, struggling to fly through the fog, his face covered with ashes and blood, his wings dragging in exhaustion. He was trying to call out something that Dean couldn't quite hear. The grey mist closed over Cas, and he was gone.
Dean slowly improved, day by day. His breathing was getting steadily better; the burns and broken ribs began to heal; the frostbitten fingers began to feel more normal. Sarah almost flew out to join him—she seemed convinced that no other nurse in the entire world could possibly do a good job caring for his injuries— but Dean managed to convince her to meet him later in Seattle instead. (The only reason she was remotely convinceable about this was that she'd somehow gotten involved in reuniting the teenage girl with her family in Minnesota.) Dean assured her he was doing fine and that he'd meet her soon.
But the truth was that Dean was still practically crippled. The ankle was seriously messed up— it was still pretty painful and swollen, and he could barely hobble around at all. The frostbite and the burns had, in combination, left him with a frustrating and erratic nerve damage, weird waves of tingling that kept moving down his arms and hands and that kept making him drop things. Which really wasn't going to be all that great for little details like, oh, handling guns. His hearing was messed up because of the burst eardrum— also not really ideal for a hunter. And he was still feverish, constantly kicking off his blankets and pestering Kevin to turn the room heat down.
The doctors said everything would heal eventually. Even the eardrum would heal, apparently. But Dean hated feeling so hobbled and vulnerable and weak. He knew he was in no shape for a hunt.
Just when he really needed to be hunting... for Cas and Sam.
For somehow Dean had managed convince himself all over again, that Sam was alive somehow. That he had grabbed onto a tree. Or fallen into the river. Or been scooped up by Castiel. Sam was alive, and so was Cas, and Dean was going to find them.
He just had to figure out how.
The Kodiak searches ended, the California redwood fire was at last extinguished, and Dean was finally released from the clinic. He could tell, by the way Kevin and the other staff all gave him pitying, sympathetic hugs when he left, that they all thought Cas and Sam were dead and that Dean was totally deluding himself.
Dean didn't care. They didn't know Cas and Sam.
And besides, Dean had come up with a plan. It was a great plan.
Dean was going to make a deal with Crowley.
He met Sarah in Seattle, after a rough, miserably seasick ride on a Seattle-bound fishing trawler out of Kodiak. (Flying was simply not an option.) When he finally came limping off the trawler on his crutches, exhausted from the boat journey, Sarah was waiting at the pier. She assaulted him with such a teary bear-hug that Dean lost his balance and nearly fell over.
She apologized profusely and led him carefully to the parking lot, and there in the marina lot was a minivan that he barely recognized. The VW's baby-blue paint job had been badly blistered, and the whole van was singed and smeared dramatically with soot. Apparently the VW had had its own close call with the fire, even just from sitting in the music camp parking lot, before Sarah and the girl had reached it.
Kodiak had been so surreal, such a completely different world, that Dean had felt almost as if he were on pause, as if the rest of the world had been frozen still. As if Sam's and Castiel's absence wasn't really all that unusual or worrisome. But now, back in the lower forty-eight at last, standing here in the Seattle drizzle with the VW right smack in front of him, it was suddenly extremely obvious that Sam and Cas weren't here. The VW was here, but Sam and Cas weren't.
Dean limped up to the VW, Sarah trailing behind him, and swung the side-door open.
There was Cas's movie-chair. Empty.
There was Sam's duffel. And Sam's jacket, neatly folded, and his books, all lined up in a cubby. But there was no Sam.
There was Cas's backpack. There was the mattress, and Cas's blankets and the two pillows; this was where Cas had slept. This was where Dean had preened his feather-tips, that night out at the van. Where Dean had reminded him, "Not ever."
But Cas wasn't here.
Dean began poking slowly through the little piles of Sam's and Cas's possessions, trying to find somewhere to put his crutches. The whole thing started to seem so unreal that he felt as if he were acting out a scene in a bad movie. Sarah began to choke back sniffles again as she watched Dean lay his crutches down, after making a little space for them in between Sam's duffel and Cas's pack. Then Dean totally forgot what he was supposed to do next, and ended up standing there with one hand still on the crutches, staring vacantly at Cas's backpack and Sam's duffel. Sarah had to take his arm and help him hobble into Sam's seat.
Dean became aware that though Sarah was crying, he himself was dry-eyed. He began to feel a little bad, feeling like he should be crying too, but it seemed very hard to concentrate, and he was so extremely tired; and also he kept getting distracted by odd thoughts chasing through his mind. Sam's probably going to need another cell phone was one, and I should make a better seatbelt for Cas was another.
Sarah got Dean settled and checked him over. She seemed to calm magically as she slid into nurse mode. Dean watched her bustling around, checking his burns and his foot, her eyes still red but focused now on taking care of Dean, and he began to come out of his trance. Sarah, at least, was definitely alive, and she was right here. What did Sarah need?
Dean thought, I promised Sam I'd "get her out of here." Promised I'd keep her safe.
So when she tried to insist that she come back with Dean to Kansas to take care of him for a while, Dean refused. Because Dean, of course, was going to make a deal with Crowley, and there was no way he was going to let Crowley anywhere near Sarah.
"You're going back to Jackson," Dean announced to her, as Sarah steered the minivan out onto I-5. "We'll drive to Jackson and you'll take care of Cas's cat. And I'm taking the VW and I'm going and looking for Sam and Cas. But you're staying in Jackson. With the cat."
About two minutes later Dean had begun to feel very sorry for any doctor in Jackson Hospital who tried to top Sarah in any kind of an argument. She was well into a forcefully detailed list of the top twenty reasons that Dean absolutely needed expert nursing care, and absolutely should not be left alone, when Dean realized he was going to have to tell her some details.
Like... maybe even tell her the truth.
Which wasn't really one of Dean's lifelong habits exactly, but, times had changed, hadn't they?
So he said, in a brief pause while Sarah was taking a breath before launching in on her next twenty reasons, "Sarah, I know you want to help. And I know you want to help me find Sam, I get it, believe me, I really get that. But, thing is, there's somebody I'm going to try to contact. He might be able to find Sam and Cas. I don't know. But I've got to try. But Sarah, he's dangerous, and I mean dangerous, and I am telling you flat out, there is no friggin' way I am going to let you get within a hundred miles of him. I don't want him to even know you exist. "
She glanced over at him warily. She didn't look all that convinced.
Tell her the truth, Dean thought. The actual truth.
"He's killed people who were close to us," said Dean. "He killed a girl Sam knew. And nearly killed a girl I knew, too. I know you want to help, but I am not going to let you get near him. I'm serious."
Sarah let out her breath slowly. She stared at the drizzly road ahead for a moment.
Finally she said, "Who is it? Who are you meeting?"
Dean sighed. In for a penny, in for a pound. "The King of Hell."
She snorted. "Nice nickname. So who's that really?"
"The King of Hell," Dean repeated.
Sarah glanced at him.
She looked back at the road, her hands tightening on the steering wheel. She was silent a long moment, and then said, "You're serious?" Dean nodded, and Sarah gave a weak little half-laugh, shaking her head, saying, "You guys really are big league, aren't you? I kind of had that impression already, but... Dammit, Dean. Is this wise?"
"Probably not," Dean admitted. "I've dealt with him before, though. Actually he was chained up in our basement for a while."
Sarah blinked. "You had the King of Hell chained up in your basement?"
"Yeah." Then Dean remembered something. "Oh. He was still there the first time you came to visit, actually."
"The King of Hell... was... chained up in the basement?"
"Yeah... I guess we forgot to mention that?" said Dean. Her eyes had gotten a little wide, so Dean added, "But with special chains. And he was inside this pentacle design that we painted on the floor. He can't step outside it."
"The King of Hell can't step over paint?" Sarah said.
It did sound a little odd when she put it that way. Dean tried to gather his thoughts and said, "The point is, I gotta talk to him and I am not, just NOT, going to let you get anywhere near. Sorry, Sarah, I'm just not. And if you try to, I will fight you. I am dead serious." He drew a breath and added, "Maybe you should know... Sam was really worried about letting you get too close. Basically because of this King of Hell guy. He was scared to death of putting you at risk. I told him it was your choice whether to get involved or not, that once you're in, we can't push you out... but... if I was wrong, then damn, Sarah, I'm really sorry you got mixed up in all this. If I told Sam the wrong thing, then I really am so sorry—"
Sarah interrupted, saying, "It IS my choice. You told him right."
Dean looked at her. She was driving along quietly, her hands on the big flat VW steering wheel, working her way southward through the Seattle traffic. It was raining lightly now, a steady drizzle, the road gleaming in the dim afternoon light. The windshield wipers were going steadily from side to side, whup-whup, whup-whup.
Sarah said, "I'll admit parts haven't been fun. But now I know what the hell's going on. Part of it anyway. And if you think I'd rather be in a state of blissful ignorance, like a rabbit running around on a battlefield completely clueless, like a cow just walking to slaughter, boy have you got another think coming." She added, "Even if it's risky, I'd rather know the truth. And... Dean. I got to meet Sam. And you, and Castiel. And if you think I'll ever be anything other than grateful as hell that I got to be part of this, and meet the three of you, and get to know Sam, and help fix Castiel's wing, and maybe make some kind of a difference with my life... then you are even more fucked up than I thought."
Dean had to smile a little at that. Sarah had started to sniffle a little again, and she added, "Though I will admit I was hoping for just one goddam normal date with Sam JUST ONE GODDAM TIME. I was thinking, maybe we could go out to a movie, you know? Dinner and a movie?" She gave a weak, sad little laugh, and then spat out, "GOD FUCKING DAMMIT."
They drove on for a moment and Sarah asked, "Where is God in all this, anyway, Dean? Is he in the picture?"
Dean said, "Cas is pretty sure that Elvis left the building a while ago."
Sarah sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose with one hand. She fished out a Kleenex from one pocket, blew her nose noisily, stuffed the Kleenex away again, and said, "All right. I'll let you take the VW. I can't believe I'm saying this, but once we get to Jackson I'll let you take this VW and leave and meet the... King of Hell, and the only reason I am going to let you do this alone, honestly, is that I'm one-hundred-percent sure that if I try to come along, or keep you from going, you'll just bop me over the head and sneak away anyway. But, Dean... I've got to ask this straight... Is there really any chance Sam is alive? And don't sugarcoat it. Is there a chance?"
Dean hesitated.
"I have no friggin' clue," Dean said. "But till I find a body I am not giving up."
She nodded slowly.
She added, "And Castiel?"
Dean swallowed. "I... don't know. I think so? But... he may be hard to find. He could be a million miles away. I mean, literally."
Sarah nodded again and said, "Then you gotta go find that angel." A moment later she added, "Dean. Did you ever tell Castiel how you feel? About him?"
Dean looked over at her, startled, but she just drove on, her hands on the big VW wheel, her eyes on the road, as if what she'd just said wasn't the slightest bit unusual.
How the hell had she known? Had it been that obvious?
Hell, even Dean hadn't really known, back when Sarah had last been around.
"No," Dean said, his breathing suddenly uneven. "No... I... uh... no."
She shook her head with a sigh.
"If you find him, you will tell him," Sarah said. "Won't you."
It was not a question. It was a command.
"Yes, ma'am," whispered Dean, his mouth dry. She patted his hand, and they drove on in companionable silence.
A/N -
I did not plan all this Sarah stuff originally. I was just going to have her show up only to give Dean the VW and then she was supposed to disappear conveniently. But then Dean wanted to call her from Kodiak, and then she wanted to know what had happened (that whole phone call conversation, or the emotional tone of it anyway, was pretty tightly drawn from the phone call I had last Friday). And then, in Seattle, Sarah just WOULD NOT just give Dean the keys and let him drive away alone. All of a sudden she had all these opinions of her own. AND Dean suddenly got worried about her too, and got paranoid about protecting her from Crowley. One thing I learned this week is if you lose people, or even think you might have lost them, you instantly become very aware of protecting the few people you have left.
So they insisted on having a whole conversation and next thing I know, Dean was telling her the actual truth. For once in his life. Almost as if he's learned something over the past year.
Sarah's command to Dean at the end was also unplanned; she did that on her own.
Next: Crowley. I should have it up tomorrow.