AN: Sam POV again in case anyone is wondering how he feels about Dean's actions in the previous chapter. Sorry that there's not much action. (Heh.)
Janice helped greatly, as she does. Not only does she help with content, she fixes my truly abysmal comma placement without complaint or mockery.
In this case, I did make quite a few changes after she fixed it up, so there may be more errors than usual, and that's completely on me.
Edited to include replies to comments.
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Sam was known to lose his temper now and again, though that usually involved just yelling things he normally wouldn't have said. (Usually at Dad.) Rarely, he got angry enough to throw a punch. (Usually at Dean.) A handful of times some ghost or monster was hurting a family member (Bobby, once, but he counted as family too) and Sam went a little postal. But never before had he actually gotten so angry he literally couldn't see for a few minutes.
A sharp pain in his hand brought Sam back to himself. He was shaking, all his muscles tensing enough to make his sore ribs scream at him and at least one cut on his chest break open. He could feel the trickle of warm blood inside his shirt. His left wrist wasn't especially happy either, so he'd apparently been pulling on it during his little breakdown. (Although Dean would probably call it a tantrum.) But it was Sam's right hand that had drawn his attention.
He pulled it in front of his face and grimaced. He'd put the butt of the gun he was still holding (because he was a Winchester and some lessons didn't simply go away because he was having a mental breakdown, apparently) right through the driver's window of the Jeep he was stuck to like a staked bear.
"Son of a –" Sam groused, trying to tell how bad the damage was, but there was too much blood for him to gauge the depth of the cuts. No wonder Dean didn't trust him to fight the hydra – he'd lost to a damn window.
In frustration, Sam pulled on his left wrist again, sliding it as far up as he could.
Analyzing and understanding your feelings can take away some of their power, said a book that Pastor Jim had given Sam when he'd confessed that his anger scared him a little sometimes. Okay: analysis, then.
Realistically, anyone, even Dean, unilaterally making decisions regarding Sam's safety, particularly while hunting, would piss Sam off. He knew he was competent, and for someone raised in the life, he was basically an adult. And, yeah, he had a knee-jerk reaction to being ordered around, especially without explanation, whether it be by his overbearing father or his overbearing brother.
This was even stronger, though. Sam knew, down to his very marrow, that they could defeat the legendary monster together, but the thought of Dean facing down the massive hydra alone made Sam feel like throwing up the way he had the first time Dean and Dad left him behind to go on a hunt and actually told Sam what they'd be doing.
Sam found himself growling. Hmmm. Analyzing and understanding hadn't helped much. Except...when Sam had pulled on his bound wrist, it had caught on something. His heart rate picked up, this time from excitement. The rednecks had welded the roll cage themselves, or perhaps just fixed it, and there was a series of rough protrusions. Sam dragged the zip tie over the bumps as hard as he could, again and again. It abraded the skin on the back of his wrist, but who the hell could be bothered to care when he had a chance to get himself free?
Sam kept an ear out to try to track how the fight was going as he dragged his wrist back and forth as fast as he could. There had been some gunshots, but those had stopped. There was a lot of crashing that made Sam wince, picturing that heavy body stomping around. Sam vaguely noted that his grip on the handgun was getting tacky, which hopefully meant that the bleeding on his right hand was slowing.
The hydra screamed, and Sam optimistically decided that meant that Dean was doing well. He didn't like the crashes that followed it, though. He really needed to see what was happening. Sam jerked his hand extra hard and some of the strong plastic threads broke, knocking Sam mostly off his feet. The Jeep jolted forward from the motion, which it most certainly should not have done while in park. Sam fell into the broken window, only his borrowed coat keeping his elbow and upper arm from getting shredded.
Sam stood carefully. The Jeep had moved ahead far enough that it was on the beginning of the slope, and Sam really, really didn't want to get dragged down the hill while pinned to the side of the vehicle. Luckily, the grille had come to a stop against a small tree, just past the sapling stage. The new angle inspired Sam to try something. He turned his trapped foot until he could push his toes against the tow hook it was attached to. It caused the zip tie to cut into his ankle a little, but nothing like what he'd already done to his wrist. He tucked his gun in his pocket and grabbed hold of the Jeep above him with his right hand, then curled the fingers of the left hand around the bar it was hooked to as well as he could. Thus anchored, Sam was able to lift his second foot to prop it against the front tire. Once he was balanced, he went up on his toes, ignoring the savage pull on his wrist as he eased his right hand free.
He didn't fall. Sam pulled the first knife he found, the tactical, and reached up. Between the extra distance from pushing up on his toes and the half-inch he'd gained from getting the zip tie cut partially through, Sam was just able to get the tip of the knife between his wrist and the tie with enough pressure to sever it the rest of the way.
Sam's fingers couldn't hold him up on their own, so he promptly fell on his face. He'd expected it, however, and had moved the knife to the side so he didn't fall on it. (He was bleeding from enough places, thank you very much.) He hadn't expected his ribs to protest quite as much as they did, but he didn't have time for that. He twisted (son of a bitch that hurt) and cut his ankle free too.
He really wanted to take a second to breathe, but he didn't dare. Sam stood, reached through the window he'd broken, and put the Jeep back into park, since, as he'd expected, it had slipped into neutral. He was grateful to the small tree, bent way over, that had prevented it from hurtling down the slope with him attached to the side. They'd have to worry about how to get the vehicle back to flat ground after they'd killed the hydra.
Sam wiped his hands perfunctorily on his already ruined jeans and grabbed the second flamethrower from the back of the Jeep. Then he hurried to see what his brother was getting up to.
It wasn't good, naturally. As Sam started down the slope, the first thing he saw was Dean rolling across the ground like he'd been flicked by a giant finger. A misshapen head lowered down toward him, gaping like it would very much like to chew off a literal pound of flesh. Sam yelled something – he didn't even know what – and pulled the rifle off his shoulder.
Oddly, he was thinking about sitting in a Pizza Hut in early December in Hatfield or Hartfield or something North Dakota.
Pizza Hut was a little more expensive than the places they normally frequented, but it was nearly 10pm and the rest of the little town had already rolled up its sidewalks. Dad was surprisingly relaxed, the poltergeist they'd gone after dispersed with a refreshing lack of fuss and pain, the people they'd helped grateful to the tune of $1,000 he'd tried to give back. Dean was bored and goofing around, amusing their 60-something waitress who was the only other person they could see in the entire restaurant.
Normally, Sam would have enjoyed it more, especially fond of bantering with his brother when they weren't in the shadow of yet another hunt, but he was buried deep in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. That didn't stop Dean from vying for his attention, however. Sam ignored him with more skill than usual, utterly captivated by the explorations of will and power and exploitation.
The waitress – Wilma – refilled Sam's coffee (yes, Dad, it's decaf – I'm just cold) and pretended to flirt with Dad when Dean winked at her. Sam felt blindly for the container of sugar to doctor his drink, and Dean slid the shaker of red pepper flakes into his hand, obviously hoping he'd ruin his coffee. But Wilma, without missing a beat in exhorting Dad and Dean to get some chocolate chip cookies for dessert, tapped the side of Sam's boot with one of her orthopedics. He realized what he was holding and correctly guessed that Dean had unscrewed the cap to maximize the damage. In a quick move, Sam dumped it over Dean's pizza instead and pulled his coffee out of range.
Dean sputtered, simultaneously proud and dismayed. It was the very last slice of pizza and he hated peppers. And Dad laughed. Out loud. And declared he'd 'take one for the team' and eat the pizza, since he didn't mind the peppers. Wilma laughed until she snorted and gave them each a cookie for free.
And if the hydra had its way, there would never be another moment like that.
Luckily, while Sam's brain had been freaking out and bringing up nice but unhelpful memories, his body had been shooting. For all he hated it, he had to admit that Dad's constant drilling apparently worked as he reacted automatically. The bullets distracted the stupid, toothy thing, especially when one ripped off the protrusion at the end of the nose closest to Dean. Blood spurted and the head jerked back, the other heads turning to see what was happening, but the reprieve lasted for only a second. It was just enough time for Sam to grab the sword (after almost tripping over it) and run flat-out toward his prone brother. He dove beneath the head, which was descending again, and whipped the sword up. As he passed in front of Dean, the tip of the sword caught the chin of the head coming down. The head in question jerked much farther back this time.
Sam was moving too fast to stop immediately. He tumbled head over heels and it took him a few seconds to regain his feet and detangle everything -- rifle, sword, flamethrower.
By the time he did, Dean was on his feet too, yelling at Sam, but he was too relieved that Dean was alive to care enough to listen to the actual words. We get more moments. Well, if we survive.
Even in the dark, Sam could see that Dean was pissed. That was okay. Sam was pissed too.
Dean dodged yet another pass from the very persistent injured head without turning his eyes from Sam. Another head was clearly lining up for its turn at Dean. Given the fact that there was already an empty neck flopping around, Sam figured that the sword was just as efficacious as they'd hoped. Just...it was still in Sam's hand and Dean wouldn't be able to get to it before the head hit him.
Never throw your weapon, Dad often said. But since I know sometimes you have to, do it right. If you're throwing it at an enemy, make it spin as rapidly as possible to make it harder to track and block. If you're throwing it to an ally, no spin so they can catch it without cutting a finger off.
Thinking of flipping the knife to Dean inside Dave's cabin approximately a million years ago, Sam grabbed the sword just below the hilt, caught Dean's eye, and tossed it. As planned, the sword stayed point down for its entire flight. Dean, being a conquistador and Errol Flynn and maybe even Zorro all rolled into one, caught it by the handle and used the momentum to cut most of the way through the neck of the head that came at him. The neck thrashed uselessly, the head dangling. Dean jumped to cut at it twice more until the head fell to the ground next to him.
By this time, Sam was there to cauterize the stump with the flamethrower he'd carried down the slope.
Then Dean was dragging Sam backwards and the still moving severed head nearly took a bite out of his calf as he stumbled past it. Dean didn't let go until they were way across the clearing from the rampaging monster. It was a good plan. Trees and rocks and everything in its path went flying. Pieces of wood that would be called splinters if not for their sheer size shot past over their heads and Sam and Dean dove behind the trunk of a giant, dying old pine.
"Careful," Dean grunted, indicating where Sam had ahold of his shirt. "Its blood will burn you."
Sam felt a bizarre urge to laugh bubble up in his throat. They'd been kidnapped and tortured by a family of insane witch-hunters and there was a massive hydra with two heads still intact throwing a fit across the clearing from them but Dean felt the need to warn Sam about where to touch his shirt.
Speaking of Dean's top shirt, Sam could now see it was sprinkled with tiny holes like it had been sprinkled with acid. "Huh," he mused. "Now that I think of it, Hercules used to dip his arrows in the hydra's blood. We should see if we can collect some."
"Maybe after it's dead?" Dean asked, a little snottily, to be honest, as they both threw themselves flat in response to something else sailing over their heads.
That tone never failed to awaken the little brother in Sam. "You know, you would've been dead if I hadn't gotten loose!"
"Not the time," Dean answered, and he wasn't wrong. "In a minute, it should settle down a little bit, then we –"
"If you tell me to stay behind, I'll punch you in the face," Sam promised.
Dean sighed, his face jumping from guilty to resolved to finally settle on resigned. "Yeah, guess that ship has sailed. Can you distract it just a little so I can poke at it with the sword? Then it will swing the heads at me so I can reach 'em. And you can burn it after I cut another head off." He didn't look happy about it. "And Sam, those head whip down faster than you'd think."
Sam smirked to cover his sudden nervousness. (It was one thing to rush in in a second of adrenaline and immediate need and a very different one to strategize on the best way to run at a gigantic monster with multiple heads, big teeth, and acid blood.) "You'd know," he teased, then sobered. "You're okay?"
"Enough." Dean had the temerity to shrug at him. "My bruises have bruises but it's nothing I can't handle. And you? What the hell happened to your hands?"
Sam had expected the question. Even in the low light, his hands were clearly bloody. "Somebody tied me to a Jeep, and I got mad and busted a window. Oh, and fyi, zip ties cut you if you try to get out of them." He should've felt guilty about the wince that prompted, but he really didn't. "It's fine. Just shallow cuts. They aren't really even bleeding anymore."
Dean opened his mouth but never got to say whatever it was that was on his mind because the hydra did its hiss/arch/grow/scream routine again. Even the head on the ground screamed, the logistics of which would undoubtedly haunt Sam for a long time. Crap! Wasn't there something in the lore about the heads being unkillable? What had Hercules done about that? Hopefully, they didn't grow new bodies.
"We gotta move," Dean declared. He pointed to the right. "You go to that side and do something loud."
Sam bit his tongue and nodded. The two remaining heads were on the monster's left from their perspective, but he supposed it made sense that the guy with the sword needed to be near his target.
"And – go," Dean directed.
Sam rushed toward the pissed off but no longer flipping out monster. It was awkward, to say the least, with the flamethrower, but he managed to hold it in one arm so he could also have the Ruger out. It was less powerful than the Beretta he still carried, but it was more comfortable to him, sitting in his hand like his own Glock. He had no confidence that a bullet would do any good against the hydra's tough hide, but every creature, supernatural or not, had weak spots. Sam was hoping the hydra's really ugly, long-toed feet were such a spot. After all, once he'd stomped on the pinkie toe of an angry werewolf and the thing had actually cried.
The foot was seriously gross, round with a halo of toes all the way around it. Sam emptied his clip into it. All he got for his trouble was an upward flick of the foot, like it was shooing off a fly. Sam rushed backwards and tripped on the uneven ground. Not only did the hydra not follow up with more of an attack, it kept both of its remaining heads up high.
"I'm fine," Sam called from his position on the ground. Only then did he realize just how close he'd come to landing on his face in a puddle of hydra blood. It had cleared away all the vegetation that it had touched, and Sam sucked in a breath thinking about what would have happened if he'd gotten it all over himself. He scrambled to his feet, noting that he'd broken open something on his hand again. He took a step to just put some distance between himself and the hydra and the blood to regroup and think of a new plan when his movement caused a drip of his blood to fall. His movement caused it to land in the puddle.
That wasn't the interesting part. Where Sam's blood landed, the darker monster's blood bubbled and fizzed. In a second, there was a bare spot of ground where the two kinds of blood had met.
It gave Sam an idea. Iron and blood. That's what the prophecy had said. The sword was iron…
Without thinking too much about it, Sam tucked the gun away and swirled an index finger in air to signal to Dean that he was going to try again. He pulled out the flamberge dagger since he was pretty sure that it had an iron blade. He hastily dragged it through the blood on his wrist and hand, realizing too late that it would have been much easier if he'd set down the stupid flamethrower.
He drew in a breath, then Sam rushed toward the hydra again, this time plunging the blood-soaked dagger into the foot. The dagger slid into the hilt with almost no resistance at all. The hydra screeched and pulled the wounded foot up so fast that Sam almost lost the weapon.
Instinctively, Sam ran toward his brother. When Dean hefted the sword and snapped, "Slide!" Sam complied immediately. He'd never played baseball, but he could slide with the best of them. Something passed above his head, then Dean was jumping over him swinging the sword with abandon. The impact of his blow sent him flying backwards almost into Sam's lap.
"Dammit! Why is this so much harder than before?" Dean demanded, and Sam saw that the neck that was hurtling toward them again was only cut shallowly. Sam ducked even farther down, holding the flamethrower at the ready so he was prepared but not in Dean's way.
This time, Sam saw Dean hit the neck with the sword. He winced as the impact again sent Dean flying backwards. The hit did more damage, but the neck was still not cut even halfway through.
Dean was definitely dazed this time. Sam abandoned the flamethrower to haul Dean and the sword out of immediate range. Dean was a little shaky but came along mostly under his own power, and the string of swear words coming out of his mouth attested to his coherence. Still, it seemed unlikely that he could survive finishing the job at the current rate.
Unless, of course, Sam had a way to make it easier.
He half-shoved Dean to a seated position against a tree that the hydra hadn't gotten to. "Coherency test, Dean," he ordered, panting as he dropped to sit next to his brother.
Sam had expected Dean to balk and complain that he was the older brother, thank you very much. Instead, he swore a little more, then obediently (though not without attitude), started on the typical list they used to help check for a concussion.
Surprised but pleased, Sam surreptitiously tried to wipe blood from his hand onto the sword on his side that wasn't next to Dean. The blood was too scarce and tacky to do much good, unfortunately. Grimacing, Sam pulled up the right sleeves of the coat and shirts and dragged the back of his forearm over the sword edge – the back, because he needed to bleed, but he didn't particularly want to die from blood loss. The sword was sharper than he'd expected and the cut ended up a little deeper than the barely-more-than-a-scratch he'd planned. Still nothing scary or into the muscle, but the blood flowed out easily.
"You okay?" Dean asked suddenly, interrupting himself. The question was calm enough that Sam knew Dean hadn't seen what he'd done.
"Yeah. I think I made the sword better. I'm gonna try to cut that head off the rest of the way."
Dean turned toward Sam suddenly. "Like hell! I'm fine. You can man the flamethrower."
Sam bared his teeth, suddenly back to furious. "Cuz you're doing so well? And I don't have the flamethrower anymore, in case you didn't notice."
Dean took the sword back before Sam realized what he was doing. But he didn't yell or argue the way Sam had expected. "I...I have to be the one to do this," he said softly.
That pulled Sam up short, since more than once on this crazy trip he'd had similar feelings, all the way back to wanting to investigate. His anger didn't quite die, but it did retreat to the back of his attention. While he chewed over his response, Dean glanced around.
"The flamethrower I brought down is right there," he pointed. It was between them and head number three, which was systematically sniffing along the ground as if searching for them, heedless of the blood still pouring from its wound. Speaking of wounds, Sam hastily pulled his sleeve down.
"Okay," he agreed. "On three?"
Dean relaxed slightly and moved to a crouch. He counted down.
This attack went very differently from all of the previous ones. Sam went straight for the flamethrower and still barely was ready by the time the head was rolling on the ground because this time, the sword passed through the neck as smoothly as if it were cutting a banana. The components of the flamethrower rattled a little when Sam picked it up, but it still spit out flame just fine. He kind of wanted to try to burn the newly removed head next, especially when it snapped abortively at Dean, but he didn't know how much fuel he had.
They retreated back, ending up going as far as they possibly could without crossing a stream or climbing the hill back to the Jeep to avoid a truly impressive hissy fit from the hydra with its one remaining head. They watched in silence for a few minutes, a testament to just how tired they were.
"That last head never comes down," Dean said at last. "I won't be able to cut it off without getting on top of snake-face's body." He didn't turn, but Sam could practically hear him frown. "What did you do to the sword? Cuz holy crap did it work!"
"I bled on it," Sam blurted. "Iron and blood, remember?"
"What?! Well, I'll bleed on it this time."
"No," Sam answered. "I have to. Besides, I'm already bleeding, so why bother to cut yourself?" He wasn't at all sure that it had to be his blood, but he was done with Dean insisting that he had to do everything himself. He looked at the hydra and wasn't nearly as alarmed as he should be to see that it was a lot closer than he'd expected. Somebody once said that people can get used to anything...Sam wondered if he'd just gotten too used to danger and adrenaline for it to affect him much at the moment. "You think it's a self-preservation instinct that it never lowers that one head? Cuz it can't die until all of the heads are cut off?" he asked almost idly.
Dean looked at him oddly. "Everything good?"
Actually, Sam wasn't feeling so great. but he wasn't about to admit that to Mr. Overprotective. "Yeah. Give me the sword. How are you gonna get on top of the hydra?"
Dean handed over the sword, but his scowl was clearly visible. It grew deeper when Sam pulled up his sleeve to coax more blood from his long cut. "What did you do, Sammy?"
"Saved your ass, among other things." Sam handed the sword back. "If the hydra comes close enough to the hill here, you might be able to jump on its back."
"We're not finished with this conversation," Dean warned, but Sam was so far past caring he did nothing but shrug.
"After we talk about zip ties," he shot back. He was pretty sure Dean's eye was twitching.
Dean took two long, slow breaths. "Fine. Later. Look, that's a good idea. Let's get a little farther up the hill and shoot at it, see if we can get it over here. Then, uh, once I cut off the head, you can toss me the flamethrower."
Sam nodded slowly. He hated the plan but didn't have a better one. Losing his attitude for a moment, he said. "Be careful."
"Always!"
Sam got the sword well and truly coated with blood even though the cut was already starting to clot up. They moved up the hill and Dean readied himself. This is insane, Sam thought as he took aim at one of the snout protrusions, remembering how sensitive they seemed to be. At Dean's signal, Sam fired.
It worked better than he'd thought. His three shots took off two of the nose thingies and the hydra was pissed. It charge toward them a lot faster than Sam had seen it move so far. Dean jumped onto its back and cut off the head in one fell swoop, but the monster's thrashing sent him flying. Sam gulped and fired the flamethrower himself, liberally spraying its back because he couldn't see what he was really aiming for very well, since Dean had cut the neck so close to the base.
The monster's body smashed into the hill below Sam so hard that he went flying in one direction and the flamethrower, still shooting, went flying the other. The hydra was still running (why wasn't it dead?!) and smashed blindly into the hill again, nearly crushing Sam. He half-crawled, half-rolled the rest of the way down as the vegetation behind him began to burn. He hoped desperately that once the accelerant from the weapon was gone the fire would go out.
He hoped even more desperately that he'd find his brother unhurt.
The hydra smashed itself into the hill yet again and a familiar voice complained, "Son of a bitch!"
"Dean!" Sam found the energy to jump to his feet and run to the familiar figure. He grabbed Dean only to let go quickly when Dean gasped.
"Arm's busted, I think," Dean gritted out. He held it carefully against himself and let Sam help him up with his right arm. "Why isn't King Cobra dead?"
"Maybe it was still growing more heads or something...oh shit." As the hydra body continued to smash itself into the hillside, the impact caused the little tree holding the Jeep in place to snap. The vehicle began a slow, inevitable trek down the hill.
The Jeep that was full of dynamite. Rolling toward the rapidly-spreading fire.
"Dean, water, Poughkeepsie," Sam gasped, not knowing how to convey the urgency of the situation any faster.
To his credit, Dean didn't ask a single question. He and Sam pulled each other toward the closest stream as fast as they could stumble along. They plunged into the freezing water and, as it closed over their heads, an explosion shook the ground and blackness closed around Sam like a giant fist.
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AN: Fyodor Dostoevsky was the one who wrote that "Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything" in his book The House of the Dead.
From what I understand King Cobra is the moniker for a giant snake that King Kong fought in the 1976 movie that bears the latter's name.
Long Live BRUCAS: Dean's lucky that Sam got free as fast as he did! Such a big monster is definitely at least a 2-man job.sfaulkenberry: Doesn't sound like Sam's going to let Dean off the hook for his little stunt, assuming they survive the explosion and everything. You're right about the (unintentional) similarity to Euphemism and Sam vs the tarasque dragon. Maybe I'm in a rut!
sylvia37: Me too! I was actually angrier about the one with Ketch because he didn't seem to have even a sort of reasonable explanation and Sam was obviously so hurt. Maybe this chapter helped you feel a little less mad? Also, Dean won't get off the hook...promise!
stedan: Sam to the rescue! He's already kind of giving Dean crap for his actions too.
muffinroo: Absolutely -- Sam got the run in to the rescue! While I know that they're still very young, I doubt Sam will just shrug off Dean's actions...unless they die hard the explosion, of course.
Timelady66: I'm so happy you liked the monster! I literally told Janice that I wanted to have the boys fight a baby hydra and set off a big explosion -- that was the motivation behind the entire story. Also it's so nice to hear that you find Dean's actions in character for him at such a young age. And naturally smart Sam figured out to get loose!
Colby's girl: Munificence is such a great word! Yeah, it took a LONG time for Dean to get that message. I thought about his actions for a long time before actually writing them out because I knew they'd bother people, but in the end I thought it felt authentic. Hopefully I'm right! I'm thrilled that you liked the reveal of the hydra. I was so excited to write about it!
Chiiva: I love that you said Dean was grounding Sam! What a fabulous way to characterize it. And how nice to hear that you found the chapter both interesting and so readable (if that's a thing). Thanks for the encouragement!