Sam's eyeballing the burnt pieces of paper, pulling up maps on his phone, and punching the numbers all the way down the elevator and out the door. Cas is silent, letting him focus. At the Impala reenters their line of sight, Sam announces, "It's looking like the two locations are Minot, North Dakota and Bradfordsville, Kentucky. Or someplace very near them."
Cas hesitates; then, "Are we splitting up?"
Sam casts a glance at him that broadcasts whatever remains of alarm when you subtract the surprise, and he looks back at his phone. Instead of directly answering, he continues, "We are, at this moment, almost three hours closer to Minot than to Bradfordsville. Minot's a fairly sizeable city, population of about 45,000. Bradfordsville's tiny. Barely 300 people. And honestly, I'm not sure this little fleck is directly on it." He pulls out the map of Kentucky and holds it sideways, examining it. "Might be a bit to the east. Hard to tell really. Point is, there aren't a lot of big cities in the area."
"Would that perhaps be a more ideal spot for Cain, based on what Dean told us about the last place he was living?" Cas ventures, uncertain. "I mean, it's harder to maintain a low profile in such a small town, but if he might actually be outside the town…"
"Exactly. And based on what Crowley told me over the phone, Dean's biggest mission right now is just to find places he can get totally hammered, play pool, and start bar fights. Not a lot of prospects for that in a town of three hundred." Sam shoves his phone into his pocket without turning it off and withdraws the keys to the Impala, obviously struggling to juggle everything with his injured arm. As he unlocks the doors and pulls open that of the driver, he says, "I don't like the idea of splitting up. Whatever we end up finding, we're gonna need backup. But the fact that Crowley has the means to easily set up this spell as many times as we need it is, to be honest, a huge advantage and comfort. And especially if Dean has no master plan he's working on right now, I'm way more uncomfortable with splitting up than I am with just taking a risk and maybe wasting twenty hours of driving." To punctuate his speech, he turns the keys in the ignition.
Cas is silent for a moment, processing his logic. He seems to deem it sound, and nods. "All right then. Minot, here we come."
They stop once near the Nebraska-South Dakota border for gas. Sam charges Cas with refueling while he makes a pit stop and a run into the convenience store for snacks and a ready-made salad and sandwich. They have over nine hours left in the car, and on the chance that they actually find exactly what they're looking for, Sam needs to have some energy.
He asks Cas to take over driving after that, grateful that the angel now has some experience behind the wheel, and uses the freedom of his hands to safely partake in the gas station food and read up on recent Minot news. There've been a few murders in the last week, but none of the reports note anything particularly supernatural. Sam makes some calls, introducing himself as Agent Tull following up on a tip that a dangerous criminal may be hiding out in the area. He skirts around the physical description by saying that the culprit's face has never been seen, nor indeed has his race been identified, but most accounts describe him as rather muscular and tall. He's spitballing, really. He has no idea what kind of person Dean might be wearing, but he strongly suspects he'd at least choose somebody who's physically fit.
He's worn out after an hour of phone conversations and tries to get some shut eye. He even succeeds for about ten minutes, but wakes up again for unknown reasons and can't go back to sleep.
With so much time on the road, he and Cas have opportunity to talk like they haven't had at all in the past two and a half weeks. Sam has no idea how to fill the silence. Finally, Cas asks, "Do we have anything resembling a plan?"
Sam blinks. "Use the map of North Dakota, follow whatever it is Crowley meant that he said we'd recognize that will get us close to the Mark. If it's Cain, withdraw. If it's Dean, immobilize him, bring him back to the bunker, complete the cure." He nods once, decisively.
"If it's neither? Or it is Dean, and we fail? Will we immediately go back to Crowley?"
Sam is silent.
"Sam, that's an outline of a plan, sure. Good start. But we need more."
He releases a long sigh. "You're right. You're right." He rubs one hand down his face, painfully aware that Cas is counting on him for almost the entirety of that plan. They both know Dean, but it's not Dean they're dealing with here. They can't approach this as a brother, or a friend. This is a hunting job.
"No chance at all of him being cooperative, I gather?" Cas ventures.
Sam looks over at him, blinking. Slowly he realizes that Cas, indeed, never had any contact with the demonized version of Dean beyond the precious few seconds he trapped him in his arms before he smoked out. And Sam hasn't said a word to Cas about what happened between them since then.
He does not want to talk about this, or indeed think about it. That wasn't Dean who hurled all those cruel words at him; Sam was ready to forget their short, heated conversations entirely, as merely the twisted products of a tormented soul that would be healed soon.
But that was when there was an end in sight. It's sprung far ahead of them now, at least far enough that they can't see where it is, and can only stumble almost blindly along a dimly lit trail in the hopes that they find it. And Cas ought to know what Sam has already put behind him on that trail.
"No," he finally says, in answer to Cas's question. "No, I don't think so."
Cas heaves a shallow, controlled sigh.
"I keep trying to tell myself it wasn't him, Cas," Sam whispers, and that sure catches the angel's attention, enough that it's evident to Sam even through his peripherals. "That he was… 'in there somewhere,' but the guy I was talking to wasn't Dean. But…" He breathes in deep, wipes at his eyes once, despite their being bone dry. "But I looked into his eyes. I heard the way he talked to me. It was Dean, just a little angrier… well, a lot angrier… and sans filter. It's like all the Mark really did to him was remove the dam he's been building up for his entire life and… and there was so much crap behind that dam that he got swept along with it. He's glad it's gone; it's a relief. And I can't fault him for it. I've been wanting him to stop construction for a long time." A sardonic chuckle rises from him. "I just… always pictured it going somewhat differently."
"Sam." Cas sounds extremely grave. Worried. But not about Dean this time. "Listen to yourself. You really think Dean, your brother, still being himself, would try to kill you with a hammer?"
He throws up a hand submissively. "No, of course not. I don't mean… Sure. I guess I didn't put that into words so well. Of course it did more to him than that, but… but if I try saying he's a different guy it's like I'm trying to invalidate everything he said to me. When in reality, he was just voicing the grievances he'd always really had because he could finally let himself. They were real. I can't pretend they weren't." He feels like he was going to keep talking, but the micro-pause after these words suddenly gets an extension when he feels Cas's curiosity—more than that, his need to know—burning up the air between them.
He gives it a couple seconds, pulling his scattered thoughts together. He's about ready to talk when Cas finally gives in and asks, "What did he say?"
Sam makes another rough swipe at his eyes, his nose starting to prickle. "I… I think the Mark opened a lot of old wounds for him. Really went far back. He… He talked about our parents. Said that our Dad 'brainwashed' us, that it's… that it's my fault he grew up without a mother. And that last part is true at least, but—"
"Sam. No, it isn't."
Sam ignores him, and presses on: "But he—the real Dean, the human Dean, the silent sufferer, whatever the hell you want to call the version of him that he was before he died—he never would have said it before. Now that he's letting himself, am I supposed to ignore it? Just shrug and say 'Demons lie' and go on?"
"Sam—"
"Demons lie, yeah, and he's a demon, but he's also Dean, and—"
"Sam," Cas cuts him off forcefully, "you are asking questions that neither of us can answer. Your brother has become something that has only one precedent since the dawn of time and all we can do is speculate. We can't waste energy asking questions like this. Let's just establish this: he is Dean, he is a demon, and we can't trust a thing he says while he's like this, so we're going to change him back and ask him direct."
His eyes, locked on Sam, who can only stare back, glow a soft blue as he speaks, and the quiet certainty burning in his voice finds its way into Sam's heart and spreads from his chest throughout his entire body. And he's not sure if it's an angel thing, or if he just knew in this instance exactly what to say and how to say it, or if the conviction he seems to hold of their imminent success is genuine and infectious, but after that, Sam breathes a little easier.