But then thine soul in shape of a white butterfly waltzes through the darkness, my sweet little lullaby.
Someone somewhere once said that life is what you make it. That person could have been the Dahlia Lama or maybe a gas station worker with a bald spot sick of running through a never ending play of filling up tanks, in rain sleet snow or hail. To Dean it was much more realistic and comforting to take off with the latter, to believe that at one point in time a guy named… Guy was so unhappy about going outside in a thunderstorm to fill up an old woman's Coupe De Ville he muttered "Life is what you make it" while he was being drenched to the bone, grease washing into his eyes as he stood waiting for the nearsighted granny with shotty glasses to find that last nickel in her coin purse.
Life really is what you make it, Dean supposed, and as he lay sputtering on the floor he wished he could meet this Guy and shake his hand. He also hoped the gas station employee wasn't a lefty who liked to sing Hymns.
It was almost humorous the spot Dean was in. His throat felt like it had been burnt raw and every time he took a gasping inhalation the fire erupted again, he was almost positive he would blow fire like some kind of freakish human dragon. That made him laugh, imagining himself spitting fire, and even if he didn't laugh he'd still be propelled into a coughing fit. His beautiful, studly lungs were going to come flying out of his mouth along with a swollen throat with its bowler hat and suitcase if he didn't stop his coughing. When his spell eventually did subside he needed oxygen again, lots of it, and that brought him back to stage one.
If that's what if felt like to breathe, he wasn't going to try to speak anytime soon. But maybe he could roll over and silently reprimand Sam for slapping him across the face; his cheeks hurt almost as much as his back and hand, and speaking of hand–
No, rolling over was most definitely a bad idea.
Pain shot up his arm, white hot searing pain that made stars fly across his line of vision. It was enough to make Dean yelp and collapse back to his right side, rap his head on the pavement for the second time since that demon prick let go of him. He was in a fine mess and the thought of not being able to drive his Beauty, of having to let Sam take the wheel, made him groan – or at least try to, his throat hurt so much.
He was going to cast a pathetic longing glance at his baby, but when he moved his eyes toward the car he couldn't see it. Not because it had suddenly disappeared, though the thought did streak in and out of Dean's hazy mind, but because his view of the car was being blocked by Johnny and Trude.
It made his headache worse trying to watch what was going on, made his head absolutely pound when he squinted in efforts to speed up his recharging ability to see, but shutting his eyes and going to sleep wasn't an option. Sam would think him dead if he gave in to how tired he was, if he simply closed his eyes to block out all the stimuli attacking his brain and overwhelming him. If Sam thought Dean was dead he'd be slapped and jostled again, upping his pain tenfold. So, as not to be treated like a bottle of chocolate milk for a second time, Dean wormed his way closer to his brother and buried his face by his knee, then shut his eyes because if he didn't he'd make himself sick studying the pattern of Sammy's jeans at such a close range.
Sweet blackness, he never thought he'd want to say that again, but it really was a relief to pare down his senses to feeling and hearing. He didn't want to have to listen to this, though. Maybe one of his Led Zeppelin tapes – yeah, a Whole Lotta Love would fix him right up – but not this.
What Dean was hearing but not seeing was Trude finally, if not reluctantly, taking a stand and Sam sitting dazed and thankful beside him as the college nerd tried to collect himself. He had the gun in his possession again, but what kind of good would that do?
Sam was staring down at the revolver, playing with it in his hands like it was his first time ever seeing one. He had loaded it with real bullets, not rock salt blocks like Dean had outfitted the shotgun with, but he couldn't remember why he had done that. When his brother had fired it, taking the count of the full barrel down by one, it had gone straight through the specter and into the garage's thermostat on the south wall (which he just noticed was always kept at a comfortable sixty-eight degrees). Bullets did nothing to a geist with the density of fog.
Wait a minute. Density. Yeah, density, that's the ticket!
Unable to stand up because of Dean's face crunched up against his leg, Sam waved his gun around to gain Trude's attention – who for some strange reason was slipping into her conversation with Johnny a game they used to play when she was young. Unbeknownced to Sam, Trude had gotten the same bright idea that had just struck him, only far earlier when she saw the broken plastic of the thermostat behind Sam's head when he was yelling at her. She had been convinced it wouldn't work, would be yet another notch of failure on her belt, but since Sam said she had got to do something….
"You're right, Johnny, I know they're taking shovels and axes to something they shouldn't, but we hardly know them. We both know how you work: you don't kill strange people," Trude explained in a newly found tone of voice, like a teacher speaking to a little child. "You try to scare them within an inch of their lives, like when you did when I was little, but you never kill them. That's not what you do." That's what she had been saying when Sam started waving at her like a lunatic.
"Trude, dear, you're doing it again. You're convinced you can stop me, but you know very well that for all your efforts you're just going to have the rubberneck's blood all over you. I hope you don't catch something, Lucifer knows where he's been."
Dean called out in protest, wanted to point out that he might have had a ratio of ninety percent skull to ten percent brain but he wasn't that stupid. Unfortunately with his traumatized throat and the position his face was in the neighing he made was hardly audible.
The gun needed to be re-cocked. The sinking sensation Sam was feeling, the "Oh, no" running through him because cocking a revolver wasn't exactly a silent task, prevented him from reacting to the geist's remark.
"I know, I know," Trude said in a bored manner. "That's what I was trying to tell them, but obviously they're not the strangest noose in the barn. Still, strangers aren't on your hit-list and you'd be losing your cool if you strayed away from that, wouldn't you?"
Johnny had one single plus against all his minuses: he took what Trude said into consideration. "Actually, I think it would drive a little life into me, make me a little more formidable."
There it was, the window of opportunity she had been waiting for. "You know you don't need to kill a couple of strange men – who, by the way, are bound to be thrown in jail for the rest of their lives eventually – to become more formidable. Remember, Johnny, when I was little? You'd make yourself solid and then disappear, terrify the other kids because you knew no one would believe them if they told. That's awe inspiring enough, don't you think? I mean," she laughed, "offing a couple strangers is nothing compared to solidifying and showing your true form."
The demon tilted its head, but said nothing.
Sam was slowly, slowly readying the gun. Luckily, either intentionally or not, Dean lapsed into another coughing fit loud enough to mask the click! of the revolver cocking. He smiled down at his brother, who nodded weakly with a lopsided grin.
"You haven't done it in years, though," Trude observed carefully. "I don't think you can do it anymore. Your memory's gotten spotty and you've forgotten. In that case, go ahead…." And she waved a hand at the Winchester brothers.
Even demons from Hell have egos, very big fragile ones in fact.
Johnny puffed himself up, not that he needed to. "Now, just you wait a minute! Who says I've forgotten anything? You've forgotten who I am, child!"
Trude made a spot on recreation of the teenager born eye rolling, head cocking, eyebrow raising one shoulder shrug. "I know," she said, blandly, throwing up her hands. "'The great Archangel's right hand man, blah-blah-blaah'."
Dean hoped Trude would make it through this, she was anything but a columnist for a local newspaper. Deep down, though, he wanted to be able to arrange a marriage between Soft Top and his Black Beauty. They'd have to do it in San Fransisco, of course, in a church with a massive dehumidafier.
The specter snorted in revulsion to Trude's lackluster response. "That's right, dear Trude. I forget nothing, I'm–"
"Worse than Hybris," Trude quipped dryly. "Really, for a demon you have some very deep seeded emotion issues."
Letting out an angry scream, one scary enough to make Trude shriek and she was the one trying to fool the thing, the geist whirled around to face the brothers. That wouldn't have been so bad had the demon looked like Johnny, the painfully handsome evil villain, and not like…. Oh, God, there was just too much fowlness to clip a name to.
It was certainly of a solid form now, but Sam had to shut his eyes and turn his head away for any hope of saving even the smallest amount of his sanity. He had never understood the phrase "so frightening as to make a man go daft" but, boy howdy, did he ever understand it now.
Even in his worse nightmares as a child, as an adult, Sam's mind had never been able to conjure up something as frightening as Johnny's true form. That fact alone was enough to start him screaming. That there could something in the world so terrifyingly ugly, so downright hideous that the human imagination could not come even remotely close to was beyond comprehension and all forms of insanity. A schizophrenic in his worst delusions couldn't create something as monstrous as the thing lumbering toward the brothers.
The floor was shaking, actually shaking, as the thing (it looked like no animal or human or combination of the two) took impossibly large strides over to the other side of the garage, over to the shivering from fear Sam and the very confused but not wanting to ask Dean. It seemed like no time at all before Sam felt hot breath on the left side of his face, smelt the stench of sulfur and death and blackness so disgustingly strong as to make him gag.
But there was a part of Sam that wasn't screaming (whether it was just in his head or out loud, he didn't stop to care about), that wasn't leaning his body back to shelter his still wheezing-sputtering-coughing brother with a shattered hand. There was a part of Sam that was still on a planet earth filled with evil he needed to protect people from, still a part of him that consciously raised the revolver and emptied four bullets into the very heart of the creature that most definitely embodied every last speck of evil on Sam's earth. Four bullets; one for his mother, one for his whereabouts unknown father, one for Jessica, and one for Dean because Dean would have shot the thing for trying to make him a corpse (a damn handsome one, but a corpse all the same).
With his eyes still closed and body still turned in a makeshift shield covering his brother Sam wasn't able to see Satan's main squeeze explode into black flame – of all things, black flame – and pitch backward into an endless pit that opened up under the main portrait of villainy, a pit that closed without a trace of its existence soon after.
A decade later Sam, wondering why he wasn't demon meat by now, opened one eye and came to the realization that his right arm had gone numb on him. He was still holding the gun up high with finger poised on the trigger. Maybe it was out of shock he dropped it and looked down at Dean.
"What," the almost brunette was trying to say, but with voice failing him and a throat being strained he gave up – more like had to, Sam wouldn't let him speak.
"Don't try to talk," he demanded lightly. "I don't know what happened, I had my eyes closed through the whole thing."
Dean let his trademark smile shine, without words telling his brother all he needed to know.
"Shut up," Sam said, smirking softly. "I didn't exactly feel you take your face out of my leg, I bet I'll forever have your face mark there. Just what I need," he added sarcastically.
Wriggling away from his geek brother, Dean used his unbroken hand this time in trying to roll over and get up. Every bone in his body ached, his head felt like one big pulsing vein, but he managed to get himself on his knees with his right hand on the floor to prop him up. When he saw that Sam wasn't hurting himself in rushing over to Dean's aid, he looked behind him and threw a dirty look.
Intimidation helped nothing, Sam wasn't even looking at him – how rude – but over at the cars.
Dean sighed, coughed a few times because he sighed, and slowly turned and lifted his head to look at whatever it was that fascinated Sam so much. What Dean saw added salt to all his wounds.
Trude was sitting on the hood of Soft Top, which wasn't so bad, but what was was how she was sitting: hunched over with her head down and a hand to her chest, over a large red stain on her white Remmington Arms t-shirt, right above her heart.
&&&
"So do I look sexy with my hand done up like this? Be honest with me now," Dean requested with a smile, looking out of Black Beauty's passenger window at his visitors.
He still had the hand mark bruises around his neck, though they were close to gone now, and his left hand wasn't done healing quite yet which meant he wouldn't drive (well, he could, but Sam wouldn't hear of it). But it could have been worse, he could have his hand back in that contraption on loan from Pin Head, the one they put it in when he was in the hospital so that the pins would stay where they needed to.
Jo grinned and leaned into the car almost nose to nose with Dean. "You'll always look sexy to me, babe, but make sure you come by when your hand's all better. I'll give you a manicure."
A hand came in through the window, gently yanked Jo out of the car by her shoulder. It was Trude, laughing softy. "Enough, Jo, I don't think he wants to be your guinea pig."
Trude recently had the stitches removed from her chest (deep cut-like wounds, but they hadn't been life threatening) and she now seemed like a totally different woman from the one Sam and Dean had met. Her eyes were clearer, in a sense, then they had ever been before and she appeared to operate like a normal human being for the first time in her life. However, she no longer dreamed at all – only complete blackness, she explained – and had lost most if not all of her personality after what had happened. So, yes, she really was a different woman than the one who had strolled up behind Dean that day with the comment about Beauty's value being killed.
She and Jo were going to go on a road trip to Montreal, Canada when Little Blondie came to spring break. Trude had lost her job (she couldn't write anymore and even if she could, concentration was now only a word in the dictionary) and felt like the two needed a little sister bonding time.
But for all the loses that came with Johnny being sent back to where he belonged, Trude couldn't have thanked the Winchester brothers enough for what they had done. She had, Dean thanked God for, not lost her know-how with cars and invited the brothers to stop by her garage if they ever found themselves in whichever city Trude had decided to move to. She was getting her fresh start after all those years and if the Winchester boys didn't hurry up they would miss theirs.
Life is what you make it, Guy the disgruntled gas station attending once said. Dean was fairly sure that if that Coupe De Ville driving grandmother had taken more time in her search of a nickel so she would have exact change Guy would have also muttered, "And there comes a point when you're too far into the blueprints to switch plans" in that downpour.
So with some heartfelt good-byes, off the Winchester brothers went down the line of the lives they had built. But unlike what Guy might have added to his rant that become a mantra of wisdom, Dean knew that sometimes lives can become damaged; pipes can spring leaks, making a nasty yellow water stain appear on your bedroom ceiling. The trick is to replace that pipe and fix up the water stain without tearing down the rest of your beautiful Victorian house because, sometimes, we run into things that we may not like but we still love our home even though it might have a drafty attic or a slanting foundation.
Dean wasn't one to read like the fortune in a fortune cookie, and those thoughts confused him. He had never liked metaphors and thinking about them and blueprints and water stains made him get a tension headache. Or maybe that was because of the way Sam was driving.
"Be careful," he started pestering three miles down the interstate. "She doesn't like it when you go against her. Just relax and flow with her and, jeez, stop being so stiff with the steering wheel. She's just like any other woman, Sammy, and doesn't appreciate being treated like how you're treating her. You're not five and playing the racing game at Chuck E. Cheese's, here."
Sam scowled at the bumper of the car in front of him. "If you don't stop that, so help me… I'll break your other hand."
"I'm just saying, Sammy," Dean said as he swapped out tapes in the player. "Gentle."
"Yeah. Gentle. Uh-huh."
Dean looked up at his brother. "You never did appreciate her."
"It's just a car, Dean."
He gaped, put a hand to Beauty's heating vents. "Don't you ever say that again, Sammy! You hurt her feelings!"
Sam actually giggle-snorted.
"I find nothing funny about insulting a beautiful car."
Now he was laughing.
"Sammy, being mean to a classic is not amusing! Stop laughing, your eyes'll get watery and you won't be able to see what your doing."
Make that howling.
Dean glowered. "Sam, this is not funny!"
"I take it back," Sam said when he had quelled his laughter enough to speak.
"Good, but don't say that to me. You need to say that Beauty. Sammy, tell her you're sorry."
Sam shook his head, smiling. "Not about that, I still think it's just a car. I take back what I said about you not having a scrap of heart in your body, about not being able to understand what it's like to love someone."
"Thank you," Dean grumbled though there was earnest in his words. "That means a lot to me, Sammy, it really does."
Curtain.