Seven

When Dean left the motel room, gathering everything he owned back into the old duffel bag, he hadn't meant to upset his parents so much; he knew that defying them was not something to be taken lightly however. It was the first time in nearly two decades that Dean was turning away from his father who had controlled every moment of his life since Mary died. Dean laughed quietly as he popped the latch on the Impala's trunk, thinking of the irony in the situation that Sam, perfect little college boy, was teaching Dean to go against their father. It was something Sam would get a good punch for if they ever met again.

Dean assumed, anyway, that his father would forgive him eventually. After all, John had softened to Sam as the years passed and even began to reluctantly accept the idea that his youngest son was going to college. Perhaps, too, with time, John would accept that his oldest son was preparing to cross the line between life and death to save that same younger son. It was something that Dean would hope for, but never fully expect.

As Dean loaded guns with silver bullets and others with rock salt, Mary tried to reason with him yet again by his car. She had barely been alive for a day, and she was already back into the maternal role she had abandoned too young when Dean's last major crisis in life had been not wanting to eat his peas.

"Dean, it's the middle of the night, where are you going?"

"To where it started," Dean sighed, shutting the trunk with a slam. "Maybe there'll be some answers there or something left behind from the ghost."

She sighed, looking back to the motel room where John stood in the screened doorway. His dark figure crossed its arms, and although Dean couldn't see his father's scowl, he knew it existed like it had when Sam left for California. Ignoring John's displeasure, Mary moved forward and grasped Dean's hands in her own. "Just be careful, okay?"

"Always am. Dad taught us first aid quickly," he joked. Unlike John, Mary understood her son's offbeat humor and responded to it better than her husband.

Reaching up, she touched the side of his face, and a playful look quickly came into her eyes. "Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"You might want to shave, too. Can't go into the underworld looking like a caveman."

As they both quietly chuckled, Dean realized just how much he had missed that beautiful sound coming from his mother. He would forever believe that she sounded like an angel when she laughed. Before the warm moment faded, Mary embraced her son and pulled him to her tightly. Dean was silent and rested his head on his mother's shoulder and reflected on what he was preparing to do. As Mary stepped back, she kissed Dean on the cheek and smiled with tears glazing her eyes. "Do what you have to," she said with a smile, "but just promise me you'll come back."

Dean smiled, wanting to be optimistic for his mother, even if he didn't know he could uphold such a vow. "I promise."

She didn't say anything, but gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder, which was covered by his leather jacket, and she allowed him to step inside the creaking Impala. Heavyhearted, Dean watched her figure grow smaller in his rearview mirror as he drove out of the motel's parking lot and headed into town. His good-bye had been short and sweet, which was how he usually preferred them to be, but he couldn't help to feel that he was lacking something. Maybe he was being foolish in going on this adventure, and he quickly pushed those thoughts from his mind.

Nevertheless, a little voice in him wondered if he would ever see his parents again.

As it was well past midnight, the majority of the stores in the town were dark with their doors tightly locked. Dean considered their closings to be a blessing, as there would be fewer people around to serve as witnesses to his latest crimes. Breaking into the locked doors was far less a problem than questioning townspeople. The last thing he needed was a nosy neighbor wondering why there was a man who, picking locks, was loaded down with more weapons than city's entire police force.

Dean parked the Impala in the abandoned parking lot of a restaurant and crawled in the backseat. Clutching a large hunting knife to his chest, he dozed lightly as he had not slept in over twenty-four hours. He knew that he needed to be fully alert for what he was undertaking. When the alarm on his cell phone woke him only a few hours later, he felt only slightly refreshed, but still fatigued. Fortunately, he had enough sleep that he could reasonably function, which was more than what he had before the brief nap.

After making sure he was properly protected with everything he could reasonably carry on his person, Dean slammed the trunk lid of the Impala shut and pulled out his homemade EMF device. Placing the headphones in his ears, he walked towards the restaurant Sam and he had eaten breakfast in when the god first came to them.

Dean moved slowly around the perimeter, sweeping the device back and forth, but catching nothing out of the ordinary. Only typical crackling came through the headphones, leaving Dean with a feeling of defeat. Considering that the entire restaurant had been destroyed and rebuilt in less than a day by the hand of some crazed deity, Dean assumed the place would have been crawling with paranormal activity.

Following his time around the restaurant, he went to the park across the street. The park also was empty, as the late night couples had gone home with the first signs of the rising sun. Dean yawned heavily, wishing that he had gotten more than two hours of sleep in the backseat of his car that night. But, time was of the essence, and he told his exhausted body that he would sleep more at the first chance he got.

After walking to the area where he first awoken after the deity had destroyed the land with the powerful storm, Dean bent to the ground and waved the device over the dew-covered grass. There was a slow crackle, only a slight increase from the restaurant, but nothing to get excited about. If anything, it was only a small patch of forgotten radioactive material from an old plant. Nothing that would lead him any further to Sam.

Scrunching his brow in frustration, Dean waved the device towards an area where he remembered the large vortex being placed.

"Dean!" There was a crackle in Dean's headphones, and he lifted his head at hearing his brother's voice.

He looked to the rising sun.

"Sam?"

Dean pulled the headphones from his ears and stuffed the device into his pocket. While he thought he had heard his brother's voice, sound alone was not completely reassuring. It was very possible for the deity to be mimicking Sam's voice in order to further confuse Dean. He pulled a shotgun loaded with rock salt from underneath the crook of his arm and held it out in front of him with his finger tight on the cold trigger.

"Sammy?" he repeated, turning in circles and trying to pinpoint where he had heard the voice.

There came an exasperated sigh from one of the trees, and Dean saw the faint outline of a hand, followed by an arm pushing through the air and finally the rest of Sam's body. Sam was faint, lacking all color in the style of an old movie when color television was first invented. Dean's eyes widened, and he swore under his breath, nearly dropping the gun upon seeing his brother in such a ghostly format.

"Sam!" His voice was a hiss mixed with question and shock.

"I'm back!" Sam grinned triumphantly. He walked towards Dean and tried to hit him on the shoulder when his hand passed through Dean's body.

"Or not," Dean replied with a grimace as put the end of the gun towards the ground so he could rest his hands on the weapon's butt.

Sam sighed again in anger. "It's Sam, anyway, jerk."

"What? Oh, yeah, Sam." There was a pause in the conversation then as the awkwardness of their situation began to emerge. Sam looked away from Dean towards the sun, which glowed with warm reds and oranges. The small flecks of dew on the grass caught the early morning rays, and they glittered like diamonds on the green blades. While Sam was admiring the realistic scenery, Dean eyed Sam's translucent skin and clothes. "So, you're really dead?" Dean asked.

Sam shrugged aimlessly, attempting to be nonchalant about the situation, before he focused back at Dean. "I guess so, or as dead as I can be, given the circumstances."

"What exactly does that mean? 'Given the circumstances?'"

"Something went wrong in the trade, I think. You remember how the god said whoever crossed over wouldn't be in pain?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I've been in pain since I got here."

Dean snorted. "So, he lied. I'm not surprised. It's not like he was going to advertise the fact that after we died, we'd be in pain. Wouldn't exactly cause us to jump at the chance, huh?"

"There's more though. He also said that we wouldn't recognize the fact that we're dead. Dean, I know I could be dead. Everybody else here? They don't understand that they could be dead. They're so…confused. But, I know what's going on."

Dean slid down against a tree and stretched his legs out in front of him, hooking one ankle over the other. With the gun resting safely in his lap, Dean scratched at his prickled chin while Sam moved down next to him. For the first time, Dean noticed that he was able to see the grass beneath Sam's transparent legs. "What are you saying?" Dean asked.

"I think something went wrong in the trade."

"Right, we've established that." Dean chewed on the inside of his lip before speaking, "Does the god know about it?"

"If he does, he hasn't come packing yet, let's put it that way."

"Where are you exactly?"

"It's hard to explain. The underworld really isn't a place…it's more of a series of places all meshed together. Right now, there's this room and there was a door that I just stepped through…and I thought that I could get back to the world—"

"Well, you are back."

"Just not alive…which is kind of what I was hoping for when I crossed over. You know, all that good stuff of breathing oxygen and everything."

"Yeah…" Dean was feeling more alert than he had since Sam first left, and his brain was eagerly turning with all the possibilities that now awaited with Sam speaking to him. "So, there's no way that you can get back, then?"

"Not that I've figured out, but god, Dean, I've only been dead for less than a day. This isn't something I'm really an expert at yet. If you gave me more time—"

"But you're not completely dead, you think."

"Not really. It's hard to explain. It's like I'm more alive than any of the other souls here, but more dead than you."

Dean furrowed his brow and mumbled something under his breath that Sam was unable to understand.

"What was that?" Sam asked, leaning closer to Dean.

"You went with your body," Dean replied thoughtfully. He looked up, meeting Sam's eyes and seeing that Sam didn't quite understand what he was saying, Dean sighed. "Most people when they die, leave their bodies here—right? And they go with just their souls over to the underworld. Well, when you 'died,' you went over with your body too. You're more than a spirit, Sam. You've still got your body because it didn't get left behind here to get buried or cremated or eaten by somebody else."

"Eaten?"

"Jeffrey Dahmer, Sammy."

"You're sick."

"Hey, look at it this way, at least I'm not sitting down right now with one of your legs going, 'Pass the BBQ sauce, please.' 'Sam.' It's what for dinner!" Dean grinned evilly.

Sam shook his head. "You disgust me."

"Yeah, it comes with the territory if you haven't noticed."

"But I think you may have a point."

"About you tasting good?"

"No about the body thing, moron. There was this big lake, and well, to make a long story short, some of the spirits there called me 'warm blood.'"

"But you don't really have blood," Dean responded.

"Maybe not like you have blood. I don't know, dammit. I can't exactly take myself to a laboratory and examine me like a first year biology project."

"Cool it there. All we know so far is that you're not really as dead as everybody else there."

Sam scowled, slightly upset at Dean's tendency to act as the expert in the conversation. Then again, he wasn't completely surprised. Whether his listener was dead or alive, Dean had to be the center of attention. "I guess not."

"But, what's it like being at least 'semi-dead,' y'know? I've gotta ask."

"It's…it's, I don't know. It doesn't feel that much different from being alive. There's certain rules that I don't have to follow."

"Like?" Dean pressed.

"Like being able to fall thousands of feet and not being blasted all over the ground."

"Sounds fun."

"It's not," Sam replied grumpily.

"You're just bitter because I'm alive, and you're not."

"Dean."

"Right, drop it. But, if you can't come over here, then I'm going to have to come over there. Have you found anything like that, yet?"

"Short of killing yourself? No. But I do have a suspicion. This lake I was talking about? It serves as some sort of passage between the living and the dead. Those who have just died have to travel this water to get to the underworld, right?"

"I'm listening," Dean said, raising an eyebrow slowly.

"Okay, as far as I can tell, this town and the area near it seems to be some sort of area to travel through to the underworld. I step through the door, I find you in this park. The deity appeared in that restaurant over there and took me away in this park. It could be possible that there's a body of water around that leads to the underworld."

"What are you saying? That I have to go swimming?"

"Maybe. I don't know, do some research, see if there's anything on mysterious disappearances in the water."

Dean nodded, immediately starting to think about the potentials for what was going to happen. He looked up at Sam who was now standing against one of the trees. "Give me a few hours. I'll meet you back here." He paused. "Do I need to make a signal or something for when I want you to come back?"

"Nah, I'll be watching. Just get some research done."

"All right." Dean rose to his feet, brushing off the seat of his pants before grabbing his gun protectively. He started to walk away then turned back around, facing Sam. "If you get me killed like you because of this, I'm going to kick your geek ass."

Before he disappeared completely, Sam just shook his head and laughed silently to himself.