Feels like Midnight
Almost there… Thanks for bearing with me.
Chapter Six
"DEAN!" Sam leapt forward as his brother was dragged away from him, faster than he could run. Invisible hands seemed to grab Dean, who appeared barely conscious, and lift him so that he was sitting on his knees. The invisible hands placed him carefully, sitting him in the exact position of the woman still kneeling and sobbing, shotgun beneath her chin, sitting him over her, into her, until it was like one image, superimposed over the other.
Sam skidded to a halt beside him as Dean sucked in a ragged, painful gasp of air, though his eyes remained distant and blank, the dead woman's face flickering over his.
"Dean?" he asked tentatively.
He watched in horror as Dean raised his own sawed-off shotgun and placed the barrel beneath his chin, mirroring the ghostly image of the woman still superimposed over him.
Sam snatched the weapon from Dean's hands, surprised at how easily he gave it up. It was only rock salt, but double barrels of rock salt at that range would kill him just as dead.
Dean's hands fell loose and then rose again, grasping the woman's shotgun, placing his hands around it, its barrel beneath his chin, its butt resting on the ground, grasping it as if it were real. Sam snatched at the ghostly weapon too only to have his hands pass right through it. He momentarily considered shooting them both, Dean and the ghost, but the thought was more than he could stomach. He couldn't do that again and Dean was already hurt. Time, he just had to give Dean some time. Dean could talk his way out of anything.
"Convince her!" the waitress commanded, kneeling in from of Dean/her sister. "Make her stay!" she cried, a child begging for someone to care for her, save her, for someone not to leave her alone in the dark.
Sam knew that it wasn't the other three, but the child who was keeping them all here. It was the waitress who would not let anyone leave, who had doomed them all to repeat this night over and over until it was made right.
As much as it hurt, Sam understood why the waitress had chosen Dean. His brother rarely spoke of it, but Sam knew Dean would identify with the child's need, her fear. The need to keep his family together, his fear of abandonment; they were just as much a part of his brother as his brazen disregard of authority. The child's father was gone. Their own father had left without a word. The girl had no one left and she just wanted her sister to stay, not unlike what Dean had asked of Sam. She had picked Dean; his own brave, stalwart Dean who needed only to share his screwed up life to make it bearable.
"Dean?" Sam said again and his voice sounded hoarse even to his own ears.
Dean turned his head slightly to look at him and Sam dropped to his knees so they could be eye to eye. The dead woman's face flickered over Dean's, 'their' hands still holding the ghostly murder weapon. "Dean, can you hear me?"
Dean barely nodded and Sam wanted to weep with relief to see that something of his brother was still present.
"Lily, can you hear me?" the waitress echoed, the three/four forming a triangle where they knelt.
Again Dean/Lily nodded.
"Please listen to him, Lily. He can help us… Please," the waitress sobbed, holding out her arms like she wanted to grab her sister, force the gun from her hands. "Please stay."
What if this time was different, Sam thought, suddenly more horrified, if that were possible. What if what they were doing was breaking the cycle? The suicide was the catalyst for the never ending night. What if dragging Dean into the suicide instead of the murders was changing it? No repeats, no starting again.
Sam tried to grab Dean by the shoulders, move him, shake him, anything, but Dean was an immovable statue.
"Dean, listen," Sam whispered intently. "Just listen to my voice. Don't let her hurt you. I need you to stay with me, ok? You're stronger than she is."
"You're so strong, Lily," the waitress sobbed. "I need you."
Sam saw their hands, the dead woman's superimposed over his brother's, tighten on the gun. "Stay with me, Dean," he said again, an edge of panic coloring his tone. "Don't let her take you."
Life without Dean. It was a concept he didn't even want to have to contemplate. The sight of Dean so calm and collected with a gun shoved under his chin was a terrifying sight to behold. Sam had always had a secret fear of just such a thing happening and the nightmare was playing out in front of him.
It wasn't the loud, overly-emotional, obstinate ones who stormed out of the house like him you had to worry about, the ones who knew themselves to be right and everyone else was an idiot. Like him, they just got angry, left and didn't look back.
It was the quiet ones. The soldiers. The ones who took every loss to heart, but who never spoke about it. The ones who seemed to brush off every insult, but who silently locked away every word as if it just might be true. It was the brother with fears he hid so deeply he hardly dared admit them to himself you had to watch. One more perceived failure, one more loss; that might be all it would take. He was the one you had to worry about coming home one day and finding him dead out in the yard. And the quiet one, who didn't feel entitled, would choose the yard because he didn't want to bother anyone to have to clean up the blood and brains in the house. You could just hose down the yard.
"Stay with me, Lily. I'll die without you," his fellow supplicant begged.
"Focus, Dean. I… I can't live without you," Sam pleaded. "Please… Don't let her do this."
Dean/Lily shifted, their hands tightening around the trigger. She was going to do it. She was going to kill herself right in front of her sister and kill Dean while she was at it.
The waitress stood, still sobbing. "I can't convince you. I can never convince you. I thought maybe this time…" she said, as if to herself, her shoulders sagging with loss. "But no more. I will not die alone."
Sam blanched, true panic flaring as the woman stepped toward Dean, stepped toward her sister and knelt into them, adding a third layer.
She was changing it. She was changing the story. And that would be all it would take. Sam was sure now. No more repeats. No more never-ending cycle. She was going to end it her own way. The woman/child didn't want to die alone in the fields so she would die with her sister. Tonight they would die together, but they were going to take Dean with them. Permanently. No more do-overs meant a dead Dean would stay dead.
The three knelt together, the two sisters and his brother. The three images flickered and blurred together giving Sam a headache, though he could not look away as the final actor in the trio placed her hands over Dean's and over her sister's.
Sam raised Dean's shotgun, scrambling back so the range wasn't as deadly. His brother would just have to forgive him again.
A shotgun blast filled the night air.
"NO!" Sam let out a strangled cry. He hadn't fired yet. Dean, Lily, the waitress had.
The three fell backward, almost in a fan, the two sisters closer together, their arms and legs tangled, the shotgun lying haphazardly across them. Dean fell back, his arms flung wide, and lay completely still.
Sam crawled forward on all fours, ignoring the tears running down his face. "Dean? Dean, talk to me!" he shouted. There was no blood, no wound. His brother looked deathly pale in the moonlight, but he was whole.
Movement drew Sam's attention and as he watched, the bodies of the two women faded. Next the bodies of the murdered father and Harold disappeared. Finally, the house itself and the clearing vanished and were replaced by row after row of corn, tall, lush, green, 'real' corn.
Sam pushed aside the plants that had appeared, separating him from his brother.
"Dean?" Sam called again. "Come on, man. Stay with me."
Dean still wasn't moving.
Sam looked closer in the bright moonlight.
Dean wasn't breathing.
Last chapter tomorrow. Hope this was an interesting enough way to get rid of the ghosts... Don't want to bore you all to death.