Under a Haystack

By EB

©2006

5. To see a fine lady upon a white horse

It's a long drive, and he wants an early start. Dean puts the whammy on that right away. Not that it's intentional, but when Sam wakes him up Dean feels hot, and by the time Sam's plunked him in the bathtub he's certain it's a fever. Dean's eyes are dull, none of his usual child's enthusiasm about him.

Kids, Sam reminds himself, catch everything that comes down the damn pike anyway, and besides, last night was pretty exhausting for both of them. He makes quick work of the bath, and smiles while he towels Dean's skinny body dry.

"Not feeling too good this morning, huh." He waits for Dean to nod, and wraps him in the towel. "Come on."

He puts Dean back in bed and digs out their thermometer. Med kit's always pretty well-stocked; it isn't like they want to visit ERs any more than they have to, and the vast majority of viruses can't be treated with anything but fluids and bed rest anyway. Dean's temp is 100.3, which doesn't worry Sam too much. He's fresh out of kid's Motrin, however, and so he tucks Dean in, makes him promise not to open the door for anyone but Edward, and ducks out to find a drugstore.

The bug isn't serious, but it sets him back a couple of days, taking care of Dean while he pukes and sniffles and mostly just sleeps all the time. The downtime is good for research, since Sam is cooped up, too, hoping he doesn't catch whatever Dean's got. But he feels fine, and while Dean's zonked out Sam gives the laptop a workout.

Curses, it appears, come in all shapes and sizes, tailor-made for the unfortunate recipients. He's already aware that they're heavy mojo, requiring a lot to put in place. Not a job for the weak, or the neophyte. But he can find absolutely nothing on specifically age-related curses. Or de-aging, as it were.

More troubling, he can't think of anything that would explain why it's Dean who's regressed back to the second grade, and not both of them. Of course he's thankful, the minute he thinks it; after all, they'd almost certainly have landed in state care if the whammy had taken them both. He has an instinctive fear of such, a paranoid infection caught from his father. That would be a disaster, no two ways about it, so better than it's worked out as it has, even if he feels like the blind leading the extremely young and vulnerable.

Finally, late on the second day, Dean's up and, if not quite his usual slightly feral self, pretty much restored. They are desperately low on cash, and that night Sam takes out the super-ultra-emergency stash, hidden away in Dean's boot heel. It ain't much, but it should suffice for what he needs.

"Where are we going?" There's no question in Dean's voice; he's well-accustomed to moving around already, and his streak of pragmatism is already fully functional.

"Northwest," Sam tells him, stuffing the money in his wallet. "You feel all right, kiddo?"

"I'm okay." Dean sips Gatorade and watches him carefully. "Am I gonna get tall like you?"

Sam smiles. "Pretty close, yeah."

"Are we gonna look for Dad now?"

"Well, right now we're going to see a friend. And we might be able to find out where Dad is, or we might not, I don't know yet."

Dean's expression becomes pinched. "Are we gonna see more monsters?" he asks quietly.

Sam hesitates, then sits next to Dean on the bed. "Maybe," he says honestly, putting his arm around Dean's narrow shoulders. "But we're not looking for them right now, okay? We're not hunting. This is just – a road trip. Okay?"

Dean nods, with no little relief, and Sam feels that now-familiar stab in his belly: this is no life for a child. Not even a Winchester child.

"You know," he says carefully, "that thing with the crossbow you did the other night -- You saved my life, Dean. That's pretty big."

"It was gonna eat you," Dean says, leaning against him.

"But you didn't let it eat me. Remember how you said you needed to watch out for Sammy? Well, you did, you did a real good job. I'm really proud of you."

Dean's smile is wan but real.

It's barely dawn when they set out the next morning. By Sam's calculations they can make the drive in one long-ass day, but he's already decided to break it in two, considering Dean's still getting over his kid-flu. So they stop that night in Blackwell, Oklahoma, and after a greasy meal at a crowded diner where there appears to be nothing on the menu that isn't fried and/or smothered in cream gravy – a menu that appeals to Dean, predictably enough – they each barely have enough energy to bathe before crawling into bed.

That night, Sam has his first nightmare since the Dean-regression.

He shoots bolt-upright in bed, a scream tangled in his throat. The room is oppressively quiet, Dean out like a light in the other bed, and it takes Sam a few minutes to get his breathing leveled out. The sheets stick to him, wet with flop-sweat, and he makes a face and flings them away.

True-seeing, or just stress? A part of him still wants to believe that most of the time a cigar is just a cigar, that nightmares come with the demon-hunter territory and are just the way his brain decompresses, gets rid of unwanted and unneeded baggage. And there's been a lot of baggage lately, no doubt about that.

But while he goes into the bathroom and runs a glass of salty-tasting water, he meets his own eyes in the mirror and acknowledges that there is a qualitative difference between brain-dump dreams and the quality he's reluctantly learned to recognize as precognition. This nightmare is the latter, and his head is already getting that thick, heavy feeling of a headache struggling to be born.

He takes four Tylenol and then goes to pick up the journal. On one of the few remaining unmarked pages, he scrawls the images from his dream. Inscrutable, like they almost always are at first, but he has to get them down, make sure he doesn't lose this brief clarity. They will mean something; of that he's certain. What that is, well, remains to be seen.

When he's done, he sets the book aside and glances at Dean, a motionless lump in the next bed. Is it Dean, for whom the dream proclaims something coming? Or Dad? Because the two are inextricably intertwined, moreso now than ever before. Dean is Dad's child, not Sam's; Dean is, in a way, Dad's responsibility. But Dad is nowhere to be found, on the run from things he will not reveal to them, and Sam's left holding the bag right now. Do these cryptic images mean something for any of them? Or for some poor schmuck Sam simply hasn't met yet?

He lies back on his sweaty sheets, wincing a little. Still a bit sore from the thing with the ghul, although it's just a reminder now, not anything terrible.

Tomorrow he may be able to get some answers. He hopes so. He is tired, so very tired. And he wants his brother back, the way he was. Wants that with a ferocity that kind of scares him.

The closer they get to Lawrence, the tenser Dean becomes. The weird thing about it is, Dean isn't exactly reading maps yet, and Sam hasn't told him where they're going. Dean just seems to know, and near Wichita he turns to look at Sam.

"This is a bad place," Dean whispers shakily. "Bad, Sammy."

Sam swallows and shakes his head. "It's just a place, Dean, I promise. And we're gonna be with a friend here. Nothing bad will happen to you, okay?"

But Dean's fidgeting gets worse, and about a mile after the merge onto I-335 he flips.

"Go back!" Dean screams, yanking so hard on Sam's arm he nearly pulls them into the semi lumbering by to their left. "Turn around!"

"Dean, cut it out!" Sam gives him a shocked look. "Chill out, okay?"

"NO! No, it's bad, and I don't WANNA!"

His head has been a steady miserable ache all day, and now Dean's screaming feels like he's taken a hatchet and driven it deep into Sam's brain. "DEAN. Calm down, just – stop screaming. Now. All right?"

Dean's flat green eyes flare, and he draws a deep breath and screams wordlessly, for all he's worth.

"Fuck." Sam yanks them over into the right lane, aiming for a business exit. He's shaking suddenly, rage and exhaustion and lingering fear, new fear because Dean hasn't pulled any shit like this in days, and why NOW? Dean isn't psychic, Dean doesn't KNOW they're near Lawrence, he can't even read the goddamn highway markers, so where is this coming from?

There's a gas station on the access road, and Sam pulls in, over to the side. "Okay," he yells over Dean's ongoing clamor. "Stop it! Look at me!"

Dean's silence is all the more startling. He stares blankly at Sam, waiting.

"What is it, Dean?" Sam puts all the patience he can into his voice, fighting nausea from this crucifying godawful headache. Even his smile feels like it will break if he tries too hard. "You're freaking out on me, and you're not telling me why. What's going on?"

"It's a bad place," Dean whispers, eyes welling with tears. "I don't wanna be here."

Sam nods slowly. "I know bad things happened, the last time you were here. But that thing is gone, Dean, it's not here anymore. Lawrence is just a place now, it's not –"

"NO!" Dean roars, and flings himself at the door, stumbling out.

"Crap," Sam mutters, and swallows bile before he climbs out of the car.

Dean's sitting on the curb, in front of the restrooms, and Sam squints in the sunshine, staring down at him, and finally folding himself up to sit next to him. "Okay," he breathes, shading his eyes. "Let's talk."

"You won't listen," Dean mutters. "Dad would listen. He would."

"I am listening, Dean. So talk. I know this isn't where you want to be. Okay? But –"

"Daddy said we wouldn't ever have to come back here. It's a bad place."

Sam nods slowly. "Is it the place that's bad? Or is it just that it feels bad to be here, where stuff happened?"

Dean wipes his cheeks furtively. He still won't look at Sam.

"Dean, I won't let anything happen to you. Do you know that? The demon that killed her – it's not gonna get you, too. It's gone. I swear. I really swear, Dean – it is long gone, and Lawrence is just a town. Just a place. That's all."

"But that thing back there," Dean whispers. "It was a bad thing, too, and it was gonna eat you."

It hits Sam then, what this is really about. This isn't about their mother's death, or Lawrence as such, not even close. This is about Sam, and what Dean saw before he shot that crossbolt.

This is about the people Dean loves, leaving him. Being killed, in front of his eyes. Lawrence represents that, the loss of their mother, the loss of a home, everything Dean trusted and knew, crumbling in one night of fire and terror. And there is nothing Sam can do, really, to fix that, to make life safe enough that that can't happen again. He sees Jess burning, sees the terror and agony on her well-loved face, and he knows.

His throat is so tight he can barely squeeze words out. "We're okay," he manages, pulling Dean close against him. "We're safe right now. That's what counts, Dean."

Dean presses his face against Sam's shirt, and says, "I don't feel safe."

Neither do I, Sam thinks, and clenches his eyes tightly shut.

He isn't able to offer any reassurances that aren't flat-out lies, but Dean seems better after that, at least no more screaming, and Sam and his thumping headache are grateful for it. Dean even perks up a little, seeing the pretty little street with the park beckoning from the corner.

"Stay here for a second." Sam puts the Impala in park and turns to look at him. "Let me go see if she's home."

Dean nods gravely. "Daddy came here once."

"Yeah. I heard." Sam smiles and touches Dean's hair. "Back in a minute."

But she's already standing on the porch, not quite smiling, hands on her hips. "Of course I'm glad to see you," Missouri says. "Seen you comin' for days and days."

Sam gives her a shaky smile and walks up the steps. "Then you know why I'm here?"

She touches his cheek with warm fingers, and the half-smile disappears. "That part wasn't so clear. I saw you, but not your brother. But he wasn't gone, just – different. Like there was a place held for him, a space where he was supposed to be, but nothing else." She cocks her head to the side, gazes at the car. "Still feels that way."

"He – changed," Sam blurts, and swallows grief and exhaustion. "Really changed. And I don't know how to fix him."

"Oh, child."

"I want him back the way he was. Help me. Please."

She nods soberly, and looks at the car again. "Bring him in."

Sam turns, clears his throat. "Dean?" he calls. "Come on, buddy."

He hears Missouri's indrawn breath when Dean comes around the side of the car. Sees Dean for the first time all over again: bright shock of hair and freckles scattered over his nose and cheeks, small and shy as he walks up to the porch and stands very close to Sam's leg.

"My gracious Lord," Missouri whispers, eyes round with surprise. "Why, you're just about the cutest thing I ever saw. You remember me, child?"

Dean doesn't move, then gives a small flick of a nod. His hand slips into Sam's, clinging tight.

Missouri's wide eyes meet Sam's. "So this is how. How I couldn't see him no more."

Sam nods, and then coughs a bitter sob, out of nowhere. "I can't do it without him," he croaks. "I can't. You have to help me make him right again. Please."

And then he's crying, trying not to and failing utterly, and Dean gapes up at him with his mouth open and his face crumples, too, uncomprehending and so terribly innocent, and Sam can't stop. Leaning against the corner of the house, braying sobs that feel like he's breaking in half.

Missouri's voice says gently, "Come on, Dean. It's all right. You want a cookie? I baked some just this morning. Chocolate chip. You like those?"

Dean's hand slips out of Sam's, and Sam puts his hands over his face and sits down on the porch while Missouri and his brother vanish inside the house.