Sacrifice – chpt 5 – s.n. fic.

by: sifi.

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"What is it Sam?" Dean asked worriedly as he slid into the drivers seat and looked at his little brother.

Sam shook his head, "I'm not sure…"

"A vision?" Dean asked.

"No, I was…I had to get out of there…it just…it felt like I was on fire…" Sam looked at his big brother who sat waiting for an explanation. Sam took a painfully quick hard breath and wiped his dripping face with the sleeve of his jacket, "I can't stop sweating… Rabbi Roseman… it's like I could feel his fear Dean… he's terrified that this thing exists."

"Which it does…" Dean added.

"God my heart's pounding a mile a minute…" Sam breathed hard as Dean pressed his fingers to his neck.

Dean's heart skipped a beat, his little brothers' pulse wasn't so much a series of distinctive beats as it was a vibration in his throat, "Talk to me Sammy…what's goin' on?" he asked, his concern almost tangible.

Sam shook his head, "I don't know…" he gasped and pushed his back against the seat with his eyes closed, struggling for a breath that when it finally came, and came deeply enough, he slumped against the seat and seemed to sigh in relief.

"Sam?" Dean asked as his little brother drew in a deeper breath and nodded his head, seeming to relax a bit.

"Yeah… I'm okay…" he looked into Dean's eyes and nodded with a faint smile at the concern he saw there, "Really… that was weird…"

Dean shook his head, his expression all too easily read.

"I don't know… One minute he was talking about Methuselah and then… when he thought about the bell existing… it was, panic city man… it rolled off him like freakin' waves Dean… and I just broke out into a sweat and I think I kinda almost saw things…" he tried to explain and leaned back grimacing with his eyes closed, and pressing himself forcefully back into the seat while his breathing sped up again.

His brother's distress at even relaying how the feeling had started didn't go unnoticed, Dean shook his head laying one hand on Sam's shoulder and holding his head with the other, "Alright, t'salright Sammy… just… push it out… push it away for a minute man, come on…" Dean urged.

"I'm tryin' man… really… just get us the hell out of here Dean… please…" Sam gasped for air again, gulping at it desperately in fact as Dean nodded and started the car.

"Okay… yeah… let's get out of here… if you can't get a grip on this Sam I'm taking you to the hospital so you'd better just…" he warned pulling out onto the street where to his amazement Sam's breathing started to even out and come easier

"Sam?... How're you doin'?" he asked a few minutes later as his little brother slumped between the seat and the door, his breathing near normal and the sweat beginning to dry. He nodded though his eyes were still closed and a tiny, I-was-getting-worried-for-a-second smile tilted his lips.

"Okay…I'm'onna be 'kay…" he assured softly before his head dropped to the side and he fell into an exhausted sleep.

--

Sam Winchester walked slowly up a bright arid plateau, the sun was golden and hot, beating hard into his back and the sky before him was deep blue and whispering promises of cool to come. Hey Dean… what're you doing here? he thought as he drew up to the man who stood still surveying the land beneath his feet.

He cast his glance sideways and felt the smile of camaraderie die on his lips. To his right stood a large man, kingly in stature and carriage with eyes as dark as coffee and a palpable aura of power surrounding him.

"My king…" he felt his lips say, "…what troubles you?"

The towering dark skinned man smiled, his teeth seeming whiter than they were against the deep color of his skin, "I am not troubled Etemenanki… I am pondering the possibilities…"

"The possibilities of what my king?" he asked following the penetrating gaze out into the valley floor below.

"In past ages of man, a king built a temple in that valley… the temple of the Seven Lights of the Earth… it was a temple so vast it nearly breeched the heavens…" he said, the sound of hope and glory ringing from his chest.

"My king… the temple of the Seven Lights of the Earth is a myth… a fable told to children…" Sam felt himself say, although he no longer felt quite like himself. In fact he began to feel something moving within him, something uncoiling deep inside, whether inside his mind or his bowels he was unable to say. Still despite the unease of the sensation he found himself smiling, knowing everything was going to turn out just as it should. An idea passed through his mind, a mere shadow that trickled from these lips that were not his, and he listened, and watched, fascinated.

"My men have discovered ruins my old friend… proof that such a temple was once built…" the king beside him spoke, his lips still smiling and his heart light with joy.

"If this is true my king… and it is not you whom I doubt, then you must have come upon this destiny righteously… it is you who must re-form the temple, you must pierce the heavens my king and take your rightful place... as the greatest leader of men…"

The king turned his head, his eyes narrowing incredulously, "Breech the heavens… stand beside the Gods themselves and proclaim myself the greatest leader of men… nay my friend, such an action would bear only sour fruit… my people would suffer the wrath brought upon them by my pride? Nay... it shall not come to be…" the king shook his head.

Thank God for that…Sam thought and felt his mouth move once more.

"There would be no wrath my king… the Gods would welcome any man who would dare such an endeavor with welcome arms as one of their own!" and Sam wanted to clamp his hand over those traitorous lips but the body was not his to command.

The king looked at him, weighing his words for merit and finding them substantial as he nodded softly and raised an eyebrow, intrigued, "You know such thing for fact Etemenanki?"

"Yea my king… does not fortune favor the bold? And are you not the boldest of the kings of men?" the thing Sam was wearing persisted.

The king beside him grinned hugely, his smile one to rival the sun, "I am that my old friend… for all my people sing so it must be true!" he laughed then, a rich warm sound and turned his face to the sun to descend from the pleateu and meet his new valley. His hand clapped hard on the shoulder Sam was wearing and the young Winchester felt his feet slide out from under him leaving only air beneath as he fell back, his head spinning with the realization that he was about to plummet to his death from the crest of a plateau in a foreign land and an even more foreign time.

--

"Sammy!" Dean hollered half panicked as his brother's dead weight pulled at his quickly slicking hand, "God! Sammy! Please!... Help me!" he pleaded wishing he could grasp at the roof with his toes and spare his other hand. Slowly he began to inch backward, dragging his chest against the edge of the rooftop, the aluminum of the gutter ripping across his skin through his t-shirt, "Sam!" he yelled again as his second hand that he'd been using for balance and ballast reached out and caught him by the wrist just as his first hand slid down to his fingers. He felt himself dragging forward as Sam's weight pulled him toward the edge, "Sammy please…" he gasped wiping the sweat from his hand and grasping the wrist with both hands, if Sam was going to fall he was going with.

He was dragged another inch that felt like a mile forward and felt Sam shudder in his grip before he drew a breath and his tenor shouted fearfully, "Dean! What the hell!"

"Sam! Sam… get your ass up here now!" Dean ordered and felt his brothers fingers wrap around his wrist vise-like.

"What the hell's going on?" Sam asked swinging his leg up and over the edge of the rooftop and grasping Dean's upper arm for stability while he tossed the rest of himself onto the hot asphalt.

Dean lay gasping over the edge of the roof uncertain if he was going to faint first or throw up, I hope I puke first… then that'll be over...jeez…what the hell? What happened? How'd he get up here so fast? Man, what's happening to you now Sam?

"Dean?" Sam asked wrapping his arms across the older man's shoulders and unbending him from the edge of the roof, "Dean what happened?" he asked after turning his big brother's dumbfounded face to his and searching his eyes.

To his surprise Dean actually laughed as his eyes filled, "You're asking me?" he said disbelieving.

Sam shook his head and dared a peek over the edge. From the rooftop, four stories looks like a hell of a drop, he thought wondering how he'd come to be all the way up here when the last thing he remembered was feeling like he was going to pass out in the car.

"Let's get back to the room then you can tell me what the hell just happened," Sam's voice trembled just a bit as he met Dean's eyes once more and saw just how close each of them had come to losing everything. The knowledge was accentuated when with his arm over his shoulders, guiding him toward the rooftop access stairwell Sam realized his big brother was shaking and most definitely in shock.

--

"…damnit! aren't those things supposed to be folded over at the edges? Man I just got the last of Eddy Jay's palm print off my damned chest and now this? Damnit this sucks!" Dean railed standing in front of the bathroom mirror dabbing at the oozing slice and scrape across his upper belly where the aluminum had cut him. "…Do you even remember what you were dreaming about?" he asked meeting Sam's eyes in the mirror.

Sam shook his head and seemed dazed, "…I remember falling…then… I woke up…and a mesa or something… and the sun was hot on my back... I… I got nuthin'…" he shook his head despondently in the doorway and wondered how many times now it was that he owed his life to his big brother.

"What?" Dean asked while dotting himself with band-aids wherever he thought the cuts were worthy, then dabbed triple antibiotic ointment onto the other open areas before sliding a fresh shirt over his head.

"Okay… we were talking to the Rabbi about Methuselah… then I couldn't breathe… we left, and I could breathe again… you brought us back to the motel…"

Dean nodded, "Tossed your passed out ass onto the bed. I went out to get some ice, came back… your ass was still in the bed, went to the bathroom, got out your ass was gone, the door was wide open and you were already at the third floor landing…I swear to God Sam, I've never seen you sleepwalk man… it was the creepiest damned thing I've ever seen… you kept babbling on about 'my king this… my king that…'" he groused rubbing his face vigorously with his hands. When he met Sam's eyes again he could almost see the wheels turning in his head.

"My king?" Sam asked, his face frozen deep in thought as if the slightest movement would blow away whatever thread of memory was almost within reach. "My king, my king… the Temple of the Seven Lights of the Earth…it's a fable… fortune favors the bold…" he muttered and swallowed hard before raising his eyes and meeting Dean's patient gaze, "I think I was someone else… I think I was looking down at the valley that cradled Babylon…" he mused and continued at his big brother's skeptical look, "… I heard that bell Dean… when Martin called for me after you were pushed down the stairs, I set it down but when I got up my knee caught on the rim of the table and… damn thing still hurts… it must've been knocked over or jarred just enough for it to ring, but I HEARD it ring… and then I saw you laying there and all I could think was, 'don't you dare be dead! don't you dare die on me…' and like I said, I couldn't' find your pulse because you didn't HAVE one…"

"But what's the price Sam? There's always a price! You know that as well as I do… if that thing is what the Rabbi says it is…"

Their eyes met as their minds made the same connection, "…and it's sitting on the table…" Sam groaned.

"We gotta go…" Dean urged grabbing his jacket and swinging into it even as Sam slid his on and they both headed for the door, Sam carrying the duffel bag with their weapons in it. Neither of them had forgotten about the manifestation that pushed Dean down the stairs, the being that was the reason they'd taken Martin with them to a motel rather than staying in his glorious and somehow hollow manor. Dean looked at his watch, 12:33, Martin wouldn't be done with school until 2:50, and then he had soccer practice until 4:30, so the Winchester brothers had time. Now all they had to do was get past the servants that were bound to be back to duty today.

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tbc.

As always, need to know what you're thinking,

Please R&R.

Thanks.

sifi