CHAPTER
TWELVE
Lost
& Found
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There was blood on his hands. Blood on his face. He could taste it. Its origin escaped him.
"Dean?"
He hurt. His head hurt. He couldn't think straight. Where was he?
"Dean, talk to me!"
At first he thought the voice calling his name was a memory, but then he remembered finding the phone booth and dialling the number. The only number his fingers knew how to dial.
"Sam?"
"Yes! Where are you, are you alright?"
Dean knew he shouldn't answer the question. He shouldn't even be talking to Sam at all. But something had happened, something bad, and this is where he had ended up. Where had all this blood come from?
When the voice on the other end of the phone spoke again, it had changed.
"Dean, this is you father. Where are you?"
"Dad?" Dean said before he could stop himself. His own voice sounded foreign, it was so weak and tearful. Why was there blood all over him?
"Yes, it's me, Dean. I need you to tell me where you so me and Sam can come and get you."
He had been at the bar, drinking, yes that was it, he could still smell the alcohol. Blood and alcohol. He remembered hitting someone over and over and over...
"Dean, concentrate on my voice. Look around you. Tell me where you are."
His father wasn't supposed to be there. Maybe this wasn't really happening. Maybe he was in a coma in a hospital somewhere and this was all a delusion. Maybe the Braken had taken everything from him and he wasn't a person anymore. He didn't feel like a person.
"I didn't mean...to hurt them."
It was a lie. At the time, he had meant it. He remembered now. The Braken had attacked him again, just before. He had staggered into the next bar and sat down. After a while they had been shouting abuse at him from across the bar and something inside him had snapped. He had taken them down easily. There had been a lot of screaming, from people who weren't leaving as fast as they could. He remembered just hitting one, hitting him in the face and not stopping...
They tried to fight back, but they didn't have the training that Dean did. When he was finished they barely looked alive. Maybe they weren't. He didn't stop to check. He just stood up, and the bartender was staring at him. Dean would never forget the look in his eyes. The abject horror.
"It doesn't matter what you did. Just tell us where you are, that's an order."
That phrase, it had meant something to him once. Now it didn't seem to matter at all. "I'm sorry," Dean muttered, running his hand through his hair. "I had to. It was going to...you and Sam...are you alright?" It was the only coherent thought his mind would allow him.
"We're both fine."
Dean felt a tear trace a clear path down his bloodied face as he saw the reflection of the Braken staring at him in the glass of the phone booth.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, before letting the phone drop from his hand.
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"What did he say, is he alright?"
John closed his eyes and wished with every part of him that this wasn't happening. Dean had sounded bad, and he'd mentioned hurting people. Even if he did come back from that, chances were he would never forgive himself. If he came back from it...
"Dad?" Sam pressed.
"He's doesn't sound good," John replied honestly. "But I think he called from a payphone, which means we can find him. Come on."
Twenty minutes later they had the location of the payphone from the company. It was situated on the other side of the city, which was where John and Sam were headed in John's truck.
"He's going to be alright, isn't he?" Sam asked. "When we destroy the demon, he'll be back to normal, right?" Sam asked.
John rubbed his face with one hand, and kept the other on the wheel.
"The demon consumes them. I don't know if they even exist any more."
John remembered when he had said those words. Should he tell Sam that Dean might already be gone and prepare him for the worst, or take a chance and save him the grief?
"Honestly...I don't know," he finally said, settling for a weak compromise.
Sam looked away and fell silent, but John could tell there was a lot he had to say.
"Why don't you tell me what happened, Sam?"
Sam met his gaze again. "I told you."
John smirked a little. Sam was never very good at lying to him. "You told me enough to get me here. Well, I'm here and now I want the truth."
"The Braken marked Dean and it's taking his soul. What more do you need to know?" Sam retorted.
"How about why?" John replied, ignoring the bitterness that had crept into Sam's voice.
Sam turned away again. "It doesn't matter why."
"It matters to me. I know that the Braken can't take a soul, that it has to be offered. Do you know anything about that?"
John got his answer from the look on Sam's face, but he didn't want to believe it.
"He did, didn't he? He offered..." John found himself almost disgusted at the situation. How could Dean have been so stupid? What was he thinking? "What about the banishing ritual? Did Dean even finish it?" John questioned, misplaced anger rising in his chest.
Sam looked incredibly guilty. "He...he told me that he thought he finished it. That's why he never mentioned it to anyone after."
John thumped the steering wheel. Dean had told him that he'd banished the Braken. He had lied, and now he was suffering because of it. "Damn it! I taught him better than that. How could he have been so careless?"
"He did it for you," Sam said angrily. "Just like he does everything for you!"
"Sam..."
"No, don't. All he ever does is sacrifice and follow orders, and all he ever gets from you is crap about his mistakes? The Braken was coming after you two years ago, and Dean stopped it the only way he could."
John silently processed Sam's outburst. John had always known Dean would kill and die for him, and John would do the same, but to sacrifice his soul, even after seeing the Braken's victims and what their fate had been...John couldn't accept it. But the more he thought about it, the more he believed Dean was capable. Dean had always been self-sacrificing when it came to the family, in the obvious ways and in the more subtle ones too. The truth was, John had always suspected his boys might leave, and after Sam had gone to college, he'd been expecting Dean to take off as well. But if he had any aspirations to do something more than hunt for the rest of his life, he never showed it. He was good at keeping things inside.
"I didn't know," John said when he realised he had been silent for a while now.
"He didn't want you to," Sam replied. He shook his head and rubbed his eyes with his palm. He was tired and regretted snapping. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," John told him. "You're right. I know I haven't exactly been a great father. But you know I only ever wanted the best for you boys, don't you?"
"I know," Sam said, smiling weakly.
John wished he could believe him. "Come on, the payphone should be around here somewhere," he said, pulling the truck into a side street.
Both Winchesters climbed out of the car and were greeted by the rain. John looked up and down the street, which was deserted. The phone booth was easy to spot. "Over there," he announced, starting towards it. Sam followed.
When they reached the phone, Dean was nowhere in sight, but disturbing traces of his presence were. There was a bloody hand print on the glass and on the receiver, as well as various other smudges of the crimson tell elsewhere. Who it belonged to was unclear.
"Oh my god, he's hurt..." Sam uttered quietly.
John couldn't take his eyes from the blood. "It might not be his."
"What are you talking about?"
It wasn't really possible to sugarcoat the statement, but he tried nonetheless. "Dean said he might have hurt someone."
Sam looked even more worried, if it was possible, but he didn't say anything.
"Let's split up and check the area," John said, finally managing to tear his gaze from the phone booth. "He can't have gone far."
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Sam was having trouble getting his head round everything that had happened. He had so much new information to process and he wasn't sure he liked any of it. Even John's
admission of not being a great father wasn't what he had wanted to hear. Maybe it was true, but Sam knew that he had always meant well. It was just a fact that was hard to remember sometimes.
Then there was Dean's phone call. He had sounded so scared and distant. It felt so wrong hearing his brother talking like that. Everything felt wrong. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. Things shouldn't have gotten this bad. It scared Sam more than he thought possible knowing that there was no guarantee that Dean could be saved, even if they did destroy the demon.
"There is one way to save him."
Sam hadn't mentioned the Braken's visit to John. At the time it was because it wasn't important, just a threat that Sam wasn't stupid enough to believe. Making another deal would only be giving the Braken exactly what it wanted, and who was to say it would stick to its word anyway? But now Sam knew there was chance Dean wouldn't be saved. He put the thought aside. He was getting ahead of himself. It was an option. That was all it was.
Sam rounded another corner and scanned ahead of him for any sign of Dean. The place was pretty rundown. Some of the buildings were boarded up and had been vandalised. Dean couldn't have gone far after leaving the phone booth, but there were a lot of places to hide in the surrounding areas. Sam tried to think like Dean, figure out where he would go, but considering his mindset was completely unpredictable right now, it did him little good.
Sam suddenly noticed a figure ahead of him, just turning a corner. He only caught a glimpse, but the figure had been Dean's height and build, and the was enough to send Sam running down the alley in tow.
"Hey!" he called, hoping for a response, or at least to get the figure, whoever it was, to slow down.
He reached the end of the alley and turned the corner onto another. There was no-one in sight. Confused, Sam ran along checking the doorways, nooks and anywhere the figure he had seen might have turned off. He was halfway up when somebody stepped out a few metres in front of him.
"Dean!"
He took in Dean's appearance. There were fresh bruises and cuts on his face, and he had blood all over his shirt, hands and face. Sam took a step towards him, but stopped.
It wasn't Dean. It looked like him, but his eyes were swirling grey. It was the Braken.
"Hi there, Sam. What took you so long?"
Sam froze and tried to catch his breath.
"Have you thought any more about what we discussed?"
"Yeah," Sam replied, trying to keep his composure and not show the fear and the fury that had invaded every inch of him.
"And?" the Braken asked with a sick kind of hope. He smiled with Dean's lips.
Sam clenched his teeth. He was going to destroy this demon if it was the last thing he did. "And how stupid do you think I am?" he spat.
Dean's twisted smile faded.
"Now give me my brother back."
"You really want him back? Fine. I'll let you two spend some quality time together, then I'll make you my offer one more time," the Braken told him. "But you might want to stand back. Dean isn't going to be very pleased to see you."
Dean blinked a few times and the grey mist was gone from his eyes. He looked around, confused, then his eyes met Sam's.
Sam saw nothing of his brother left in them.
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End
of Chapter Twelve
Next
Chapter: Hope In Hell