Chapter 17 A Simple Man
Forest Edge, Oregon
Sam looked up from the file he was reading, rubbing his knuckles over his eyes. His brother's big, comfortable living room was filled with hunters—a sight that still brought a faint feeling of surprise—sitting at the long narrow table, filling the couches and armchairs, for the most part bent over books, files or printouts, or talking to each other in low voices, faces and hair gilded by the firelight and the overlapping pools of light from the table lamps.
Baraquiel was talking to Frank, the Watcher's dark red hair catching the light like wine as he inclined his head. Beside him, Talya was reading, brows creased as she made notes on the file. Garth and Tamsin were talking to Oran, the nephilim nodding and occasionally ducking Garth's wilder gesticulations. Twist, Marcus, Trent and Katherine were in a huddle by the table, arguing with Bezaliel and Shamsiel over something, he thought, Marcus's wry smile suggesting it was not all that serious.
Dean, Ellie and Adam were working on a stack of files at the low table in front of the larger couch. Sam saw Dean look up and lean over to kiss Ellie as she got to her feet, catching her wrist in his hand. Firelight burnished her copper-coloured hair, growing out, reaching her shoulders now. She smiled and said something against his ear when he let her go and he nodded, his characteristic scowl reappearing as he turned back to Adam and stabbed an accusatory finger at the file on the table.
Tomorrow or the day after, Sam thought, Laney and her group would be here, and Soleil, Eddie and her team. They would be spending the next however-long figuring how to take down the firstborn base in Nevada, and how to find the last two who were hiding elsewhere in the big country.
He stretched his back and neck, then got up and followed Ellie to the kitchen.
Standing at the counter on the other side of the spacious room, she was making a fresh pot of coffee, spooning the grounds into the filter, when he came in. He grinned when he saw her head lift, tilt slightly to one side, then her attention return to the coffeepot.
"Need some coffee, Sam?" she asked, without turning around. He'd asked about that, a while ago, how she knew who was behind her, what was behind her, without having to look. She'd muttered something about weight and signatures and energy fields and had changed the subject after she'd seen his eyes begin to glaze over.
"Yeah, I'll wait."
He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. "How many will we have, altogether?"
"About twenty, I think," Ellie said, turning the pot on and turning around, leaning back against the countertop as she looked at him. "Four teams of five, the way it's looking right now."
"You're going?"
She shook her head. "Second string."
He wasn't sure which was more surprising, the decision or her acceptance of it. "You don't seem that disappointed."
"I'm not." She shrugged and smiled. "Baraquiel has a plan, and I think it's the best shot we've got."
"To arrange a meeting between the firstborn and Michael?" Sam asked. "I thought the archangels hated the nephilim?"
"Not just the arcs, most of the seraphim do too," she said. "But the Watchers think he'll agree. I don't know what Baraquiel and Sariel have over Michael, but they've hinted it'll be enough."
"Let's hope,"
The business of angels had once seemed fascinating to him. Not any more. They could have their power struggles and keep it to themselves, so long as they didn't involve the human population, he thought.
"How are you finding working with Adam?" Ellie came over to the table and sat down.
"It's good," Sam said, smiling a little. "It's fine. I didn't think it would be, but it is."
She nodded. "Dean says the same."
"He's had it the worst of all of us, I think," Sam said, his gaze dropping to the table. "At least we knew what was going on, most of the time."
"Certainly made Dean think long and hard about being a vessel for Michael," Ellie commented, only a hint of emotion hidden in her voice.
"Yeah."
"What about the training for the kids? How's it going?"
"Well," he said slowly. "It's working, sort of. They seem to be able to do different things."
Ellie nodded. "John and Rosie, too. John's abilities are more passive; Rosie's, more active."
"Is that what the firstborn want them for?" Sam glanced at the pot which was bubbling to itself.
"No, I don't think so. The abilities have to be there, but they're not the thing that's crucial. As with you and Dean, it's the bloodline that's the key, somehow." Her gaze unfocused for a moment, then sharpened on him. "Bobby took me to visit a friend of your father's once, a psychokinetic. Fred Jones. Do you remember him?"
"Fred Jones." Sam rifled through his memories of the few genuine psychics they'd met over the years. Fred Jones had been the most powerful, their father had told them. A tall, straight-backed man with warm brown eyes and a sneaky sense of humour, Sam remembered, but he'd never done anything in front of them, other than introduce them to beer.
"Yeah, he had the full deck. I've never even heard of anyone else who could do what he could," she said. "Both the active and passive gifts."
She leaned back in the chair, the small crease between her brows. "I was surprised Dean hadn't remembered him when your abilities started to show up."
Sam laughed, his expression rueful as the memories of that time came back. "It was years ago, the last time we saw Fred. Dean and me, we never saw what he could do. We only had Dad's word for it Fred was powerful."
"Fred wasn't the only psychic your father knew about," Ellie said, getting up as the pot hissed. She took two mugs down from the shelf and filled them.
"What made you think of Fred now?" Sam took the cup she handed him.
"I've been looking around for someone who has the abilities," Ellie said, sitting down again. "Someone to help train John and Rosie."
"You found Fred?"
Her mouth turned down. "Yeah. He's in a nursing home."
"Oh." There didn't seem to be much more to say to that.
"I'm guessing you wanted something other than a fresh coffee, Sam?"
"Huh, yeah, I was wondering if you were planning on anything for Dean's birthday?" he said, blowing over his coffee.
She smiled suddenly. "No. No plans."
"You mind if I do?"
She looked at him speculatively. "He's not much for parties and fuss, Sam."
"Yeah, I know." Sam shrugged. "But I thought, maybe a surprise—"
Ellie laughed. "Are you trying to kill him? Or get people shot in our house?"
"We've done it before. Once," Sam said, remembering the sixteenth birthday party he'd thrown for his big brother. "He was okay."
"Did you ever ask him about that party?" She shook her head. "He's not comfortable being in the spotlight, you know that."
"Well, something then…?" Sam lifted a shoulder in a helpless shrug.
"Why?"
"I don't know," he said, his gaze dropping to his cup. "Because he's kind of like the backbone to this whole life, and we never acknowledge that."
"He doesn't like to think about that either." She sipped her coffee. "He's happiest when he's left alone to do his job."
Sam sighed as recognition hit him. She was right. "You really think he'd rather we just forget it?"
"Forget it?" Ellie snorted, then shook his head. "God, no…not forget it. But keep it extremely low-key. No speeches, no fuss. Lots of food."
"How do you do that?"
"In this weather? Hard to say," she admitted. "But we'll have nearly everyone here tomorrow, so it shouldn't be too hard to manage. Maybe just a buffet dinner."
He finished his coffee and looked into the empty cup for a moment.
"Sam, how is it you don't know this about him? He's your brother, and he's been like this as long as I've known him," Ellie asked. "He's never thought of himself as anything out of the ordinary."
"Despite all evidence to the contrary?" Sam smiled. The vessel of an archangel, the subject of a prophecy.
"That's it," she said. "I'm prepared to admit I'm biased, but there's plenty of testimony to back that up."
"Yeah. I don't know." He shrugged as he got to his feet, carrying the empty cup to the sink. "Sometimes it feels as if we're still kids, knowing everything about each other. Other times, I look at him and feel like I've just been introduced."
"Sounds like it's not just Adam you two need to get to know again."
"Maybe," he agreed. "It got really screwed up for a while, with what we were doing. Then you guys were away for a couple of years." He walked back to the table, sitting down.
"Don't take that the wrong way. I know he really needed it, that time, and I'm glad he got it, but there's a lot I feel like I don't really know now."
She nodded. "Well, there's time."
"Yeah," Sam said. In this life, in their life, that was usually a false comfort. He wasn't sure why he felt such a need, right now, to understand Dean. The feeling had grown gradually over the last year. More time spent together, maybe? More things shared. He felt like he knew bits and pieces, but not the reasons behind them, not the why of his brother.
Returning to the living room, Sam found Dean leaning against the table, the rest of the group gathered around.
"There are four left in the house near Winnemucca," Dean said, giving his brother a nod of acknowledgement as Sam joined them. "That might not sound like much, but trust me, they are not going to be easy to take—and we can't kill them. We have to take them alive."
Sam realised why Ellie wasn't going along. He'd thought Dean would have taken the attack on Ellie, John and Rosie more personally, but his brother sounded relaxed and unemotional, not even an edge of anger in his voice. Another thing changed, he thought, evolved gradually without him noticing.
"We'll go in with four teams. Laney and Soleil are bringing their people up and they should be here tomorrow. Hopefully by then, Frank'll have nailed the other locations down to something less broad than a state," Dean said, with a look at the older man who scowled at him from the other end of the table.
"What are we doing with them, once we've got them?" Marcus looked across the table at Baraquiel.
The Watcher looked at him. "They want to return to Heaven. We're going to show them what awaits them there."
"That's nice and cryptic," Marcus muttered and Baraquiel smiled, turning to Dean.
"Castiel has confirmed that Michael and Iophiel will meet with us, in six weeks. Does that give us enough time?"
Dean glanced around as Ellie walked over to stand beside him. "Yeah, it should do."
Sam watched them discreetly from beneath his brows.
Ellie's attention was mostly on the cup of coffee she held, and she sipped as she listened to Dean talking. In the space between the two of them, however, there was an awareness; of each other, Sam thought, some kind of charge that joined them invisibly. It wasn't one-way. It wasn't without cost. It'd taken him a while to realise Dean had found someone he could be himself with, just himself, not hiding anything, not holding anything back. It'd taken much longer to come to the recognition Dean had never had that before, not even with his family, being who he was overwhelmed by the need to be strong, to be the good son, the good soldier, as he'd once called him derisively, true, but not in the way he'd meant it.
Ellie had known what Dean had sacrificed for his family. She'd offered him something of his own.
Dean looked around the table. "Everyone clear on what they're doing?"
There were murmurs and grunts of assent, and the hunters began to disperse, heading back to their reading, to the kitchen to get food or coffee, stopping to talk here and there.
Dean's gaze shifted to Ellie, and Sam saw his older brother's brows draw together for a moment, the concerned expression smoothing out when she lifted her head to return his look, one brow lifting and falling subtly, a faint crinkle at the corners of her eyes apparently answering the unspoken question.
Ellie's gaze slid past his brother and her eyes met his. Dean turned around. "So, you and Trish want to do the Nevada hit, or wait till Frank's found the rest?"
"Either way is fine with us." Sam shrugged. "How are we going to contain them without killing them?"
"Holy oil," Dean said, his gaze cutting back to Ellie as he smiled. Sam turned to her quizzically.
"Cas said it would kill a fullblood angel, but it would burn the halfbreeds, the effect becoming more and more diluted the more distant the connection, but still noticeable to anyone with angel bloodlines," she explained. "Baraquiel told me the firstborn didn't know about it, and they won't realise it's a trap until it's too late. It'll burn them enough to be a sufficient deterrent from moving."
"And transporting them anywhere?" Sam asked. "Or do we leave them where they are?"
"We'll leave them there, all of them, until Michael's ready to deal," Dean said. "The Watchers will remove the protection around the house. They'll be blazing like a bonfire and the angels won't have any trouble finding them."
"And if they don't accept that Heaven isn't theirs?"
"Then we will be able to say we saw the beginning of the Second War," Baraquiel's deep, mellow voice said from behind him.
Sam turned around. "What's the collateral damage likely to be from that?"
"More than we want ever want to think about, Sam," the Watcher said, his tone sober. "We have to prevent them from being able to open the circle, even if it means killing them all."
He turned away, and Sam saw the slump in his shoulders. One of those he talked about was his own firstborn child. He couldn't imagine being in the Watcher's position.
The deep, throaty rumble coming up the road sounded familiar, Sam thought. He and Trish rose together, going to the window in time to see Laney's monstrous black pickup cruise past. Sam's forehead creased up a little as he listened to the engine's sound. It wasn't exactly right, not as smooth as it should be. He'd ask Dean about it.
"You ready to head up and say hi to everyone?" Trish asked him, taking Adrianne out of the high chair and wiping her face.
"As I'll ever be," Sam nodded, taking his daughter from her as she went to call Marc and Laura. The children were excited by the preparations that had been going on, and more excited with the prospect of staying all together in the care of their aunt, weeks' long sleepovers promised, when the teams went out.
Trish had finally decided that if she wanted to keep her hand in, she'd better get back in the field. She'd spent the last five weeks training with Ellie in the dojo and on the range, regaining the hard edge of fitness and, as she said, learning everything she'd forgotten she'd known, and quite a few things she'd never considered. He'd had a hard time suppressing his natural inclination to comment when she'd come home day after day, covered in the fluorescent paint from the forest training, or groaning loudly from the sparring sessions. According to his wife, Ellie was a hard-ass when it came to getting things right. Near enough was never, ever good enough.
He shifted Adrienne in the crook of his arm, and looked around the hall for anything they might've forgotten, then followed Trish outside.
They were only two houses down from his brother's place, but the blocks were big and by the time they'd turned in the gate, Laney, Greg and Carl were already inside. Marc and Laura shot down the driveway, the rising shrieks of excitement as Laney's two girls were reunited with John and Rosie clearly audible. Dean stood on the porch, a frown drawing his brows together as he stared at the black pickup sitting behind the Impala.
"Did you hear the truck come past?" he asked Sam abruptly as he climbed the steps.
"Yeah, something didn't sound quite right," Sam said, as he walked past, He caught Dean's faint expression of surprise.
"Yeah, that's what I thought," he said, turning and following him. "Hey Laney, what have you done to your engine?"
Both turned back as two more vehicles came down the drive, a dusty, tan and white station wagon, followed by a silver pickup, pulling up behind Laney's truck, and they waited on the porch as Soleil, Eddie, Red and Callie got out and came up the porch steps.
"Are we the last to get here?" Soleil looked at them, one brow rising.
"Not by much. Laney arrived about ten minutes ago," Dean said, gesturing to the hall. "All quiet down your way?"
"Quiet as the grave," Red said as he shook Dean's hand, then Sam's in passing, following Soleil, and continuing over his shoulder. "Adina called this morning, Ginny and Jim went north to check out a couple of deaths near the border, but nothing else."
"Quiet before the storm," Eddie muttered, slapping Dean on the shoulder as he passed them.
"Always the optimist, Eddie," Dean said, waiting for Callie then following them inside. Sam saw the girl half-turn back, and then carry on, as if she'd been about to say something but had thought better of it.
"Where the hell did he go?"
Sam heard Laney's voice from the hallway, followed by her exclamation as Soleil and Eddie walked into the living room. He followed Callie and Dean into the room, seeing the diminutive blonde hugging the tall Frenchwoman enthusiastically.
"God, it's been years, look at you," Laney grinned up at Soleil.
"You haven't changed, Laney, still far too much joie de vivre for such a tiny person," Soleil smiled at the other woman with genuine affection. It wasn't so surprising that the women had survived so much, Sam thought, had led and protected their crews so well. In his experience, women were far more practically minded and pragmatic than men, less likely to get lost in the despair or idealism or lack of attention that tended to kill their male counterparts.
There was a brief flurry of introductions and then Laney spotted Dean, advancing on him.
"There you are!" She shouted, moving fast through the crowded room to him. "Happy Birthday, Dean!"
Sam saw Dean's eyes widen, a vaguely hunted air hunching his shoulders as he looked around for support. Ellie'd been right, he thought as everyone in the room turned around at Laney's announcement and looked at his brother.
"Ah, thanks, Laney," Dean said, his gaze flicking around over her head as she hugged him tightly.
"And you said you wouldn't make thirty!" Laney leaned back. He smiled uncomfortably at her, his expression growing more harried as the rest of the hunters gathered around him.
From across the room, Sam caught Ellie's eye, nodding as she tilted her head and lifted an eyebrow. She edged around the crowd to his brother, and Sam saw him catch sight of her, his expression relaxing as he followed her progress through the press of the hunters.
I mean, I don't like getting singled out at birthday parties...Sam remembered Dean's protest with a smile.
"Come on, you guys, let the man breathe," Ellie said when she reached Dean. "Kitchen's full of food, go get some before it all disappears."
Magically, the hunters turned en masse and headed out through the dining room for the kitchen. Sam watched as Laney and Soleil reluctantly turned away with them, and Dean and Ellie stood together and watched them go.
"She was right, you know." Sam walked over to them, smiling at his brother. "You didn't think you'd make it to thirty."
"Yeah, see my 'shoot first, ask questions later' policy worked," Dean said, an arm curving around Ellie as they followed the hunters slowly through the dining room.
"You really don't like being the centre of attention, do you?" Sam asked him.
Dean's expression was perplexed as he answered. "Why is that a surprise to you?"
"I don't know," Sam said, shaking his head. "I got the idea you didn't mind it."
"From where?" Dean slowed as they approached the kitchen. "Kind of hard to stay camouflaged if the spotlight's on you."
"Yeah."
They walked into the room, and Sam hung back a little, looking around for Trish. He saw her standing by the island bench, talking to Soleil and Eddie, and took the path of least resistance, following the walls. From the corner of his eye, he saw Dean and Ellie move through the crowd easily, talking to one person and then another. Dean was relaxed and comfortable, talking and laughing, now he wasn't the sole focus of attention.
"Laney, give me your keys," Dean called out when the kitchen was mostly empty, and the food mostly gone. She turned around and fished them out of her jeans pocket, throwing them to him. He caught them and went out.
Sam watched him go, wondering if he should follow.
"I'm going to put Adrienne down upstairs," Trish said, appearing beside him, the drowsy little girl held in one arm. "Have you seen Marc and Laura?"
He nodded. "They're all in the playroom, upstairs. Ellie took them up some food before and they're watching a movie."
Trish smiled and turned away. He knew what she was thinking. Ellie wasn't in the slightest bit maternal, and having seven kids to look after for the next few days would be an interesting challenge for his sister-in-law. She'd cope, he thought callously.
He went to the fridge and pulled out two bottles of beer, walking down the hall to the front door, and out onto the porch.
"What is it?"
Dean looked up from the innards of the engine. "Timing's out."
"Is that serious?" Sam passed him a bottle, leaning against the quarter panel and opening his own.
"If I have a chain to fit, no," Dean straightened, smiling and lifting a brow. "You want some lessons on fixing cars again, Sammy?"
He smiled. "Not really, no, definitely your thing."
"Then what is it?" Dean twisted the top off and looked at him.
"I…uh," Sam looked down into the engine, unsure of what he wanted to say. "Just, you know, we've been getting to know Adam again, and uh…it seems like I don't know you all that well, either."
"Sure you do," Dean said, frowning at him.
"No, I really don't."
"Okay, well now you're creeping me out a bit, Sam," he said, leaning against the grill. "Do I need to get the holy water and borax and iron?"
Sam laughed uncomfortably. "No, it's me…it's…um…like, for instance, you're going on this hunt for the firstborn."
"Yeah, and?"
"And I'm not seeing any emotional fallout from what they did," Sam said, not needing to elaborate on that. Dean nodded slowly.
"Yeah, okay," he said, understanding. "It's there, Sam, just not giving it any airplay right now."
"You never used to be able to do that."
Dean smiled. "I used to do it all the time. Just didn't hide it as well, is all."
"Ellie signed herself off this ride, didn't she?" Sam asked. He saw a shadow pass behind his brother's eyes, there and then gone.
"Yeah, well, she took it a lot more personally," Dean said, putting the beer down and picking up a socket wrench. "They shouldn't have tackled her when she had the kids with her."
Sam watched him undoing the nut that controlled the tensioner, easing the sprocket inward, the small whir of the ratchet in the wrench the only sound.
"But you're okay with it?"
Dean glanced up, squinting into the sunlight behind his brother. "No, I'm not. Baraquiel's plan just seems to be the best shot we've got of not having to go to war with them ourselves, and not having them hunt us until they get lucky."
He looked back into the engine. "Pass me that small hammer."
Sam looked around and picked it up, putting it into Dean's extended hand. "How'd you convince Ellie to step back?"
"I didn't," Dean said, his voice a little muffled from the proximity to the solid metal as he tapped gently. "She took herself out."
"Oh."
"Realistically, we shouldn't be on this hunt either, you know," Dean said a moment later, freeing the old chain and pulling it out. "If it goes sideways we're both what they want."
He picked up his beer and swallowed a mouthful. "But we're probably the most experienced hunters here, especially when it comes to the whole angel thing."
"Yeah." Sam nodded. It was true. Unfortunate, but true. It still wasn't what he needed to ask. Dean's eyes narrowed a little as he caught the unspoken tension.
"Whatever it is, Sam, just say it."
"Did you, um, tell Ellie everything? I mean, everything that's happened, everything you've done?"
He saw a fleeting expression of sympathy in his brother's eyes for a moment and realised that Dean knew exactly what was he was asking. He wasn't sure if that was a relief or not. He couldn't remember the last time he'd asked something this personal of his brother.
"Yeah," Dean said unequivocally. "I had to. I couldn't deal with it when it was just in my head." He shrugged, giving Sam a faint, humourless smile. "You were right about that. I needed to get it out, but I couldn't with anyone else."
He ducked his head, spinning the socket around with his fingers. "And, well…I wanted her to know me. All of it, the broken pieces, the scars, everything." He cleared his throat and added, "I needed her to know me."
Sam thought about what he knew of Dean's experiences, of the little his brother had told him of Hell, of what had been done to him, what he'd done, how he'd felt. "How? When? What did she do?"
Dean looked around and picked up the chain. "I've got a chain that'll fit this in the garage. Come on."
Sam followed him around the house. The garage sat to one side, a big triple, the walls lined neatly with shelving and mechanics mobile drawers, a chain hoist over one bay, a grated pit in the floor of another, the concrete stained with paint and oil, but otherwise clean. Sam glanced around. It looked like the sort of workshop his father had set up, from time to time, when they'd been in a single place long enough. Organised. Efficient. Designed for working in.
Dean stopped by the long workbench at the rear, and put the old chain down, setting his beer down next to it and walking along the shelving to the left hand side. He pulled out a box and carried it to the bench, taking out the new chain and checking it against the old one.
"It was in '09. After you iced Famine, when she found us in Nebraska."
"Wait a minute, wasn't that when Raphael turned up?"
"The next day, yeah," Dean said quietly, his hands laying out the chain carefully, his eyes fixed on it. "That night was our, uh, first time. And after, I told her everything."
"Just like that?" Sam leaned against the bench, aware his expression was filled with doubt.
"Well, no. Scared the hell out of me to do it, and I was pretty sure—" His face screwed up at the inadequacy of the words. "—I was damned sure that she would leave." He slid a sideways glance at his brother. "That was why I thought she'd left and didn't come back, you know, later."
Sam nodded. He remembered Dean's despair, as they'd searched for the way to get Lucifer into the cage, and the slowly growing certainty Ellie wasn't coming back. Dean'd never explained that certainty and after a while he'd stopped talking about her at all.
"What did she do? When you told her?"
It was what he was afraid of; what would change, what Trish would do, how it would make her feel.
He was surprised to see Dean's gaze drop to the bench and his mouth curve into a smile. "She told me I needed to forgive myself. She, uh, told me she loved me."
Sam watched the expressions flit over his brother's face with the memory. Ellie had already known a lot about Dean's life, about what'd happened to him. She'd heard from the Watcher, Penemue; and from Bobby, and probably others. He wondered how much difference that had made to her understanding of his brother.
"I—it took a long time before I really believed it," Dean said, with a shrug. "I spent a lot of time convincing myself that I didn't."
"And you didn't forgive yourself either," Sam said, knowing Dean hadn't.
"No." His brother turned the chain over in his hands. "It seemed too easy. It changed something inside me, though," he added, lifting his head to look at Sam. "It made those memories, those feelings, not so hard to live with."
Sam nodded, his gaze dropping down at the worn chain lying on the bench. "So this just needs replacing?"
Dean glanced down at it and back up again. "With some other adjustments, yeah. Sam…?"
Sam looked at him, hearing the question, his expression suddenly bleak. "I can't…I can't seem to…do it. Not even with Trish."
"I can't believe I'm actually saying this—" Dean looked at him, rubbing a hand along his jawline. "—but you need to. If you don't, if you don't find a way, it'll wreck everything, eventually."
"I know," Sam said.
"She'll understand, Sam."
"How do you know that?" His head snapped up, the fear churning into a defensive anger. Even that wasn't real, he thought. Just a habit he'd had once and hadn't yet discarded. "How can you be so sure of that?"
Dean shrugged. "Because she's a hunter. Because she knows what this life is like. Because she loves you. Because, the bottom line is if she doesn't, then she's not the right person for you."
That was the thing he didn't want to hear. He nodded and turned away.
He'd told Trish a lot of it. She knew about Azazel. She knew about Ruby and the demon blood, although not the full extent of it, not what he'd almost become, or the life he'd taken on the demon's say-so. He'd told her he'd done it to kill Lilith. She didn't know about the seals or Lucifer rising or jumping into the Cage with the devil or what had happened to him down there. And he was afraid that if he told her…everything…it would change what they shared on a fundamental level.
He could feel his brother's gaze on him, and he turned back to meet Dean's eyes reluctantly.
"I used to think everyone needed a part of themselves that was just them. Just themselves where they could put the crap that they really didn't want or need anyone else to see," Dean said, picking up the chain and his beer and choosing his words with care. "I found out that was wrong. Everything I've done, everything that's happened to me, all of it, from the moment Mom died, it all, I don't know, turned me into who I am now."
Sam nodded. It wasn't just the events or the decisions. It was how they dealt with them, what they did to understand them as well.
"I can't take one little piece and say, that's not relevant, or I don't think Ellie should know about that. It can't work that way. I had to be myself, no lies. And I had to know if she could deal with that, knowing how bad it was."
Sam closed his eyes, thinking of the courage it must have taken to do that. He'd never been just himself with anyone, he realised. Not even himself. He wanted to, he realised. More than anything, he wanted to know who he was when he was just Sam.
"Have you forgiven me for everything I've done, Dean?" He asked, opening his eyes.
He saw the hesitation on his brother's face, a flash of memory or feeling and Dean looking at him through it. "I've forgiven everything I can, Sam."
That hadn't been the answer he'd been looking for, but he knew it was the best he could expect. In the long catalogue of the things that had happened between them, the choices they'd made and the consequences of those choices, there was only one thing Dean couldn't forget, couldn't get past.
You're angry, you're self-righteous. Lucifer's gonna wear you to the prom, man. It's just a matter of time.
His brother's words slipped into his mind. He'd been angry and self-righteous for a long time before then, beguiled by Ruby's assertions and the manipulations of angels. Seduced, so easily, by the power of the blood and the sense of cataclysmic importance of his role. He hadn't listened to Dean because he'd thought Dean hadn't been listening to him, and because he'd thought that Dean had been broken apart by what had happened to him, by what he'd done.
He remembered feeling stronger than his brother, remember the towering arrogance that had come with the ingestion of Ruby's blood, tearing apart Samhain and Alastair. The memories of that arrogance still had the power to make him curl up in shame.
When the spear had driven into Meg's heart, into Lucifer's heart, every one of those rationalisations had fallen away, like the anger that had lived inside of him his whole life. What had been left had been an understanding of how he'd been turned into a puppet for Heaven and Hell to play with, making his own choices based on the fallacy of the promise of being the world's saviour, of turning the taint in his blood into something pure and powerful. A lie he could see now. But he hadn't then.
With hindsight, and a clear head, he realised he should've known he was being played. God had never once chosen anyone who'd lined up for the job to save the world. His choices always had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to the arena. Like his brother.
"Sam, I know you didn't have much room to manoeuvre, I know you were being pushed around with no time to think," Dean said.
Sam looked at the man standing a few feet from him, deep regret in the dark green eyes. His brother. The only family he had left. The two of them had only had each other, really, for years.
He couldn't tell if the tangle of emotion when he thought about Dean was real, or habit, or if it had evolved because it had gone on for long enough that it had become real. He'd spent quite a lot of his life feeling completely different from Dean and his father, feeling a certainty he'd had nothing in common with them, couldn't talk to them, couldn't articulate his feelings to them. He hadn't understood them. Either of them, their straight-forward desire to hunt down the monsters and kill them, the lack of consideration for any other type of life, the recklessness that both had for their own lives, expendable if need arose, especially for family.
"There you are."
Sam turned toward the garage door. Trish was silhouetted against the sunshine outside.
"Come on, finish whatever you're doing, you're both needed inside," she said, walking into the garage and across to Sam and slipping her arm around him. He saw her register the silence between them, the tension in him, and lift a brow slightly. He smiled and put his arm around her shoulders.
"Yeah, we're coming," he said, turning back to Dean. "You need a hand with that chain?"
"Nope. I'll only be a few minutes," Dean said, following them out of the garage and stopping by Laney's pickup as they climbed the stairs.
Sam stopped and turned around, watching his brother for a minute as Dean buried himself inside the engine bay, installing the new chain. The sunlight glanced from the chrome as he spun the wrench in one hand, finger-tightening the nut with the other.
He'd thought his brother was a simple man, and perhaps, in some ways he was. Happy with what he did, with who he was, with what he had, Dean didn't really care about the things other people did, or wanted or thought about. At the same time, there was nothing simple about him. There were depths in his brother he'd never even thought about. The same things could be said for himself, he supposed. The difference was, he thought Dean had explored those deeps, and he knew he never had.
"So what were you two discussing that was so tense when I came in?" Trish asked him as they took their seats at the long dining table.
He looked at her, his heart contracting as it always did when he really looked at her, seeing the curve of her cheek, the fullness of her bottom lip, those things somehow tugging at him with a wordless need.
"Just old times," he said. "Nothing that serious."
He hated those lies, the ones that came out almost automatically whenever their conversations got close to something he couldn't bring himself to let out. Every woman he'd ever been interested had gotten those lies, and it was worse, a lot worse, with Tricia, because he didn't want to lie to her at all.
He'd wanted a normal life, but he'd never considered he couldn't have one with someone who was a civilian. He should've, god knows his brother's attempt with Lisa and Ben should've shown him. Even with Jess, when he'd thought himself well out of the hunting life, he'd kept most of what they'd done, most of his own history, hidden from her. Tricia wasn't a civilian, but he still kept things apart, compartmentalised into what he thought was safe, and what he knew was not.
It made a barrier. He'd asked Dean because even when things were at their worst between his brother and Ellie, there wasn't a barrier of that kind keeping them apart. He wanted that. He thought he needed it; they needed it.
"Laney, new timing chain in the truck," Dean said as he came into the dining room, handing her back the keys and walking around the table. Sam felt Trish's attention shift from him and he let out a small breath.
He watched and listened as Dean went over the plan for the next day, allocating positions, weapons, warnings, instructions and the little personal history of the nephilim they knew of from Chasina and Lazio. The two other firstborn would be transferred back to Lovelock after they took the base.
He looked like he'd been doing briefings all his life, Sam thought with a reluctant smile. Dean had always been good at rallying people, good at cutting through to the bare bones of an operation and laying it out as if it couldn't fail.
He'd gotten a lot better, hunting with his wife, though. Ellie strategised as naturally as breathing, and she'd taught Dean to play chess over the years they'd spent in North Carolina. Sam thought Dean was still too impatient for the really long-view strategies, and not inclined to sacrifice any piece purely for a tactical advantage, but he was good at seeing advantages and he'd absorbed a lot of her cold objectivity.
He's a lot more like Dad now, he realised, but without the fury and the fear that had driven their father on his preordained path. The sense of limitless strength, infinite determination, that was what he could see in his brother as he stood by the table, Dean's eyes dark and his face thoughtful as he listened to Twist's opinion.
"Frank's got another location, in Omaha," Dean said, turning to Laney. "It could be just the one, or it might be both."
"Kitra and Chuma split off from the others six months ago," Baraquiel said to the blonde hunter. "Chasina said they went looking for other compatible descendants when they failed to find the precise location of the Winchesters."
"Even if we can trap them there, how do we bring them back?" Laney looked from the Watcher to Dean.
"Castiel will move them," Bezaliel leaned forward across the table. "Sariel and I will be with you."
Laney's face screwed up. "I thought the angels hated them?"
Dean nodded. "Most do. Cas isn't quite so hidebound as his brothers."
"All right." He turned, letting his gaze travel around the room. "Laney, Carl, Bezaliel, Sariel, Greg and Oran, you're backup for tomorrow but point on Omaha."
Laney nodded, glancing at her people. They would be strictly observers unless needed.
"Twist, Baraquiel, Sam, Trish and Red, you'll be taking the front entrance of the house. Marcus, Trent, Katherine, Idan, you'll be taking the back southeast corner. Soleil, Eddie, Adam, Sagi and me'll take the back southwest corner." He glanced at Ellie. "Callie, you and Sima stay on the road until you get a call to come in. If we fuck this up, we'll need a fast exit, and you keep the engines running."
Sam saw Callie twitch beside Soleil, and the older woman laid a quelling hand on her ward's arm. Not so happy with being far from the action, he thought, returning his attention to his brother.
"Any hit will slow them down, but they heal fast, so make sure of your targets and don't get close until they've stopped moving," he said, his gaze moving around the faces staring at him. "We'll be there just after midday, but we'll take the house just after dark. Plenty of time to get an idea of what they're up to." He turned to Baraquiel. "You got a way to keep me and Sam off their crystal balls?"
Baraquiel nodded. "We've warded the cars. The, uh, protection you and Sam need is a little more complex."
Sam turned his head to look at the Watcher. "Say again?"
"It won't be too painful," Sariel looked at him with a faint grin. "And we have to have them as well; the children can see us as easily as you."
Sam looked at his brother. Dean gave him a half-shrug, his smile resigned.
The children were settled in their rooms, Marc and John sharing a room; Laura, Rosie, Sara and Leah were in Rosie's room and Adrienne's cot was in the guest room in between. Sam came down the dimly lit stairs, moving quietly. He'd just turned for the living room when he heard his brother's deep voice, and a lighter female voice, coming from the shadowy end of the hall near the basement door. He wasn't sure why he did it, but he froze in the near-darkness of the stairwell, staying out of sight and listening to the conversation.
"I'm old enough to do my part."
Callie, Sam thought, his eyes adjusting as he looked down the hall. She stood in front of Dean.
"That's not the issue, Callie." He heard his brother say patiently. "You don't need to be in the firing line here; look at it as a way to get experience."
"I have experience, I have lots of experience," she said, stepping close to him and lifting her arms to wind around his neck. "Come on, there must be something I can do to convince you."
"Not the kind of experience I'm looking for," Dean said, stepping back and unwinding her from him. Sam heard the irritation in his brother's voice.
"I've been hunting with Soleil for years," she insisted, getting closer again. From where he stood, Sam heard his brother's deep exhale.
"Callie, forget it. One more word, and you'll be staying right here and baby-sitting the kids," Dean said tiredly, pushing her away. "One more."
"Why won't you trust me?"
Dean snorted. "I don't know you, and the little I've seen so far is not that inspiring."
Sam heard Callie's mutter as she turned away and headed for the back porch. He gave his brother a wry smile as Dean walked the other way, coming up the hall and seeing him in the shadow of the staircase.
Dean made a face. "What'd I do to deserve that?"
"No idea. Think you made an enemy?"
"No, she's a kid, she'll get over it." His brother's gaze flicked up the stairs. "Did you want to talk about something?"
"No, just didn't want to get in the middle of that," Sam said, turning for the front door.
"Probably a good decision." Dean stopped at the foot of the stairs. "See you in the morning."
"Yeah."
Sam closed the front door and checked the protection on the ground level, then climbed the stairs to his bedroom.
The house felt very empty without the children in it. He walked into the bedroom and let out a sigh of relief. Tricia's presence was visible in the smooth shape under the covers on one side of the bed, the lamp on his nightstand a gentle spill of light in the dim room.
He'd spent the last five years here, he thought, waking up every morning to the pale blue walls and the white woodwork trim, the dark blue drapes and his wife's warmth curled up next to him. It still shocked him, in a distant, vague kind of way, that this was his home, that he didn't need to pack his clothes into a duffle and leave it. He pulled off his clothes, throwing them over the box at the end of the bed, and crawled under the covers, reaching out to flip off the lamp.
Tricia made a small noise and rolled over toward him, and he felt the instant glow of acceptance as she slid her arm over his ribs, one thigh draping over his.
"You okay?" she murmured, her voice slurred with sleep.
"Mmm. Yeah, I'm fine," he said, his arm automatically curling around her shoulders, chin lifting as she tucked her head against his chest.
He listened to her breathing slip back into the steady pattern of sleep. He was, for the most part, completely okay. He couldn't talk about what he was not okay with until after the job. Maybe not even then, he acknowledged honestly. He didn't know if he could risk this, this very-close-to-perfect life they'd made together.
I had to be myself, no lies.
Was he himself, here? He'd always been able to shut off completely the things he hadn't wanted to remember. To face. Did that make him less himself? Did he even know himself? Dean seemed to, seemed to be comfortable in his skin, no doubts, no regrets. Had that really been telling Ellie everything and saying take it or leave it?
He closed his eyes. It wasn't the events or the acts themselves. It was how they made him feel about himself. He didn't know if he would survive reliving those things and seeing himself in Tricia's eyes, the way he'd really been.
Last I checked, it wasn't the road to heaven that was paved with good intentions.
He pushed the thought away, and brushed his lips over Trish's hair. He'd changed a lot. He'd learned a lot. He could face what he'd done, what he'd felt. With help.
Lovelock, Nevada
Sam lay stretched out in the ditch, partially covered with leaves, the blood over his chest and back itching as crusted and flaked. The protective sigils were large, elaborate and covered him from shoulder to hip, front and back, painted in goat's blood and a mixture of pungent-smelling herbs and driving him crazy with the desire to scratch it all off.
Two hundred yards in front of him, the firstborn's house glowed like a jewel in the deepening night; golden lights spilling from the curtainless windows and glass-paned doors, the long swimming pool shining turquoise against the dark ground. It looked like a movie set, he thought vaguely, a concrete construction of squares and boxes, nothing personal in view, even the views he had into the interior showed a glossy magazine layout with comfortless furniture and bare concrete walls. To the Watchers, the exterior was layered in wards of guarding and deflection, sigils against Heaven and against their own fathers. The humans couldn't see the markings and symbols.
He glanced at his watch. Another minute and they would start to move down the hillside. The plan, simple as it was, still depended on where they found the nephilim and what kind of weapons they had inside the house. Everyone was wearing Frank's much-maligned and recently acquired Second Chance vests, and he hoped it would be enough if the children of the Watchers turned out to have an arsenal in there.
Throughout the afternoon, they'd watched the place, seeing the three nephilim moving around. Dean had positively identified Maluch and Reuma, Bezaliel had confirmed Idra. Most of the ground-floor windows were designed not to open, which helped with narrowing the possible escape routes. Laney and her crew were ready with the diversion.
He heard Tricia move up beside him. "Ready?"
"Yeah."
They rose from the ground, shedding leaf matter and branches, Baraquiel and Twist and Red a few feet from them, their faces painted in broad, uneven smears of black and green and grey.
No flashlights, relying on the light thrown up from the house below to see the trees and branches and rocks and holes, moving as silently as possible as they traversed the slope, dropping onto the concrete apron that separated the large garage from the front of the house. Tricia drew a small device from her pocket and pressed the switch in the centre, and the soft soles of their boots made little noise as they slipped through the darkness that blanketed the windowless front wall of the house.
Sam knelt in front of the door, looking at the electronic keypad and card lock. He pulled a small flat grey box from his pack, slipped the card into the slot and held the box close to the card, the tiny readout cycling through number combinations in reverse until it reached the correct five-digit code. The heavy mortise clicked back and he pushed the door, freeing the card and tucking card and box back into the bag.
People really needed to do more research on home security, he thought absently as he watched Baraquiel, Red and Twist slip through the open door, Tricia following them. He got to his feet and closed the door behind him.
The hallway was very wide, tiled and virtually empty, a closed door to his immediate right the closet, he thought. He opened it and looked in, closing it again when he was proved correct. They pulled out their weapons, slipping safeties off and checking that they were loaded and cocked. Then they walked down the hall.
What happened over the next ten minutes, he only really understood later, when he'd had a chance to replay the events slowly to himself. The lights went out first. He remembered that clearly.
At the end of the hall, shadows flickered across the wall, and Red turned and dropped.
"Down, they're there," he shouted, opening fire toward the movement as a muzzle flashed in the darkness in front of them and Sam felt two bullets hit his chest, knocking him backwards to the floor. He couldn't breathe and he struggled to move, rolling to the wall.
"Trish, you okay?" he asked, reaching out and grabbing her wrist, pulling her close to him.
She grunted, and in the dimness he saw her hands close around her thigh, pressing tightly.
"Hit in the leg," she said, her voice wheezing with the effort of drawing a breath. One ugly metal flower gleamed dully from the centre of her chest.
"Let me see," he said. "Don't fight against the pain in your chest. Just pant until you can breathe through it."
Against the darker clothing, her hands seemed mottled, and he realised blood was spilling over them. His fingers found the small hole through the front of the thigh, and slipped around to the back, a larger, torn section of flesh coating his hand in her warm blood as he felt around gingerly.
He reached for the small kit in his pack and pulled it out, ignoring the continuous cacophony of gunfire behind them. They were in a doorway, recessed deeply enough to be out of the line of fire. The kit contained a half dozen four-inch chemical lightsticks, and he broke one, the reaction giving off a faint blue light, enough for him to see what he was doing, not bright enough to present a clear target.
"In and out, not sure if it hit the artery, Trish," he told her. He pulled two thick dressings free of their antiseptic wrappings, folding one down over the entry hole, and placing the other against the exit hole. She nodded, her face stony against the acid-burn pain of the injury as he wound a pressure bandage tightly over the dressings and around her leg.
"This will hold for about half an hour, then it needs to be loosened," he said, his gaze on her face.
She smiled thinly at him, knowing as well as he in half an hour they would either have contained the nephilim and there would plenty of time to look at the wound, or they would all be dead.
He checked her handgun, and handed it to her. "Get back to the front door and stay out of sight. If they come down here, shoot for the heart or head, just give them the whole clip."
She nodded again and began to inch backwards, dragging the leg as she slid along the wall. He turned away, following the Watcher and the men up the hall. He could hear the whistle and shriek of Laney's fireworks behind the house, and under it, more firing.
"Trish okay?" Twist turned back to him.
"Shot. In and out." Sam said, not wanting to dwell on all the goddamned things that could go wrong with an injury like that. His chest felt like someone had given him a couple of good hits with a baseball bat and breathing wasn't the easiest thing in the world. "Let's get the trap down."
They moved fast up the hall, tracking the shouts and gunfire around the hard, echoing rooms and corridors. The hall opened into a big living area, empty as they entered. Twist and Red pushed back the loosely arranged sofas and chairs, and Baraquiel pulled the bottle of holy oil from his pack, moving around the room in a large circle, the oil splashing out onto the tiles in a thick, viscous trail as he walked. The circle blocked the entrance to the front hall and Sam and Baraquiel took up positions to either side of the circle, Sam in the entrance hall and the Watcher in front of the glass doors that opened onto the patio, as Red and Twist reloaded their guns and walked down another hall toward the noise.
Sam pulled out his lighter as he heard the slap of running feet along the hard tile floors, somewhere in the house. To the right, down the smaller, secondary hallway that Twist had taken, he heard a volley of shooting, Twist's Uzi submachine gun rat-tatting sharply, and a louder, deeper fusillade, possibly a Kalashnikov, he thought, on semi-automatic fire.
He looked at the Watcher, who nodded once, and they crouched by the oil, waiting. Sam saw the barrel first, the nephilim holding it bursting out through the end of the hallway, one foot skating as it touched the edge of the oil circle and he tried to slow when he saw his father. The flames touched the oil, and the oil caught, Idra staring at Baraquiel as he rose from the crouch, head snapping around as he caught Sam's slow rise in the corner of his eye.
"Drop the weapon, Idra, it's over," Baraquiel said quietly. "Where are Maluch and Reuma?"
Sam watched the nephilim twitch in the centre of the circle, not wanting to believe he was trapped, that he didn't still have options. The half-breed was tall, not quite as tall as his father, but wider, heavier, broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, his hair cut short, the colour lighter than Baraquiel's, more of a red-gold in the light of the fire that surrounded him. His face was smooth and pale, his eyes a deep blue. Sam saw Idra's fingers tighten around the barrel of the AK47 he held, and he raised his gun.
"Don't."
Idra looked at him, brow furrowing as he recognised him. "You can't take all of us."
"You can't raise the circle with less than nine," Baraquiel said mildly behind him. "And even if you could, you would be killed before you started."
Idra turned back to his father. "Why didn't you tell us?"
"You were children at the time, Idra. It was the council's decision and it was agreed, Lucifer could not have a way to return to Heaven." Baraquiel looked at him steadily, sorrow in his voice.
"You condemned us all to living here, with these monkeys, instead of being able to claim our heritage!"
"Well, you certainly sound like the seraphim," Baraquiel said, his voice dry. "Who was it that filled your ears with that particular line of fantasy?"
Idra stared at him, uncertainty clouding his features for a moment. "Maluch told us, when he found out the truth."
"Maluch was wrong, Idra," Sam said. "The angels, the archangels, they hate the nephilim."
"What would you know?" Idra spun around to face him. "A monkey, despite the blood that flows in your veins."
Sam's mouth thinned at the comment. "The angels haven't made a secret of how they feel about half-breeds."
He swung around at the slur of a sole on the tiles in the hall, lowering his gun as he saw Soleil come around the corner.
"Baraquiel, we need you," she said, looking past Sam and Idra as if she didn't see them.
The Watcher nodded, walking around the circle to her. "What happened, Soleil?"
"One of the nephilim broke through," she said, glancing at Sam.
"Is Dean okay?"
She nodded. "Yes. It's Bezaliel."
"I'll stay," Sam answered Baraquiel's unspoken question, turning back to Idra. The Watcher strode away, Soleil on his heels.
Idra was looking at the floor. Neither man nor nephilim said anything.
Sam looked up at the sound of wings in the closed space. Castiel stood beside the circle, Chasina and Lazio held tightly to either side of him, their hands bound behind them. He thrust the two through the flames and into the circle, his face impassive at their screams as they crossed the line and fell to the floor in the centre.
"What happened?" The angel turned to Sam.
"Maluch killed Bezaliel and broke through. They have Reuma in the circle at the back of the house," Sam said. "Trish is down by the front door, Cas. She took a bullet through the leg."
Castiel turned abruptly, walking fast out of the room. A few minutes later, he returned, Tricia with him. She was walking normally, the bandage and dressing gone from her leg.
"Where are others?" Cas asked.
Sam gestured to the door on the other side of the circle. A short flutter in the air bowed the flames of the circle for a second and was gone.
Sam turned back to Tricia. "You okay?"
"Better now, I was getting a bit woozy for a while there," she said, slinging her gun over her shoulder and looking at the nephilim in the circle. "Have they tried to get out?"
Sam turned to look at them as well. Chasina and Lazio lay on the floor, the scorch marks and blistered flesh from the holy fire clear even at a distance. "No, and I don't think they will now."
They left Lovelock at dawn, the four nephilim held in three concentric circles of oil and flame, and Castiel remaining to watch them. The six-hour drive home was silent. Bezaliel had been killed by his son, who'd somehow managed to get through the net of hunters and escape into the night, severely burned by his break across the fire, but still alive. Eddie had died in the crossfire when the nephilim had come from the front of the house. Red, Oran, Sariel, Dean and Katherine had all taken hits. Castiel had healed them before they'd left. They'd burned the bodies on pyres, away from the house.
It hadn't been then that Soleil had realised the station wagon had gone, Callie with it. In the scrying bowl, Baraquiel had seen the car and the girl driving east, Maluch in the seat behind her, the semi-automatic pressed against the back of her head.
Sam sat in the backseat of the Impala, his arm wrapped around Trish, staring out the window as the sun rose slowly through the peaks and the traffic on the road gradually increased. His gaze cut across to the front seat. Dean drove steadily, his face expressionless, hands light on the wheel. Sam wondered how much guilt his brother had taken on board for the deaths, for Maluch's escape and Callie's kidnapping. He didn't know how to ask. Or even if he should.
Beside his brother, Soleil was curled into the corner between the seat and the door, silent and withdrawn.
Eddie had been her partner for a long time, Sam knew. He'd only met Eddie in Garber, in '09. He'd thought it'd been by chance that the hunter had shown up in time to see off Bose, Hull and Janklow when they'd returned later. But nothing was chance, and Red had told him Soleil had sent Eddie back to Garber to ensure the hunters didn't kill him. That debt, among others, couldn't be repaid now. To either of them.
A part of him knew it was just the life they lived. He was pretty sure both Dean and Soleil knew that as well. Another part wished that he didn't know anything about this life. It was still there, the old desire to forget about the things in the dark, forget about his family's history, forget that he'd brought on the end of the world, and saved it. There wasn't a way, it seemed, to get rid of that part, to really be comfortable with who he was and what he did. An inch to the right and Tricia could've bled out before Cas got there. Dean had had a shallow furrow along his scalp. An inch lower and he could've been without his brother.
Don't you get it? The demons will never stop. You can never be with your family. So you either get as far away from them as possible or you put a bullet in your head. And that's how you keep your family safe. But there's no getting out and there's no going home.
He sighed deeply, remembering his words to Jimmy, seeing the man's face in his mind's eye again. It had seemed like there were no options back then.
You remember when our job was helping people? Like, getting them back to their families? Dean had looked at him, his uncertainty and dislike of what they were doing obvious. You think I don't want to help him? I'm just being realistic. I mean, hell, we're doing him a favour.
For a long time, he'd been in that mindset, rationalising the evil out of his actions, telling himself it was all for the greater good, for a higher purpose.
The truth was, there was no higher purpose that was ever justified in pain and suffering. You could sacrifice yourself, but never anyone else, and Dean had known that. And somewhere, far down, he'd known it too.
Forest Edge, Oregon
Sam watched his brother get out of the car, walk slowly up the porch steps and crouch down to enfold his children in his arms, seeing the tension flow out of him as he picked up Rosie and looked down at Ellie, her hand lifting to lay her palm against the side of his face. He saw Dean's eyes close briefly as if she'd taken something from him. The moment was over too fast to understand what had passed between them. He only knew that he felt a sudden yearning for that comfort, for that understanding.
He got out and followed Tricia up to the porch, crouching down to hug Marc and Laura as Trish took Adrianne from Ellie. He picked up both children, waiting for Soleil to walk inside first and following her. Behind them, the cars came down the driveway, pulling in behind each other, the hunters getting out and filing into the house.
The dining table was extended and the surrounding chairs filled, the men and women eating with little appetite from the platters of food that covered the centre.
"Frank's checking the cameras he can access," Ellie said quietly to Dean as Sam sat down next to them. "He'll have a direction and a route in a couple of hours."
Sam picked up a sandwich and took a bite, looking over at her. "He'll be heading for Omaha, won't he?"
She nodded. "That's the best guess."
She glanced at Soleil worriedly and the older woman turned her head and returned the look; her face smooth and without emotion.
"Maluch would be a fool not to question Callie on what we know," Soleil said, a shadow in her eyes as she acknowledged what kind of questioning that would be. "We have to expect that she will tell him, and that they won't stay in Omaha."
Ellie drew in a deep breath. "Whatever they have there is protected, against the angels and the Watchers, it won't be so easy for them to give that up and put themselves on the run."
"And he's injured. Badly," Dean added. "He won't be up to much in the way of doing anything…forceful…for a time."
"The nephilim heal fast, Dean." Soleil looked down at the sandwich on her plate doubtfully. "I don't know how much time we have."
"Carl and Twist have already headed out there, and I've called Charlie and Jeremy to meet them. They'll keep eyes on until we can get there in force," Laney looked down the table at Dean. "We just need a few more and we can take them there."
Sam felt Tricia's hand curl lightly around his arm. He glanced at her, seeing the slight shake of her head as she looked at him. He took her hand and squeezed it gently. Whoever was needed would go, he wasn't going to back out if Dean asked him.
He turned his head back to his brother in time to see Dean looking at Ellie.
"Laney, you and Dean, Trent and Katherine and Oran," Ellie said, looking at them.
"And moi, chere," Soleil added quickly, looking from Ellie to Dean.
"Your head isn't in the right place for this, Soleil," Dean said.
"Callie is my responsibility, Dean," she countered fiercely. "I must be there."
"Alright," Ellie agreed, glancing at Dean, her head inclined slightly. "But you're there for Callie, oui? Not for Maluch. You follow orders."
Soleil looked at her for a long moment. "Yes, oui, all right."
Sam felt Tricia's fingers relax in his, and he turned to his brother. "What about the rest of us?"
Dean looked down at the sandwich in his hands. "Frank'll be able to give us a direction and if they've gone to Nebraska, then great. But there's always a possibility Maluch will try to get Kitra and Chuma to meet him elsewhere, and he'll come here," he said, looking down the table. "In which case, everyone else stays put. They still need us, so we're not taking chances."
"When do we go?" Laney asked, picking up her beer and chugging a mouthful.
"As soon as Frank confirms they're really going east," Dean said. "Soleil and me'll ride with you, Laney. Trent and Kath can take Oran with them."
He looked at them. "Check that we've got everything we need, and this time we load up with hollow-points, nothing under .45 calibre, grab some from the armoury if you don't have anything suitable of your own."
He turned to Baraquiel, his expression and voice hard and cold. "We're done pussy-footing around with these dicks. If they go into the circle, that's fine, otherwise we put them into the ground."
Baraquiel glanced at Chazaquiel and Sariel briefly, then nodded reluctantly in agreement.
Sam found Ellie in the basement, keying in a search pattern for the accessible security cameras in and around Omaha. She glanced around as he pulled up a chair and sat down next to her.
"Do you think they've gone there?"
"Maybe. The burns from the holy oil aren't like other injures, Maluch won't heal from them like he would a bullet wound or being stabbed, they attack the angel in him," she said distractedly, fingers flying over the keyboard as she moved from department to department within the government's network. "He'll need somewhere safe to go."
"Will he torture Callie, to find out what she knows?" he asked, trying to shut out the imagery the thought raised.
"Dean said his skin was burned off in places, blistered as if he'd had a blowtorch on him in others," she said, hitting Enter and turning to look at him. "He's not going to be doing much in the way of anything, I'd say. At the moment, he's aware we won't be sitting still, letting him go. So I think Callie's relatively safe for a little while longer."
He nodded. "I was surprised you let Dean go."
Ellie raised a brow. "Let him go?"
"You know…didn't ask him to stay here," Sam said. "He took the deaths hard."
"I don't know why people keep thinking I have any control over Dean," she said, shaking her head. "He does what he has to."
"You can influence him, though, Ellie. He listens to you," Sam insisted.
"He listens to everyone, Sam, and then he makes up his own mind. It's not my decision to make for him, and I wouldn't try to use his feelings against him." She looked around as the machine behind her beeped softly. "You know, he'll always take responsibility for the things he puts into action, Sam. That is never going to change and it never should. But he's figured out how to deal with the guilt over the people who don't make it."
"Has he?"
"The thing that took him the longest to get his head around was that people make their own choices." She typed in a new command, eyes narrowed as the screen divided into a number of small frames, each showing a different section of the city streets.
"And that he's not responsible for those choices," she continued, turning back to face him. "Eddie and Bezaliel were hunters. Had been for a long time. They knew the risks, they knew the dangers, and they chose to be there. Dean knows that's not on him."
Sam nodded. "And Callie?"
The corner of her mouth lifted in a one-sided smile. "Callie tried to make Dean put her closer to the action, didn't she?"
He looked away. "You knew about that?"
"You sound surprised," she said, her tone derisive.
"I am, I guess," he said, giving her a shrug. "It's probably not something I'd've told Trish about, in the same circumstances."
Ellie's smiled disappeared. "Sam, there are a lot of things you should tell Trish about."
He looked at her, seeing an understanding and a very gentle warning in her face.
"I don't know that I can risk that."
She turned to the screens, studying the camera images for a long moment, then turned back to him. "I think the risks of not doing it are much higher than the risks of doing it. For both of you."
Sam felt a shiver skate up his back as her words sank in. He nodded, looking away.
The bedroom was dimly lit by the single lamp, throwing a pool of light over his nightstand, leaving the rest in shades of grey. Tricia always left it on, if she went to bed before him. Sam pulled off his clothes and crawled into the bed, hand hesitating over the lamp switch off as he settled. He pulled it away as he glanced at the woman who lay beside him.
His brother had been right. Ellie was right. He couldn't keep going like this, hiding his crap away as if it didn't exist. He'd never be free of it. He'd never be able to be himself.
"Trish? You awake?" he murmured, rolling over onto his side.
"Mmm…yeah, what it is, Sam?" She turned to face him, her eyes narrowing a little against the lamplight.
"I—" He took a deep breath. "There's some stuff I need to tell you, that you need to know about."
She looked at him, her expression sharpening as she focused on him. She nodded, sitting up and propping the pillows behind her. "Okay."
He thought about where to start.
Lawrence, he decided. At the beginning…
