Sorry about the week break! Things got crazy, but they've toned down a bit now, until finals next week, but I'm ahead a bit so there will be a chapter next week even with finals ;) As always, thanks for sticking with the story! Reviews are always loved and appreciated! Thanks to Celtic Knot and TXKimsonFan for reviewing!
As for Wayward Sisters, personally I love what they did with it and I hope it becomes a series. Could the episode have used more Winchesters? Yep. But with the time they were given to fit everything in, they did well, and the scenes we're missing from the Winchester camping trip in Purgatory 2.0 can always be filled in by fanfic authors. So there's my two cents, feel free to add yours!
Nope, don't own SPN.
December 12
"The hell?" Dean asked the second Sam started pulling around a dirt road to something that looked like an old power factory. They had left the motel early the morning before, with Sam and Cas taking turns driving as Dean mainly slept in the passenger's seat. They had stopped a bit later than they had initially intended to at a motel, but it was worth it because in the late afternoon the day after, they had made it to the bunker.
"Just give it a minute," Sam replied, trying to ease Dean's worry. Even in the fading light, Dean could see the small smirk on his brother's face, a gesture that he had missed seeing in their current situation. Dean did, in fact, give it a minute, and when they pulled into some hidden spy garage under the factory, he was impressed.
He was more impressed, however, with the multitude of fancy old cars and bikes that were also inside the garage.
"Woah," he whispered as Sam stopped the car and the three of them got out. "So…a bunch of librarians collected cool cars?"
"Apparently, though they do take offense to that term," Cas brought up, though the angel was smiling as well.
Dean took a look around. Beyond the cars and machines, the layout was definitely a bit older, but it was fancy nonetheless. "Okay," he clapped his hands together a bit, "grand tour time."
It was the only way he could think to bring levity to such a situation. After all, how could he not remember a place like this? Even after following Sam and Cas down a few hallways, he was practically begging for anything to come to the surface. Literally anything. But the cars and the old lights and the cold cement beneath his feet did nothing for the years lost inside his head.
He tried to not let his disappointment show, as Sam and Cas were apparently pretty good at doing.
The hallway eventually ended and Sam and Cas let Dean go a few steps ahead up into a giant room. A metal staircase snaked up one side with a bunch of old radio stuff on the walls. A lit up map table sat in the center of the room with a few chairs sat around it. Dean let out a low whistle as he surveyed the area.
"We live here?" he asked, just to be certain. The library up ahead was also crazy big, but they could get to that later.
"Yep," Sam nodded, half a smile on his face. It fell a bit as Dean kept looking around, as if all of them were holding their breath waiting for something to surface.
Dean went over to the map table and toyed with a few of the circular objects on top of it. Things felt…familiar in a strange sense. Like he was going through some deja vu without remembering what would have caused it in the first place. It was unsettling.
"There is a kitchen just down the hall," Cas pointed to the area on the other side of the map room. "Sam has mentioned that you can be fond of cooking sometimes."
"We have a real kitchen now?" Dean asked, already beginning to cross the room, but he stopped when he heard a bit of a laugh.
Behind him, Sam was smiling and shaking his head a little. When Dean looked at him quizzically, he simply held up a hand and waved it. "Just deja vu. You, uh, you said that before."
Right, so the deja vu was hitting them all pretty hard then, good to know. Dean nodded in response, not quite sure what words would make up for what his brain couldn't remember. He followed the snaking hallways until he reached the kitchen, which was in fact a real kitchen, much to his delight.
"Am I a decent cook?" he asked, turning towards Sam and Cas as they stood in the doorway. Of course, he knew how to handle a few things, namely burgers and anything that had to be put on a grill. He was in charge of the grill during the barbecues with Lisa and Ben and the rest of the neighborhood…
And there it was. He cut off that thought before it could get any further. Lisa and Ben weren't with him, and Sam and Cas hadn't mentioned them, which meant that something had happened that they'd rather keep under wraps until it was absolutely necessary.
Dean could only take so much loss at one time, and right now his memories were taking up about a hundred and twenty percent of his 'loss' capacity. He couldn't add Lisa and Ben to that percentage…not yet.
He must have been staring at the soup ladle in front of him a little too long, because Sam eventually cleared his throat to get Dean's attention before he replied. "Pretty decent," he tried to be nonchalant about it, "but you need to learn how to do laundry."
"Re-learn?" Dean asked, trying to correct his brother.
Sam shook his head and smirked again. "No, just learn. Dude, you iron shirts with beer, we can't have that anymore."
Dean made a bit of a face and shrugged his shoulders in indifference. Water, beer, same difference, right? They probably worked about the same.
"So, we've got kitchen, headquarters, library, what else?" he asked half hoping there was some area that would just scream out memories at him.
"There is a filing room," Cas brought up.
Dean rolled his eyes in response. "Seriously, Cas? Filing? Sorry, but we're talking cool stuff here."
Sam shook his head and stepped back out into the hallway before he motioned for Dean to follow. "No, no, this one's good."
Dean muttered a 'whatever' under his breath and followed Cas down another set of hallways. He would definitely need to explore more to get all the hallways and rooms down. Some were labelled with numbers, others with letters, there didn't seem to be much rhyme or reason behind that. Cas eventually stopped and opened the door to one, revealing…a filing room, just like he had said. Cas flicked on the lights and let Dean enter.
There were stacks of paper and boxes around, but there wasn't much else there…until Dean looked at the floor. He looked back to Sam and Cas, who motioned for him to go explore, and he went up to the end of the room where there were semi-circle scratches on the floor. A hidden secret room? That should bring back some stuff for sure. He pulled open the cabinet that would attach to the scratches and grinned as it came forward and folded out to reveal a giant devil's trap and chains on the walls.
"I believe it isn't quite so boring now?" Cas asked, and Dean could practically see the smile on his face.
"Oh, definitely not," Dean replied, and took a few steps in. But that was about as far as he got. Something twisted in his gut the further he got into the room. He couldn't explain it, and no pictures popped into his head when he did so. He just had a bad feeling, and he knew to trust it. "So, we got bedrooms?" he asked and turned around to close the dungeon off, hoping it wasn't too fast to draw unneeded attention to it. Apparently not, because Sam motioned him out of the room.
Down, you guessed it, another hallway, Sam pointed out his and Dean's rooms next to each other, which Dean peeked into, and then they continued to the library. Dean hadn't been interested in it before, but standing in the space with the big wooden tables, lamps, and books stacked up, he could only imagine how helpful it was to them.
"This is crazy," he muttered and ran his fingers along just a few of the book spines.
"Yeah. Turns out the librarians were good for something. There's other storerooms in the bunker, but we can get to those tomorrow or something," Sam mentioned. He pulled out a chair at the table, to which Cas did the same, and sat down. Dean kept standing, fingering through a few titles on various creatures and findings, some of which were new even to him.
They lapsed into silence for a few moments, and when Dean looked up from his book that he was turning pages in, he was struck by how much the even stacks of books looked like those in Bobby's house. Oh man, he must love this place. It was a little far from Sioux Falls, but still.
"Hey," he turned to the two men seated at the table, "Bobby ever drop by here? I mean, the distance is a little much, but he must love it." He turned back to the books with a fond smile on his face before the silence got to him.
They should have responded, right? Some sort of affirmation? He turned back to them a bit slower than he had the first time to see Sam suddenly very interested in the pencil on the table and Cas looking back at Dean with a sad expression on his face.
And that loss percentage that Dean had been so worried about? He should have known what was coming, but he had to ask anyways. "He's been here, right? Or you text him pictures of this stuff when he needs it or something? Skype over how to alphabetize werewolf nonsense?" Each question got more desperate as they were asked. And still, the silence fell back over them. "Sammy?"
His brother eventually raised his head, and Dean could tell that this was one of those topics that they had been trying to avoid until it was absolutely necessary. Because knowing…in Dean's already fragile state, could…he didn't know what.
"There was an…incident about five years ago," Cas started very quietly. "The leader of a group of monsters came after you and Sam and Bobby and-"
"Bobby didn't make it," Sam finished for Cas just as quietly. "We found the bunker about a year later."
So, no, Bobby had never been to the bunker. They had never skyped or called to share the vast tomes of knowledge. They had never done that because Bobby was dead, and had been for five years. And Dean didn't remember any of it. He very slowly closed the book and put it back on the shelf.
"I'm sorry, Dean, I wasn't sure how to bring it up to you, the aftermath didn't go well last time, and with everything else happening, I wanted…I don't know, to see if you remembered something first that may make it easier."
Of course, nothing about the situation would make any of it easier, but Dean got why Sam hadn't told him. He got it because at that very moment, his chest was tight and his legs were about ready to run away from whatever sort of news flash this was.
"He…he get a hunter's funeral?" Dean was eventually able to ask in a voice that cracked enough to betray the emotion he was trying to hide. Because he should have remembered that answer for himself, and he couldn't bear asking about more of the details because he should have remembered those too.
Cas was about to answer, but Sam held up a hand and shook his head. So there was more to the story, but Dean couldn't bear to ask any more of it. "He's at peace, Dean, he's in heaven, we know that for a fact."
Again, something Dean couldn't bring himself to question Sam on for more details. He eventually nodded as slowly as he could and pursed his lips.
"Okay…" he trailed off quietly. "I'm gonna…I'm gonna take a shower, get this hospital and traveling stink off me."
It was a lame excuse, but nobody called him on it, and Dean doubted they would have. He left Sam and Cas sitting at the table in the library, but the tightness in his chest didn't dissipate. He followed the winding corridors down to where he remembered his room to be, the one with the guns on the walls and the nice mattress.
He made a beeline for the bathroom, where he got some cold water on his face and gripped the edge of the sink as if it could anchor him back down to reality. Bobby was gone, and had been gone for half a decade. How much more family did they have left?
So he had…two more years with him from what he remembered, hopefully. The last time he had seen him he had said goodbye and driven off in the Impala with the salvage yard in his rearview mirror.
That couldn't have been the last time they had seen each other, right? No, they had to have afterwards. They had to. It just went on as another tick on Dean's 'unanswered questions that may never be asked list.'
Dean wasn't sure how long he stood like that in front of the sink, but he did eventually make his way back into the rest of the room. Once there, he sat on the edge of the bed and looked towards the nightstand. Something in him pulled to open the top drawer, where he found a pistol and a small stack of photographs.
It took him a second to muster the courage to pick the stack up, but eventually he had the images lying in his lap. The first was of him and mom, which brought a sad smile to his face. He flipped through the one of their family in front of the tree in their yard and eventually to one of him and Sam. Sam was younger then, closer to what Dean remembered him as, but closer even to his Stanford days.
The next one he flipped to, however, was one Dean didn't recognize. He and Sam were seated at the kitchen table in Bobby's house with beers and sandwiches between them. They were both smiling, which was funny, because surely if that had happened and Bobby had taken a picture, Dean would have remembered it. Add that to the list of things he was missing, and for once it seemed to be a decent memory.
He flipped to the next photo and stopped, jaw set tight. It was another photo he didn't remember taking, and based on Sam's hair alone it seemed to be from about the same time as the other one. He and Sam were standing against the car with Bobby in the center, his arms folded.
It brought Dean the smallest amount of solace that he had at least seen Bobby again after his months with Lisa and Ben…and yet…This was probably the last picture they had of him, anywhere, and Dean didn't even remember taking it. He didn't know how long after he had left the life it was taken, or how far before Bobby would be removed from the picture entirely.
That thought had him putting the pictures back in his nightstand, slamming it closed probably a bit harsher than he should have. He went about grabbing a fresh pair of clothes to change into after his shower, trying to ignore how hot his face was. It was only there that he couldn't tell the difference between the water droplets and the few tears that would've stained his cheeks.
After he got out, Dean's head was no more clear, but he still wasn't ready to go back to the library or look for Sam and Cas. Instead, he started down one of the many hallways, looking for something to take his mind off what he had just learned. He passed by the kitchen and made a left down where Sam and Cas hadn't yet shown him. The walls in the hallways were mostly bare, save for a few lights that spotted them, and were free of marks.
Except for one portion. As Dean got closer, the same feeling he had in the dungeon came back. There was a large dent in one of the walls close to where it turned into a corner. Dean brushed his fingers over the dent. Something had obviously been hit rather hard into the wall and jerked back out again…
A hammer.
Just like that, a small flare of pain started in the back of his head and Dean reached up the massage it away. A hammer…he could practically feel it in his hands. He had hurled the hammer intending to hit something. Something on the wall? Had a monster gotten into the bunker?
But he should've listened to the feeling in his gut and not tried to remember anything else. A hammer was good enough, right? Wrong. If he couldn't remember Bobby, the least he could do was remember why the hell he was throwing around hammers in the bunker.
He shut his eyes, ignoring the steady warning of pain in his head until a feeling bubbled up in his gut. It was one of anger mainly, but also one that distinctly didn't belong. It didn't belong at the very core of Dean's being. The hammer…had been with the intention to kill someone…Sam.
It was a fleeting image, one that he tried to snatch onto but the second he did he wished he hadn't. It couldn't have been more than a few seconds, and it was fuzzy and dark around the edges, like someone had failed at editing a photo properly.
But his hands were holding the hammer, and the hammer was aimed at Sam's head. His little brother had ducked just in time, leaving the hammer in the wall and Sam's hand up with a knife at Dean's throat.
Dun dun dun! This is actually what I've been excited to write about for pretty much the whole of the story. There's so much Dean doesn't remember, so going through a few moments will definitely be a ride! Tune in next week for some more brotherly angst, a few revelations, and some other fun stuff. I hope you guys enjoyed reading as much as I did writing!
If anyone has a specific memory they'd like to see pop up, don't hesitate to suggest it and I'll see if I can work it in :)