The Devil You Know
Chapter Five
Time to act –
Time to act, now, damn it!
Dean's finger relaxed on the trigger: he couldn't shoot Michael without risking Sam, and shooting Sam had never really been an option. Time was running out: Sam's face, tensed with borrowed hatred, turned away from him, and the muscles of his arm contracted, preparing to move.
Dean did the only thing he could think of; it wasn't a good plan, but in that second, it seemed the best of a bad lot. The least of a whole range of evils –
He turned the gun in his hand and threw it, hard and accurate, straight at Sam's forehead. Not hard enough to knock him out, but hard enough to make him lurch backwards, releasing Michael from the knife.
There was a burst of movement. Sam staggered back, cursing, ducked, and snatched up the gun from the floor, spinning as he rose to his feet. Dean swore – not such a brilliant plan. He seized Michael by the upper arm and pushed him forcefully towards the open bathroom door. It was the nearest cover available. Dean plunged after him, rolling on the floor and kicking the door closed as he fell. Three shots rang out, painfully loud and sharp, and he felt one of them graze the side of his neck; the other two made splintered dents in the thick wooden door. He flicked the lock and searched wildly for something heavy to lean against the door to keep his brother out. He cursed his luck at being in a bathroom; all the heavy furniture was fixed securely to the walls and floor.
Another shot, slightly muffled, slammed into the wood, making the hinges rattle ominously. Dean threw his own weight against it, just in time – Sam's kick thudded loudly against the other side. Dust rained down on Dean's head. Apparently, this solution was temporary at best.
Michael picked himself up from the bathroom floor and stared incredulously at Dean, who was struggling with the trembling door. 'Why would you save my life?' he demanded. He sounded almost angry.
Dean glared at him. Of all possible activities, being stranded in a bathroom with Michael hiding from a homicidal Sam must feature in at least the bottom three. He grimaced as another bullet lodged in the door, causing splinters to explode out just above his head. The wood was weakening. A few more bullets, and they'd start coming through.
Michael was staring at him without comprehension. 'Why…?' he began again, but his voice gave out. For the first time that Dean could remember, the teenager was looking at him without hatred.
'Sam would tear himself apart if he killed a human being,' he grated out reluctantly. He only conceded grudgingly that Michael belonged to the class 'human being'. Still, he didn't want to let Michael believe he had been saved for his own sake.
He grunted as Sam's weight slammed into the other side of the door.
Michael blinked, and looked away. Dean had a powerful desire to hurl abuse at the young idiot for getting him into this mess, but holding the door took all his energy and concentration. Again, he had the sensation of a moment of electric stillness lodged in the middle of a series of storms.
Not that it was particularly still – Sam's voice could be heard beyond the door, using words Dean had never heard him use before, accusing him of cowardice, trying to get a rise out of him. He shut out the sound determinedly, but phrases filtered to his ears, punctuated with loud thuds, as Sam continued trying to wear down the door.
The moment stretched out; it seemed to go on and on. Dean's mind was too harassed to formulate any satisfactory plan, so he resorted to cheap, childish tricks. Sam's charges against the door had taken on a rhythm. At a strategic moment, he stepped away from the door and unlocked it, ducking away to one side, ignoring Michael's yelp of protest. Sam burst through the door, too full of momentum, and Dean's fist collided powerfully with the side of his head as he passed. He fell, face down.
Another moment of stillness. Events seemed to be unrolling in staccato bursts, interspersed with brief, tense rests. Dean stared down at Sam and breathed out. His eyes met Michael's, in a dangerous warning stare which meant don't move.
Dean crouched beside his brother, in time to see Sam begin to stir groggily. Hastily, he wrenched the chain free of Sam's neck, glanced up at Michael and pitched it across the room, out of reach. He didn't want to touch it any longer than he had to; the feel of it turned his stomach.
He half dragged, half carried his brother out of the bathroom, and deposited him on the nearest bed. He wasn't comfortable, sitting at Michael's feet. Sam groaned as he sat up, both hands going to his head.
'Mmuh… hurts,' he mumbled.
Dean muttered an apology.
'You back with us?'
Sam looked up. Realisation dawned, slowly, on his face. 'Shit. Oh, shit… I'm going to kill him. What did I do?' His eyes widened suddenly in horror. 'You're bleeding. Oh, my god, not again…'
'What?' Dean raised a tentative hand to touch the spot Sam's eyes were fixed on. Sure enough, a narrow gulley ran along the side of his neck. He remembered feeling a bullet graze him in the confusion. But it was nothing, not a finger's depth. 'Sam, chill, I'm fine. You didn't hurt anyone. Just a door,' he added, trying to lighten the mood. Sam didn't respond to the weak humour.
He studied the tiny wound in minute detail. There was something akin to panic in his eyes. Dean seized him by the shoulders, and forced him to meet his eyes.
'Sam. Look at me, I'm fine…'
Sam took a shaky breath, and nodded.
'What's all that about?'
'I just… Jesus, Dean. I just… I don't know, lately… I'm going to have a heart attack, man; I'm really going to lose it if I have to mop up your blood one more time. I know you don't do it on purpose but… Seriously, it's getting out of control. I can't take any more, Dean…'
Dean was surprised, but then he reflected. He remembered looking up at Sam's face through a haze of pain in a dark motel room, remembered Sam's sharp intake of breath as he had pressed the barrel of a gun against his own chest. Remembered, more recently, a tight-faced Sam stitching up his arm, and glaring at him, disproportionately angry with him for scratching at the wound as it began to heal. For a second he tried to empathise, tried to imagine himself watching Sam suffer a series of injuries, but he stopped, pulling his imagination back. It was too painful.
There are a lot of ways to be selfish, and some of them look selfless on the surface. He felt strangely guilty. A part of him rebelled- did Sam think he had deliberately got himself stabbed and shot? Another part was sympathetic- he hadn't thought about it from his brother's point of view.
'Okay…' Dean said. 'You won't have to, Sam. I promise. I'm sorry…' The words sounded awkward. He hated making promises he couldn't guarantee to keep.
Sam nodded, appeased, for the moment. 'Where's Michael?' he asked, suddenly, his expression hardening.
'Sitting on the naughty step,' Dean replied absently, turning to see whether Michael was still standing in the bathroom, staring vacantly into space. He wasn't. Dean spun round, and his gaze fell on the teenager, crouching in a corner of the room, studying something on the floor.
Dean cursed. He didn't believe how careless he had been, in his concern for Sam.
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Michael stared after Dean as he dragged Sam out of the cramped bathroom. He found himself awash in painful ambiguity, and wished hard that he could go back to seeing everything in black and white. Shades of grey were unsettling.
He had come here secure in the knowledge that he hated, hated the Winchesters, with a passion, with a fury. He had come with his heart and mind set on revenge, with a lust for blood in his throat. It had been beautiful, pure, he had lived with a clear purpose. Having a purpose, he had found, was nearly as good as belonging to someone; because when you knew exactly what you wanted, you could be utterly self-centred. You could belong to yourself.
And now –
Now, he stood watching the Winchesters. There was a knife at his feet, dropped by Sam as he had collapsed onto the floor. They weren't watching him, wrapped up in their quiet conversation. Heroes of revenge tragedy would have killed for an opportunity like this. 'Now might I do it...'
And yet… a strange, unfamiliar feeling tugged at him. He hadn't felt it in a long time. He didn't like it, and tried to cast it aside, but it clung to him like a limpet, insistent and stubborn. He couldn't dislodge it.
There was a name for this feeling, but he couldn't bring it to his lips, it hovered in his subconscious. It annoyed him, so much that he could almost work up enough fury to galvanise himself into action. That limpet-feeling pulled him back, though. He growled in frustration.
Staring out into the room, framed by the battered doorframe, a tiny part of the view seemed to swell and brighten until it dominated his vision, and suddenly the answer was clear. The perfect opportunity for revenge was marred by a sense of responsibility to the man who had saved his life – but the solution was there in front of him. A way to suppress conscience- yes, conscience, that was it. He would be better off without it.
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Self-reproach and horror slammed into Dean's head with the knowledge of what Michael was doing, and he was moving almost before the thought was complete in his head; not again…
Sam's hand stopped him, catching his wrist anxiously. He spun round and looked back. His little brother was wearing a complicated expression, reproach and concern, exasperation and pleading mixed strangely in his features. He grunted, unable to articulate his objection, and Dean paused a second. Sorry, Sam…No time to think before I leap, not now…
He shook Sam's hand off, and plunged on.
Michael slipped the medallion over his neck.
Dean caught the metal symbol in his hand, ready to yank it away.
Michael's knife entered between his last two ribs with smooth, surgical precision.
He gasped and fell back, landing heavily on the floor, clutching both hands to the wound and feeling warm liquid seep out to cover them.
Sam leapt up with a wordless cry of rage; pushed to breaking point. He slammed the teen's wrist violently against the wall, and the knife clattered to the floor. Sam's hands went for Michael's pale exposed throat. He was angry enough to kill.
Dean pulled his dark jacket over his stomach, lurching to his feet. 'Sam, stop, I'm fine –,' he called, desperately. His head spun as he rose, and he came close to falling. Sam looked at him doubtfully, one hand still on Michael's neck.
'I thought…'
'I know… but he missed me. I'm fine,' Dean repeated. He regretted the lie as soon as it left his lips, but it swelled to fill the space between them, and with every passing second it became harder to tell the truth, to contradict himself.
Sam relaxed, his head drooping as he breathed out heavily. 'Thank God,' he breathed.
Dean winced, inwardly.
'I was sure there was blood on the knife…' Sam muttered, turning to check.
Michael was gone. Sam turned in time to see the door slam behind him.
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Short – sorry. But, action-packed, maybe that makes up for it! You should know how lucky you are that you only got 5 words of Hamlet there… one mention of revenge tragedy, and I nearly went off on a very long tangent…Review, and I will reward you by not mentioning Shakespeare next chapter :D