Chapter 3
Watch Me Lean and Watch Me Rock
Dean ran. He had never really liked running growing up, possibly because his father forced him to run laps for disobedience. He'd felt that it was stupid to simply run in circles, loosing energy without actually getting anywhere.
As he'd grown, he'd found a release in running. It gave him time to think, time to brood, time to work off that excess energy that made him dangerous. And it was an escape. He had enough stamina, built up through years of training, that no one but Sam could keep up with him.
So he ran. He ran and he thought. He thought about what he had done, about what Sam had said. He laughed as the conversation about super strength recurred to him. It was stupid, the idea that he had suddenly developed the ability to rip doors off hinges, to send zippers through walls, to pull doorknobs from their place, to hurt his brother.
The laughter died from his face as he stopped, standing up straight and tall at the roadside as cars whizzed past, their drivers oblivious to his plight. He'd hurt his brother. He'd hurt Sammy, the same man that he'd sold his soul to save, the one that his father had given to him, had told him to raise and take care of without ever saying those words. He'd caused Sam pain.
And he wasn't winded.
Dean blinked, drawing in a deep breath. His lungs didn't burn in protest, his windpipe didn't constrict painfully, his parched mouth didn't even beg for water at the action because it wasn't parched. He'd been running for at least fifteen minutes and it was like he hadn't even moved a muscle.
With another deep breath, Dean set off along the grassy roadside again, his mind turning from what he'd done to the room and his brother to his suddenly increased stamina. He shouldn't have been able to breath so well, not after fifteen minutes of pounding his feet over the uneven terrain.
He willed himself to run faster, to push his limits farther, to see if he could tire himself out, to make himself feel the pain of exhaustion. Anything would be better than the pain of remembering; remembering his father, his final Halloween, his brother's bruise…
The cars sped by faster, meaning that he'd probably entered a stretch f road with a higher speed limit. The cars accelerated until he could no longer tell the make and model of each that he passed, until he could no longer tell that they were cars, until they all blurred together, rushing by faster and faster, becoming one long line of color.
His breath finally hitched, but only because of the shock from the changing of the scenery flying by at a rapidly increasing rate. The blur of passing cars changed from a flashing rainbow to solid green and brown and gray, the color of a rural roadside. That soon gave way to a pristine blue, which flashed past all around him, even under him. His brain barely had time to register the splashing sound of water before the scenery changed again.
Foliage flew by, followed by more water, followed closely by the green and brown fields of beans, corn, and the various other agricultural necessities grown in the Midwestern states.
Midwestern states? Dean's mind screamed at him, pulling him from a fog of confusion and fascination, water? What the hell, buddy boy?
With those thoughts prominent in his mind, Dean willed himself to stop. His feet abruptly obeyed, sliding out from under him as the laws of physics caught up with the hunter and pitched him forward under his own momentum. He managed a less-than-graceful face plant in the dirt.
Sputtering, Dean brought his head up off the ground. "How's that for an outside force?" he asked no one in particular, suddenly wishing that Sam could have been there, if for no other reason than to rub his brother's nose in the fact that he had, in fact, paid attention in school.
Of course, Dean wasn't entirely sure where there was. Slowly, he climbed to his feet, frowning at the new holes that had worked their way into his shoes, jeans, and shirt upon his sudden stop. He swiped a hand across his face, expecting to find his nose dripping blood, because, well, with an impact like that it should have shattered.
He pulled his hand away and found nothing on it. He glanced down at himself again, quickly assessing the damage, of which there was none. Gulping back his shock and fear, the hunter looked around, wondering if anyone had seen his three-point-landing.
He was surrounded by corn. Blinking rapidly in confusion, Dean stumbled along through the stalks, scrubbing a hand over his face, thinking that maybe it was a bad dream. There was no other explanation, right? It wasn't a common occurrence for people to go for a jog in New York and wind up in a cornfield, after all.
He staggered along, picking his way through the stalks, careful to keep as many intact as possible. Wherever he was, he didn't want to announce his presence, and making a crop circle wouldn't help with the stealth.
Finally, he found his way out of the maze of corn, walking out to the roadside just as a big yellow school bus rumbled by. A gaggle of high schoolers looked out at him. He saw a blonde girl point and laugh while her friend, a young black man, just shook his head.
Looking down the road, he saw a truck coming his way and waved it down. The Ford pulled over and a window rolled down, the drive leaning across the wide passenger seat to get a look at the ragged young man by the roadside.
"Need some help, son?" the man asked.
"I… I think I'm lost," Dean responded slowly, "um, where am I?"
The man in the truck narrowed his eyes, reaching inconspicuously behind him to lock the truck's doors. "Well, son, you're in Kansas. Just outside a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere. Awful small place. If you don't mind my asking, how'd you get here?"
"Kansas?" Dean asked. "I'm in Kansas? You know, dude, I'm not really sure how I got here. You wanna clue me in?"
The truck driver leaned back across his seat, put his vehicle in gear, and sped away. Dean watched him drive off, sighed, and shoved his hands into his pockets. He looked around, at the cornfield behind him, the other one across from him, and the desolate plains that lay beyond both stretches of road. Perfect. How was he supposed to get back to New York?
Maybe a better question is how you got to Kansas in the first place, genius, his mind pointed out.
"Kansas is where it all started," Dean thought aloud, beginning to pace around on the side of the road, "maybe something brought me here. But what about the scenery?" He clicked his tongue against his teeth as he paced, stopping his noise-making only to try and wet his freakishly not-dry lips.
He hit a hole in the ground, probably made by a gopher or a chipmunk, and sprawled out flat on the hard-packed dirt, his tongue sandwiching itself between his teeth in what should have been a painful meeting. Instead, the hunter only felt a slight discomfort.
Once again cursing the laws of physics, Dean got to his feet and brushed himself off. He ran his tongue over his teeth once before spitting on the ground. There was no blood.
Running a hand through his hair, Dean started pacing again, this time keeping watch for gopher holes. "Kansas is where it all started," he muttered to himself, "and I was running. And Sam…"
Sam thought he was Superman or something.
"Doesn't tell me how to get home," Dean grumbled, his frustration with the situation growing, "unless I fly." He shuddered at the thought.
No, there had to be some explanation, some reason, some answer. He was starting to think that Sam had a point. Maybe it would be wise to call Bobby, if just to ascertain that he wasn't under some sort of curse brought on by rifling through his father's earthly possessions.
Yeah, he would call Bobby just as soon as he got back to the motel room. Sam was probably getting worried, and Dean wanted to check on that bruise, make sure it didn't hurt too much. He had to get back. The only question was how.
"Of course," he said, stopping his pacing and looking down the road, "there's always the way I came." He started to run.
o0o0o0o0o0o
"Where were you?" Sam demanded as soon as Dean had walked back through the door, which his brother had apparently tried to duct-tape back together, careful not to break anything else.
"I went for a run," the older man shrugged.
"A run?" Sam asked, raising his eyebrows at his brother, "since when do you run?"
"Since I want to clear my head."
"You were gone for over an hour," the younger man said softly, not really in the mood for a fight, not while his chest still throbbed painfully with every movement.
Dean shrugged again. "I…took a little detour. Got kind of lost."
"Where?"
The older hunter smiled dryly. "First, Kansas. Then, I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and wound up in some crappy little hellhole in Mexico. Turned up in Vancouver after that. Did you know that every show but Smallville had to shut down production because of that writer's strike? It's crazy."
"Dean?"
"Nearly drowned in Lake Huron, if you believe that. Finally made it back here, though."
"Dean, what are you talking about?" Sam asked, his eyes worried. "Did you fall down? Did you hit your head?"
"I'm fine. Better than fine, actually. I ran all that way and never once got out of breath. Stopping's a bitch, though."
Sam blinked, finally taking in his brother's dirty, disheveled, slightly damp appearance. "Dean?"
"Yeah, Sammy?"
"What are you talking about, and what happened to your clothes?"
Dean grinned, flopping down on the bed that he'd claimed as his own hard enough to make it buckle in the middle. "Dammit!"
"Dean?"
"I told you, stopping's not as easy as Tom Welling makes it look."
"Tom Welling?" Sam asked, stepping closer to his brother's bed, "the CW's Superman?"
"The one and only."
"Does that mean what I think it means?" The younger man stepped closer, leaning forward to gaze at his big brother with wide eyes.
"I think you were right," Dean said in a conspiratorial tone, "I think there's something wrong with me."
"What kind of wrong?" Sam asked, suddenly feeling as if he were playing a game of Twenty Questions with his brother, a game that he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know the outcome of.
"You hungry?" Dean asked suddenly, standing up, a smile spreading across his face.
"Um, kind of. I was waiting for you-"
Dean ran. After so many wrong turns he was starting to get the hang of it, of controlling his speed and direction, of finding his way. It wasn't much of a jog to the local mini-mart for a bagful of snack foods that had a better chance of killing him than any demon did, a bag that the clerk and security cameras didn't even see him take and fill up.
"-to get back." Sam finished, his eyes wide as they spotted the bag in his brother's hands. "Dean?"
"Mini-mart," Dean grinned, "record time."
"Dean?" Sam asked again, his voice considerably quieter than the last time around.
"Don't worry, nobody saw me. Probably only felt a breeze. I'm getting better."
"Better at what?"
His brother's grin widened, and Sam knew the answer before he spoke it. The game of Twenty Questions was done. Was he thinking of superpowers? You betcha.