THEN: Led by Missouri's psychic breadcrumbs, Sam found the trail to Dean. Dean, who is not very nice without a piece of his soul, tortured both him and a young boy named Ryan. Sam escaped, knocked Dean out, and convinced the little boy to not go to the authorities with Dean's description.
NOW:
I.
The sun was just starting to set. Sam sat on the edge of a bed (another motel, so many motels, but this one was different, this one didn't come with blood). He watched his brother silently, on the opposite bed, still asleep.
Sam had tied Dean's arms and legs to the frame. Three times. Triple knots.
Sam sighed and turned away from him, back to his research, mostly scattered and confused. In between drinking and visiting Missouri and remembering old times and getting tortured, Sam had done a little research, although he hadn't gotten very far. The whole get Dean's soul back thing? Pretty much zilch on that.
The spell Dean had used to take Sam's power? That was what Sam had.
Dean on his own was dangerous. Dean without a soul was terrifying. Dean without a soul, with the ability of premonitions, telekinesis, and random thought-snatching? Letting that Dean walk around was just a recipe to get yourself killed. Sam could keep doping his brother up, keep knocking Dean out so he couldn't attack, but sooner or later he'd slip up. It was just the nature of the game.
Sam needed to get the upper hand back now. He didn't know how to save Dean, so at the very least, he could get his powers back. That was the first step.
Of course, this plan was potentially problematic. Magic could be a tricky thing; you had to be careful with how you used it. You could change things around, make substitutions when you knew what you were doing, but Sam had only dabbled in spell work, and wasn't confident in his ability to improvise. Certain things (Sponge Bob placement instead of an altar cloth, for instance) were pretty easy to switch around. Other things, not so much.
Unfortunately, Sam didn't have much of a choice. Most of what he needed was easy—few herbs, candles, not much to it. He already had the piece of obsidian; the rest of the components were a piece of cake. Unfortunately, what Sam didn't have was time.
The spell was supposed to take place during the New Moon.
The New Moon wouldn't come up for another two weeks.
Sam couldn't wait that long. Trying to would be suicidal—even if he had a pharmacy full of tranquilizers (which he didn't)—something would go wrong. Something always did.
No, Sam would have to try this spell out tonight. He'd have to hope that the influence of the New Moon was only minor at best, wouldn't aversely affect the outcome.
Although, if Missouri were to be believed, the presence of the New Moon wasn't his biggest problem.
When he'd been at her house, Sam had asked Missouri about the spell. He needed to know if it could be cast again, work to undo the damage which had been done.
Missouri had been hesitant at best.
"You have to understand, Sam. I don't cast spells. My ability is natural, just like yours." Sam's mouth had twisted bitterly there; he had his doubts about just where his abilities came from. Missouri might have picked up on it, but she kept on talking. "I could only guess to the effects of such a spell."
"Then guess," Sam said, quietly, desperately, because desperation was pretty much what he'd been living on for the past week and half.
Missouri had taken him into the living room, forced him to sit down again. Sam had had some trouble keeping still; stillness meant inaction, meant not helping Dean. "Well," she said, "from the looks of it—yes, the spell should work. There's nothing in here that seems to prohibit using this spell against the one who cast it upon you."
Sam rose, excited, and Missouri quickly leaned forward. "But Sam," she said. "Magic ain't like tossing a yo-yo. It doesn't always swing back and forth the way you think it will."
Sam sat back down. "So it won't work?"
"I didn't say that, Sam. I said it might not." Missouri shook her head, leaned back a bit in her chair. "Magic is a tricky thing. It has a way of creeping into your being, of becoming a part of you, an inseparable piece of who you are. You can try to take the magic back, Sam, but I'm just warning you: it might not turn out exactly as you hope."
Sam had swallowed at that. "What do you mean?" he had asked. "Could he get worse?"
Missouri had looked away. "Sam, I get the feeling that there's not much of anything that could make your brother worse."
She was right about that one, Dean-In-His-Head said now. Little Ryan, man? Can't get much worse than that.
Sam stood up quickly (he didn't want to think about Ryan anymore) and had to reach a hand out, trying to maintain his balance. He was dizzy as hell from the blood loss, stood very still until it had passed. After dropping Ryan off at the hospital, Sam had driven to a new city, found a new motel where he could patch himself up—but he'd still lost a lot of damn blood, and he was the feeling the effects right about now.
Not yet, he told himself. You have to wait, hold on, hold on . . .gotta . . . gotta do this thing first, make sure Dean's . . . Dean's out, stays out . . . wait . . . pass out AFTER . . .
The world slid back into place, and Sam let his hands drop to the side. Briefly, he wished his father were here. John Winchester could take care of this. At the very least, he could watch Dean while Sam passed out on the floor. But there was a flicker of doubt there, a moment of uncertainty (I mean, the way he raised us to hate those things, and man, I hate 'em, I do) and what would Dad do, if he saw what Dean had become? Would he find a way to fix it? Or would Dean just be another fallen soldier along the way?
Dean did a good job, took care of Sammy. Now the only thing left is to finish the job, finish Dean.
Sam shook the thought away, pushing his father out of his mind. It didn't matter what Dad would have done—saved him or killed him, Dad was dead. Dad was dead and Sam was on his own. He had to get his brother back by himself.
Sam took out everything he needed for the spell, put them in place, and then stepped over to his brother. Dean was shifting around restlessly, starting to come around.
I'm going to fix this, Sam thought. I'm going to fix you, Dean.
Because we got work to do. And I'm not doing it on my own.
II.
Dean had been knocked out by drugs more than once in his life, so he knew the slow, muddled spin was his mind trying to return to consciousness. Right now, being conscious had like less than zero appeal, but his body ignored his desire to slip back into the darkness. He opened his eyes slowly, the gray, fuzzy world focusing into a single face above him.
"Oh, it's you," Dean said, or tried to say—speaking clearly wasn't quite on the menu yet. His tongue felt thick, maybe two times its normal size, and his lips were dry and slightly numb. He concentrated on glaring at his sonofabitch brother, but even that was hard because Sam's face looked kind of . . . shiny?
So, clearly, Dean had made this mistake of every mustache-twirling villain out there—he'd had too much fun with the monologue and not enough with killing Sam already. Jesus, he knew better than that . . . but the torture had been so much fun, and he'd really wanted to work up to it . . . well, now, he knew what came from that.
Still, Dean had only been full-on evil for, what? About two weeks now? He was bound to make mistakes. These things happened. You moved on. As soon as Dean got out of this, he'd be remedying that error in judgment. He'd tear Sam's head off from his fucking shoulders—try coming back from that, you emo fuck.
Besides, if he was a head shorter, Sam might be back at a height where humans lived. The thought made Dean smile. He'd always wanted to give his brother a hair cut.
Of course, there were problems standing in the way. The fact that he was currently having trouble thinking in complete sentences was one of them. It also looked like Sam had gone a little overkill with the knots. Dean tugged uselessly against his restraints and then quickly gave up.
He could see his knife from across the room, resting on the TV stand. He should have been able to make it fly straight into his hand, but his crazy psychic powers seemed to have deserted him. Must be the drugs, he thought, and then lost his train of thought—the knife gleamed, it was so shiny, so ready to be used—and then Sam was saying, "Hey," and Dean slid his eyes lazily back to his brother, knowing that time must have passed but not having anyway to determine how much.
Sam looked bad, unnaturally pale and limping as he moved around the bed. He had one hand pressed to his side, the side that Dean had stabbed over and over again. It was nice to see that his fun hadn't gone entirely to waste—Sam was definitely hurting, looked none too steady on his feet—but even though the bastard was probably two seconds from passing out, Dean had no way of moving, no way of breaking free.
Dean was trapped. He knew it, and Sam knew it.
On the table behind Sam were some candles. Also, a piece of obsidian.
Dean closed his eyes, groaned. "You are such a pain in the ass," he said.
Sam almost smirked. "Yeah, and who do you suppose I get that from?" There was a needle in Sam's hand, and he tapped it firmly twice before walking a little unsteadily towards Dean. "Don't worry, Dean," he said as he slid the needle in. "I'm going to fix this. I'm going to take care of you."
There wasn't time for a witty retort; the world was already fading to darkness again. "Oh, fuck off," Dean managed to say, and then everything around him disappeared again.
III
He was standing in the tangerine hallway again, only somehow he knew that Sam hadn't brought him here this time. This time, he could only blame his own subconscious—and fuck his subconscious. He'd never seen the point in having one, anyway.
He didn't want to be here, but the door behind him was locked, so he'd have to find another exit if he wanted to escape. And there were so many escapes from this hallway, but they all led backwards into the past, places he never wanted to visit again, never wanted to remember.
He wandered aimlessly down the hallway for what seemed like hours. He'd figured there'd have to be an end somewhere—fuck, he'd only been alive for 28 years—surely it couldn't go on forever, surely there had to be an end to the doors somewhere. But he couldn't find one—the hall just went on and on and on, and there were suddenly speakers on the ceiling, Jim Morrison singing, "He walked on down the hall."
" And he came to a door. And he looked inside."
Dean knew then that this was the answer. It was the only way that he was getting out of this fucking hallway. He'd have to go through a door, any door, back into the past—it was the only way back to the future, him and Marty McFuckingFly. There was no logic behind it, just something Dean spontaneously knew, the way you knew in dreams. The way things just made sense.
He approached a blue door that was slightly open, and peeked carefully into it, not wanting to walk into the dark blindly. He recognized the room instantly; he'd been in there just earlier today, only now he was looking at the motel room 17 years into the past. This wasn't a good place to go; Dean knew that, but something kept him there. Something kept him from turning away. It was a bad idea, on all counts.
Dean watched an eleven year old version of himself sitting on the couch, reading a book. He couldn't see it from here, but he knew Sammy was in the other room, sleeping soundly away. It was late, and Dad had been gone awhile, didn't know when to expect him home.
Mini-Dean glanced up at the door every few minutes. He didn't want his father to come home and catching him reading, at least not this book. A part of him knew that this was stupid—Dad probably wouldn't even remember it, but if he did . . . it would be a bad idea to let Dad see it at all.
So, reading it on the couch, in full view from the front door? It was a pretty lousy idea, pretty godamned reckless, even for Dean. But Dean did it anyway, ignoring the voice in his head (it was Sam's voice, always that too-serious, little boy tone in the corner of his mind: Dean, this is a bad idea. Dean, just read the book at school or something.)
Later, in one of those boring moments of introspection, moments that Dean tried to leave to Sam whenever possible, he had to sit down and consider the possibility that maybe he had wanted to be caught. That whole subconscious thing again, annoying fuck that it was. Maybe Dean had wanted his dad to walk in, wanted him to recognize the book.
Because sometimes Dean needed to talk—not often, words could be dangerous things, he knew—but sometimes, when it was late and he was thinking about her, he needed someone to tell him things, someone who actually remembered. Dean remembered so little himself; it seemed like he was forgetting more and more every day. He wanted Dad to remind him, but it was nothing that he could ever ask.
Maybe if Dad came in, he'd force Dean to talk, and things could be better than they were right now.
Or maybe Dean just got absorbed in his book and his thoughts, and he didn't react quickly enough when his dad walked in.
Dad was drunk—really, really drunk, didn't need to even look up to confirm the knowledge. Dean could smell it—it was a pretty familiar smell, maybe not quite as common as blood or sweat, but definitely not rare. Dean set his book down, but not quite quickly enough. Dad staggered over, picked it up with one clumsy hand.
"The hell's this?" Dad slurred as he examined it with bleary eyes. Mental Sammy, indignant and traitorous to the last, piped up in Dean's brain: I'm surprised he could even READ it. But read it, he could, and Mental Sammy wasn't helping. Dean tried to snatch the book, but Dad held it away, glaring at him.
"Dean! Boy, where the hell did you get this?"
Dean swallowed convulsively and the sudden intake of air went down wrong. "It's just a book, Dad," he whispered, his throat so tight he could barely breathe. "It's just, it's just a book. C'mon, you should get to bed—"
"Get the fuck off me!" Dad pulled his arm hard away from Dean, so hard Dean stumbled back. "'m the fuckin Dad around here, 'm the one who's tellin, give the godamned orders here, tellin, tellin me . . ."
"Dad . . ."
Dad held the book high in one hand. "I give the orders, godammit, not you. You don't tell me a godamned thing. Where'd you get this book, Dean? Tell me!"
But, Mental Sammy pouted, you don't want me to tell you a godamned thing . . .
Shut up, Sammy. Shut up NOW
"Tell me!"
"I just—the library, Dad, okay, I just—I picked it up and—look, I'll get rid of it, all right? I'll just, I'll get rid of it, just, I just wanted—"
"You're godamned right, you'll get rid of it!" Dad held the book in both hands and started ripping the pages, lurching unsteadily as the papers scattered to the floor. And Dean shrieked, he actually shrieked, because it was important to him, dammit. She had read this to him. This was her book. Sure, it was just a copy; the real one had burned away with his mother, but Dean couldn't stand seeing it destroyed like that. He just, he couldn't.
So he tried to take the book back, and this time Dad knocked him across the room for it.
"I don't remember that," a voice said quietly from behind him. Behind him, the Dean in the doorway, not the child, memory version knocked over on his ass. Dean turned around to see the grown-up Sam standing there, the one who had gotten so freakishly tall, the one who Dean was itching to finally kill. There was a piece of obsidian in that brother's hand, and Dean knew that was somehow important, but he couldn't remember why, so he decided to ignore it.
"I don't remember that," Sam repeated, sounding more than a little horrified. "I don't . .. I don't remember . . . did that really happen?"
Dean snorted and abruptly shut the blue door; he didn't need to see the rest to remember what had happened. "You were asleep," Dean said flatly. "You were always fucking asleep. You slept through everything, but it all happened. It all happened, and you were too fucking selfish to notice."
Sam looked down then, at his feet. "I'm sorry," he barely whispered. "I wish I had noticed, what you did for me. I wish I didn't understand everything in retrospect."
Dean shook his head, glared at his brother. "Whatever," he said sourly. "I don't want your fucking apologies. I don't want your fucking words, Sam."
"Then what do you want?"
"From you? Just blood."
Sam winced a little, looked down again. "Sorry," he said. "Can't give you that." He flipped the piece of obsidian over, looked down at it carefully. "The only thing I can give you is your soul. Not yet, I don't have it yet, but soon."
Dean growled at him. "God, won't you fucking listen, Sam? I don't want it! I don't want my soul back!"
Sam smiled sadly. "Sorry," he repeated. "That's really not up to you."
Then he slammed the piece of obsidian onto Dean's forehead, and the doors, all the doors, they finally went away.
IV.
Sam's eyes snapped open, and he immediately fell forward. He landed mostly on Dean, but Dean's eyelids didn't even flicker. That was the good thing about drugged sleep; elephants could be stampeding around and you wouldn't wake up. Sam was thinking that such a sleep sounded pretty damn perfect right about now.
He groaned and rolled himself away, accidentally rolling himself right off the bed. He landed on the ground hard, his head smacking against the floor with a loud thunk.
Sam briefly contemplated getting up and then quickly decided that movement, of any kind, was a very bad idea. Dean was out, would be for awhile, and Sam thought that he might enjoy keeling over and dying right now. His head was just killing him, either from the spell or from whacking it against the floor, and his whole body felt shaky, strange. Weak. He felt so weak.
Sam felt something wet against his lips and cheek and wondered, dazedly, if he was drooling. He put a hand to his face and came away with red fingers. It took him a few minutes to realize his nose was bleeding.
It wasn't the only part of him that was, though. The side of his stomach was red too, really red, like, a lot of blood, so the knife wound must have reopened. He wasn't sure when that happened, if it was before or after the spell, but he wasn't sure it mattered. It didn't seem like a lot mattered, at the moment.
The world felt fuzzy all around him. It seemed like as good a time as any to pass out.
But God, it seemed, had different ideas, because there was this noise keeping him from falling asleep. It was like . . . voices . . . or something . . . coming from somewhere in the room. It couldn't be Dean. Could someone have come in? He thought it might be the police, but the police didn't usually sing like that, so maybe it was the radio? A few more friendly hallelujahs? But he had turned off the radio, had left it behind, actually, so who the hell was callin—
Cell phone.
Slowly, Sam rolled over and reached blindly for the cell phone that was resting on the bedside table. He knocked over the alarm clock and the syringe before his fingers finally fastened on the phone. He flicked it open and held it to his ear, unsteadily getting to his knees. "Yeah?" he asked roughly. He was too busy staying conscious to worry about being polite.
"Sam?" The voice was familiar, warm, feminine . . . but he couldn't place it. "Sam, child, it's Missouri." Oh, okay then.
"Sam, I know you're hurting, but you need to hold on for a little bit. I sensed you—sensed you awhile ago, what you were doing. I'm sending you help, you hear?"
Sam heard but didn't really understand; the words weren't making much sense in his brain. The edges of his vision were starting to go dark, like a photograph burning away at the sides. "Missouri?" he asked thickly. Why was she calling again? "You're . . . you're okay?"
He heard her take a breath. She sounded worried, although he wasn't sure why. Maybe something had found her, maybe she needed help. "You're okay?" he asked again.
"I'm fine, Sam, just fine. Don't you be worrying about an old psychic like me now. You just got to concentrate on staying awake. I've sent someone to take care of you, okay?"
Someone to take care of you . . . but that didn't make sense, because the only person who took care of him was Dean. And Dean was sort of unconscious right now, and evil besides, and Sam was supposed to be taking care of him for once. It's supposed to be my turn . . .
There was a dull sort of roar in his ears, a roar that was slowly building, and he wasn't sure what it was, maybe the ocean, maybe his heartbeat. It occurred to him slowly that Missouri might know; she seemed to have all the answers. He opened his mouth to ask when he realized he had dropped the phone.
Too sluggish to even contemplate moving, Sam just looked at the phone and watched it spring back to his hand. "Oh, good," he said faintly. "You worked, at least. That's, that's good." Then he dropped the phone again.
There was a knocking sound coming from somewhere. Knock knock knocking on Heaven's door, Dean-In-His-Head sang nonsensically, and Sam knew things were bad when even the Dean-In-His-Head started to sound delirious. The knocking was important, and Sam knew he needed to figure out what it was—the cops, maybe? Maybe they found out about Ryan after all. Sam hadn't told Ryan where he was going, but maybe they found a trail or a clue or something. Sam didn't remember leaving clues. His dad taught him to be careful about that kind of thing.
If it wasn't the cops—couldn't be Dean. Dean was here, unconscious on the bed. And Missouri was on the phone and Dad was dead and Jessica was dead and everybody was dead . . . so who was calling, "Sam? Dean? Sam, Sam!" like their life depended on an answer.
Whoever it was sounded so damn worried that it made Sam feel pretty worried too. He managed to pull himself up to his feet, forgetting about the phone resting on the carpet. He staggered almost sideways over to the door and managed to unlock it with clumsy, numb fingers. When he opened the door, he stared at the person staring at him from the other side.
"Hey," he slurred. "What're you doin here?"
Then he fell headfirst into the man's arms.
TBC