A Family Game

by ZuWang

When a mythical being traps Sam in his memories and threatens his life and his family, Sam and Dean must cooperate to hunt in the real world and in the dream world simultaneously.

5. Recovering the Legion

Chapter 5: Recovering the Legion

Inside Sam's dream-scape, the hunter and the manticore had reached the end of the line of friends and family the monster had assembled. After indicating his understanding of the monster's latest 'game', Sam had been silent for the rest of their measured walk down, quite literally, memory lane. He'd concentrated on counting rather than on the choice he faced. Ninety men and women stood on the misty road, shivering and confused. Some likely thought they were inside a nightmare. Sam hoped most of them did. He hoped they'd wake from their forced slumber and tell people "I had this weird dream…" In his mind, he'd already decided that they would. Because they would wake. All of them. There was no way Sam was going to let the manticore eat nine innocents in his place. There was no way he'd let it eat one.

But Dean had told him to stall for time. This, he would do, for as long as the manticore allowed him to continue. Dean had a plan. That plan would either play out in the real world, or it wouldn't. Sam would stall until the manticore wouldn't let him stall any further. And then, if he were still here, Sam would let the beast eat him.

There was no other way he could allow this game to end.

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Dean carefully re-rinsed Sam's leg with holy water and then spread the sticky antidote mixture over Sam's wounds. He knew his brother; knew how this 'game' would end if he couldn't fix this. While working, the elder Winchester alternated between angrily demanding, "Don't you dare do anything stupid you big nerd," and muttering "I've got you. We're gonna solve this," to the younger man's recumbent form. He gently eased the honey mixture onto his brother's darkened flesh, which now covered Sam's leg from the puncture wounds to his foot.

The antidote seemed to help some in lessening the younger man's pain. Sam's sleeping deepened, the pinched look on his face easing. Dean completed his task, and then after a moment of consideration, gritted his teeth, asked the women to turn around, and spread the stuff…further North as well. When Claire and Jody turned to face him once more, the elder Winchester's cheeks were red but his eyes clearly indicated that their comments were unwelcome. Neither made one. When the evidence of the manticore's damage to his brother's limb was covered, Dean tried to ease some of the antidote mix into Sam's mouth, to pull him back from the manticore's dreamworld as he and Jody had been. Sam coughed and choked in his sleep, unable to swallow the wine mixture.

Sam was as well treated as was possible. It was time to end this.

The three hunters moved quickly to implement their plan. Holy oil, matches, and assorted weapons were gathered into the sheriff's official SUV – even Dean admitted that its four-wheel-drive would get them to the remote area of the forest they were going to more easily than would Baby – and Dean, Claire, and Jody piled in. Dean felt almost a physical tearing pain as Jody drove off and they left Sam behind, but the trio had no other choice. They had to kill the manticore before his idiotic self-sacrificing bitch of a brother let that damned Persian pussycat kill him.

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On the side of a two-lane road inside a memory, Sam considered his options. He cleared his throat and addressed the manticore politely, hoping to avoid a re-run of the thing's fury when upset back on the beach. "Sir," he began,

"Xerot."

"Excuse me?"

"My name," hissed the manticore, "is Xerot. Yours is Samuel. I have given you the respect of using your name. It is high time you do me the same curtesy."

Honestly, Sam had never considered that the thing had a name. So much for not pissing it off. Focus. Stall for time. If the thing wanted to argue, Sam could oblige. He winced inwardly, affected a tone haughty enough to match the manticore's, and responded, "My name is not Samuel. It is Sam. Perhaps I have not given you respect, but neither have you. You call me by a name which is not mine. I will call you Xerot if and only if you will call me Sam."

The manticore growled, and its lip twisted with resentment at the hubris of this puny being, but it responded grudgingly, "It is an agreement." Pause. "Sam."

OK. Maybe it didn't want to argue. Maybe it wanted to deal. Time to re-ingratiate himself. He bowed politely, "It is an agreement, Xerot."

The monster's too-human eyes crinkled with something approaching humor, and it snorted a purr-laugh. "You are clumsy in your obeisance. But this is amusing none-the-less. You are an amusing companion. It is a shame that we must soon part." It sat, firmly, and its amusement seemed to disappear as it focused disconcertingly upon Sam's face. "Because now we have come to the end of our games. You have won. You will not die today. Like retreating Legions, you will withdraw from this battlefield. Choose your offering. Who among your remembered companions is to face decimation, my Roman commander?"

Sam looked along the line of innocent (and not so innocent, he admitted, his eyes alighting upon a man who'd once bullied him unmercifully in middle school) men and women assembled. He couldn't choose among them. He wouldn't. But Dean had tapped his watch. Sam addressed the manticore. "How am I supposed to choose from the legion if I don't know who to choose? I barely remember some of these people. Let me talk to them. Let me remember who deserves mercy, Xerot, and who should not."

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The SUV pulled to a halt at the head of a trail ten minutes from Jody's cabin. Before she had even turned off its engine, Dean was out of the vehicle and shouldering his duffel bag, giving orders and pointing out directions to Jody and Claire. As he fell into his accustomed commanding persona, even Claire's instinct to roll her eyes was forgotten. The other hunters moved to follow Dean's instructions. They set off down the trail, soon separating to three different directions. They would find the manticore, surround it, and herd it to their planned trap.

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The manticore had begun to look bored. Sam had spoken in turn to twenty one people. He remembered each of them, from a case or a class in his past. Some were friends, some not; none deserved to die.

And then they reached a gap in Xerot's carefully curated line. One person had stood every two paces, but there were four empty strides here. The manticore hissed his displeasure, and roared "WHAT IS THIS?"

Sam ducked before the conscious thought came, instinct and long practice taking over for a moment. It likely saved his life. Xerot's massive paw seemed to almost whistle over Sam's head. The people in the line nearby screamed and pulled at their invisible restraints, unable to run from this nightmare beast.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" It rushed him. Sam ducked again, rolling to avoid the monster and feeling its warm breath blow across him as Xerot's teeth snapped closed inches from Sam's right shoulder.

Then it was fully and violently moving inside Sam's head. He could feel it in there, almost physically pulling at Sam's mind, looking for his deceit; for the plan Sam didn't know. There was nothing to find. Sam took the chance this hesitation offered. He ran.

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Jody sighted it first. The manticore lay, sleeping soundly, on a rocky ledge in a bright sunbeam some twenty meters in front of her and several meters above. From this distance, the manticore looked comfortable and catlike. It also looked as if it wasn't planning to wake any time soon. Jody's first thought was that maybe she could end this immediately; that she'd pour the holy oil upon it and burn it before it woke. That plan was forgotten as she carefully moved closer to the monster and it caught her scent.

Suddenly awake, the manticore stood to its full, impressive height. Its voice GROWLED through Jody, and she heard its human words booming through the nearby forest, "WHAT IS THIS?"

Dean and Claire heard it too. Their hunt had begun in earnest.

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Sam hadn't expected to be able to get away. The manticore was, after all, inside of Sam's mind. There was nowhere for him to go that Xerot wouldn't know of at the instant Sam arrived.

And yet, minutes passed without Sam seeing the beast. The hunter took full advantage of this unexpected reprieve, running in and among the trees which bordered the dream-road. Those trees now seemed startlingly real, and strangely familiar.

He'd been here before. Recently. He stretched for the memory. And then, there it was. Allen's Point. Sam's memory, or perhaps Xerot's, had taken him back to where this hunt had begun.

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Jody yelled, startled by the manticore's sudden, full, presence. Her confusion didn't last long, however. She pushed fear out of her way – stowed, but not forgotten – and pulled their plan back to the forefront of her mind. The beast leaped off of its perch and toward her. Pulling the stopper off of her small jug of holy oil, she sprinkled a thin line of it on the ground between herself and the oncoming monster. Then she lit it and threw herself backward, out of the way of the resulting fire and the manticore's rush.

The manticore, midway through a leap toward this puny human who SHOULD have been inside of his memory trap, took a second too long to identify the danger it faced. It landed too close to the burning pool of holy oil. Its growl turned to an all-too-human screech and it jumped haphazardly aside, the underside of its forepaw scorched black.

The catlike monstrosity faced the puny human who had hurt it, and hissed.

Jody all but growled back at it, spraying holy oil and yelling for Dean and Claire as the manticore shied back from this woman and her unexpected weapon.

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Sam heard a familiar shout. Jody's voice? He turned and ran toward it as answering calls sounded from his left and right. Dean. Claire. How were they here?

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The manticore ran, three-legged, through the forest, seeking high ground and an advantage over this horrid woman and her burning oil. As he surged forward, however, he found another thin, burning line of the stuff, behind which he smelled the scent of another human female.

He avoided this pool easily, leaping sideways and circling again toward higher ground. Six long strides found it turning again, stumbling this time away from a human male – his captor's brother – who was waving a flaming branch and shouting obscenities.

Again and again the manticore was turned, as he ran, loped, stumbled, or snuck along paths. Until before him rose a steep rock wall, too high to jump and to sheer to climb. Xerot could hear the human hunters gaining from all other directions. The manticore retreated the only way still open to him; into the dreamworld and Sam's memories.

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The massive manticore appeared suddenly in the forest before Sam, frothy with sweat and howling with anger. Its roaring, hissing, wordless rage sounded in Sam's ears, and he instinctively covered them. Xerot took advantage of that moment to leap upon him, pinning Sam to the ground under its immense weight.

They reappeared in the waking world together; Sam's wounds resurfacing in full as his body and mind were pulled into one place. Sam lay pinned, prone and bloody beneath the huge, roaring beast. He screamed in agony as the monster applied his weight atop the hunter's torn stomach.

Dean, Claire, and Jody, each carrying a branch coated in holy oil and flame, heard Sam's yell and halted in their converging progress toward the monster. They stared at the scene before them; the manticore standing, covered in froth, streaked with black ash and flecked with Sam's blood, looming above the wounded hunter. Sam's blood had begun to flow from reopened lacerations onto the rocks below. The result was a clash of red blood, grey stone, and yellow lion fur. Sam's paling face looked colorless, out of place in the horror-show Technicolor tableau.

"Sam!" Dean attempted to approach, wildly waving his burning branch, trying to back the monster off of his brother.

"Dean." Sam's voice was a quiet half-moan; almost too quiet to hear through the chaos that surrounded him. "Stop. Wait."

The manticore shifted and, "AAAAHHHHHHHHH," a scream was torn once more from Sam.

"SAM!"

"No." Sam started again, holding a hand out to stop his brother and their friends, who had also moved forward at Sam's shriek. "Xerot."

A rumbling growl came from the wounded beast, but it looked down at its captive. "Whhhattt?" It hissed.

"I won."

It stopped, staring at the man half crushed beneath its one good forepaw. "What?" It asked again, its voice a deadly quiet to match the hunter's.

"I won," Sam repeated. He grunted, holding in another scream as the manticore shifted again. "We won." He indicated his friends. "We answered your riddles; we played your game. And now we've trapped you."

"You."

"Yes, us. You made the rules." Grunt. "We played by your rules. We won. Are you going to prove a dishonorable cheat now?"

"You say you have trapped me; but I have trapped you also, my Roman captain." It leaned forward, its weight pressing the air out of Sam's lungs so that the man couldn't even yell in his pain. Its human eyes looked directly into his. "So who has won?"

Dean saw the light flickering lower in his brother's eyes as breathlessness took what energy hadn't drained with Sam's blood. He stepped forward, continuing Sam's train of thought. "We did." The manticore's attention focused on the elder Winchester. "You know we did. We answered the little riddles you gave us. And bigger riddle. Who are you? We answered it, and we found you, and we won. You lost. Sam asked you a question. Are you going to cheat now?"

The manticore looked stunned. It sat back, removing its paw from Sam's chest. Sam's weak gasping inhalation was the only indication that he was still aware, still conscious.

Dean moved forward again carefully, holding his branch in front of him even as its flames died slowly to embers. He kept his eyes on the monster, but reached out a hand to feel for Sam's. When Sam grasped his hand in return, Dean nearly sank to his knees in relief. He held on tightly and continued to speak to the beast before him.

"You gonna cheat at your own game, or are you gonna play fair?"

Its mouth twisted in disgust, but it spat out a hissing answer. "I am honorable." It turned away from the brothers.

"I'm not. CLAIRE!"

A shot rang out. Hit by the salt in Claire's shotgun, a bucket tipped from a ledge several feet above the manticore's head. As a sheet of holy oil cascaded downward, Dean yanked his brother out of the way. Jody flung a lighter into the fray as the brothers toppled clear.

The resulting inferno engulfed the monster, reducing him to ash and cinders in minutes.

Dean watched the flames, shielding Sam's bloodied form with his own body. Once the result was no longer in question, Dean looked down at his brother. Sam lay on the forest ground, his eyes closed tightly and his jaw clenched, grunting with each pained breath. Half of his stitches were torn out, and his shirt once again was covered in blood.

Pulling out his folding knife, Dean tore open Sam's pants leg, but the skin beneath was clean and pink. The only evidence which remained of the manticore's spines was two black dots, already fading to nothing.

Dean looked back at his brother's face, trapping Sam's eyes with his own. "We got him. We got you. It's over." He flashed an exhausted but genuine grin. "And, man, after we finish sewing you up? You're gonna have the record."

Sam's head rested back against the leafy ground and he managed a pained laugh.

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Back at the cabin, Dean's prediction proved true.

Sam recovered from his one hundred seventy two stiches slowly.

But that was OK. He did it surrounded by family.

Thank you for sticking with me to the end. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, or if you have any constructive criticism, I'd love to hear from you. Comments make the writers dance.