PART THREE - SAM
Sam watches the pyre burn, orange flames glaringly bright against the falling darkness. He stands upwind of the fire, Pastor Jim at his side, as it consumes his father. He can't escape it – nearly everything important in his life is eventually reduced to ash. Fire is greedy and fickle and it doesn't discriminate.
Now, more than ever, Sam wishes he knew where Dean was, that his brother was with him because he doesn't want to go through this alone. Doesn't want to track the demon down on his own. He'd promised his dad he'd go back to Lawrence and talk to Missouri. If she doesn't have the answers he desperately needs, Sam doesn't know what he'll do.
Jim reaches out and squeezes his shoulder, says soft words of what Sam assumes are encouragement that he can't hear over the hiss-pop of the blaze in front of him. He nods, shoves his hands deeper into the pockets of his jacket in an attempt to ward off the chill of the mountain air as it seeps into his bones. His frozen fingers graze his father's dog tags and Sam's heart seizes in his chest at the thought that these scraps of metal and a leather-bound journal are all that's really left of his father.
When he finally finds Dean, what's he supposed to say? Is he supposed to be angry because Dean made him go through this alone? Is he supposed to be grateful that, for once, he was able to spare the hardship of their lives from Dean? And what if he doesn't? What if there is no Dean to be found? What if Sam's looking for a ghost?
It's the thought of never finding his brother – that not only is he an orphan at twenty-two, but he's completely on his own – that makes him break. It's too much to take and the tears start to fall. He hates that he's this weak, but right now he doesn't know how he's supposed to be strong.
Sam shudders out a breath and swipes the wetness from his cheeks with the rough sleeves of his coat and stands sentry until the fire starts to die down and, well after dark, becomes nothing more than smoldering ashes. Jim pokes at the glowing embers with a long stick.
There's really nothing left.
"Are you going to be okay, Sam?" Jim asks, leaning on his stick, face pale in the dim moonlight.
"Yeah," Sam lies. "Thanks for..." - driving all night to get here, giving my father the hunter's funeral I couldn't, keeping me together, just being here - "everything."
Jim's smile is small and sad as he pulls Sam into a hug. It reminds Sam of summers when he was a kid, sunshine and the open, grassy field behind the small parish in Blue Earth – Jim freely offered the kind of affection his own father rarely did – and Sam finds himself gripping the older man tightly. "You're welcome, Sam. You ever need anything else, don't hesitate to call." He pulls away and his own eyes glisten wetly. "I've got Deacon and Caleb looking into Dean's whereabouts. I'll do what I can to help you find him."
Sam feels the burden weighing him down lighten just a little. "Thank you."
With another squeeze to Sam's shoulder, Pastor Jim steps back and starts for his car. When he opens the trunk, Sam crosses the distance between the scorched earth of the pyre and his father's truck, pulling open the passenger side door to find an empty water bottle or an old coffee cup or something else to hold some of his father's ashes. It's morbid, he knows, but if he's going to Lawrence, the least he can do is take part of his father with him so he can rest with his mother. It's more symbolic than anything – with any hope, they've both crossed over. But Sam feels it's something he has to do regardless.
Jim watches him silently scoop the ashes from the center of the blackened patch of earth into the styrofoam cup with its plastic lid and gives Sam a nod when he finally backs away. "Earth to earth," he mutters, pushing the point of the shovel into the dirt and overturning the earth, "ashes to ashes," with a grunt of effort to dig below the permafrost, "dust to dust;" working his way around the charred land until any evidence of fire has been erased. "In sure and certain hope of the Resurrection into eternal life."
With those final words, John Winchester is laid to rest at the edge of the woods in the middle of western Colorado.
Sam only makes it as far as Burlington before he's too exhausted to go further. It's well after midnight when he pulls into the dim, pot-holed lot of an L-shaped, two-story motel. He makes a mental note of the gas station across the street before he all but stumbles into the office.
The man behind the counter is watching ESPN, feet kicked up on the low table the TV sits on, a plate with a half-eaten sandwich and potato chips on his lap. He glances over his shoulder at Sam, setting his plate aside and wiping his hands off on his thighs as he drop his feet to the floor and turns the chair around. "How can I help you?" he asks tiredly.
"Just need a room for the night," Sam says, digging his wallet out of his back pocket, sorting through the few credit cards he has that'll be maxed out soon enough.
"Single or double?"
Double, he nearly says, catching himself at the last minute. He's alone now. No need for a second bed. "Single." He sets his emergencies-only Visa on the counter and stifles a yawn with the back of his hand.
"Sixty-seven dollars," the man says, sliding the card off the counter and swiping it through the machine attached to the ancient desktop computer. There's a loud whirring sound, then the printer next to the monitor grinds to life, spitting out Sam's receipt.
Sam's not asked for his signature – he's just handed the printout and a key attached to a diamond-shaped piece of orange plastic with the number "14" on it.
"First floor, behind the office, by the second light pole. Checkout is eleven."
"Thanks," Sam offers with a nod, folding the receipt in fours and shoving it into his pocket.
The room is small and cleaner than Sam expected it to be. There are no visible bugs and the stale scent of cigarette smoke is minimal and it's a far cry better than some of the motels he and Dean were stuck in while their dad was away on out-of-town jobs when they were younger. The heater works, spewing out musty, hot air and the shower stall isn't growing any kind of fungus. So Sam showers the smell of charred flesh and bone from his skin and washes it from his hair, letting ash and dirt and sweat slide from his body and down the drain as the hot water relaxes his muscles from the tension of the day, of his father's funeral.
When he climbs between the sheets , they're stiff and smell faintly of bleach when he climbs between them. That's the last thing he remembers before the alarm on his cell phone is beeping loudly at him from the nightstand, bright sunlight cutting through the gap in the dingy brown-tan-orange striped curtains over the window.
Sam's out of bed and dressed in five minutes, nearly the entire state of Kansas to traverse today and one psychic to track down, so he needs to get on the road as soon as possible. He drops the key off at the motel office and drives across the street to fill up the truck's tank and grab yet another gas station breakfast.
The further east he gets, the less snow covers the ground and the tighter the knot of apprehension in his gut becomes. Once he reaches Salina, the snow is no more than a dusting, skies an endless bright blue. When he reaches Lawrence, his first stop is the Oak Hill Cemetery where he hasn't been in a good decade or so. But the Campbell family plot isn't difficult to locate; straight down the main road until it forks, turn right, and four narrow drives back on the left side, a large, weathered marble weeping angel overlooking the headstones.
Sam parks his father's truck along the edge of the grass and climbs out, cup of ashes in hand. He passes the grave markers of the grandparents he and Dean were named after and kneels before his mother's. Dirt and bits of grass cling to the dark granite and Sam wipes them away with his sleeve. "I'm so sorry I couldn't save him," Sam says, prying the lid off the coffee cup and spilling his father's ashes into the dried grass in front of the headstone. "I never should've left. I should've been there, we should've all been together. It's all my fault." His father would probably still be alive and Dean wouldn't be lost, and Jess...
He never wanted to go, not really. But Dean pushed him. Begged him to take the scholarship, to go have the normal life they never had growing up. "You're smart, Sam. Smarter than I ever was. Can't just let that go to waste. And look at all these schools that want you. That are willing to pay for everything. You can't pass this up," Dean had all but pleaded. There was more to it than the seemingly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, something Dean wouldn't tell him. But he pushed and pushed and pulled further and further away from Sam. "Just, please, Sammy. You can be so much more than this. You deserve so much more than this." More than the life or Dean, Sam never was sure. Still isn't.
So he kneels before his mother's grave and prays until his feet are numb and his legs are stiff. Prays for forgiveness and guidance in finding his wayward brother.
Missouri proves easy enough to find as there's only a handful of psychics listed in the Kansas City Area Yellow Pages he finds dangling from a twisted cable attached to a graffiti-covered payphone. Sam tears out the page and folds it down into a square with Missouri Moseley's address and phone number facing out.
Missouri's a formidable woman, knowing dark eyes staring at him as he climbs the steps of her porch. She stands in her doorway, thin shawl draped over her shoulders, like she's been waiting. And, from what his father's told him about the woman, she probably has. A wide smile cracks her stern face, teeth blindingly white against the dark warmth of her skin, and she waves him closer with both of her hands. "My, look at how you've grown."
Sam doesn't remember ever having met her but her presence is welcoming. He feels the slightest shock when her hands grasp his, a little jolt that sends his gaze to her face.
Missouri's eyes are sad and she squeezes Sam's hands gently. "Poor baby. All alone." She shakes her head. "Come with me." Then she's tugging him inside, closing the door behind them.
The house smells like cinnamon-sugar and coffee and it makes Sam's stomach rumble loudly.
Missouri smiles again, but it doesn't chase the melancholy from her face. She leads him down the hall and into the kitchen, gestures for him to sit at the table. "I'm sorry about your father," she says, pouring two cups of coffee, setting one in front of Sam before returning to the counter for sugar and cream, and a plate with slices of fresh cinnamon bread.
"Thanks." Sam fixes up his coffee and takes a piece of bread from the plate. "He said you might be able to help me find Dean."
Missouri nods. "What else did he tell you?"
"About you? Not much. Just said you could help."
"Did he ask you about your abilities?" She glances up at him quickly before sipping at her coffee.
"Yeah, but..." Sam sits up straighter in his chair. "I don't have any abilities."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm not psychic."
She scoots her chair closer to the corner of the table and leans forward, offering her hands. "Here."
Hesitating, Sam lays his palms over Missouri's, feels that same static shock.
Her forehead wrinkles in concentration then in confusion. "Hm." She tilts her head like she's listening to something, leans in even closer to Sam. "I don't understand." Missouri sits back, still holding Sam's hands, and shakes her head. "It doesn't make sense."
"What?"
"I don't- It's like they've been stripped away from you. The potential is there, but the ability is gone." She sighs and takes her hands from Sam, folding them in her lap. "There are other kids out there like you, they've all got psychic abilities that are unparalleled by anything I've ever even heard of. The demon made you all so strong. But you... Do you ever remember having power of any kind? Telepathy? Telekinesis? Pyrokinesis?"
"I had a dream about Jess – my girlfriend – before she died. It was months before it actually happened." He shrugs a shoulder, picks at the peeling laminate surface of the table with his thumb before continuing on with the rest of what he'd told his dad. "I had vivid nightmares as a kid. They were terrible, people always dying." Then he tells Missouri something he didn't tell his father. "They were always killed by monsters or ghosts – things my dad hunted. But those stopped not long after I found out what Dad really did. I just figured it was because I knew I was safe, you know?"
"Did anything else happen around that time? Anything at all."
Sam wracks his brain, trying to think of anything weird, but it was so long ago. There is one thing, but he doesn't think it has anything to do with this. "Dean started having nightmares about then. But Dad had just started taking him on hunts. I figured..."
There's something in Missouri's stare that gives Sam pause. She raises her eyebrows and stands. "Let's try something."
Again, Sam follows her down the hallway to a cozy living room with overstuffed furniture and a fire burning in the hearth. There are herbs and flowers hanging upside down from the brick mantle, brittle and leeched of color. He watches as Missouri selects a few leaves and petals and places them into the mortar sitting atop the brick facade. She then grinds them for a few moments with the pestle and adds a couple drops of something viscous from a pewter decanter. She turns back to Sam, thumb stuck into the mixture in the mortar. "What is that?" he asks.
"It'll help you remember." She gestures to the couch and settles next to him when he finally sits, and swipes the brown paste from temple to temple across his forehead. "Now, close your eyes and try to relax," Missouri tells him, placing the mortar and pestle on the coffee table in front of her.
He only does as she asks because his father said he could trust her.
"I want you to go back, Sam. Go back to the last vision you had as a child."
Sam never said anything about visions. Nightmares, yes. But visions? So it's a shock when the memory surfaces, unbidden except for Missouri's words.
The farmhouse is old, creaking wood floors, warped lead-glass in the windows, books everywhere. Uncle Bobby's. Dad's standing at the door and the car's still running outside. Bobby's in the hall behind them, stained rag in his hands and grease on his brow. Dean's standing next to Sam and they've each got a duffels slung over their shoulders. "Bill's got a job out in California he needs my help with. I"ll only be gone a few days. You boys behave."
Sam and Dean offer their Yes-sir's and watch him go.
Barely two days later, Bobby gets a call of his own and Sam and Dean are being left completely on their own with explicit instructions to "keep your hands to yourselves, don't snoop, don't answer the phone, and don't kill each other." But it's said in a fond way Sam's unaccustomed to and Dean just rolls his eyes and is browsing through Bobby's weapon cache before the dust in the driveway's even settled.
Sam has his first full-blown vision right at the dinner table as Dean's taking the pan of mac and cheese off the stove. Dad's half hidden by a cluster of boulders and he's watching some man Sam doesn't recognize. The creature appears out of nowhere, then Dad's moving and the thing's turning around and the man's right there and he can't get away. Dad's yelling, raising his gun, but it's too late. The monster is already attacking the man, long claws cutting across his belly and then his guts are- But he doesn't die and the monster gets away. Then Dad's there, beside him, and the man's begging to die. "Please, please, let me die." And Dad kills him, burns the body like he's supposed to.
It's just like the wendigo, Sam thinks, stomach sinking.
Sam barely has time to utter "Dad" and "monster" before he blacks out from the pain behind his eyes. There's more, but it's got the hazy, unreal quality of a dream. Dean's frantic, trying to wake him up. He drags Sam into the library and starts tearing through the books on Bobby's shelves, the slowly dying fire the only thing that shows how much time has passed before Dean returns to his side with a sheet of age-browned paper in one hand, his pocket knife in the other. There are tears on his face as he apologizes, kisses Sam's forehead before lifting Sam's hand and peeling off the band-aid there from their morning sparring session. Dean gently reopens the cut across Sam's thumb and slices open his own palm, presses the amulet around his neck into the welling blood seeping from their wounds, cupping the whole mess between both of his own hands as he starts speaking in some language Sam doesn't recognize. He looks scared and determined, cheeks damp, lips trembling as he stumbles over unfamiliar words. He closes his eyes when he's done. "Please work," he begs, clutching Sam's hand tighter. "Please." Suddenly, Dean's whole body spasms and he collapses to the floor.
Sam doesn't remember any of this – he remembers his father leaving, only to come back a day or so after Bobby, bruised and haggard. He barked out orders for Sam and Dean to get their things together the moment he came through the door. He and Dean both heard the argument between their father and Bobby – the accusations that John was reckless and thoughtless, and didn't he give a damn about his boys? Did he want his sons to grow up without any parents? There was more, low angry words that Sam didn't hear, then they were gone. They never saw Bobby again after that.
"Sam?" Missouri lays a gentle hand on his forearm. "You okay, sweetie?"
"Yeah. I just." He shakes his head, not quite able to believe the memory that's been pulled from his subconscious. "Dean did something. Some kind of spell with our blood."
Missouri's eyes widen and her hand falls away from him. "Blood magic?"
"He used the amulet as some kind of conduit."
"Amulet?"
"It was something Bobby gave me as a kid to give to my dad for Christmas. I gave it to Dean instead when Dad didn't come back. I'd found Dad's journal, realized he'd been lying to me, and Dean told me the truth about everything. He said they were just trying to protect me."
"And Dean knew about the nightmares?"
"Yeah. I used to get so scared I couldn't fall back asleep without him beside me." Sam thinks about all the years they'd shared a bed. And how sometimes, even after his own nightmares went away, Dean would crawl under the covers beside him, like he was seeking the same comfort he'd offered Sam. It didn't happen all that often and Dean wouldn't talk about it when it did. But Dean was sixteen and just started going on hunts with their dad. It wasn't that far of a stretch to think the nightmares Dean was having were caused by whatever he saw on those hunts. Then, as Sam got older, Dean stayed in his own bed, even through the dreams that woke them both with is hoarse, terrified cries, and Sam was forced to cross the short distance between them and do for Dean what he'd always done for Sam.
"Do you think he was still trying to protect you?" Missouri asks, interrupting Sam's reverie. "Taking the nightmares away?"
It sounds exactly like something Dean would do. "But if the demon gave me some kind of psychic power, how could Dean take it?"
"The spell he used must have been very old magic. Blood magic is one of the most powerful kinds of sorcery, but your bond, the conduit, Dean's intentions, those things would only make it stronger. Can you remember any of the spell?"
"No, but it sounded strange. Like Hebrew... or, maybe, Arabic."
"Something Egyptian or Coptic, maybe?"
"I don't know." Sam scratches at his forehead, the drying paste making his skin feel tight and itchy. "How will this help us find Dean?"
"You're brothers. You have the same blood. I can use that. Whatever spell he did will only have strengthened the bond between you and that should make it even easier to track him." She stands and runs a finger along the spines of the books on the shelf beside the couch.
"Missouri? If Dean took my psychic power, why did I dream about Jess?"
Missouri stops leafing through the pages of the book in her hands to look at Sam. "Dean wasn't meant for it – you were. It's likely stronger than he is. The conduit should help him control it, but the power is still yours."
It's not helpful and not really an answer. But if Missouri can find Dean, it doesn't really matter. So he stands by and watches as she cleans off the coffee table and lays out a large Rand McNally atlas open to a two-page spread of the U.S. map. The locating spell she uses is familiar, Latin. She holds her hand out for Sam's, pricks the tip of his finger with a pin and squeezes a drop of blood over Lawrence. The bead coagulates atop the paper instead of soaking into it, slowly sliding north to the juncture of interstates 29 and 90. Sioux Falls. "Bobby."
Missouri raises an eyebrow at him. "You know where he is?"
"I think so, yeah." He probably should've thought of it sooner, but he hasn't seen the man in years. Not since the day his regressed memory made him remember. But if Dean was trying to lay low, keep their father from finding him, Bobby's would be the perfect place to go. Sam's just curious as to what's got him hiding. He glances at his watch. If he leaves now, he could make it by eleven.
"You can leave first thing," Missouri says with a pointed look – it doesn't take her psychic abilities to guess what he's thinking. "I've already got a room made up for you and you look like you could use a good, home-cooked meal and a decent night's rest."
Sam can't exactly argue. He's been living off of cheap, greasy diner food and gas station coffee for longer than his body's used to. However, he doubts he'll rest easy until he finds his brother, motel or Missouri's guest room aside.
A storm front moves in overnight and Sam wakes to the sound of sleet pelting the window. Missouri sends him off with a quarter of the loaf of cinnamon bread and a full travel mug of coffee. "You ever need anything, don't hesitate to call," she says with sincerity, hand resting on Sam's wrist as he reaches for the door. "And good luck with Dean."
There's something in her voice that makes her words seem almost cryptic, like there's more Sam should know before finding his brother. But Missouri doesn't elaborate, just pats his arm and offers a smile. So Sam returns the smile – she may be vague, but he wouldn't have found Dean so quickly without her. "Thanks, Missouri."
She watches from the doorway as he climbs into his dad's truck and pulls away from the curb, waving before she disappears from sight. Within seconds, the house blurs into the neighborhood, becomes indistinguishable from the other white-vinyl-sided two-story suburban homes. Then, minutes later, he's exiting onto the highway, Lawrence on its way to once again becoming nothing more than a distant memory.
As the miles pass, Sam grows increasingly anxious. The open road gives him time to think, nothing but the odd thoughts sliding through his mind for companionship. He goes over the memory Missouri helped him recover, what Dean did for him and how it might be affecting him now. Sam wonders if that's what she was referring to in offering him luck. She'd told him that Dean wasn't meant to have the psychic ability the demon had given to Sam as a child. He's heard more than a few stories of people with a natural ability going crazy from the things they'd seen or heard. It's not a far stretch to think Dean could be going through something similar. From there, Sam's mind just goes into darker and darker places.
The sleet turns to snow by the time he crosses into Iowa, tiny, hard flakes that sound like sand against the windshield at seventy miles an hour. Within an hour, the weather has seriously deteriorated, the snow's falling heavy and wet and so fast that, even at forty with the wipers on high, visibility is no more than four or five car-lengths ahead of him. He's determined to make Sioux Falls by dark, and that's seeming less and less likely as the truck crawls along and the blizzard outside continues.
The drive takes almost three hours longer than it's supposed to and Sam turns off onto Bobby's lane just before six. The windows are mostly dark, two downstairs dimly lit through heavy drapes. The curtains on the larger window part in the middle, spilling a shaft of warm, golden light across the starkness of the freshly fallen snow. By the time Sam's out of the truck and headed for the front door, the porch light comes blazing to life in its frosted-glass globe. The storm door opens silently then Bobby's pushing the creaky screen door open with the toe of one boot while he levels the barrel of his shotgun out the gap. "Who's there?" he questions gruffly, eyes squinting into the darkness beyond the soft fall of the porch light.
"It's Sam Winchester," Sam tells him, hands raised in supplication as he starts up the stairs. "Is Dean here?"
Bobby lowers the shotgun, holds the screen door open with a shoulder as he gestures Sam inside. "No."
That doesn't make sense – this is where the tracking spell said he would be. "But he was?"
"Look, Dean made me promise not to call your daddy. He's going through something he wants to handle on his own and I'm helping him work on it."
"Work on what? What's he got himself into he couldn't tell Dad or me?"
"He's okay, Sam. He's safe."
"So you know where he is?" Sam asks, ignoring for a moment that Bobby's avoiding the question.
"Yeah."
"Well, I have to see him. I have to-"
"It's not a good idea, Sam. Not right now. He's- he's not really himself."
Sam shakes his head and just blurts it out. "Our dad's dead."
Bobby's face goes oddly blank at that, eyes narrowing just the slightest bit to belie his concern. "What?"
"Three days ago. We were tracking a wendigo and it got him. He was in the hospital for a while, but there was nothing anybody could do. He told me about the demon. I have to find Dean so I can tell him about Dad and so he can help me find the goddamn thing that killed our mother."
"Look, I'm really sorry 'bout your daddy. He- he was a good hunter and- and I know he was doing his best with you and Dean." Bobby shakes his head and sighs, rubbing a hand over his brow beneath the bill of his ever-present baseball cap. "But when I said Dean's not really himself, I meant it. You might want to sit and you're definitely gonna want a drink."
Sam follows Bobby into the library that looks virtually unchanged from his memory of the place. He sits in one of the chairs by the window, a familiar energy calming him as he settles against the padded backrest.
Bobby returns with a half-empty bottle of whiskey and two tumblers. He offers one of the short glasses to Sam and pours a good three fingers of amber liquid into it before filling up his own and sitting in the chair next to Sam's, separated by a narrow table covered with a mess of books.
"Dean?" Sam prompts, tension rising the longer Bobby draws this out.
"He called me a couple of weeks ago when he was working a job in New Orleans." He takes a healthy swig of whiskey before continuing. "He was having trouble remembering things. Basic things, about the job and- and everything." With a shrug he glances up at Sam. "He said it had been going on for a while but it was getting worse. He'd resorted to using post-it notes as reminders: where he was, where he was going, the job he was working on. I asked him if he'd ever told your dad and he said no. Then I asked if he ever told you..."
"And? What did he say? 'Cause he never told me a damn thing about it, either."
Bobby finishes off the alcohol in his glass, pours himself some more, and swallows that down, too. "He..."
"What, Bobby?" If Sam gets any tenser, he's going to crush the glass in his hand.
"He didn't remember you. At all."
Sam takes a deep breath in an attempt to ease the ache in his chest, but it only seems to swell even more. The important thing is that Dean's alive, and he tries to focus on that. "He's my brother – he's all I've got left."
PART THREE - DEAN
Dean pulls his pillow over his head when his alarm starts to go off. He knows he can't be certain, but he's pretty sure he hates the damned thing. The pillow barely muffles the annoying bleating so Dean shoves off his blankets and sits up, reaches over and slides the broken-off peg to the notch marked 'OFF' with his thumb nail. There are two sticky notes on the face of the alarm clock, lit up orange as the red LED lights of the numbers shine through the yellow paper. One says Harvelle's Roadhouse – Kimball, NE – new job work at 11.
The numbers beneath the notes say 9:35, so Dean turns on the lamp and takes his daily journal off the top of the stack of notebooks on his nightstand. The last entry is marked November 15, 2005, and paging back though a few entries, he sees that he writes daily. That makes today the sixteenth.
Two weeks' worth of entries are all variations on the same thing. He wakes, writes down what he remembers of any nightmares or dreams he's had, goes back through previous entries. They all end the same: "The drawings help me remember people, but I'm losing everything else. I'm getting worse."
He closes the notebook and climbs out of bed, finds his duffel full of clean, floral-scented laundry – folded, no less – in the closet and pulls out a pair of jeans, a tee and a henley, and a pair of boxer-briefs before heading for the hall. He pauses in front of his gallery of sketches, smirking at his own notes on the curling edges of both portraits of the women he recognizes with certainty: HANDS OFF!
He goes through the vaguely familiar motions of showering and shaving, brushing his teeth and getting dressed. Dean looks at his face in the mirror every morning until he recognizes the stranger in his reflection – until the edge of panic he feels as he tries to remember who he is, where he is, fades to a dull, uncomfortable thing.
Curling post-its lining the edge of the medicine cabinet mirror above the sink serve as reminders and temporary place holders. "I am Dean Winchester," he reads aloud from the one closest to his reflection. I live in Kimball, Nebraska, says another.
It's a weird feeling to have – that he's not who he's supposed to be. Like his skin's a size too small, ill-fitting and itchy. Confining. Smothering. Like he's in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like he used to be somebody else and the memories of that other, better, previous life are just out of his mind's grasp, like a forgotten word right on the tip of his tongue. Whatever it is, it's right there, so close he can almost taste it.
He returns to his room for a pair of socks and sits at the foot of his bed as he pulls them on. There's a sketch on the wall, separate from the others and unfinished. It's just a set of eyes, heavy bangs falling across the forehead, faint lines of graphite suggesting a nose and a jaw. The eyes are perfect, familiar, but everything below seems off. There's no name on the corner of this drawing so Dean has no idea who it is. He shrugs, stands, studies the rest until faces and names are familiar, and heads for the kitchen.
There's a battered pocket-sized notepad on the counter next to the coffee pot, pages fuzzing and the thin chipboard cover stained. He flips it open to the first clean page, marking it with his finger, and reads through the last few notes. Ellen got a call from Bobby – he should be here on Friday, might have new info? Still not remembering anything - maybe there's a good reason. Maybe we should just leave it alone. It's not very helpful or very inspiring, but it's possible Bobby found something.
There's more, but nothing too enlightening. Just daily play-by-plays, what he's been doing, things he's heard. He skims more of his sloping scrawl and closes the oft-used notepad before shoving it into the back pocket of his jeans where his wallet should be.
He starts the coffeemaker with the aid of more post-it notes and leans against the counter as he waits for it to brew enough for a cup. He lets his mind drift back to that incomplete sketch and he feels a sudden spike of frustration that the rest of the face is blank. He wonders where his mind came up with the image, if it's something he's remembering or forgetting.
Dean drinks his coffee black because there's no post-it telling him otherwise, how much milk or sugar to add, and he likes it just fine even if he scalds his lips and the tip of his tongue on the first sip. He knows it's probably not the best coffee, but it's not thick as tar or strong as jet fuel, so he figures he's done something right. Just as he's preparing to pour his second cup, an alarm on the other side of the room blares to life. Dean finds a cell phone plugged into a charger on an end table next to the short couch. It's easy, thoughtless work to get the damn thing to quiet and he's struck, not for the first time since he woke up, with how strange it is that processes such as shaving and shutting off the stupid alarm on his cell phone are amazingly simple, yet he can't remember basic information like his name and where he is without prompts from three-inch square pieces of sticky, yellow paper. Surely whatever's wrong with him is some kind of freak anomaly.
A message pops up on the phone's screen moments later, accompanied by a tinkle of chimes and a buzz: Time for work :) showing up across the screen. And Dean is as certain as he can possibly be that he didn't type that for himself.
After turning off the coffeemaker and dumping the leftovers down the drain, Dean heads for the door. There's a time- and weather-worn leather jacket hanging from a hook on the wall and a pair of muddy work boots on the mat beneath it. He sits on the edge of the chair behind him to pull on the boots and shrugs into the jacket, shoving the cell phone into his front jeans pocket as he stands.
He slips his hand into the front right pocket of his jacket and finds the keys he'd anticipated would be there. He wonders if, maybe, he's starting to remember, but reasons that shoving his hand into his pocket is probably just a habit. It doesn't really matter, he guesses. So he leaves the trailer and pulls the locked door shut behind himself. The morning is gray and cold, reflecting dully off the mirrored surface of the trailer and the snow on the ground is up to Dean's calves as he steps off the last stair. He makes his way down the hill and to the Roadhouse to start his day.
Dean takes all the chairs down off the tables, sets out full napkin dispensers and salt and pepper shakers. He checks the coolers behind the bar to see if anything needs to be brought up from the back, but everything looks well-stocked. Jo comes in while he's slicing up tomatoes and hops up onto the counter beside him. "Mom got a call from Bobby last night. He's coming early. Said he'll be here this afternoon."
"Yeah?" Dean scoops up the thin slices with his knife and carefully sets them into the empty Tupperware bowl.
"Uh huh."
He thinks about the note he read earlier this morning. "Does he have any new information?"
Jo shrugs, flips her blonde hair over her shoulder. "Mom didn't say. Don't know why he'd make the trip out if he didn't, though." She hops down and moves towards the fridge. After rifling around inside it for a couple of moments, she returns to Dean's side with an orange slice of American cheese, methodically breaking off the corners and popping them into her mouth.
Dean tries to ignore her stare but it's nearly impossible. She's barely two feet away, head tilted as she eats her cheese, big brown eyes locked on his face. "Did you need something?"
Jo shakes her head and grins. "Nope."
"Well, if you're gonna stand there, you might as well be useful – you can cut up a few onions while I finish up with these."
The request has the desired effect and Jo pushes away from the counter. "No thanks."
Ellen comes in around noon, a couple of the locals show up around one, and Dean tends bar while Ellen slaves over the grill. By three o'clock, a third of the tables and all the stools at the bar are full of hunters. Dean's digging through the cooler for a can of Sprite when he overhears Ellen talking to a man with his arm in a sling. He catches bits and pieces of the conversation, finds out that the man's name is Levi Sutton and that he just got done with a job tracking down a skinwalker in New Mexico. Dean knows that used to be him, based on what he reads every morning in his journal – before he forgot everything he knows, he was a hunter, and a good one at that. Part of him yearns for the road, the constant change of scenery, the life he knows he had but might never remember. But, unless Bobby arrives with good news, that's probably never going to happen and the only scenery Dean's ever going to see is what's outside the windows of the Roadhouse and his trailer.
He pulls the can of Sprite out from the back of the cooler where it's buried behind the Coke and takes it over to Pat O'Hare. The old man's glass eye kind of freaks Dean out a little and he pops open the top of the can and reaches for a glass, setting both before the man and heading for the end of the bar. "I'm taking my break," he calls to Ellen, already eying the card game going on in the dimmest corner of the bar. Twenty minutes is more than enough time to get in a few good hands. He pulls up an empty chair and slides in between a man in a Huskers baseball cap with a long, ginger beard and another guy with a thick, black Tom Selleck mustache. "Deal me in?"
Tom Selleck rolls his eyes and scoots over to give Dean more room. "Are we going to have to explain the rules again?" he asks, but the tone of his voice is colored with humor, not exasperation.
"Yeah, probably."
Huskers Cap rattles off the rules of the game, just basic poker, and the guy opposite Dean deals out the cards and cuts the deck in front of himself. They manage to get through four hands before Ellen's calling for him. Tom Selleck throws his cards down onto the table. "Every time, man. Don't know how you do it."
"Beginner's luck," Dean laughs as he pockets nearly all the cash from the pot he won and drops a twenty between Tom and Huskers. "Next round's on me."
"Get out of here," Tom Selleck says, waving Dean away but picking up the twenty and putting it back in the middle of the table.
Dean busies himself emptying food baskets and cleaning silverware for a while, scrawls his poker winnings into his notepad as well as the other bits of information he's gleaned from eavesdropping. He's at the sink, washing glasses, watching Ellen check the clock above the shelves of liquor for the third time in the past ten minutes and he's about to call her on it when the front door bursts open. Two men enter in a swirl of blowing snow, the first Dean recognizes as Bobby Singer from the sketch in his room. The second man, though – Dean's around the bar and has the man shoved up against the wall, his forearm pressed up against the man's throat, before he's even aware he moved, then Bobby and Tom Selleck are pulling him back.
It's him. The man from the unfinished sketch. Dean would recognize those eyes anywhere. "Who are you?" he grits out
The man looks scared and maybe a little hurt. "It's me, Dean. It's-"
"Jo!" Ellen yells, moving in between Dean and the stranger before he can get out his name. She pushes Dean towards her daughter. "Go cool off," she tells him. "We'll talk when you calm down."
"What's going on?" He looks from Bobby to Ellen, the stranger, looks around at all the people in the bar that are now staring at him.
Jo grabs his arm. "Come on. Let's go."
Dean reluctantly follows, but only because of the stern look Ellen fixes him with. "Who is that guy?" Dean asks once they're outside, accepting the cigarette Jo offers him from the crumpled pack she digs out of the pocket of her coat.
Jo lights her own cigarette before handing the lighter off to Dean. She eyes him warily for a second. "You don't know?"
"Would I be asking if I did?"
"Why'd you react like that, then?"
"Because he...he looked familiar." That's not exactly true. Sure, the eyes he recognized from that unfinished sketch, but there's so much more to it than he himself can understand. He felt something when their gazes met. Dean knows him from somewhere. But how? There's only one place Dean can find the answers he's looking for. "Look, I'm gonna-" He gestures towards his trailer.
Jo nods. "Are you okay?"
"I need a post-it to remember my name and sketches to recognize people I see every day. What do you think?" Dean leaves her with that, unable to care that he was unnecessarily rude to her.
It doesn't seem to have fazed Jo any, judging by the affectionate "Asshole!" she calls after him.
Dean kicks off his boots inside the door and tosses his coat onto the chair before moving back to his bedroom. His gaze automatically lands on that damned unfinished sketch and he can feel the weight of its graphite stare. Ignoring the impulse to tear the drawing down, Dean sits heavily on the edge of his mattress and pulls the stack of notebooks into his lap. He's not sure what he's looking for – it's not like he has a name or a date to guide him. But he thinks he finds his answer a half-dozen pages into the dream journal. There are a handful of dates written in the margin and Dean knows it's the other nights he had this same dream. It details desperate but gentle sex – tentative hands, warm mouth, hard body – slow with love, frantic with need.
The stranger is – or was – his lover, maybe something more. But he seems older now. Dean wonders how long it's been since they've seen each other, if he knows what happened to Dean to make him this way.
He's rereading the entry for a third time when there's a knock on the front door. Setting the journal aside, Dean stands and heads down the hallway. It could be anybody. Except, it's the last person he expects.
The stranger – the literal guy of his dreams, the good ones, anyway – is standing on his stairs, hands shoved into his pockets. "Hey," he says when Dean opens the door.
"Hi." Dean doesn't move from the doorway.
"I'm Sam. Can I come in?"
"Sam what?"
Sam shakes his head and moves up a step so he's eye to eye with Dean. "Winchester."
Married? Dean wonders. Is that even legal? He backs away from the door. "So, you're...?"
Sam pushes the door closed and turns to face Dean. "I'm your brother."
But, the dreams. "You're what?"
"I know. Bobby said you'd forgotten."
"That's- But- Shit, I need a drink." He pulls two bottles of beer from the fridge and offers one to Sam after he's pried the lids off with his ring. "Brothers?"
Sam licks his lips and takes the bottle that's held out to him. "Who did you think I was?"
Dean shakes his head and crosses the short distance to the couch. "I'm not- I don't know. I have this... dream."
Sam sits in the chair across from him and Dean feels kind of caged in with the way he's blocking the only exit. "Dream?" Sam prompts, looking at Dean intently.
He nods, takes a swig of beer, doesn't know how much he should give away because it's entirely possible that the dream was based more in fantasy than reality even if it never felt like it was false. "Yeah. You're in it."
Sam leans forward a little more in the chair at that. "What happened in this dream that makes you think were weren't brothers?" His eyebrows draw up like he's fishing for an answer he already knows.
Dean looks away from that earnest stare.
"The last time I saw you was over four years ago, Dean. I'd just graduated and I was going to be leaving for college. I didn't want to go, but you insisted – didn't want me to have the same life you and Dad did. You said you wanted me to have a choice, but you're the one that made the decision for me. I hated that you were sending me away and we had a pretty bad argument." Sam pauses long enough to get up from the chair and move over to the couch, leaving half a cushion of space between himself and Dean. "But then you had a nightmare – you were having so many nightmares back then – and I couldn't help myself.
"It had been building up for a long time, I think. I mean, I don't remember ever not wanting you. But you'd push me away, tell me we couldn't...But that night, I think you just needed me as much as I needed you." He shifts closer. "I kissed you and you let me and it was perfect, then we... I thought for sure you wouldn't make me leave after that." Sam gives this little mirthless laugh. "Should've known it was your goodbye."
"But we're brothers. Why would we...? And why can't I remember anything?"
Sam sets his beer on the coffee table and reaches his hand out to Dean, fingertips chilled and damp from the bottle caressing Dean's cheek. "I don't know, Dean. I'm sorry. I just know that I miss you. God, I miss you."
Dean can't deny what that hesitant touch makes him feel, how his body reacts to it like it's something he's known his whole life. "Sam."
Then Sam's closing the distance between them, crushing his mouth to Dean's frantically before backing off to kiss him slow and gentle. "I was afraid I'd never see you again."
As much as Dean doesn't want to stop, he knows they can't do this. Not now, maybe not ever again. He gets his hands up between them, pushes against Sam's chest until his brother – Goddamn, his brother - sits back. "I'm sorry," he murmurs, letting his forehead fall against Sam's shoulder.
Sam's nodding when Dean straightens back up. "Yeah. No, it's okay." But the happiness in his eyes has dimmed and his expression is shuttered, mouth tense with a forced smile.
"I'm sorry," Dean repeats. "I know this can't be easy for you, but I just don't..."
"You don't remember me. At all. I know. And all this," he says, waving a hand between them. "You... I get it. I hate it, but I understand. And it's not your fault. But I promise you, Dean, I'll do anything, whatever it takes, to get your memory back. To make you remember who we are and what we were. I've lost too much. We've lost too much."
Sam's desperation is palpable and Dean wishes there was something he could do to ease the obvious hopelessness his brother is feeling. But he doesn't think he can give Sam what he wants and he can't think of anything to say that'll make any of it better. "I just... We just need some time," he finally says.
Sam nods again, shifts further away on the couch until there's half a foot of space between them. "I should go," he says, briefly catching Dean's gaze before standing.
Dean stands as well, awkwardly follows Sam to the door, stops his brother on the stairs with a hand on the sleeve of his coat. "We just need time," Dean repeats once Sam's looking up at him. He presses a kiss to Sam's frowning mouth, lets the fingers of the hand not holding onto Sam's jacket skim across the warm skin of his cheek. Little flashes of memory come back to Dean as his fingers tangle in Sam's hair.
His hair is shorter, a little sweaty at the nape from spending half the afternoon on the high school's side lawn as the vice principal read off the names of the graduating senior class and students crossed the stage to gather their diplomas and shake the hands of the principal and the superintendent. Sam's name was third to last to be called and Dean had hooted and hollered from his seat four rows back from the end of the stage. And the grin Sam had given him, huge dimples on display – he'd never forget it.
But Sam isn't smiling as he pulls away, gently brushing off Dean's hands. "Have a- have a goodnight, Dean."
He watches Sam walk away, wondering how he'd managed to forget. That smile. Sam. But that's not really true. There's an unfinished sketch of Sam taped to the wall in his room. The sketch, the recurring dream – they're memories of Sam, not forgotten at all.
Dean closes and locks the door when he sees Sam disappear back inside the Roadhouse. He returns to his room, ignoring the half-empty beer bottles on his coffee table in favor of sitting at the end of his bed and staring at the drawing for a long stretch of moments before pulling it down and quickly finishing it. The Sam in his mind's eye is wearing a disappointed scowl, heartbreak evident in his eyes, and Dean hates how it translates to the paper. Sam should never look that sad.
He sticks the sketch back up on the wall and closes his eyes against the sight, trying to remember the way Sam looked when he was happy, but all he can conjure up is that little flare of memory from Sam's graduation. He focuses on it, the smell of fresh-cut grass, the heat of Sam's skin from the sun. But that's not the memory he sinks back into.
Sam's curled around him and he smells like stale sweat and fresh air. "It's okay," Sam says against his throat, "you're okay." And parts of the nightmare surface, twisted, broken bodies and the flickering spirit of an angry, vengeful man. Sam holds him close and Dean knows this won't last. It can't. He brings his arms up around his brother, shifts until they're face to face, leans in and lets Sam kiss him.
Sam kicks out of his boxers and lays back on Dean's bed, legs bent at the knee and splayed wide, asking with his body what he's too afraid to ask aloud. Dean kicks out of his own sweats and underwear, settles himself over Sam, kisses him slow. Tonight is all they have.
Sam sucks on his own fingers until they're dripping with spit and reaches down between their bodies. Dean watches, transfixed, as Sam works himself open, one finger, two, then three. Dean can't help but press one of his own fingers in there along with Sam's and it makes his brother cry out. "I'm ready," Sam pants, grasping at Dean's shoulders, his hips. "I need you."
Then Sam's head is on his chest, an arm and a leg flung protectively over Dean as if Sam's afraid he might disappear in the night. Dean holds him as long as he can because when he lets go, it's for good.
Dean falls back on his mattress feeling years'-old loss hitting him head on, wondering if this is anything like what Sam felt when he realized Dean didn't remember him. Part of him wants nothing more than to run to his brother, tell him what he's uncovered, tell Sam that he loves him and that he's sorry, but Dean doesn't know what he's going to remember in the morning. He can't take the chance of disappointing Sam again.
Instead, he curls up on his bed and pulls out his daily journal, debating for a moment if he should leave anything out. In the end, he details his uneventful morning, then how he met Sam, how he recognized his brother's eyes from the sketch on his wall. He leaves out the dream and certain parts of his recovered memory, and sums up their relationship as 'closer than brothers.'
He closes his journal, turns off his light, and holds tight to the memory of Sam's mouth against his, wishing for dreams of his brother.