Author:Mirrordance
Title: Home Road
Summary:The brothers were so different sometimes.Dean after Sam died was lethal silence and a sense of suicide-Let the world end.Leave me alone.That loudly unspoken I wish I was dead.Sam was different.He had murder in his eyes.Post-3.16 and Sam finds a way.
Massive Thanks to all who read and especially all who reviewed. Every single one is highly valued, I guarantee it. You keep me goin and goin :) Here's part 3. C&C's as welcome and desired as always. 'Til the next post!
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Home Road
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3
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Elsewhere
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Every time Dean drifted off or closed his eyes, he went back to that night that his life had changed. It was his mother in her nightgown. Her kiss and her goodnight and the heat and the despair.
Every. Fucking. Time.
Watching it the first time felt like a stab in the gut. Seeing it a second time was someone twisting the knife to the right. Seeing it a third time was someone twisting that same knife to the left. Seeing it a fourth time was someone digging in deeper. Seeing it a fifth time was someone pulling it up. Seeing it a sixth time was someone pulling it down. Seven and eight moved it sideways. By nine and ten he was thinking, diagonal. Eleven was someone wrenching the knife out. He was gutted out and emptied, and still the memory ran on, again and again and again, in every possible detail.
He had never remembered her in this magnitude. He had never been given this much of her. The intimate knowledge of her only made her loss more acute.
Her eyes, her clothes, her freckles, every strand of her hair. He watched her beauty and felt it being wrenched from him in every possible way. She burnt off of the face of the world. Every single bit of her.
By the nth time, he realized the pain was duller when he started to look beyond his mother. He watched cute baby Sammy on the crib. Smelled his father's aftershave. Watched the fire dance. Looked at a fireman's funny hat.
The more he watched his mother die over and over and over, the easier it was to look at something else, to think of something else. It sure as hell felt safer.
" " "
Indiana
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"Winchester?" Brennan said, "You wanted a vegetable and you got it. Now give me my daughter back."
"Soon," Sam murmured, "Sit tight, Doctor. I will call."
He hung up the phone, thoughtfully. Everyone in the room was watching him, including the teenager who had just woken up. She pulled her weight off of his shoulder, and watched his face.
"Got what you needed?" she asked.
"Believe it or not," said Sam as he got to his feet and walked toward Bobby, "That was the easy part. Got anything?"
"We've been doing this for a year, Sam," the older hunter sighed, "Not such a stretch, is it, to say I haven't found anything new?"
"Him being in... in hell," Sam said, "I was wondering if that could actually be good for us. No one can stop a demon deal but now that he's there... if we found the Colt and opened the gate--"
"There's no guaranteeing he can get out that way," Bobby said, quickly, "You could be letting out everyone down there before you get to Dean. That's like... spitting on his damn corpse, son. Even I won't let you do that. If we can get the Colt in the first place, which I doubt."
"People summon out demons all the time," Sam said, thinking of another way.
"He's not one yet," Bobby pointed out, "It takes time, for a soul to change, especially the stronger ones. And your brother... you know as well as I do he'll be the strongest one down there. Besides, while it's true that the sooner he turns, the easier it will be to bring him out, I guarantee you, the less you'd want to."
"So what?" Sam snapped, "What, nothing now?"
"We're looking, aren't we?" Bobby snapped back.
"Looking at what?" the nosy teenager piped in, her sharp eyes already showed more understanding than Sam or Bobby hoped. But they've gone past caring discussing the situation in front of other people now. "Looking at what?"
"My brother's in Hell," Sam replied, in a low voice, looking away from them, "A year ago, I died, and he sold his soul to get me back. They gave him a year to live, and they dragged him down there... yesterday. We thought... we thought we'd have enough time to find a way to save him. We were wrong. And now he's there and I'm... here."
There really wasn't anything anyone could say about that.
"First things first," said Bobby, "We gotta get your brother somewhere safe, and two, we need more hands."
"You ah," Sam said, "You know I got no one else, Bobby."
"I got a few people I could round up."
"No," Sam said, lowering his voice, "There are... few I could trust with this. Because... because there might be options open to us with me being what I am. Other hunters might try to stop us."
Bobby's brows furrowed. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Sam glanced at the teenager and the EMT. "Later," he muttered.
"Missouri and the Harvelles all right?" Bobby asked.
"Just Missouri and Ellen for now," Sam agreed, "And if Ellen allows it, then Jo too."
"You got it."
" " "
It was time to start calling in favors and not just hands, Sam decided. They needed a place where they wouldn't be found, so this excluded any of their known haunts including Bobby's place, which had become like a second home to him and Dean (their first home, of course, being the Impala). And so he called in the most tenacious real estate developer he had ever known.
Larry reminded Sam of his own overbearing father, the late, the great, John Winchester. If John Winchester was the superstar of the hunting scene, Larry was his real estate, white picket fence counterpart. It was ridiculous to even think of hunting and the business of real estate in the same plane, but then there it was. If John Winchester were into real estate, he'd be like Larry. Same way if he'd been into homebuilding he'd be fricking Martha Stewart.
Sam and Dean had saved Larry's family from certain death in a cursed land in Oklahoma. They all came out of that one ridiculously bee-stung, but scarred was inarguably always, always better than dead. Larry was every bit as grateful as his son Matt had indicated in his post on the Ghostfacers website. Sam ended up with a two-month lease on a large house in a new development just outside Indiana, a ten-minute drive to a state-of-the-art new hospital. He had specified that, when making his request. He had to be ready for any condition Dean would be in, once restored to him. There was also a nearby Biggerson's there, so that he'd have a place to get free food. It was a mild quirk, but he and Dean really had taken to the place after Sam won that free meal ticket there after that Black Rock debacle, and it was a kind-of happy place he could take Dean to, once he felt better.
'Felt better?', he thought, catching himself. It was a stupid, monumental understatement, wasn't it? Dean was flat-out, categorically dead. To think of him 'feeling better' was like calling Ebola a cold. But he couldn't, and wouldn't look at things any other way. He was going to get Dean back. He was going to get his brother back exactly as he was when he had lost him. Noisy, whining and hungry.
Jerk.
Come back to me.
" " "
Elsewhere
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Dean didn't realize how much of a stranger his mother actually was to him, until the hideous replay of her murder finally got to the end of its run and his vision was switched to seeing his father die, this time around.
It hurt infinitely, incomparably more.
Mom was a dream, she was his beloved but ultimately distant goddess. His father, on the other hand, was his superhero. Sam was his world, sure, but his dad... his dad was the sun. Blinding, burning at times, but he just shone like a beacon to Dean. See me. Shine on me. Like me. Be proud of me. Love me.
Everyone saw clean right through it. He remembered how, shortly after his father died, he had to look through the torture of everyone else looking at him. The nurses and the doctors at the hospital. God, he had to get out of there. Their sorry, staring eyes were burning through him. He wanted them to shove their condolences where the sun don't shine. He wanted to tear that place apart.
There too was his stupid kid brother always, always checking if he was "okay." Okay? Really? It wasn't one of Stanford's finer moments, that's for sure. Monumental, ridiculous understatement.
Then there was Bobby Singer and his cloudy eyes, shaded by that cap that was situated just a little bit lower that week. Enter Ellen Harvelle days later, a total stranger at the time, with her warm eyes, looking at him like only a woman could. He thought he was gonna bawl right then and there.
Why the hell was everyone saying sorry to him? It was Samantha who couldn't get rid of the waterworks, for chrissakes.
Even shithead demons knew about that gaping chink in his armor.
...You know, you fight and you fight for this family, but the truth is….they don't need you. Not like you need them. Sam - he's clearly John's favorite. Even when they fight, it's more concern than he's ever shown you...
God, even obtuse as he often seemed, his own father knew that.
...You know, when you were a kid, I'd come home from a hunt. And after what I'd seen, I'd be... I'd be wrecked. And you'd come up to me, and you'd put your hand on my shoulder, and you'd look me in the eye, and you'd say "It's okay, Dad." Dean... I'm sorry...
...You shouldn't have had to say that to me. I should've been saying that to you. You know, I put... I put too much on your shoulders, I made you grow up too fast. You took care of Sammy, and you took care of me. You did that. And you didn't complain, not once. I just want you to know that I am so proud of you...
Yeah, sure you were, Dean thought, glumly, Shortly before you keeled over and died for me and consequently ruined the rest of my life.
He honestly still felt like a sack of shit for making his father do that. Why would John Winchester do such a stupid, stupid thing, trading his life for Dean's? Not to say he was a hypocrite; Dean did the same to Sam too, after all. But then Sam's different. Sam's special. Sam's smart. Sam's...Sam. And it's Dean's job to look after him. But dad... dad still had a job to do. The world couldn't afford to lose a hunter like John Winchester, especially if what they got left with was him instead.
And so, hell being, well, Hell, it struck him where it hurt him most. The assault had begun with the crippling, repeated, high-fucking-definition front row seat to his mother's murder. And now, John's death began to replay right before his very eyes, the memory claiming every sense in his body.
He could smell the detergent on his father's clothes.
He could smell it mingled with his sweat.
He felt the heat from his breathy whisper. Watch out for Sammy. Save him. Kill hi-- What the hell?!
He felt the brush of the stubble on his chin.
He saw his father's eyes glisten and shine, veiled by his tears.
Again, with borrowed eyes, he could not have known his father any better than he did in that moment. He felt like he knew him inside-out. Every single parcel of his father, he was reintroduced to. Just before it was wrenched from him.
His father, collapsing. Sammy on his knees. His brother's echoing, terrified cry. The smell of bad coffee spilled on the floor. Charred skin as the machines tried to pull his father back to the world of the living. The flat, unforgettable, eternal sound of death.
And then it began again.
And then it went on again after that.
Somewhere inside him, he knew it was all a memory. His crazy father had walked out of hell somehow, and all that he had to worry about was himself, chained in hell. But once the show began, it was consuming, and there was nothing else, nothing else to see but his father dying, over and over and over again. And there was just no way to stop it.
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Indiana
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Sam Winchester, his daughter had said, and so after informing Winchester of the surgery's outcome, and as he waited for Jessie's kidnapper to call him back, Troy Brennan got online and wondered who the hell this guy was and why his daughter would not only know him, but be assured that she was safe in his hands.
The first thing he found was a kick to the gut. The man was wanted by the FBI for a cacophony of insane charges. The second thing he found was that Winchester was already supposed to be dead. The last thing he found was that he was supposed to be some sort of a cult hero.
Christ, what the heck is going on here?
He read on, about his enemy. He had dismissed the heroic praise as some sort of weird following. Even psycho serial killers had fans, after all. But the commentary was wide-ranging, and insistent. And Winchester was supposed to be dead except somehow, he wasn't. The more he read, the more strange his situation became.
Not to mention more and more oddball stories were coming out of New Harmony.
Jesus, what's going on here?
" " "
"Sam?"
Sam looked up at Bobby, "You got something?"
"Not... quite," Bobby winced, "Sam... I just thought of something."
"What?"
"The last time Lilith took over a town," Bobby said, his voice shaking, as he glanced at the two sleeping women in the living room, "She cleaned up after herself, didn't she? Made sure her tracks were covered. That the things that happened were kept a secret from the world? She tore that place down. Killed everyone, made it look like a freaky gas leak."
"You think we can expect the same thing for New Harmony?" Sam asked, anxiously. He had been focused on Dean, damn it, and he had every right to be.
"I don't know," Bobby admitted, "I honestly don't, kid."
"Bobby," Sam hesitated, "Ruby said that there was a reason Lilith was afraid of me. When she... I don't know exactly, what she was trying to do. She raised up her hand, and there was this, this light. All I wanted was to stop her. Dean had stopped screaming. I thought he was dead. I was so mad. And all I wanted was to stop her."
Bobby was staring at him. He couldn't watch the old man's face any more.
"And what?" Bobby asked, quietly.
"And then nothing," Sam whispered, "Whatever she was trying to do, it just... it didn't. And then she just looked scared. She backed down. She left."
Bobby's brows furrowed. "Sam..."
"Ruby was right about that, wasn't she?" Sam asked, "Whatever she may have lied about, she was right about that one thing. That I could stop Lilith."
"What are you saying?"
"You think she'll be coming after the town?" Sam asked, "You think she'll be cleaning up her mess?"
"Anyone in that town who may have known what happened is in the hospital where Dean is," Bobby pointed out, "If she wants to clean up her mess, that's the place she'll tear down."
"We gotta go," Sam said, beginning to gather her things.
"Sam," Bobby grabbed his arm, "And do what?"
"If I could stop her there--"
"Stop her with what?" Bobby retorted, "You don't even know what the hell you got."
"I don't care," Sam snapped, "I don't care anymore, Bobby. I got the knife. I got dibs on where she might be. Dean's in danger. All the people there are. We gotta go."
" " "
Sam Winchester had a baby-brother's innate, bitching self-absorption that he couldn't shake off, heroism and bravery aside. Dean had spoiled him that way, Bobby supposed. Sam was hungry and single-minded, and he fully expected to be supported. It made him a very, very compelling man to follow. It made people around him believe. He was just so damn sure, all the time.
He had done it for school. He had the same approach to researching and formulating strategies for a hunt. Now he was using it to save his brother. It was both scary and reassuring.
Even as a child, Sam had never been the please-help-me type of guy. He said it once in awhile, sure, god knows how but John raised an alien, polite kid. But Sam was really more of the I-can-do-it-watch-me type.
Keep fighting, Dean, the veteran hunter though, prayed, whatever.
Your brother's coming. You just gotta keep fighting.
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Elsewhere
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Dean gasped himself 'awake,' or whatever it was this default state was, chained and looking up to an infinite sick-green sky, hanging over a bottomless pit. Sensations of his father's death faded slowly from his five senses; the sight of John arching upwards as electricity coursed through his body. The sound of the flat line. The smell of charred flesh and bad coffee on the floor. The tears from his eyes. The taste of bile in his mouth.
When they faded completely, he realized suddenly that he wasn't alone.
What the hell?
"Hello, Dean," Ruby – and Dean was sure it was truly her this time – was sitting on some chains near his arm, her legs dangling. She still had on her borrowed human face.
He closed his eyes, tried to find both his voice and his sarcasm.
"I guess I really am in hell," he told her, hoarsely. But the tone was as sardonic as ever, "Who the hell am I gonna see next? Bela?"
"That's the spirit," she snapped back, but her eyes were aglow with a weird appreciation that he still somehow retained his sense of humor or, in the absence of genuine spirit, his game face at least. He frowned at her. She looked as battered as he felt, maybe even slightly worse. She had holes not just in her tattered clothes, but even on her body, as if she had been meat-chained the way he currently was. There was even a fricking hole on her left cheek, as if one of the chains had gone through that way.
They looked at each other thoughtfully. He was wondering if she was really there, or it was another elaborate way to torture him. And of course, as always, he was also wondering what the hell side she was playing for. God knows what she was thinking about, looking back at him.
"You know where you are?" she asked him.
"Is that a trick question?" he snapped.
Ruby scoffed at him. "You actually think this is Hell. Seriously."
"I made a deal," Dean retorted, "I got picked up by hellhounds. Oh, and yeah, it really sucks. What the hell am I supposed to think?"
It was strange, he found his voice getting stronger again. Maybe he just needed a distraction. And Ruby being Ruby, she also inspired aggression.
"This is the Waldorf Astoria, genius," she told him.
"The what?"
She rolled back her eyes, "I've been dead for centuries and I have a better grasp of culture than you. We are in Lilith's backyard. You're where the dog dumps the treat his master told him to go fetch."
"What do you mean?" Dean asked, "Not to say I trust you, bitch, but, just for the sake of me not having anything better to do. Besides, she did say she put you away where you couldn't cook up any more of your usual shit."
"She said that?"
"I paraphrase liberally."
Ruby shrugged, "Lilith doesn't have the following that Azazel did, at least, not yet. She dumps you in hell and the demons down there will tear you apart, like they have a few other hunters who came in there. She wouldn't be able to call everyone off. And she wants you kept intact, for now. That's why you're here and not there."
"Why?"
"You're her biggest asset against Sam," Ruby said, "She needs you as leverage against your brother. So you go enjoy your time here while it lasts. This is just a teensy taste of what's going to be going on down there. This is five-star."
"Why are you telling me all this?" Dean asked, "What's in it for you?"
"I still want Lilith wiped off the face of everywhere," Ruby said, "But this is an old tune, isn't it? You've never believed me before, you won't believe me now."
"How do I know she didn't just plant you here to jerk me around?" Dean asked.
"You can't," Ruby replied, "Manipulative liar, whatever, its the least of my sins. Tell you what, though. I don't know why she didn't just kill me, she does have the Colt with her. I think it's because she doesn't want me out of my misery just yet, but you'd have to ask her that. She didn't send me down to hell because I've kicked asses down there before. I've even escaped from there before.I'm in her back pocket because she thinks she can really, truly punish me here. But guess what," she raised her arms and shook them. One of her arms had holes in them too. "She's busy, and I got free and I'm outta here."
"To where?" Dean asked.
She looked down at the seemingly bottomless pit that the two of them were hanging by chains over. "Down there is hell. All I gotta do is jump."
"Is that better than this place?" Dean asked, "I thought you said it was worse."
"It is," she said, "But that place is not in her control, not yet. Down there, I can hide from her. Down there, I have a chance at getting back out." She looked at him, pointedly, "Down there, if you hide well enough, she won't be able to use you against your brother."
"You want me to go down there with you?!"
"You don't have to stick with me," she said, "But I don't want you left here, to be used against Sam."
"You are off your rocker, sweetheart--"
"I won't ask again," Ruby snapped, "I'm getting out of here, before she knows I'm off the chains. I'm getting out of here, while she's busy out there, doing god knows what. So make up your mind."
He gulped. Was he just supposed to trust her?
Not trust, Sam had said, Use.
Besides, why would Lilith do this crap, anyway? What was the point of putting him in some sort of hell and then letting him escape into another form of hell, one that was presumably worse? Hell is hell. It didn't matter, did it? At least this way, he had some sort of action, instead of just lying here...
"I'm going."
Her brows rose. Surprised, but pleased. "All right," she said, shifting her weight, moving toward his arm. He winced, as she touched the chains on his body, wondering how to go about setting him free.
"But Dean," she said, "I gotta tell you. If you're lying there thinking things couldn't possibly get any worse and you might as well just go along with me, you'd be wrong. Things can get plenty worse."
He said nothing for a long moment, just grunted and winced and watched her work on his bonds.
"I don't know when it happened, exactly," he said, quietly, "But Sam... it kinda just came at me, I guess. He just knew what he wanted and how to go about it. He thought he could listen to you. I don't know why, but he was so sure. I got nothing else right now but you, and Sam thinking he could listen to you. That's all I got to go on. So I just gotta go."
She paused from her work, looked at him wistfully, before she nodded, as if coming to a decision.
"This is gonna hurt," she warned him, "I can't loosen the chains at all, there's no room to shift away from the hook. You wanna get free? You gotta part from some skin."
"Bring it on, sister-- Fuck!" he exclaimed, as she pulled at the hook that tore a good chunk of flesh from his shoulder. When he fell back, he swung from the remaining hooks on the rest of his body, making the pain there flare also.
"Hang on," she said, grabbing him by the shirt and hauling him up. "Grab a chain, hang on, while I get the rest."
He grunted, but did as he was told. She freed his other shoulder next, and he held his weight by shaking arms clinging to a chain, as she freed his legs. It hurt like hell, but it was liberating when he was finally free enough that his legs dangled below him as he hung on by his arms. It was like his body was his again.
"Now what?" he asked her, breathlessly, feeling nauseated with pain and inexplicable, overwhelming relief.
"Now we let go," she said, smiling tightly, as if daring him.
"Right," he muttered, still cautious, "You know what they say, ladies first."
"Wuss," she said, as she slid from her perch and let herself fall.
He watched her for an indefinable moment.
"You better be right about her, Sammy," he muttered under his breath, "'Cos here goes nothing."
He let go.
TO BE CONTINUED...
