Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural and, after Comic Con '09, I suspect it's in the right hands.
A/N: To those of you who haven't heard the news about season 5 yet... JUST WAIT! It's all sorts of epic!
Thanks: Kaorukamiya307 for editing, and JEBS, Merisha, Lilithakaducky, spuffyshipper, bleedingkansas, shinaria, ppg713, primadonna cat, and Frank for reviewing. HUZZAH! 10 reviews to a chapter, my goal realized at last. Ya'll rock! I now do a nerdy nerdy dance...
Videos of the week:
youtube. com/watch?v=0l4fclvcPpk ((Appropriate, I think.))
. com/watch?v=ej_VX9s0jNg ((Wonderful vid.))
o-o-o
"Come on, Sammy," Dean urged gently. "It's been six hours. You gotta eat."
Sam didn't move; he hadn't moved since he'd woken up two hours ago, relenquishing his death grip on the door. Bobby had suggested that, in light of Sam's recent telekinetic fit, it might be a bad idea to tie him down. Dean suspected he didn't want to risk spooking him into revealing more supernatural powers.
After Sam's last fit, Bobby had managed to coax Dean away from the door, insisting that he needed to look after Jimmy. Of course, Jimmy probably couldn't have found trouble if he tried. When Dean found him, he'd somehow managed to navigate his way into Dean's old jeans and boxers. The shirt, though, either escaped or fascinated him because he held it up, running his fingers over the seams and the faded Led Zeppelin logo.
Part of Dean wanted to scream at him. Couldn't he just pull himself together? They had bigger things to worry about; Sam was dying, Cas was missing, Lucifer had risen, Sam was dying! And there was nothing he could do.
Except there is. If I can help anyone right now, it's this poor son of a bitch.
So Dean helped Jimmy to slip into the t-shirt, coaxed him back to the couch, and fixed him a peanut butter sandwich. No sounds floated up from the basement. One hour since Sam had freaked out.
Jimmy wandered from his place on the couch, running his hands over the corners of the old tv, his face alight with pure fascination. Curiously, he pulled his hand away, rubbing dust between his fingers.
"C'mon," Dean grunted. "Food."
Jimmy cocked his head, lips pursed until Dean showed him the sandwich. Whether or not he understood, Jimmy paused his investigation of the tv and returned to the couch, where Dean demonstrated the proper method for biting into a sandwich. It took Jimmy a moment, but something akin to recognition lit up in his face.
Awkwardly, he picked up the sandwich, trying the spongy bread between his fingers before taking a cautious bite. His eyes widened as he slowly worked his jaw. For a second, Dean feared the smaller man had forgotten how to swallow but, at long last, he did and took another small bite.
Half a sandwich and a glass of water later, Jimmy's eyes began to droop. Dean tucked him back into the couch and snuck down to check on Sam. The door was still bolted, his brother still sprawled on the floor. Bobby shook his head sadly and sent Dean back to the living room. Two hours now.
He collapsed in a chair and let the last few days wash over him like a tide.
God, we are so screwed.
The next thing he knew, Bobby was shaking him awake.
"Dean," the older hunter murmured. "Sam's awake. We should probably get some more food into him, but he won't take anything from me."
And so Dean found himself trying to force a spoonful of breakfast cereal into his twenty-six year old brother's mouth. Sam didn't even seem to realize Dean was there. He lay limp as a rag doll, shoulder and forehead pressed into the wall, dull eyes staring at nothing.
"Sammy," Dean groaned. "Come on, you love this stuff. Even after you went to college and turned into a health nut, man you still ate Lucky Charms whenever you could get 'em."
Sam blinked and took a shuddering breath.
"Sam?"
Sam blinked again, a shadow of pain flicking across his face.
"I played right into his hands, Dean," he rasped. "All this time... we thought we were winning. But in the end I did exactly what that yellow eyed bastard wanted. Freed Lilith, freed Lucifer... You killed him and he still got his way."
There was no inflection in his voice, no emotion; just weary resignation.
"Come on, Sam," Dean begged. "Don't do this to me."
But Sam had retreated back into his shell.
"Come on!" Dean barked, slamming the bowl down and splashing milk all over the floor. Sam didn't even flinch.
All at once, Dean was exhaused again. Story of his life; taking care of someone who didn't want the help, saving people who didn't care to be saved, fixing other people's mistakes and being cursed for it. If only for a few hours, he was done.
"Fine," he sighed, leaving Sam behind and slamming the door behind him.
o-o-o
Cold stone pressed into his forehead, salt and iron that made the poison in his veins scream even as he welcomed the safety it offered. The fan blades churned overhead with a faing fwoosh, fwoosh. Dean was trying to talk to him. Pressing something to his lips. It was cold. It felt nice.
Food. He's trying to make you eat. He wants to keep you alive.
Sam remembered the taste of the vomit in his mouth. Food would only make it worse.
They spoke, and Dean grew upset. Why wouldn't he be? It was the truth, but Dean had never cared much for the truth. In Dean Land, the level of failure that Sam had reached was unacceptable.
Does this mean I've been deported? Because Sam Land is looking pretty damn empty right now.
But he'd made his bed. Now he had to lie down and writhe in it.
That hadn't always been the case. Once upon a time, he'd been able to share his bed with someone. He'd slept safely, happily, in the arms of the one person who had never made him feel strange or unworthy.
Bare feet padded against the floor. Groggily, Sam glanced up.
She was beautiful. Of course, she always had been. Her blonde hair fell over her shoulders and God could he remember running his fingers through it when they made love. She was wearing the same sundress she'd worn the day they met, the day they moved into their apartment, the night they went to see "Kingdom of Heaven" together. She'd smiled on all those occasions.
She wasn't smiling now.
"What have you done, Sam?" she breathed, eyes wide as she took in the sight of him. "Look at you."
He swallowed and tried to say her name, but all that came was empty air. Jess's brows pinched.
"I mean, that demon killed me, and you go and do what he wanted? Sam, if a demon wants you to do something bad, then I think it would be in your best interest to stay out of the morally gray altogether."
"I..." Sam licked his lips, searching his fuzzy mind for some sort of explanation. "I was just trying to help."
"Great job, Sam," Jess snapped, turning around and rubbing her forehead. The anger seeped out of her face, leaving only weary resignation. That was one more thing Sam loved so much about her. She was strong, and she had a wicked temper, but she didn't hold onto her anger long. When she gave up and stopped being mad about something, that was a pretty good sign that everybody in the vicinity should follow her example.
"You should have told me," she sighed. "I'd have thought you were nuts, sure. But you could have tried to prove it to me. We should have worked this out together."
"I know. Jess, please, I'm so sorry," Sam pleaded. Jess turned back to him, one brow raised. Sam swallowed again. "I should have been there to protect you. And I wasn't."
"Yeah, well, there wasn't much you could have done. But maybe if you hadn't repressed this crap for so long you wouldn't be here, locked in this room which, by the way, you kinda deserve."
"I know." Sam's lips twitched. "We both knew I'd never get by without you."
Jess scoffed and rolled her eyes.
"Sam Winchester, I swear! You are such a baby sometimes." She smiled sadly down at him. "But I guess if that really was the problem we'd have never gotten together."
She tucked the dress around her knees and eased herself down onto the floor, sitting right next to him. Her full lips pulled back into a grimace.
"You look like crap, Sam."
"You look beautiful," he replied, and Jess laughed.
"Oh! So you seem to think flattery's gonna get you out of the doghouse? Fat chance. You're still in trouble."
"Then why are you even talking to me?"
"You mean why am I not beating you to the ground and making you feel like scum?" Jess tilted her head, her face pensive. "Cause you've got enough of that, Sam. You hate yourself right now, I get that. But that doesn't mean I have to hate you. Sam." She took his arm and caught his eyes.
"What happened to me was not your fault," she told him earnestly. "You made a mistake, not telling me about your family. But those dreams of yours? We both thought they were just nightmares. You didn't call that thing up and tell it to do what it did."
"I might as well have," Sam muttered. "He killed you cause I was gonna ask you to marry me, Jess."
"I know." Jess tried to smile, but it fell just short of her beautiful blue eyes. "Doesn't change anything."
Sam bit the inside of his cheek. There was no point arguing this with her; he and Dean had been over this point over and over again, and he had nothing to argue that she wouldn't shoot down. For a pre-med student, Jess would have been one hell of a lawyer.
"C'mere," Jess sighed, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and cuddling up close to him. "Just close your eyes and try to get a little rest."
He should have fought it. After all, the warm body pressed to him wasn't his girlfriend. It wasn't even her ghost. Just a hallucination he had fabricated because he just needed a break from the hate and self-loathing. But the smell of her hair, the feeling of her gently calloused hands -so different from his own- the tickle of her breath against his neck. It made it easier to close his eyes and pretend he was back in Stanford. He felt like crap because he'd just crammed for a test for forty-eight hours straight, hadn't had anything but coffee and gum in all that time, and he'd still managed to bomb it. This was just the part where he collapsed in the living room, feeling like crap, and she reminded him that, in the end, it was just a stupid test and she was there and she would always be there...
"Sam."
His eyes flew open. Mary stood on the other end of the room, but this wasn't the same woman who had encouraged him to drink the demon blood, to kill Lilith. This was his mother staring at him; the same beautiful woman who had saved him from a poltergeist. Her eyes were wide, her hands clapped over her mouth in horror.
"What have you done to yourself?" she gasped.
"Mom," Sam choked, his heart racing.
"Ssh," Jess soothed, catching his chin and forcing him to look at her. "Sam, it's not real."
"My family," Mary lamented. "John, Dean... and now you, too. My family is gone."
"It's just a hallucination, Sam," Jess reminded him. "That's your own guilt talking. Let it go."
"You're supposed to be my brother?"
Sam's head snapped around. A young man stood, half covered in the shadows, mouth half open in shock.
"Adam?"
"Is this what you would have had me do, Sam?" Adam demanded. "Become a hunter like you? Like Dad? You were preaching about how important it was to be a hunter, and you go and turn yourself into one of those things?"
"I'm sorry-"
"The things that are out there... they killed my mom. They killed me! Maybe it's better that we never met. I'd rather die than become one of them."
"Sam!" Jess shouted, grabbing his face again. "Stop looking at them. They aren't real, they'll only hurt you."
"Sammy!" a gurgled choke rang out. Sam didn't need to look over to know that it was Dean, ripped apart by hell hounds, bleeding on the floor of the panic room.
"Don't look," Jess whispered, pulling Sam's face down to her shoulder.
"Sammy, please!" Dean sobbed. "This is what I died for? I gave everything for you, Sammy. Don't leave me like this."
Sam gripped the legs of his pants, hands trembling as Dean let loose a blood-curdling scream that sent the hair on the back of his neck standing up. God, this was happening again. It shouldn't have happened in the first place.
"He brought me back," Sam murmured into Jess's shoulder. "I think I came back different. Before Dean's deal I would have never considered..."
"Ssh," Jess soothed, running her hand through his hair. "Sam, it's over."
Sam sighed, allowing his breathing to return to normal as Jess rubbed his back, whispering reassurances into his ear.
"I'm so sorry, Jess," he breathed.
"It's okay, Sam."
"I wish we could have gotten married."
"Me, too." Jess smiled against his ear. "It'd have kinda weird though. I'd have had to learn about your family eventually."
"I was such an idiot; I should have told you the secret. Don't know how I thought I could keep it forever."
"It sure would have led to some awkward Christmas parties."
Sam chuckled at the mental image. It wasn't easy to imagine Dean and Dad loitering around an apartment, egg nog in hand, talking ghosts and demons with Jess.
A sudden pain stabbed behind his eyes. Sam winced, pulling back sharply and pressing the heels of his palms into his temples. Images flickered through his mind like a faulty movie projector.
"Agh!" he gasped as the pain grew white-hot, burning through his brain.
"Sam!" Jess gasped, her voice muffled and distant.
"Aaugh!"
He fell down to the ground, curling into himself, clutching his throbbing head.
People were dying. Ghosts roamed, peaceful spirits turned bitter and vindictive in the apocalypse. A psychic's screamed, blood boiling from his throat. Despaired people threw themselves from buildings, held guns to their temples, begged for mercy as spirits and demons ripped them apart from the inside.
"Sam! Sam, I'm right here. Sam!"
o-o-o
He was not what he had once been. Amidst the blur of incomprehensible motion rushing past him, he knew this one thing to be true. There was much he had once known, much he had once experienced, and he could feel all of it so close but infuriatingly beyond his grasp.
It was the form he now inhabited; too small, its mind too simple. Each time he attempted to stretch, he pressed against a cramped, crowded space, his head aching from the effort.
He was not alone. Each time he shifted his, their, mind, the other countered him, just as small and scared and confused as he was.
They met on occasion, wandering through memories and dreams of dark and overwhelming light, blonde-haired females laughing and crying through the mist.
"Who are you?" he asked the other one.
"I don't know," the other replied. "Who are you?"
"I don't know."
The world came and went, bright and dull. At times, he could feel it; warm air against his skin, strange tastes in his mouth. When the world dulled, he knew it was the other who experienced all of it.
Muffled sounds came from a man with a familiar face. The sounds, he came to realize, were representative of ideas, and there was a sound representative of the familiar face. He knew the sound.
Dean.
The face loomed over him, speaking gently. He clucked, trying to make the sounds that belonged to the face. The other whispered to him, teaching him to make the sounds.
Then there was discomfort, and leakage from his body. Fear gripped him, but the familiar face taught him and comforted him.
"It's going to be okay," the other one soothed.
"How do you know?"
"I don't."
'Then why will it be okay?"
"Have faith?"
"What is faith?"
The world dimmed as they were eased into the warm water. It felt nice against the skin, and the other ran their hands through it.
"Water," the other thought. "I know water. I like water."
"Then I like water, too."
Until the water closed over his head. Then it was the dark, suffocating them, cutting off the world. He retreated into memory.
When he returned, the other had recalled many 'words', but not the means to speak them.
Shirt. Pants. Sink. Wall.
And some of the words spoken by the familiar one.
Pain. Bath. Calm.
The world brightened, but the other continued whispering words.
Room. Television. Dust.
Then there was food.
Soft, spongy bread, sweet with grain, wholesome and sustaining. The bread enveloped a butetr, salty and sweet and rich, sticking to the roof of his mouth as the taste overwhelmed his senses. He nearly dropped the food, but the other one interjected.
"Don't. Eat more, it will help."
Numbly, he followed the other's instructions until the familiar heavy feeling returned, bidding him to walk once more in dreams.
o-o-o
When the world pulled him out of his dreams, it was different. The light that had filtered in was gone. There were words for these things, the times when the world shone with light and the times that it did not, but he couldn't remember.
The familiar face -Dean- slept beside him on a curious... thing.
"Cot," the other provided at a length, and he trusted the other one's judgement.
The others he knew to be in the house -the less familiar face and the man with the whiskers- were still missing as they often were. Blinking owlishly, he glanced around the room, taking in the assortment strange objects scattered about the rooms.
Then he saw her sitting at the foot of the couch, as though she'd been there all along. Bright, red hair fell over her shoulders. Blue eyes sparkled in her sad, pale face.
"Woman," the other offered weakly.
"Who is she?"
"I don't know."
"What is she called?"
"I don't know."
"She was in our memories."
"Yes. Our feelings for her are conflicted."
The woman looked him over, her face filling with grief.
"Castiel," she murmured, reaching forward to take his hand.
"Anna!" a voice warned from the corner. A man in a suit stood there, his expression sour.
"The woman is called 'Anna'," the voice offered. "And we are called 'Castiel'."
"But Dean calls us 'Jimmy'," he argued.
"We are both."
"The man in the suit doesn't like Anna."
"No."
"Do we like Anna?"
"We..." the other hesitated. "We aren't... sure."
"Castiel?" Anna's voice was firmer now. Was she scared of the man in the suit? "Cas?"
He tilted his head. The second word was familiar, too. It meant the same thing as the first.
Anna sniffed and closed her eyes.
"I am so sorry this happened to you, Cas," she whispered. "But I have been permitted to speak to you about what happened because it's my fault."
The man in the suit scowled in the corner.
"She knows who we are!" the other cried.
"We know who we are. We can't remember, but we know."
"She's going to help us."
"To start with," Anna began, interrupting his internal dialogue. "You're an angel. You disobeyed because I convinced you that it might be the right thing to do. You were trying to help Dean, but it didn't work."
She nodded at the familiar face on the cot. He hadn't stirred since Anna had arrived.
"But to do so was foolish and blasphemous," the man in the suit interjected. A torrent of emotions raged at the sound of his voice.
"Respect," the other named helplessly. "Fear, love, anger, understanding..."
"In order to punish you," Anna went on. "You were forced to fall. But it happened too fast, and you fell back into your vessel. You hear a voice in your head. That's him. That's Jimmy Novak."
The other reeled, then drifted away from his perception, leaving him alone with Anna.
"Everything is going to feel different, and I can only guess at how hard it's going to be, sharing your body with someone else... but this is your punishment."
Her blue eyes met his and a sea of sorrow and remorse washed over him. The other was gone, so there was no one to identify the strange things her sorrow stirred within him. There was love, which he knew... and relation, like the man in the suit. But it was different. Anna was closer to him, on the same level.
A memory stirred. Something he had called her.
Sister.
He tried to form the words on his lips but, without the other's assistance, all that came out were garbled sounds. This made Anna even more sad.
"You are to remain with Dean Winchester," the man in the suit instructed, abandoning his perch in the corner. His gray eyes were deep and wise, but filled with cold anger.
He had angered the man in the suit. He and Anna, both.
"You will not be harmed so long as you do," the man in the suit continued. "But to leave his side would be suicidal. We took an awful risk giving you so lenient a punishment, Castiel. Try not to get yourself killed."
"You will remember more," Anna promised. "But Jimmy will remember before you do. Maybe he'll help you." She tried to smile, but fell short of actual happiness. "It'll get easier, once you've been here a while. Pretty soon you should be able to understand the humans when they're speaking to you. And this isn't going to be permanent. Just until our superiors feel you've learned your lesson."
"You should count yourself lucky," the man in the suit informed him. "We can't afford to kill angels who oppose Lucifer right now. Anna." He turned his cold stare to the woman. Morosely, Anna dropped her head and, in a whisper of a second, she was gone. Frowning, the man knelt over the couch.
"You decided you wanted to save a bunch of monkeys," the man sneered. "Well, here's your chance to find out whether or not they were worth saving. And be sure to relay all of this to Dean Winchester. He deserves to know the consequences of his actions."
The man in the suit pulled away and, in the span of a blink, he was gone as well.
Weariness returned, and he found himself walking along darker memories than he ever had before.
o-o-o