Episode Seven
"Sanguis Sanctus"
Chapter Four

"Dean." Kevin looked around the gym. Dim-lit, smelled old. Dean had beat the shit out of a bunch of stuff, and he was sitting where Kevin had found him once before, bottle in his hand, blood on his knuckles. He crouched.

"Dean. We're gonna find him."

"He don't want found."

"This doesn't sound like Sam, Dean. Does it?"

Dean looked at him then, this burning intense thing, disgust on his face. "You don't know nothin about us, kid."

"I know Sam."

"No you don't. Sam leaves. He always has. Shit gets hard and he bolts."

"But then he comes back. Right? He's always come back."

"How would you know?"

Kevin looked off a moment. He didn't want to know, but- "Charlie told me. She's worried."

"Riiiight," Dean said, vicious smile. "Charlie and those books. Well they only tell half the story, believe me. Sam's gone, and he's not comin' back unless we make him."

"So you're gonna make him."

"You think I shouldn't? He's not in any shape to be out there right now, Kevin."

"I know. I'm just. It just doesn't make sense to me. How he could swing from being ready to die for you to walking away like this."

Dean looked off. "Yeah, well. Me and Sam got really high highs and really low lows."

"So you did do something-"

"Just drop it, Kevin. You got a job to do, if I remember correctly. And it ain't gettin' done while you're down here talkin' my ear off."

Kevin watched him, unmoved. "Crowley was begging to help, so he's on listening duty right now. We think it's definitely a warehouse, from the echo patterns. Charlie's setting up a filter to get the voice waveform taken out."

"And you just had to come pester me?"

"I don't think he's run off," Kevin said.

"I'm sorry, were you or were you not listening to that phone call? I got two others just like it. He is done. I have been on the brink with this kid for months, and he's just finished."

"Yeah but what if-"

"No code words, Kev. Sorry, kid, I know it's not what you wanted to hear." Dean sighed. His gruff scowl slipped into something more thoughtful. "I know you want to think the best, after he ditched you for a year, that maybe that was just a blip, that he's not that guy. But for all Sam's good points, this is who he is. Especially if he thinks we can get along just fine without him. Which..." He shrugged.

"We can't, though," Kevin said. "He's got stuff to do here. The whole Enoch thing? The John Dee thing?"

"I don't know what to tell ya, Kev. He knows you can figure it out. He knows I can take care of any fuglies. Sam's always been lookin' for a home, and I guess this just isn't it for him."

"How can you say that, knowing you're just gonna drag him back here."

Dean blinked, fast. Kevin felt embarrassingly like he might be tearing up, but the guy was drunk and Sam was basically his only anchor, so. "Because it's true. But I have to make him understand that it doesn't have to be."

Kevin frowned. These guys were screwed up. Like really screwed up. His phone buzzed.

"It's Crowley," he said, reading the text. "He says he heard something."

"I don't hear anything."

Crowley raised his brows. "Well my delicate shapely demon ears did. I'm telling you, there's a little Moose-squeak in the background of this recording."

Dean blew out a breath. This was a waste of time. "So he stubbed his toe on his way to hanging up on me. So?"

"It sounded more... distant than that."

"Yeah, speakerphone will do that. Tell me something about the location, or I got other stuff to do."

"Other stuff like what?" Kevin challenged.

"Like head out to cow pie country and look into some of these demon sightings."

"Um."

Dean looked up at Kevin. Charlie was there too, looking uneasy. Crowley wouldn't meet his eye. Crowley knew about the demon blood thing, of course. But from the look of it, he hadn't let Kevin and Charlie in on it.

"Got something to say?"

Kevin cleared his throat. Looked at Charlie. "Um," he said. "Just. Sam's exorcising demons, okay. I get that. But um. What's up with the demon blood?" He trailed off a little, rallied. "You just said... demon blood problem, and we were wondering, like. What that meant."

"Is Sam a demon?" Charlie blurted. Then looked shocked at herself. Kevin stared at her, shaking his head vehemently. "I mean he's obviously not, or else holy water and like salt and demon traps and stuff would work on him, but- I'm shutting up now."

Dean closed his eyes, willed himself calm. Just a couple of idiot kids who didn't know their history, didn't really know Sam. If he wasn't careful, he could get Sam back just in time to find out the only people they had didn't trust him anymore, and no chance would Sam stay if that happened. He opened his eyes.

"Don't worry about that just now, okay? We gotta find him, and we can deal with everything else later. Is there anything else on that recording that can give me something to work with?"

Kevin looked at Charlie. They shrugged at each other. Cas was frowning. Crowley sat like a surly teenager.

"Okay then. I'm going to go out looking. Cas, you comin'?"

Cas pressed his lips together a moment, watching the other three, then nodded.

They were on the road in a matter of minutes. Dean kept a go bag in the trunk these days, ever since they'd first gotten a Fed tail and had to camp out in an abandoned house in Nebraska.

"Dean," Cas said. "What are you thinking. About Sam?"

Dean squeezed his anxiety out on the steering wheel a moment. Shook his head. "I don't know. He's exorcising demons. Kevin said maybe he felt guilty about not closing the gates. That could be it. I mean you know Sam. He gets it into his screwed up head that he's gotta do something to make it right, and he doesn't care what it does to him in the process. I mean even Death said-" Dean looked at Cas, who looked clueless. Right. Cas didn't know about Death's little puppet show, how he told Dean Sam would just run off and kill himself to save someone else, how he'd ruin his own soul if there was a greater good involved. Cas didn't know shit.

Cas looked out front. "Sam does have that characteristic in him. He always has. It was one of the reasons the great war hinged on him. But we underestimated him."

Now was not the time to bring up the panic room. Not the time not the time- "Yeah well. That's what I'm here for, I guess."

"To keep him from doing that," Cas guessed.

"Yeah. Listen, Cas. What you said. About not trusting me with Sam or whatever. That's bullshit, and you gotta know it. I would never intentionally-"

"Dean. What's in the past is unchangeable. We've all hurt Sam. Sam has hurt us. That's what we do-"

"Well look at the newly human guy-"

"Humans and angels - all creatures who can decide for themselves how to treat each other. We screw up. Maybe we do it out of love, but that doesn't excuse it."

"Who's trying to? You know what. I'm done with this conversation. You wanna believe I don't know just exactly how I've screwed up with Sam? You honestly think I don't go over every moment of that kid's life and how I failed him? I do. And you of all people do not get to tell me you're worried about me with him, okay? Mr... Abomination. Boy with the demon blood? Oh hold on, lemme just crack your head open for kicks? Oh sure, you're all hearts on your notebook for Sam now but maybe you forgot a few things, huh?"

Cas was quiet, watched out the window as the scenery sped by. Dean didn't care. Because fuck Cas, okay? Cas could suck it.

Kevin turned to Crowley as soon as the door had closed. "Okay, we're going to Pennsylvania."

Crowley raised his brows. "What?"

"You heard me. Somethin' stinks about this, and I'm gonna find out what."

Charlie scoffed. "Have you ever actually been on a hunt before?"

"Yes. Obviously. Kind of. I've witnessed them. Look, Sam isn't ditching us, I know it."

"I wanna believe that too." Charlie shrugged. "I do. But Dean's looking, and he knows Sam better than any of us-"

"That's the problem," Kevin said. "He's too close to this. He's got too much baggage. I don't know if you've noticed, but he treats Sam like a kid. It's like he's totally forgotten Sam saved the planet from being roasted-"

"Only because Dean was there-"

"You have to stop reading those books," Kevin said. "Look, I know it's tempting, but they're clearly biased. You can't possibly know the whole story if you think Sam only saved the world because Dean was there. And do you even know what happened after?"

"Uh. They kept hunting monsters? There isn't anything published after Swan Song."

"You don't wonder even a little how he's still here after the way the last book ends?"

Charlie quirked a brow. "Uh, well obviously Edlund took liberties. It's not like Sam literally dove into Hell. Right?"

Kevin and Crowley looked at her.

"Right?"

"Um."

"Holy jeez. No way."

Kevin rolled his eyes. "My point is, Sam isn't what Dean has as this... image of him, and it's getting in the way of him being able to see Sam for what he really is. And there's no way he'd just run out on us like this! There's no way he would just leave this family-"

Kevin stopped. Breathed hard.

Charlie bit her lip and glanced at Crowley. "Holy daddy issues," she muttered, and Kevin took a deep, calming breath. God, whatever heavenly crap was in him giving him the prophety goodness, grant him the Serenity and all her crew-

"Anyway," Crowley said, coming to his rescue. "Mini Moose has a point. This isn't like Sam."

"I wanna go check out the place where Sam and Dean were hunting before Sam disappeared." He turned to Crowley. "You're gonna take me."

"Sure, I suppose I could lend a-"

"You're only alive because of Sam. Damned right you're lending a hand."

"Okay okay. Sheesh."

"What should I do?" Charlie said. "Um, I just got back from a hunt with them, and I love Sam, I do, but maybe there's something nice and homey I can do from here?"

"Sure," Kevin said. "You can be like, our hub. We'll like, call in and ask you to run searches and stuff. That's a thing that happens, right?"

Charlie shrugged. "Probably."

"Okay."

The three of them looked at each other.

"Go team?" Kevin said.

"Right, right," Charlie said. "I'll just-"

"Why don't I go pack up some spell supplies," Crowley said over her, and Kevin rolled his eyes as they disappeared to their tasks.

Lincoln, Pennsylvania was a shithole. Tiny, kinda rundown. They appeared in the parking lot of the only motel in town, the Lincoln Logs. Cute. Kevin got them a room with Sam's emergency credit card with promises to pay him back, possibly with a rescue, and while he'd have vastly preferred a room of his own, there wasn't any sense in getting a room for Crowley when they were supposed to be working a case together and Crowley didn't even sleep.

Kevin dropped his bag on one of the beds and pulled out his laptop. Crowley strolled around the tiny room, appraising the wallpaper.

"So what first, oh mighty hunter?"

Kevin glared at Crowley. "Well. I have the casefiles on what they were hunting here. But Dean also said Sam got into a fight of some kind, had to make a police report. I wanna read that."

"You don't think it's more likely that Sam came into contact with whatever it was they were hunting? If it was a shapeshifter, it could sound like Sam."

Kevin shrugged. "Let's just get all the information first. Then we can spin theories."

"Okay. So how do you intend to get the file? Don't suppose you got yourself a fake ID?"

"Yeah right. It's the 21st century. I'm gonna hack their database." He gestured to his laptop with a grin. "Maybe you should go get us some dinner."

"I get it. I'm the driver, the gopher, the hired hand. Well I care about Moose too. And you might remember I'm something of a decent mastermind?"

"Oh I remember. But I'm hungry, and you can't hack their database. So right now, I got a job and you got a job, and maybe when we find something you can do, if such a thing exists, I'll go get the take-out."

Crowley grumbled, but then he vanished and Kevin was alone. It took him a little time on the motel's crappy wifi, muddling through the police station's firewall. But he did get the report, simplified as it was.

Agent Sam Carter, blahblah. Woman in red named Natalie Smith. He texted the woman's social and name to Charlie to get her working on that. Sam's description of the event was detailed; he'd known Sam was maybe more precise than he needed to be, but clearly a lifetime of hunting had him way over-leveled for this hunt. He described the bad boyfriend as a dude about 6'1, 240 pounds, wearing a black hoodie jacket over a red tee shirt, jeans, boots. He wore a silver ring with a complicated crest on it, which Sam also gave a lot of detail for. But his face was in shadow, so he didn't have a good description. Said the guy was chasing Natalie, so Sam stepped in, got hit in the face, there was a note in the file that a paramedic escorting an injured perp was on premises and as a professional courtesy, did up two stitches on the agent's jaw.

Kevin sighed and made notes about everything, just in case. He was hoping for some obvious clue, but then, if Sam had noticed something off that night, he'd have mentioned it to Dean. He stretched and glanced at his phone for the time. Frowned. Crowley should have been back with food by now.

hey, you don't have to eat, but i do. do they have to butcher the cow or what?

A couple of minutes later, his phone buzzed.

omw pocket prophet. don't get all huffy, you'll get worry lines. no boy likes a prophet with worry lines.

Kevin made a face at his phone, went back to the laptop to make more notes. Natalie's report matched Sam's, although she was able to just give them her boyfriend's name and address and didn't bother with a physical description. Kevin noted them down, made it a point to visit this Frederick guy.

And then Crowley appeared in the room.

Kevin jumped. "Jesus you can't just show up like that."

Crowley raised his brows, turned to the door. Knocked. "Hallo? I'm home."

"You could at least pretend to be a person."

"What. Show up outside the door? A block away maybe? Walk up and knock? Wait for you to open the door? It's my room too ya know. I could just come right in."

"You don't have a key."

"Which isn't very fair if you ask me."

"You don't need a key."

"Hence, the teleportation. Veggie burger and fries, right?" Crowley held out a bag.

Kevin looked at it from the side. "We're in the middle of meat country. Where'd you get that?"

"This neat little place in New York City. You'd love it."

"Thank you?"

"You're welcome. And you're welcome again."

"For what?"

"I went by the police station."

"What, as Agent British Guy?"

"Sure."

"Okay...? So did you find anything out?"

"I sure did. Eat up. Sam'll have my head if you waste away."

Kevin looked off, annoyed. But he unwrapped the thing, pulled out the fries and the ketchup packets. It smelled amazing. He needed to get Dean the recipe, because for all his faults, Dean cooked if there was food in the house, and this? Heck, Sam might even be able to eat it.

"Okay," he said around a bite. "Happy? So what's the big news?"

Crowley watched him a moment. Then he said, "Our chief suspect Detective Warner was transferred. The day after he talked to Dean."

Long River, Iowa had the feel of a town that had suffered a long depression, newly invigorated by some influx of cash, and asking around at the local diner, quick conversation, light and easy, revealed that some church had come through, donated some money for a large home outside of town. A shelter of sorts, runaways, homeless, the socially defeated. And at first the community had rebelled, because who wanted that element? But it turned out that they were just normal people, people who wanted jobs and made and spent money, and required services, which drove up business, created opportunity for new businesses, and so on and so on-

Basically, it was a town prospering in the fashion of the new American Dream or whatever.

Before even checking into the local motel, Dean and Cas found the scene of the exorcism. It was just like it looked in the picture. Burnt black around the edges, crisped matter inside the circle. Sam had killed demons before, and all it left was a body. But this? This was definitely exorcism, black smoke pouring out of the host into the ground, burning through on its way back down into the Pit. If Dean could find a host, he could maybe try to get at a memory of the fight between Sam and the demon, before it was exorcised. Maybe Sam had been the one to get the host to the hospital afterward. He looked around the scene. Sam had been here. He had to have left some kinda clue.

But it was just an alleyway, dirty, dark. There wasn't even a sign of struggle, but it'd been a week since this particular exorcism, and the evidence was probably long gone.

"Dammit."

Cas stood a bit away, examining another part of the scene. "I don't see anything of use," he called.

"Me neither. Let's stay in town a night, see if we can get in touch with the victim. He or she might remember something."

Dean didn't have a laptop. He usually had Sam for this stuff. And he could find out easily enough without a computer but it'd take time, so instead, he called Kevin.

Who wasn't at the bunker.

"What do you mean, you went out lookin' for Sam. In case you didn't notice, that's my job."

"I'm following another lead. But Charlie's working the bunker. Call her."

Dean hung up on the kid. Called Charlie and basically yelled an order at her and then slammed himself into a chair in the motel room.

He looked at Cas. "What."

Cas frowned.

"What?"

"You're angry at Sam."

"Damn right I'm angry. He knows better than to get mixed up in this stuff again. I never shoulda just let him do it. And what's the point? You know? There's no greater... whatever."

"Now that he's just drinking to make himself feel well again, it's unforgivable?"

Dean rested his forehead on his hands, elbows on his knees. "It's always been unforgivable, Cas. Do you think - maybe he's trying to-"

Cas sat at the foot of one of the beds. "What?"

"With the phone calls, the things he's sayin', do you think he's... just done? Trying to get me to hate him so I'll just leave him alone to..." God, he couldn't say it. Fuck, if that was the situation- What was he supposed to do then? What was he supposed to do with a brother who couldn't remember how to live? What good was that whole deal with Death if Dean couldn't figure this out? Of course, everything Sam was saying about Dean on the phone was true, so it could still just be Sam being a dick.

"Dean."

Dean looked up.

"Sam knows you could never hate him."

Dean stared. Was that true? Was that true? After the dungeon, after the things that strange not-Sam had said when both of them had believed the real Sam had left the building? He couldn't trust Dean, not deep down. And he didn't have Dean's trust. The number of times he had begged for it, and Dean had withheld it, because dammit, things always went south, things always went wrong, and the times Sam had asked Dean to trust him, it was just always always when the consequences for being wrong, and sometimes for being right, were that Sammy died. The risk was too great.

"You hungry? I'm starvin. Why don't you go out and get us some grub. You know how to do that, right?"

"I have been shopping with Kevin several times. But Dean."

"What."

Cas watched him a moment, frowned. "Nevermind. I'll be back."

Cas left with a quiet click of the door closing. Dean shook his head, got up to grab a beer. He spread a map out across the table, a map of the town they were in, looking for structures that could fit the description Kevin had given him. A warehouse, a factory floor maybe, definitely two stories in height, a big open space. There wasn't anything like that in this town.

But that was fine. There were thirteen other dispossessions he planned to investigate. They didn't make a pattern, but there was bound to be some bit of evidence, some shred of remembered horror in a host's mind that could shed some light on things. His phone lit up.

Your vic's home address, milord?

Dean grinned. thx kid.

When Cas got back with grub, they'd head out to talk to this Trent guy, see if they could shake any memories loose of Sam.

Trent was drunk, or high. Either way, he wasn't making any sense at all.

"Slow down, buddy," Dean said, ushering him to the couch. "Just tell us whatever you can remember. It might sound unbelievable, but I promise, we'll listen."

Trent sat with a flump onto his couch, head thrown back, hand in the air. "Maaaan no way I can't. It's like entire parts of my life don't exist maaaan."

"Like you were possessed?"

"Yeah! Yeah yeah like that, yeah."

Dean looked at Cas; Cas looked back at him and for once it was like they were on the same page. This guy was like two inches from useless. Dean sighed, sat in a chair across from him.

"Okay, I need you to focus, Trent. When you came out of this... possessed feeling. Was there a guy there? Maybe he took you to the hospital?"

Trent looked at him, turned his head and frowned and watched him from the corner of his eye, a paranoid smoker, just Dean's luck. "No man."

"Seriously. He's not in any trouble. We just wanna talk to him."

"I'm telling you, I didn't see nobody. Just woke up on the ground."

"And wandered to the hospital by yourself?"

"Well." He looked from Dean to Cas and back. "No. Some guy showed up."

"Tall? Brown hair. Maybe look like this?" Dean pulled out a photo of Sam - he didn't have anything newer than Sam at 22 or so, and Sam hardly looked like that anymore, but maybe it'd jog the guy's memory.

Trent peered at the photo, took it and poured over it, blinked hard and twisted his head to look at it from an angle, then handed it back.

"Nope, not him. Sorry dudes. Agent dudes," he corrected. "Agents. Dude agents." He saluted, for good measure.

Dean rolled his eyes and got up. "Thanks for nothin'," he said, stalking toward the door.

"Dean," Cas said out on the sidewalk. "If Sam didn't help this man to the hospital-"

"He's just exorcising demons and leaving the hosts? Man. Somethin' about this stinks, and it ain't that guy's living room."

"Hey man!" called Trent from his front door. "You don't wanna know about the vampire chick?"

Dean raised his brows at Cas. Turned on his heel. "The what?"