A/N: Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed, favorited, story alerted, etc! I'm glad you guys liked the idea! As a result, I have the majority of it already written and will hopefully, in the case that nothing goes wrong, be posting weekly.
Disclaimer: If this were mine, the show would consist of nothing but chick-flick moments and brotherly schmoop. Also, Big Brother!Dean would be out in full force. He's not; therefore, Supernatural does not belong to me.
AU after episode 7x04
Things were normal. At least as normal as they could get when you were trying to stop leviathans from wrecking havoc across the globe. Sam was… happy which was still kind of weirding Dean out. As… happy as Dean was that Sam was… happy, he knew it wasn't going to last. Hunters didn't get happy. Sam didn't get happy. When Dean thought back on it, he honestly wondered if there was a single moment in that kid's life he could claim to actually be happy. So that was why, while Dean was happy that Sam was happy and miraculously not seeing Lucifer, he was just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
So naturally, when the moment came that his secret spilled its guts all over the floor between them and made Sam decidedly unhappy, he was wholly unprepared for it.
They had exhausted a good portion of their resources, searching anywhere they could for information on how to kill a leviathan. The result? Nothing. It turned out to be a completely futile search ending with many confused hunters and very little useful information. Or rather, no useful information.
So Sam, problem-solver oh that he was, decided that they should go to a psychic. "They could talk to the other side," Sam had said. "Do we really have any other options?" Sam had said. "They could help us," Sam had said.
Yeah, 'help' is right.
Things had been fine. Dean had relented and agreed to go to the psychic. They had gotten into contact with a psychic named Kathleen via Bobby. They had shown up at Kathleen's house.
That's when things started to be not so fine.
She opened the door, took one look at them and slammed it shut again.
"Go away!" she shouted and really? Just… really? Manners were obviously not a prerequisite for communicating with the dead. What happened when you slammed a door shut on a dead person? Well, Dean supposed, they'd just walk right through it… But then they'd be pissed because regardless of whether or not the slamming of the door was effective, the sentiment remained the same.
"What the hell…" Dean grumbled and Sam just shrugged, banging on the door again. Sam looked on edge, though Dean wasn't quite sure why. Talking to witnesses and… spooked psychics was generally Sam's forte. One look at the puppy dog eyes and they'd beg forgiveness for slamming a door in his face.
"Ms… Liander?" Sam called, looking to Dean for confirmation. "Bobby sent us." He paused, waiting for a reaction of which he got none. Dean sighed, rolling his eyes and ignoring Sam's responding glare. "We just thought that maybe you could help us with this… problem we're having…"
It was quiet for another moment before the door creaked open just enough for the woman to poke her head out. She surveyed them both carefully, chewing on her lip. Dean supposed it could have been his paranoia but he was pretty sure she stared at Sam longer than she did at him. There was something in her gaze, something that made it dangerous and Dean was suddenly even more uncomfortable with being there than he was before. "You can come in," she said to Dean, "but he has to wait in the hall." She looked pointedly at Sam and stepped back, allowing them room to pass.
Sam opened his mouth to say something but then closed it again as what she said registered, glancing at Dean in confusion. Dean shrugged. He had no idea. They had driven across three states to talk to this woman so if she could help, then they would humor the crazy lady and her paranoia. He didn't like it and it didn't make any sense but again, maybe she could help. He watched Sam as he hesitated for a moment and then reluctantly nodded, stepping up into the house.
Once inside, Dean froze. They had walked into a frickin' funhouse. There were doors everywhere. The floor was tiled and there were wood doors covering every single one of the walls. Four doors per inside wall. Thirteen doors… Why the hell would anyone need that many doors? To confuse people, Dean supposed. To get them lost in her house of horrors.
On top of that – literally – there was a devil's trap painted on the ceiling. A devil's trap but no salt lines. Dean pursed his lips, mind drifting off as the woman ranted at Sam. If a psychic ate a lot of salt - like a lot of salt – would it dull their ability to talk to ghosts?
He was pulled out of his unhelpful thoughts when a finger poked him in the side. For the record, he didn't flinch. He's Dean Winchester. Dean Winchester does not flinch. Though, Kathleen seemed to think otherwise if her smirk was anything to go by. Which it totally wasn't.
"What do you want? Can't you leave me alone? I don't like you. I don't even know you and I don't like you," Kathleen grumbled, glancing anxiously around the room. She was a motherly woman, the kind that always tended to stuff Sam full of cookies. That's why it was more than a little disconcerting that she was staring at him like he was a pipe bomb. Dean decided then that he really didn't like it here. He really didn't like Kathleen much either. She was just too far south of sanity for his liking. She hadn't really even said anything to him and he already knew.
"We… need to kill a leviathan," Sam told her, biting his lip. Dean watched for her reaction but she didn't seem to have one. She just nodded, shrugging her shoulders as if this was something she heard everyday. Dean had been expecting a gasp, a cry of anguish, even a 'What the hell is a leviathan?' He had not been expecting nothing. And it kind of bothered him that she had taken his structured existence in which people are shocked when they hear horrifying news and stomped all over it.
It was rude to ruin someone's existence without dinner first.
"Okay," she sighed, gesturing to the door behind her. "Head through that door. I have to go get some stuff. Fun stuff. Or not so fun stuff depending on whether you're the one using it or the one it came from… But for me, it's fun stuff." She turned to go through one of the many doors but then stopped, turning around and surveying them carefully. "Just know that whatever happens, whatever you may think when you leave here… I have helped you kill the leviathan." With that, she left the room.
It was quiet for several moments as Dean tried to wrap his head around the crazy. He was having a difficult time of it too.
"What do you think?" Sam whispered, breaking the decidedly safe silence. Sam looked uncomfortable, shifting back and forth, gaze darting around. Not that Dean could blame him. He wanted to turn tail and run. Really far, really fast. But this was Sam's great idea so Dean figured that meant all his rights to discomfort had been revoked.
Dean shrugged, turning to face the door he was apparently supposed to go through. For all he knew, there could be one of those swinging pendulum anvil things that Sam would instantly know the proper name of on the other side, set to slice him in half. "Crazy. Definitely 'dingo-ate-my-baby' crazy."
"'kay, so what do you think? Are we gonna stay?" he asked. Dean glanced over at his brother but Sam was staring up at the devil's trap, a look of confusion on his face. Dean's eyes narrowed, wondering if the crazy was catching. It certainly looked like it. It was a devil's trap. They had seen them a million times before.
"Um… Yeah. I mean… I guess so. Bobby sent us to her so she must be… skilled." He smirked and Sam turned to stare at him, clearly un-amused. Dean held out for a few more seconds under the disapproving glare before he grumbled, "Fine... Be prepared to get out of here though. Quickly." Sam nodded, attention once again going to the devil's trap above his head.
Glancing around once more, Dean wondered why the woman had wanted Sam to stay in the hall...Maybe it had something to do with an energy connection. Maybe Sam was the antennae for the spirits but it only worked if he stood in that exact spot. It would make as much sense as anything else. Sam was certainly tall enough to get good reception.
Dean sighed and gave his brother one last look before he stepped through the door.
Okay. So that whole 'Let's summon spirits to help us kill the leviathan' thing? Didn't work. At all. The spirits were incredibly unhelpful to the point where Dean figured they were just being spiteful. So yeah, Sam and he had salt and burned a few hundred of their bodies. No reason for them to hold grudges…
Stepping out of the room and back into the hallway, he muttered, "Well thanks anyway." What happened to her promises of help and deliverance and all that crap? Crap. That's definitely what it was.
Sam looked at him quizzically and Dean just shook his head, message conveyed and received. He heard Sam sigh as they both turned towards what they hoped was the door out of there, disappointment weighing heavily around them. And yeah, it sucked. This was definitely a last attempt and now they were out of options. Apparently, the leviathans were going to run around wrecking havoc for the rest of eternity. Couldn't this be some other hunter's problem? Why was the safety of the planet always for him and Sam to deal with?
...Probably because they were the only two stupid enough to even bother.
Kathleen followed them out, stopping on the porch as they continued on to the car. Dean watched Sam smile up at the woman and wave his goodbye and then what happened next hardly seemed to register. He remembered his stomach dropping to his feet or maybe even below that. He remembered himself flinching. And yeah, in this case, Dean would admit that he flinched.
"You should have listened to your brother, Dean," Kathleen called and both Dean and Sam froze, staring up at her. "You shouldn't have killed that girl." With that she turned and walked back inside, leaving behind the disaster she had unknowingly – or quite possibly knowingly – just created.
Be warned, I like cliff-hangers. :-)