Demon Seals

Chapter Eleven: Wish Upon a Well

Here we have a retelling of 4.07 "Wishful Thinking", but with Sam and Ruby as Dean and Jo try to figure out what happened. I thought about breaking this chapter into two smaller ones to fit with the length of the other chapters I've written, and then I decided that I'm the author and I can have a chapter twice as long as the others if I please!

I actually meant to post this chapter 2 days ago, but my weekend turned a little hectic and it totally slipped my mind. The school I'm now working at starts its school year tomorrow, and I'm really anxious. And excited. But mostly anxious. I don't know if I can actually be a teacher. I've done lots of training. I spent 5 months working as a substitute teacher. I guess it's one thing to use other people's lesson plans versus creating your own without too much outside help.

Anyway... I hope you enjoy this next chapter!

Despite the plan to track as many Seals as possible, Dean couldn't shake the feeling that he should try to look at Sam's movements after Dean's trip downstairs to see if he could figure out what his brother had been doing for the last 11 months. Starting in Pontiac, Illinois, Dean followed a haphazard path that included a string of second-rate motels, crappy diners, and, with increasing regularity, bars and liquor stores. Soon, it was only the booze that Dean could track.

That wasn't good.

Suddenly, starting about a month after Dean went to Hell, Sam was back in motels, and the liquor store purchases tapered off. And then Sam began to move to different cities, different states. It look purposeful.

Had Sam started Hunting again?

Jo offered to go with Dean to check out the places Sam had visited, and Dean took her up on the offer. They first went to Harrison, Tennessee, but their probing questions got them nowhere. It seemed Sam hadn't stayed for more than a day before moving on to Jonesboro, Louisiana. It turned out that Sam had taken the time to speak to one of the victims, a high-schooler named Heather. Dean managed to get in to the psych ward where she was still located, and after interviewing her, he had an idea of what Sam was up to at last.

"He was trying to find the Trickster!" he exclaimed to Jo as soon as they met back up at the motel.

"No," Jo said, eyes wide.

"I wish I was joking," Dean groused, "but it's the only explanation that fits. Just..." He growled and collapsed on the nearest bed. "What the hell was my brother thinking?" he burst out, flinging his arms wide. "After the shit that demi-god pulled, making Sam watch me die over and over and over?! Why would he willingly go after that bastard?"

"Maybe..." Jo trailed off, looking away.

"What?" Dean asked, lowering his arms at last and leaning forward. "Please, Jo, maybe what?"

Jo sighed. "Maybe he thought the Trickster could bring you back."

Dean considered that for a long moment.

"Well," he finally said, "it clearly didn't work."

They moved on the next morning and continued to follow the trail.

"I've got a case," Ruby said hesitantly, "if you're willing to take a break from Hunting the Trickster."

"What is it?" Sam asked.

"Uh, Concrete, Washington," Ruby said, leaning forward slightly at the table of their latest motel room to read the computer screen in front of her. "There are eyewitness reports of a ghost that's been haunting the showers of a women's health facility."

Sam raised his eyebrows. "Kind of a weird place to haunt," he said.

"Yeah," Ruby snorted. "The latest victim is claiming that this ghost-thing threw her down a flight of stairs."

"Okay, that's weird to see in the news," Sam admitted. "And we don't really have any leads on the Trickster right now, so I guess we can check it out."

Two days later, Sam dropped Ruby off at the Holistic Health Center where the incident had occurred and went to meet with the victim who had been pushed down the stairs.

And the case became a little weirder.

"So you said the ghost chased you?" Sam asked, compelling the women to answer honestly.

"Not just that," Candace Armstrong answered. "It knew my name. It — it kept yelling, 'Mrs. Armstrong! Mrs. Armstrong!' And that's when I hit the stairs and fell."

"Wait, you fell? The ghost didn't push you"

"Oh, I don't — I don't know," Candace admitted fretfully as a couple walked into the Chinese restaurant. Sam glanced at them and then frowned, lowering his mental shields to get a better reading on them. The girl was practically plastered to the guy's side, and her emotions were a mixture of obsession and need. Creepy.

The guy felt both happy and stressed, the stress outweighing the happy feeling quite a bit. Odd.

"I mean," Candace continued, "I think it did. Maybe."

Sam blinked and refocused his attention. "Did it uh, did it feel like it meant to hurt you, like maybe it was violent?"

"It was a ghost," Candace said as though Sam was an idiot. "I'm lucky to be alive. Anyway, I was at the bottom of the stairs, and that's when it got weird." She chuckled and shook her head. "It helped me up."

That's not ghost behavior.

"It helped you up," Sam repeated.

Candace nodded. "Yeah, and it kept saying over and over, 'Please don't tell my mom.'"

"Yeah," Sam said, "that's weird." He wrapped up the conversation, gave the couple another look (yeah, stress and obsession usually mean something's up) and left the restaurant, pulling out his phone to call Ruby.

"Hey," Ruby said without preamble when she answered, "nothing suspicious in the showers at all, but the local newspaper says a man won the lottery, and it was for 168 million dollars."

"Lucky," Sam returned, impressed.

"But that's not all," Ruby told him. "There's a guy across the street claiming that Bigfoot threw him into a tree."

"Bigfoot's not real," Sam said slowly. "D'you know where the guy claimed it happened?"

"Yeah," Ruby said, "I got the deets from the police already. Come and get me."

"On my way," Sam promised, heading for the Impala and driving off.

"This doesn't seem like a Trickster Hunt," Dean said as he looked over the newspapers surrounding Sam's visit to Concrete. "Just a ghost acting up."

"But look at this," Jo said, showing him a paper from two days later than the one he was looking at. "Man wins the lottery for 168 million dollars? That's kinda insane."

Dean frowned. "Maybe. Let's go out and find the woman who got tossed by the ghost."

"Sam."

"No, don't say it."

"But Sam —"

"Ruby, I'm warning you!"

"Sam," Ruby said in a too-reasonable tone of voice, "those are the biggest footprints ever. It must be Bigfoot."

Sam sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Let's see where they lead," he said in defeat. They followed the tracks in silence, and came to an abrupt stop when they realized the destination.

"A liquor store," said Sam. "Seriously?"

Ruby shrugged and stepped through the torn-open back door. "Maybe he's jonesing for some hooch," she suggested with a grin (that looked too much like Dean's). They started looking around the inside of the store. "Got some empty bottles," Ruby called from over by the cash register. "Amaretto and Irish cream." She snorted. "Bigfoot's a girl-drink drunk." Sam shot her a look. "What?" she said defensively. "It's true!"

Sam came over and took a look for himself before moving on. "Okay," he said a moment later as a rounded an aisle. "The porno rack's been uh, ransacked."

Ruby popped up next to him. "What's that?" she asked, pointing at a patch of something dark and fuzzy. Sam hesitated, and then reached out to grab the thing.

"Fur," he said blankly.

"What the hell's going on in this town?" Ruby said with a confused expression. Sam just shook his head and led them both out the front door, psychically locking it behind them. Ruby let out a deep sigh and sat down on a bench near the door.

"Tell me this is weird," Ruby said, "even for you."

Sam sighed and nodded. "Maybe it's a joke?" he suggested. "Like some big-ass mother in a gorilla suit?"

Ruby shook her head. "I don't know." Just then, a little girl on a bike rode past, and a magazine fell from the box attached to it. "Busty Asian Beauties?" Ruby said, nonplussed.

"That's definitely not right," Sam said, rising and following the guilt and remorse the little girl was carrying with her to the back of the store. The girl pulled the box off her bike and dropped it at the back door before leaving. Sam nodded at Ruby to trail the girl and investigated the box.

It was full of porn and alcohol. What was interesting was the "sorry" note the girl had added to the box. Shaking his head with bewilderment, Sam left the liquor store behind him and followed Ruby's demon-signature to where the little girl lived.

"Why is the front door open?" he asked Ruby when he caught up with her.

"Dunno," Ruby answered. "She just walked in and didn't bother shutting it. Weird, right?"

Sam nodded with a frown. Steeling himself, he headed up the stairs and through the front door, reaching out to see who was in the house.

There was the little girl.

There was also something… else. He couldn't figure out how to describe it.

"Hello?" he called out.

"Who's there?" The little girl came into view at the top of the stairs in the entryway.

"Hi," Sam said, "my name's Sam. Uh, you know what? Where are your parents?"

"My mom wished they were in Bali," the girl said, sounding a little sad, "so I think they're in Bali."

Ruby moved up to stand next to Sam. "Hey," she said, "have you seen a really, really furry —?"

"Is he in trouble?" the girl asked at once.

"No," Sam said quickly. "No, no, no. Not at all. We just — we wanted to make sure he was okay."

"He's my teddy bear," the girl told him. "I think he's sick."

"Okay," Ruby said with false brightness, "that's uh… well, we're here…"

"We can help," Sam said. "Yeah, uh —"

"You see…"

"We're uh, teddy bear doctors," Sam quickly settled on as Ruby floundered.

"Really?" Sam nodded. "Can you please take a look at him?"

"Sure!" Ruby said.

"Yeah, sure," Sam said at the same time. The girl ("My name is Audrey") beckoned Sam and Ruby up the stairs and led them to a closed door.

"He's in my bedroom," Audrey informed Sam and Ruby. "He's pretty grumpy." She turned around and knocked on the door. "Teddy?" she called out. "There's some nice doctors here to see you." She opened the door.

The something that Sam had sensed was sitting before a TV. It was a giant, furry, teddy bear easily as tall as Ruby. It swayed unsteadily in its seat, a bottle of booze in one paw. As the door creaked open, it turned to look at Sam.

There was a spike of foreign emotion, followed by a loud, "Close the friggin' door!"

Audrey shut it at once and looked up at Sam, emoting worry and sadness. "See what I mean?" she said.

Sam glanced at a wide-eyed Ruby, both speechless with shock.

What the hell?

"That's not normal ghost behavior," Jo hissed to Dean as they walked away from their meeting with Candace Armstrong.

"You're right," Dean mused. "It's really not." He shook his head and pulled out his notebook. "Okay, it looks like Sam checked into a motel two streets over. You go to the health center and see if there's anyone who can tell you more about this so-called ghost, and I'll see if there's anyone at the motel who remembers seeing Sam."

"On it."

"All I ever wanted was a teddy that was big, real, and talked," Audrey told Sam and Ruby, not seeming to notice the bewilderment of the two adults before her. "But now he's sad all the time — not 'ouch' sad, but ouch-in-the-head sad — says weird stuff, and smells like the bus." Her nose crinkled with distaste at that last bit.

"Okay," Ruby finally said, "Audrey, how did your teddy become real?"

"I wished for it," Audrey answered.

"You wished for it," Sam repeated.

Audrey nodded. "Yeah, at the wishing well."

Sam frowned and opened the bedroom door again. Teddy was watching the news on the TV, and shaking his head, giant ears flopping from side to side with the motion. "Look at this," he said loudly. "You believe this crap?"

"Not really," Ruby said, peering through the doorway with a skeptical, confused-as-hell expression.

Teddy sighed. "It is a terrible world," he spelled out. "Why am I here?" he demanded, turning his furry face to the ceiling as though yelling at a higher power.

"For tea parties!" Audrey insisted, stamping her little foot for effect.

"Tea parties?" Teddy echoed incredulously. "Is that all there is?"

Sam could hear guns firing on the TV. He asked Audrey to step down the hallway so he and Ruby could "confer on a diagnosis".

"What the fuck are we supposed to do with an oversized, depressed drunk of a teddy bear?!" Ruby hissed almost hysterically.

"Okay," Sam said, "first of all, don't freak out." He looked back at the desolate, furry boozer. "Second, I don't think this teddy bear is the uh, core problem here."

"So what is?"

Sam thought for a moment. "Audrey," he called out, "you said your mom wished she and your dad were in Bali?"

Audrey walked back over. "Yeah."

"Also at the wishing well?"

Aurdey nodded her head.

"Okay," Sam said, "well, uh, I hate to break this to you, but your bear is sick. He has…"

"Lollipop disease," Ruby piped up.

"Yep," Sam said, nodding in agreement. "It's not uncommon for a bear his size, but it is contagious." He knelt down to Audrey's level. "Is there a grownup nearby you could stay with for a couple of days until your bear is feeling better?"

"Mrs. Hurley lives down the street," Audrey said after a moment of thought.

"Good," Sam said.

"Perfect," Ruby chimed in. "We'd really like it if you could stay there until your bear is better."

"Oh, and last thing," Sam continued. "Where's this wishing well?"

"I ran into a little girl named Audrey who recognized my photo of Sam," Jo told Dean with excitement. "She said she wished for her teddy to be alive at this wishing well in the local Chinese restaurant."

"Awesome," Dean said. "Was Ruby with him?"

"Audrey said there was a girl with him, yeah. My height, brown hair and eyes. She and Sam told Audrey they were teddy bear doctors."

"Do I wanna know why they said that?"

Jo laughed. "You probably don't. Meet me at the restaurant?"

"Yep, see ya there."

Sam and Ruby watched a young boy throw a coin into the little wishing well at the Chinese restaurant Sam had been at only an hour earlier. "Think it works?" Sam asked as the boy walked away.

"I don't know," Ruby said thoughtfully, staring into the water. "I mean, I can't think of a better explanation for the oversized teddy bear, but…" She knelt down and stared more deeply into the little pool. "There," she suddenly said, pointing at a small group of coins. "One of the coins is emitting a magical signature. It's strong, too." She rose. "We need to clear out the water so I can get a better look at it."

"I'm on it," Sam said, heading off to find the manager. Within minutes, the water was drained out and Ruby was crouched in the little wishing well, eyeing an old, large coin.

"It's stuck," she told Sam. "Part of the magic is keeping it in place from any touch but the one who threw it in." She pulled out her phone and snapped a photo. "Ready to do some research?"

They checked into a motel, and Sam got to work, comparing the photo Ruby had taken with various ancient coins with magical properties. Ruby, meanwhile, went back to the Health Center, thinking that maybe their so-called ghost was an idiot who made a wish.

"Guy definitely wished to be invisible," Ruby pronounced as she walked through the door. "And that kid we saw tossing in a coin when we got there? I saw him being chased by bullies earlier, but now he's got an attitude and possibly some Hulk-level strength to go with it so he can get some revenge."

Sam sighed. "Well, get this; the wishes are gonna turn bad," he told Ruby. "The coin's Babylonian, and it's cursed. I managed to find some fragments of a legend." He pointed to a picture he'd found online. "The serpent on it is Tiamat, which is the Babylonian god of primordial chaos. It looks like their priests were working some pretty intense black magic."

"So they made it?"

"Yeah," Sam nodded. "It's to sow the seeds of chaos. Whoever tosses that coin into a wishing well and makes a wish turns it into a real wishing well. Then it starts uh, 'granting wishes to all corners'."

"But the wishes must get twisted," Ruby said. "Girl wishes for a talking bear, she gets fucking nutjob."

"Apparently this coin has turned towns upside down over the centuries, even wiped a few off the map." Sam ran his hands through his hair. "I mean, one person getting their wish can be trouble, but everybody getting their wish?"

"Chaos," Ruby commented.

"Yeah."

"So we've got to find the first wisher," Ruby said, "the one who put the coin in there to begin with." She sighed. "How do we figure that out?"

Sam thought for a long moment. "The local newspaper," he decided, and went to work. Soon, they had a lead in the form of "Wesley Mondale and Ms. Hope Lynn Casey have announced their surprise engagement" from a month earlier. Sam found Wesley's address, and they planned on finding him the next morning to see what he knew.

That night, Sam dreamed of fire and tearing flesh with flayed out screams and maniacal laughter. He woke to Ruby sitting next to him, gently running her fingers through his hair and speaking soft words of comfort. The words sounded hollow to Sam since Ruby had no idea what his dreams were about, and yet they still brought some measure of peace, anyway.

Cold comfort was better than nothing, after all.

"Manager confirmed that Sam spoke to him," Dean told Jo as soon as she walked into the restaurant. "He drained out all the water, and Sam and Ruby dug around, took a picture of a big ol' coin, and then left."

Jo frowned. "Maybe there was a magic coin that was making people's wishes come true. Like, the ghost was actually a guy who wished to be invisible."

Dean nodded. "Question is, who dropped the coin in?"

"Maybe we should find the first weird incident in the papers?" Jo suggested.

"Yeah," Dean said, "good idea."

Wesley (or Wes, as he insisted on being called) turned out to be one half the kissing-obsessed couple Sam had noticed the day before when interviewing Candace Armstrong. The obsession and need he had read from the girl, Hope, now made sense. "I wished that she would love me more than anything," Wes confessed.

Sam groaned and leaned back in his chair. "D'you wanna know what her emotional state feels like?" he asked. "She's filled with obsession and need, Wes. I can't read an actual ounce of happiness or love in her."

"You read emotions?" Wes said with wide eyes.

"That and a lot more," Sam answered. "Alright, everybody get in the car. We're taking you back to that restaurant to remove that coin. The town is beginning to descend into chaos, Wes, and all because of your coin and your wish."

They lost Ruby halfway there so she could try and talk down the little boy who had wished for Hulk-strength so he could hurt his former tormentors. Once at the restaurant, Sam had to stop Hope from making a wish of her own when they got to the Chinese restaurant, but he managed to get Wes to pull out the Babylonian coin.

"Hope?" Wes pleaded.

Hope looked at him with a blank expression, her emotions reading confusion, and said, "Do I know you?"

She walked away. Sam felt a pang of sadness for the ache he sensed in Wes's heart, but he told Wes, "Love can't be built on wishes and lies."

"I know," Wes replied quietly. "I know."

"Sam, yeah, that's him," Wes confirmed quietly after looking at Dean's picture of his brother. "He tracked me down and figured out that I'd dropped a Babylonian coin in the wishing well. It granted wishes, but they all eventually turned bad."

"What did you wish for?" Jo asked with a kind expression, clearly wanting Wes to give the answer she and Dean expected from the announcement in the paper from a month before Sam showed up.

Wes gave a small half-smile for a moment. "I wished that this girl named Hope would love me."

"And did she?" asked Dean.

"No," Wes said. "Well, yeah, but it was more like obsession than it was real love. I just... I'd loved her forever, but she never even noticed that I existed, so I decided that I'd had enough and made the wish."

"How did Sam stop the coin's magic?"

"I was the only one who could remove the coin," Wes answered. "Sam said the coin would destroy the town if I didn't remove it, told me that he could feel Hope's emotions, and that it wasn't real love she was feeling for me. I uh, I guess I knew that already, but hearing Sam say it, well..." He trailed off and shrugged. "When we got to the restaurant, Hope revealed that she was carrying a penny and she tried to wish that Sam would be killed on the spot to stop me from ending the coin's power. Sam stopped her, I grabbed the coin, and then..." He sighed. "It was over, and Hope forgot who I was, what I wished for, all of it."

"You can't wish for love," Jo said, "it's all a lie like that."

Wes nodded. "That's pretty much what Sam said. He and that girl with him, Ruby, they left pretty much right after that. Ruby promised to destroy the coin so it'd never hurt anyone else again, and uh, that was it."

"Melting down the coin dispersed the magic in it," Ruby informed Sam over the phone. She had collected the coin after helping kid Hulk prove he wasn't worth messing with to his former bullies, and had promised to make sure the coin's days of causing chaos were over forever. "I'll be back soon."

"Great. Thanks, Ruby." Sam ended his phone call and settled down before his computer. This Hunt had been interesting, but the Trickster was still out there, somewhere, causing mayhem with his incredible powers. Sam was going to find him and get Dean back.

Dean sat on his motel bed, staring at his photo of Sam when Jo came out of the bathroom. "Hey," she said softly, sitting next to him. "We're gonna find him. I know Mom and Bobby are doing everything they can to find more Seals, especially after Castiel lifted Sam's order on us."

"I know we will," Dean said. "It's just... this Hunt, it sounds like Sam and Ruby were a great team together."

Jo raised her eyebrows. "You think Sam prefers a demon as his Hunting partner?"

"No, that's not it," Dean said quickly. "It's... He just sounds like he's busy being all Sam, the determination, the focus... I told him to remember what Dad and I had taught him before I died." He looked up at Jo. "I think he remembered being taught to be reckless, to put the Hunt first, to lock away all the pain and ignore it." He swallowed hard. "What if my little brother is really dead in a ditch somewhere because he couldn't slow down and put himself first?"

"He isn't," Jo said at once. "You both had a rough childhood, but Sam is strong, Dean. I know he's still out there, we know he was still alive ten days ago. Don't you give up on me now, Dean Winchester." She grabbed Dean's shoulders and shook them a little. "Sam needs you. We all do." She yanked him forward into a tight hug. "Don't give up," she whispered.

Dean clung to Jo's shoulders, her determination, and to her faith.