Chapter 4

-o0o-

Is anybody out there?

Is anybody listening?

"Holding On and Letting Go," Ross Copperman

The Impala glides through the night like a ghost, wheels quiet on the highway, engine purring contentedly beneath the hood, frame nearly imperceptible in the darkness. Outside the windows, the Nevada desert expands around them, rock formations and buttes stretching toward the sky, alien-looking in the darkness. The night sky seems lower than usual, cold white stars hanging in the blackness, bright, twinkling, empty.

A lot like the file Sam's been going through. He'd used his CDC authority to swipe it from the last lab they'd visited. He's been double-checking patient files and symptoms for anything strange that the doctors might have missed and coming up empty-handed.

"Nothing?" Dean asks.

"Ah...typical swine flu. Typical symptoms. No murderous rampages… Never thought I'd be wishing for some."

"Down the rabbit hole, Sammy," Dean says as Sam pulls out his cell and dials Bobby with a single key stroke. Bobby answers on the second ring. He must have been waiting for them. There isn't much to strategize. They'll keep heading East, eyes and ears open for more disease flare ups.

Sam's just hanging up the phone when he feels it. Heat trickling along his skin, like the ephemeral brush of warm fingertips, the itching tingle of insect legs. The feeling that tells him what's coming even before the familiar voice in the back of the seat, gritty and tired, says "I've got an idea."

The Impala screeches to a halt and the demon blade's in Sam's hand and driven into the leather seat before he really has a moment to think about it. But Crowley's gone and—

Standing outside Sam's window, knuckles rapping on the glass, one dark eyebrow arched in a question. Or a challenge. But he backs off as Sam pushes himself out of the car, Dean following closely behind him.

"Easy Moose," he hisses, as Sam advances on him with the knife, sending Crowley scuttling around the Impala. When the words have no effect, he turns to Dean. "Call off your dog."

"Gimme one reason," Dean says.

"Pestilence," the demon says, biting off the last syllable and Dean goes still. Crowley brushes the lapels of his suit, removing invisible lint or dust, all the while keeping one eye on Sam, who slows but holds the knife like he's ready to use it. That's one thing Sam will say about Crowley, he has more self-preservation instinct than most demons.

Which doesn't seem to be catching, Sam concludes after a quick conversation. Said conversation ends in a demonic tantrum and a broken street lamp and has them agreeing to accompany Crowley to his home on the lam. He and Dean get back into the Impala, with the demon slipping into the backseat. This won't be the first time they've followed a demon home; it will be the first time they've done so with one giving directions.

Once he's rattled off the last bits of the instructions that will lead them to a neighborhood not far outside Reno, Crowley leans back into the leather seat, folds his hands over his belly, and lets out a content sigh. Dean grips the wheel a little a little tighter. Sam looks out the window. The silence is heavy until Crowley breaks it. "Sam...those were some fast reflexes. One might almost say…smiteful. Kudos."

"You don't think we've had enough demons dropping in on us that I've had the practice?" Sam doesn't look, but he can practically hear Crowley lifting his hands in placation.

"Just a bit more fluid this time, is all. Drawing on that vessel-link, maybe? Must be good for something more than getting people killed."

"What?" says Dean at the same time Sam says "Shut up."

"Sam." Dean's tone is one that's Sam's become well reacquainted with over the last year. It's a close relative of the tone Sam grew up with. The one Dean wore when he was on the point of exasperation with his kid brother

"I didn't. It's—"

"A little angelic-vessel juju lets him sense when demons are coming, perhaps?" Crowley says.

Something cold settles in the pit of Sam's stomach, worms tendrils out from the center of him, pierces the tender tissues of his lungs and heart, washes over his muscles and slides into his veins, freezing him in place. Outside, the black night seems ready to swallow him whole.

"Wait..." Dean says, lost and clearly not happy about it. "You knew he was here. You felt him?"

"No," Sam breathes and the exhale brings realization, pieces of a puzzle he hadn't realized was a puzzle flying together. How could he have missed it? The shift that took place after all those nights alone and dreaming of a dead woman whose face was being worn by the Devil himself. "It's like…a whisper or a hum? Like when someone's just left a room but you can still feel them there, or when the TV's been muted. It's...background noise.

"Why not mention it before?"

"It was nothing," Sam says and even to himself, he doesn't sound convincing. "I noticed the demons a little quicker, a little sooner. I thought I was getting an edge. But it wasn't anything to write home about. It didn't save Ellen. It didn't save Jo."

"Or Bobby."

"I didn't...have it then."

Dean goes still for a moment and Sam can practically hear the gears turning; his brother's fingertips squeak on the wheel as he works through equations of time and place. Sam can see the moment Dean comes to the same realization Sam had just moments before.

"And when we were at the I Hate Luci reunion?" Dean asks, the edge in his voice is sharp and brittle. "What kind of background noise did you get there?"

Sam stares through windshield, sees a hotel instead of the moonlit road.

Despite its spaciousness, the Elysian Fields conference room is sending his brain into a claustrophobic spin as he listens to shouting in the hall, hears the crunch of bones, the spatter of blood. His hands are empty, clean but he can feel the sticky-slickness and heat sliding over his knuckles, his forearms. And he's pleased. No. Not him. Not Sam. Lucifer's pleased.

"The pagan smorgasbord?" Dean says, looking at him and for a moment Sam hates the way his brother's always been able to read him, wants to tell him to put his eyes back on the damned road. But he doesn't.

Instead, he says, "I felt them die. I felt him kill them all."

"That's how you knew about Gabriel." Dean lets out a whistling breath. "And now?"

"Nothing," Sam says. "Nothing from him. It's just like it was. Crowley? Yeah, I felt him before I heard him. But there's nothing else. Maybe it's a proximity thing. Closer I am to Lu—him…the stronger the link, the senses?" He pauses. "Dean. I didn't mention it because I didn't realize. But it doesn't make a difference. It doesn't change anything. I'm still me."

Silence again. Normally, this is when Dean would switch on some loud music to cover up the discomfort. He doesn't have to.

"If you lovebirds are done with the heart to heart," Crowley says, "the exit was a half-mile back."

-o0o-

The neighborhood Crowley guides them to is very old and the part that hasn't been gobbled up by the most recent urban development is going to seed. Even in the dark, Sam can see grasses climbing broken-down wooden fences, porches sagging with the weight of years, cars that are little more than rust sitting low on bald tires.

Crowley's house is just as bad as the neighborhood would predict, full of dust and the odor of rot. Furniture molders in dark rooms, the floorboards curl in the corners and they have to watch where they put their feet for fear of jagged nails or softened wood ready to swallow a leg up to its ankle.

But all in all, Crowley's life on the lam doesn't look entirely unlike an average month for a Winchester. Up to and including some of the warding etched on the broken doors and windows. But still…

"This is insane," Sam says, going through the gun bag they've laid out on the wooden table.

"I don't disagree." Dean checks his clip, slides the gun into the inner pants holster at the small of his back.

"Then why are we listening to him?"

"Sam—" Dean's sigh is explosive and when he looks up, he's wearing that look Sam's become so familiar with. It's a lighter version of the one he wore when Sam killed Samhain, and again when Dean discovered the full measure of Sam's relationship with Ruby. The one that makes Sam feel tired and faintly sick.

"Dean, if I'd thought it was important, I would've told—"

"Hey. This isn't about that. This is about Pestilence. And let's face it, Sam, what's our plan? Drive around until we stumble into a plague zone? No. This, at least, is useful. Even if we don't get the Horseman…well, there's always demons," he says and slides a flask of holy water into his inner jacket pocket.

The floorboards creak as Crowley enters the room. Sam glares at him. Dean says, "You ready to go?"

"Born ready. Leave the Morningstar suit." He looks at Sam. "Keep the home fires burning, eh?"

Sam grabs Crowley's shoulder as the demon turns. "Wait a minute. I'm going."

"Hands off the apparel. It costs more than your wardrobes combined. And, no. You're not."

"Why?"

"Why?" Crowley's voice lilts, eyebrows rising as though he's just been asked The World's Most Incredibly Stupid question. "You mean, aside from the fact that I don't like you. I don't trust you, and you keep trying to kill me? How about your little body and soul love connection with Satan?"

Sam balks. "That's—"

"A perfectly logical concern. Yes, I know. I don't care about excuses or hypotheses. I care that you're an unknown who also has some kind of link to the bloody devil. You stay." He points to Dean. "He goes. What's it going to be?"

The look on Dean's face says if it wouldn't have been a waste of bullets, he'd have pulled his gun and shot someone. Sam turns to Crowley with a smirk.

"Oh, well. Enjoy your last few sunsets."

"Wait…."

Crowley pauses in the doorway. Sam whips around.

"I'll go." Dean meets Sam's eyes. "What can I say? I believe the guy," he finishes, heading for the front door.

Sam stands on the porch, hunched against the night and the cool breeze, the ice in his belly. He watches the taillights of the Impala as they disappear down the road. Watches Dean drive away with a demon riding shotgun. Watches until the night swallows the car. Then he walks back into the house and slams the door behind him.

He prowls from empty room to empty room, all anger and excess energy. He doesn't entirely blame Dean for being pissed about the link with Lucifer, even if Sam's certain it's only a one way thing and not harmful in itself. But to leave Sam behind? To choose to have a demon at his back?

Sam slams into the kitchen, knocking the already loose door askew. The room, like most of the others, is a ruin of peeled wallpaper, scattered paint chips, rotting floor and decaying Formica countertops. But Sam spies something in the midst of the decay, a bottle in the recesses of one of the cabinets, shining and new and out of place. He picks it up, reads the label—Glencraig—and huffs a laugh. Being on the lam hasn't stopped Crowley from buying the good stuff.

The bottle is unopened and he uncaps it and takes a long draught, relishing the burn, before carrying it with him to the dusty slip covered chair that sits in the memory of the living room.

On an empty stomach, it doesn't take much for the alcohol to weave warm, soothing tendrils through his body, his brain, easing some of the tension, letting him think more clearly. He remembers he should probably call Bobby and let him know what's happening in case something goes very wrong. With Crowley, that's almost a guarantee.

The conversation doesn't take long to turn into some kind of fucked up therapy session. They trod over the already trampled ground of brothers and trust issues exacerbated by demons, and Sam can hear the weariness in Bobby's voice. He's sorry for it.

"Well, Sam…it's crazy," Bobby says when Sam's told him about Dean's partnership with Crowley, "but after a year of chasing zilch, maybe it's time to go crazy…" Which is really pretty much what Dean had said. Which means, maybe, what Sam's been thinking, on and off, for the last few months—longer, if he's honest with himself—isn't so off point.

"Hey, Bobby…when you were possessed, Meg, she told you to kill Dean…"

"Yeah…" The suspicion is already thick in Bobby's voice and Sam can picture the man sitting up straighter in his wheelchair.

"And you didn't," Sam continues, "you took control, took your body back."

Bobby snorts and there's the squeak of hospital-grade vinyl. "Sure, just long enough to shank myself."

"How'd you take back the wheel?"

Silence. He can hear Bobby breathing. Then, "why are you asking, Sam?"

"I've been thinking." Sam takes a long pull from the bottle, closes his eyes. "We get the keys to the Cage, pop the lid...and then what? Ask the Devil, politely, to jump in? Think that's going to work?"

"You got me."

"But," Sam goes on, because if he doesn't get this out now, he won't. "What if you guys lead the Devil to the edge...and I jump?"

"Sam," the line shrieks, the phone squeaking in Bobby's hand. "Are you idjits trying to kill me? We just—"

"Bobby. I'm not going to do it. Not unless we all agree. But…" a half laugh, "we gotta be realistic here. We don't have a lot of options."

"This isn't an option. What I did? It's a million to one. A billion. And that was some piss ant demon. You think you're just going to wrestle back control from Satan himself?"

"Bobby—"

"There's a reason it's called possession, Sam. You of all people should know that."

"I'm strong enough." It sounds petulant, even to Sam. And what he hears next makes him feel even more so, under the sting.

"No," Bobby says, "you're not. You know it. He knows it too. And he's going to find every insecurity, every chink in your armor, Sam. And he'll use it. Your fear, your grief, your anger. And you're not exactly Mr. Anger-Management… How are you going to control the devil when you can't even control yourself?"

-o0o-

Bobby's question follows him around the abandoned rooms, follows him as the Impala's headlights flood the place. It follows him as Dean stares at him, serious and stern and speaking with that calm voice that always heralds something terrible, "Sam, I need you to stay on mission, here."

The question's swept away, along with every other thought about Lucifer, about the apocalypse, when he hears a voice he hasn't heard in years. A voice he never expected to hear, muffled by a cloth sack, coming from a man sitting on a chair in a crudely drawn Devil's Trap, inside a decaying house that's miles and years away from the brightly lit classrooms and claustrophobic dorms where he'd last heard it.

"Sam? That you?"

"Brady." Sam's stomach lurches, sinks somewhere around his knees. He knows what's coming. His mind may not want to process it, but he knows.

And with the smug, self-satisfied tone of a snake-oil salesman, the demon inside Brady lays it all out: what he did to Brady, what he did to Jess. And all of that just to get to Sam. By the time he's done, the world has gone grey-matte around the edges and Dean's hauling him from the room, telling him to get it together.

It'd be easy enough, especially with Crowley disappeared to stir up a demon's nest, to get the demon-Brady all to himself. Easy enough to barricade Dean in the bathroom when he goes to rinse his face. Easy enough to take Ruby's knife and, so slowly, slice at all the non-vital parts, watch the sunburst flares of light erupt from the demon's skin, until he's satisfied the demon has felt as much pain as Sam has these last few years. (It won't. It can't.)

But he doesn't.

Because Bobby's voice, stern and kind and all kinds of fed up at once, keeps running through his head. How are you going to control the devil when you can't even control yourself?

When Dean comes back into the room, Sam's leaning against the far wall and the demon-Brady's sneering at him.

Dean says, "Sam?"

"We're good."

Dean looks incredulous.

"Seriously. Look at him. Not a scratch."

"Good," Dean says slowly. "Awesome. On-mission. About time things started going right."

That's the moment Crowley shows up with a hellhound on his trail.

-o0o-

Hours later, Sam's in the bathroom of a no-tell motel off I-80 in western Wyoming. He's listening to Dean in the main room. After hanging up with Bobby—having given him the news of Pestilence's location (courtesy of the demon-Brady, just before Sam slid the demon blade between his ribs) and set him researching the area—Dean had turned on the television, tuned it to a 24 hour news channel and run out to the office to buy a paper before hunkering down for the night.

Dean says he's looking for signs of Death and any other apocalyptic douchebags. Sam's sure that's true. He's also sure Dean's searching for word of Cas beneath all the strange headlines. Has been since the angel disappeared. Sam doesn't blame him. Cas is the greatest ally they've ever encountered—hellhound-raising demons notwithstanding, though Crowley's not really an ally, even if he did save them from being puppy chow—not to mention, in a weird and rather ironic way (par for the course for Winchesters), Cas seems to be on his way to becoming Dean's best friend.

Despite the lack of news, despite the gut-deep feeling that this is just one more thing gone wrong, Sam hopes the angel's okay. For Cas's sake as much as Dean's. They've lost too much and too many on this desperate run. Something deep in his chest twinges and he swallows around the lump in his throat, and sets the shower running, hot as he can stand it. He scalds his skin, but it doesn't wash away the memory of Jo torn apart by hellhounds, of Ellen's face as she stays by her daughter's side, of Bobby's when he knows he'll never walk again. It doesn't ease the years old pain of Jess, in pain and half alive on the ceiling or of her eyes, wide and accusing, from his recent dream.

Sam takes a sudden, shuddering breath and shoves the images to the back of his mind, buries them beneath mental maps of the states they'll be traveling through tomorrow, the lists of "what next" steps to take. The images aren't gone. They'll never be gone. He can't let things go. That's why he's in this mess to begin with.

Burying his face in the shower stream, he reaches for the thin, plastic-feeling hotel soap he'd set on the shower shelf, blinks his eyes open in surprise when his fingers close around a spongy material that disintegrates as he pulls it through the water.

He rubs his fingers together, brings them to his nose, his mouth and makes a noise—part confusion, part half-hysterical laughter—as he watches pieces of angel food cake vanish down the drain.