-Summary: It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU
-A/Ns: Another weekly update! I'm feeling better about my stockpile of chapters, even with the second week of crazy 11 hour work days (ugh!). I didn't want to leave you guys hanging for too long on that last cliffhanger. However, be warned that this chapter underwent less editing than I usually do, which leaves the writing feeling a little rough around the edges in my opinion. So apologies for that and any errors I missed.
-Chapter Warnings: The boys get a brief respite to catch their breath before the leap from frying pan to the fire.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
The Road So Far (this Time Around)
Chapter 17
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
The minute he met those pale yellow irises, Azazel was gone.
Dean took off across the parking lot all the same, hard and fast as his feet could carry him over the wet ground towards his collapsed brother. Sam was on his hands and knees in the mud, hacking up what could very well be his lungs at this point.
"Sammy!"
Layla had come running into the tent, lungs gasping for breath and fear in her eyes. Lucky for him, he'd been making a hasty retreat towards the exit before the whole congregation figured out Roy wasn't healing anyone anymore, or before Sue Ann made a bigger scene than she already had behind the make-shift church as she tried to gather the shattered remains of her Coptic cross.
Now, Layla was hot on his heels as they raced through the mud.
"Where did that man go?" She huffed from behind him, worry still coloring the edges of her voice with fear.
Dean didn't bother answering. He had more important things on his mind; mainly, his brother currently spitting up blood and dry heaving in the mud. The hunter fell to his knees beside his brother, grabbing him by the shoulders. "Sam!"
"I-I'm okay," his brother managed to wheeze between heaves and gasps. He wiped clumsily at his mouth but his hands were filthy and did nothing but smear mud across his face.
"What did he do to you? Where are you hurt?" Dean frantically felt his brother for injuries, for whatever was causing the bleeding. He checked his face and his unfocused gaze before Sam finally pushed him away.
"I'm fine," he insisted, and when Dean took a moment to really see him, he looked it. Color had returned to his cheeks and he didn't look nearly as sallow or pale as he had when Dean left him in the car fifteen minutes ago. "I feel….Okay. I-I feel good."
"What?" Confused, Dean glanced around, mainly out of the hunter-trained habit of ensuring they were not in any immediate danger. His eyes stopped on the empty jar lying beside his brother in the mud. The mud-covered glass was ringed in still dripping red and Dean's stomach tightened as he picked it up and a coppery scent tainted the air.
"Sam….What is this?" He held it up to his brother, grip threatening to break the glass. "What was in here?"
Brown eyes locked on the jar and Dean had his answer in the fear and revulsion in his brother's face. His hands shook as he tried once more to sit upright on unsteady limbs. Layla offered a steadying hand on his shoulder.
"Sam?"
"Bl-" The young man swallowed thickly, looking away from the container and the reminder of what sat heavy in his gut and pulsed through his veins. "Blood."
Layla hid her gaps behind her hands, staring between the two boys in horror. Dean could see the red dripping down Sam's chin now, despite the kid swiping across his mouth and throat once more. The blood and mud dripped from his skin and puddled in the mess below.
Dean dropped the jar. Numbness overtook the man from the future as Sam continued to insist he felt fine. Better, even, than he had since the hospital.
-o-o-o-
"There's no evidence of any damage," the doctor announced with a smile as she handed over the MRI results. Sam took them, still staring in disbelief. She patted his shoulder. "Try not to worry so much. A man of your age, in your physical condition? You've nothing to worry about."
He looked to his brother, but Dean was staring at the wall, jaw clenched and shoulders taut. Something dark sat heavy in Dean's eyes, but Sam didn't know what it was, and his brother was barely talking to him.
-o-o-o-
They sat in the Impala, parked outside their motel. They'd been sitting there for several minutes, neither of the brothers moving to get out of the car. Sam was having trouble shaking off the events of the last twenty four hours. Or the truths that he'd learned.
Dean…Dean didn't know what to think. What to do. Demon blood hadn't even been on the list of things to fix Sammy. Hell, if it had been, it would have been at the damn bottom, below selling his soul and summoning fucking Gabriel in a ring of Holy Oil.
And what now? Jesus, were they looking at blood addiction again? Last time it had been gradual. Ruby started him off slow and built up his intake over months and months. What was going to happen with a friggin pint chug?
Dean scrubbed at his scalp and face, his chest constricted and head pounding in despair. Jesus Christ, he really was making everything so much worse and he had no idea how to stop it.
"Did you take care of the reaper?"
The question was as bland as the rest of his brother, who sat numbly in the passenger seat, staring at a blank world outside their car and seeing none of it.
"Yeah," Dean mumbled in reply. "Released the hold the wife had on him. Pretty sure he took care of her himself."
Sam nodded, not seeming the least bit regretful of the human life lost. Not that he necessarily should. Sue Ann brought it on herself, playing God and deciding who lived and who died based on her own warped sense of morality.
"Why would you drink it?" The words were out of Dean's mouth before he could think them through. Yeah, sure, that was a question he wanted answers to. Right along with Are you sure you're alright? Not feeling any murderous, blood-sucking cravings, are you? Do I need to drive us straight to Bobby's and lock you in the panic room?
Of everything he could ask though, choosing the one that absolutely made it sound like this was all Sammy's fault was really, really not what he'd meant to do.
"Layla was there," Sam bit out defensively, shooting his brother a wounded glare before retuning his gaze to his hands. He didn't have the energy to fight about this, and it had nothing to do with having been on the brink of death five hours ago. Really, he felt fine now. Better than fine, he felt….strong.
Maybe stronger than before he'd ended up in the hospital. It was hard to tell.
He clenched his hands into fists in his lap. "He would have killed her. I didn't exactly a choice, Dean."
Beside him, his brother let out a haggard sigh, slumping in the driver's seat. "I know."
The two brothers were silent, but the tension laying thick in the car was no longer between them, so much as around them. Sam took a deep breath.
"He said…he said I needed more of what I already had in me." The younger hunter chanced a look at his brother, and his gaze was pained and so damn terrified. "That night in the nursery…"
"He said that?" Dean echoed quietly, staring at his kid brother with a pain of his own.
"If Yellow Eyes did that to me as a kid…" Sam trailed off. "He told me he bled in my mouth that night and that's why I have visions. Mom must have…must have-"
"Don't." Dean shook his head violently. "Look at me, Sammy. If Mom saw him that night, she would have fought tooth and nail to save you."
He thought about the fierce, spitfire hunter that Mary Winchester had been in 1973. Yeah, she would have given Azazel hell for setting foot in her house, let alone threatening her son. He knew she'd look at her life as small change for the fight to keep Sammy safe.
"What happened that night…It wasn't your fault."
Sam was staring at him with water gathering in his eyes that he fought back valiantly. He wiped haphazardly at his eyes, and sniffing as he looked away with a nod. "Yeah. Yeah, I know."
After a moment of silence, he pushed on.
"If Yellow Eyes did that to me…" Sam swallowed and looked at his brother, eyes darting to his chest and then back to his face, "then maybe Cass did something to you."
The hunter was shaking his head before he'd even finished, and Sam clenched his teeth in a flare of anger. He was tired of Dean keeping secrets. He was tired of being lied to. He no longer knew if his brother just couldn't see it, or if he was in so deep that there was nothing left he could do about it. Either way, it was damn time they talked about it.
"Dean, the visions you're having, that pain in your chest; maybe this demon is after you like Yellow Eyes is me! He said we were entries in a race. Some sort of…Battle Royale, I don't know. But if I'm his 'entry,' than maybe this Cass-"
"Cas isn't a demon." It was out of his mouth before he could stop himself, with such conviction that he knew he couldn't take it back.
Not that he was sure he wanted to. Something sat ugly in his chest every time Sam called Cas a demon. He wasn't sure if it was how close to the truth that had almost gotten at the end, with Lucifer sitting pretty in a Cas-shaped time-share, or if he just couldn't stand the thought of Sam thinking he was in bed with one.
Sam was watching him, waiting. He didn't say a word, though his eyes dared Dean to clam up. Damn that kid for knowing Dean's weaknesses; he'd never been good at silence. He wrung the leather of Baby's steering wheel in his hands, staring at the motel door on the other side of the windshield. His gut twisted. He couldn't believe what he was about to say.
"Look, I got no proof, okay?" He spared Sam a glance. "Nothing to back-up the complete crazy I'm about to tell you. And trust me, it's going to sound crazy."
Sam regarded him for a moment before nodding solemnly. His hardened stare turned a little softer. "I believe you, Dean. Whatever it is, you can tell me."
Dean had to swallow several times around the giant lump in his throat. God, he hoped this didn't fuck up the timeline irreparably.
Of course…could he really make it much worse than it already was?
"Cas- Castiel is an angel."
He waited a beat, the silence in the small space damn near crushing.
"Like, of the Lord."
Yeah, awesome, that sounded about as convincing as Peewee Herman proclaiming he was a weight-lifting champion. This conversation was going fantastically. Well, the world hadn't ended yet, so he supposed it could be going worse.
Silence settled in the car like sludge and Dean wrung the wheel again and again until the leather started creaking beneath his grip.
"Okay."
The older hunter's head whipped to the side to take in his brother, who looked contemplative and not nearly as skeptical or pissed as he should be.
"What?"
"I believe you."
"You…What? Just like that?"
Sam gave a half shrug that was way too casual and calm for the bombshell Dean just dropped. "Demons are real. Why wouldn't angels be?"
"Seriously?!"
His brother spared him a glance that Dean immediately found patronizing. "You sound like you don't believe he's an angel."
"Oh, I believe it," he scoffed. In fact, that was one of the few things in this current Alternate Timeline Clusterfuck that he had any confidence in. And he was totally not clinging to it like a life raft on the titanic, with him as the drowned rat from stowage. Not at all. "I just needed something a little more concrete than his word."
Sam perked up at the muttered admission, eyebrows rising into his hairline. "Like what?"
What would an angel show to prove himself to a paranoid, black and white, distrustful hunter like his brother?
Dean mumbled something, blatantly avoiding eye contact with his brother as his ears flushed red. And God, not even he knew why he was blushing at the memory of that night in the barn, where a pair of shadows had him almost shitting his pants.
Embarrassment at needing a new pair of pants. That was definitely it.
"What was that?"
Dean grumbled and repeated himself, louder than necessary this time. "He showed me his wings, alright?"
Curiosity lit Sam's eyes like a fat kid in a donut shop. "Really? What were they like? Were they…like a bird's? With feathers?"
The man from the future rolled his eyes. Of course his nerd brother would want to play 60 questions about an angel's friggin' wings. He didn't know, he'd never actually asked the guy about them!
"No. I mean- maybe. All I saw were shadows," Dean answered lamely, refusing to look at his brother. Well great, that didn't sound totally made up at all. Shit, if Sam asked for further proof, what the hell was he gonna give him?
"…Did he have a halo?"
He could hear the way Sam was barely holding back a snigger and shot him a dirty glare.
"Alright, shaddup." He pushed open the door of the Impala and declared the conversation over.
-o-o-o-
"You seriously believe me?"
Sam dropped the last of his clothes into the duffel bag on the motel bed. He glanced at his brother. When he saw the look in his eye, like he desperately needed his brother to say yes but couldn't believe it would be the truth, he turned and gave him his full attention.
"Dean, I know you're hiding stuff – still hiding stuff," he emphasized, and the hunter across the room decided not to feel gut-crushing guilt at that by sheer force of will, "but I trust you. If you're sure it's an angel talking to you, then okay."
Dean didn't respond right away, mulling over the sasquatch's words before settling on the best response he had that wouldn't push further or start a fight. Well. Much of a fight. "You are such a nerd."
"And you are a jerk," Sam responded in kind, turning back to the last of their packing. They should hit the road and get back to the search for Dad, now that they knew what it was hunting him. "What I'd like to know is why an angel and a demon would bother with us in the first place. That sounds….big, Dean. Like, biblical, ugly big."
Across the room, Dean's hand tightened on the shotgun he was sliding into his duffel.
Oh Sammy, you have no idea.
-o-o-o-
Dean offered to load the bags while Sam jumped in the shower. He had wiped off the mud and changed into a clean set of clothes before they stopped at the hospital, but he still felt dirty. Dean had more than understood and ventured outside to get Baby ready for the road and give his brother some space.
The water fell heavy across Sam's shoulders as he braced himself against the tile wall. He felt heavy and light all in the same breath, and had since the church.
He stared at his hand, spread across the warm tiles. He flexed the tendons in his fingers, watching the flexors slide over his knuckles, like serpents just under his skin. Water slid down the back of his hand in tiny rivulets.
There was something there. Something just beneath the surface. It might have always been there; he couldn't say with certainty that it had. Maybe he'd felt it before. Always. Felt it when he stood beside his brother and his father and hunted things he didn't want to hunt. Faced evil he wasn't always sure was evil. Became a killer when he didn't want to kill.
Maybe he'd felt it, sitting in a lecture hall with people he would never fit in with, in a world he didn't belong to. Normal kids, who didn't know about the darkness in the world. Who didn't have it in them.
Maybe he'd felt it, lying in bed with Jess curled against his body, his arms wrapped around her as he desperately bathed in her light and love and goodness.
Maybe it had always been there.
His fingers curled against the tile and it creaked and strained beneath his nails. Sam pulled away suddenly, both terrified and thrilled at the micro-fissures running across the smooth surface. The boy turned away from the tiles. They were old and already crumbling, like the rest of the motel. Grabbing the soap, he focused on scrubbing the dirt and past from his skin and forced himself to stop thinking. To stop looking.
Because whether or not it had been there before, something was there now. Just beneath the surface.
Sam had always been fit. But now….now he could feel the strength, just beneath the surface, pulsing with the flow of his blood. It called to him as much as it scared him, and he couldn't help but question which side of that war was going to win.
-o-o-o-
Layla Rourke caught them on their way out of the motel, and Dean looked between her and his brother, confused. This had happened last time, he remembered, but they'd spent far fewer time with her this go around. His heart ached at the idea of having another conversation of faith with the dying woman, especially knowing God as he did now, and where belief got you in this world.
"Hey," she greeted them softly, looking more uncertain than Dean ever remembered seeing her. She smiled at them, but with a tremor of something in the expression that he didn't know what to do with. Layla was hardly afraid of them, but there was fear in the way she played with her hands and couldn't quite settle her eyes anywhere. "Sam called me. I hope that's alright."
"Of course," Dean answered, setting the last bag he was carrying onto the trunk of the Impala. Sam offered her a quick hug in greeting. She looked like she needed the physical reassurance.
"I suppose this is goodbye…" Layla pulled away from Sam after a moment, glancing between the two of them hesitantly. "Mom and I went to the doctor. She- I….I haven't run like I did back there in….in years."
Dean glanced at Sam, confusion sparking in his green eyes. His brother just looked regretful, but there was a vein of strength – relief – in the line of his shoulders.
"The tumor is…it's gone."
The older of the two stared at her, slack-jawed. She gave him a weak smile but turned to Sam, the expression becoming far more brittle. "That man-"
"Don't, Layla," the taller man answered softly. He offered a grim smile of his own. "You're better off not knowing. I'm just glad you're okay."
She stared up at him, tears in her eyes but her nod was firm. "And Sue Ann? Did you hear what happened to… R-Roy can't…Oh God, poor Roy."
Dean took an aborted step forward, then stopped, and finally followed through to wrap the shaking woman in a gentle hug. "He'll be alright, Layla. Roy's a good man. He- he didn't deserve what happened."
Sam was staring at him, brow furled. Dean shook his head minutely. Later.
Her arms came up around his back as she leaned into his supportive weight. She hardly knew this man, either of these men, and yet… She was sure that they had somehow saved her life, in ways that Roy never could have.
-o-o-o-
Sam sat in the Impala, staring out the windshield as Layla and Dean talked quietly a few feet away. She had asked for a moment alone with the older Winchester, so Sam gave her a farewell hug and ducked inside the car to give them some semblance of privacy.
Keeping half an eye on his brother, Sam pulled a small notebook out the bag stuffed in the footwell of the Impala and dug around for a pen. Dean glanced to him a couple times as he mumbled replies to Layla's questions on faith, and what happened now.
Sam may be healed, however miraculously (or otherwise), but that only seemed to triple Dean's protective, paranoid mother-henning. Being fixed up by a demon free of charge in exchange for chugging blood probably warranted some of that concern.
Knowing Dean wouldn't leave him unattended for long, the young hunter uncapped the pen, flipped to a random page, and quickly jotted down a note so he wouldn't forget to follow up on his suspicions.
Castiel = Angel
Angels = Good?
He shoved the notebook back in his bag without further detail as Dean hugged Layla goodbye and headed for the driver side door.
-o-o-o-
As Dean climbed into the Impala, he held out his phone to his brother. There was an article pulled up on the web app for a local newspaper in Utah. Six people all in the same small town had slipped into comas over the last month. Doctors were baffled. The author noted that the CDC had been notified and an investigation could be the next logical step.
Sam raised an eyebrow. Dean had clearly been busy with more than just the car while he was in the shower.
"Could be a baku," Dean offered with a shrug as he pulled the car onto the interstate, headed west. Every nerve ending in his body twitched to take Sam straight to the panic room, but almost twenty-four hours later and he wasn't showing any signs of withdrawal. "Might be the one dad's after."
The younger Winchester studied the phone with a grim face. "Then let's go get it."
Dean revved the engine and they merged onto the highway taking them west.
-o-o-o-
They'd just crossed the Colorado border when Dean cleared his throat. "I need you to promise me you won't do that again."
Sam stared at him, confusion waring with irritation. "Dean, he would have killed Layla. I told you, it wasn't a choice."
"No, not that," Dean supplied quickly. Although, yeah, now that they were on that topic, a discussion of 'no demon deals, ever, period' followed immediately after by 'no more demon blood, exclamation mark' was going to have to happen soon too. "Don't push again, alright?"
His younger brother furled his brow at him.
"Your powers – these visions. They're…God, Sam, you can't- we can't…." He made a frustrated noise at his ever-awesome powers of speech. "Just promise me you won't try that again."
Sam swallowed thickly through the sudden lump in his throat. He turned his gaze to the asphalt sliding by beneath them in a race of yellow lines and white stripes. Yeah, that hadn't been his best move. Although, to be fair, he had no idea it would be so damaging.
Honestly, he'd thought, worst case, nothing would happen.
Twenty-four hours ago, sickly and convinced he'd be dead within the month, he would have agreed in a heartbeat. And not because he wasn't going to live long enough to ever try that trick again, but because Dean was right. Even if he couldn't articulate it, Sam's powers were clearly dangerous.
At least, they had been. Because now….
Sam looked down at his hand, flexing his fingers.
Now, he knew that if he tried again, he would be successful. He knew, somehow, just beneath the surface, that he had the power to do it again and succeed this time. The only thing holding him back was fear of where that power came from, flowing in tune with his own blood. And how his brother would look at him if he tried.
"Sammy, I'm serious."
"Okay," he answered softly, releasing the tension in his hand. "No pushing. I promise."
He was pretty sure it wouldn't require much pushing anyhow. Not anymore.
-o-o-o-
A few miles down the road, Sam shifted in his seat. "Sam."
Dean arched a brow at him. "Uh…Dean. Now that introductions are out of the way…"
The younger Winchester rolled his eyes. "It's Sam, not Sammy."
There was a beat of silence.
"Oh, no. No, no, nope." Dean popped the final letter with far too much enjoyment. Brown eyes met green, and his big brother was grinning like an idiot. "You said Sammy was fine."
"I was dying, Dean."
"You still said it."
Sam shook his head and his brother kept grinning like an idiot. He supposed Sammy wasn't the end of the world.
-o-o-o-
They tried calling John again. The search for the coma patients in Fort Duchesne was slow. There wasn't a lot of information accessible by internet alone. They'd need to get there and start asking questions themselves.
Neither man was surprised when their call went to voicemail.
They were a little more surprised when the phone started ringing before Sam had even set it down. He shot his brother a look as he pressed the device to his ear.
"Dad?"
"Not exactly." Dean could hear Bobby's gruff voice down the line and tried not to let the tension leaking off him form into disappointment that it wasn't John calling them back. "How quick can you boys get here?"
Sam frowned over at his brother, receiving the same look in return. He switched the phone to speaker mode. "A couple hours. We just hit Colorado on the seventy-six, heading for Utah."
"Well, you better turn around." The rough voice had a tinge of regret running through it. But more than that, there was worry in his voice.
"What's going on, Bobby?" Dean glanced at the phone in his brother's hand before refocusing on the road. He flipped Baby's blinker on, pulling off on the first exit they came to with an on ramp in the opposite direction.
"It's your daddy." Sam's gaze locked on Dean's. "He's here and…he ain't waking up."