A/Ns: Oh man, guys, I am suuuper tired right now and just barely eeked out an edit on this chapter, so I don't think a lot of chatter is going to happen. Let the chapter speak for itself, and enjoy!

Chapter Warnings: Sam's at a party (and he may not be crying, but he could if he wanted to!) Andy's being his wonderful Andy-self despite a less than wonderful situation, Daggett's playing with his toys, Ava's being a villain, and Sam's the damsel in distress (as Dean would say, he's got the hair for it)

Actual Chapter Warnings: Tertiary character death, description of corpses, Ava being a villain, Sam being a distressed damsel, and Andy being his wonderful Andy-self.

Oh, and a no good, dirty rotten cliffhanger. #SorryNotSorry!

(Let's be honest, you all have been through worse at this point)

-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)

Season 2: Chapter 95

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Sam woke to darkness, or very near to it, and blasting music. Wherever he was, the only light in the room was coming from a cell phone, lying face down on the table in front of him, flashlight on and pointed toward the ceiling. Music, on the other hand, was coming from a record player somewhere in the darkness, and it was turned to max volume. A scratchy vinyl of 'It's My Party' was playing (on repeat, he soon discovered), and the pounding in Sam's head started to match the beat.

Great.

Ignoring the headache playing bongos with his temples, Sam tried to figure out where he was. The diffused light was enough to eliminate the others seated around the table, and Sam instantly wished it hadn't been. To his right were two corpses, their skin dried out and partially mummified, while other parts, like their eyes, had clearly been preserved. They had party hats – those ridiculous cone-shaped ones with string straps – atop their heads. Their faces were stretched into ghastly expressions – wide eyes and wider smiles – that were probably intended to mimic happiness but, in reality, were horrifically unsettling. The entire thing was unsettling.

To his left was another body, though this corpse had partially fallen forward onto the table, so Sam (thankfully) couldn't see much of that one.

'Taxidermy,' Sam thought, recalling the manual he'd found upstairs. Freeman Daggett had been an amateur taxidermist. His animal of choice was, apparently, humans.

The younger Winchester stared at the body closest to him on the right. His hand was propped up on the table, cup attached to long-dead fingers, probably with glue. But next to his arm, lying on the table, was a Dick Tracy style fedora and that's what had captured Sam's attention. His eyes shifted to the clothing, dusty and now-decades old, that the corpse was wearing. It was the same loose suit he'd seen on the Death Echo – the one that had been shot multiple times.

'Oh, gross,' Sam thought with a grimace, turning away from the taxidermied corpse as his rapid-fire brain put two and two together. Daggett had been a hospital janitor; he was someone with access to dead bodies, an interest in taxidermy, and living a lonely Cold War life of paranoia. The table was set for a party, the record player had Lesley Gore on repeat, and this house was full of Death Echoes that hadn't died here.

Daggett had thrown a birthday party and made himself some friends.

"Don't worry," a voice came from behind him, deep and gravely, and Sam fought off the shiver that chased its way down his spine. He tried to turn around, but he was tied to the chair he was seated in, and couldn't do much more than toss his head back and forth, trying to spot the ghost. "It stops hurting. So don't worry."

"Get away from me," Sam growled, rocking the chair back and forth in his efforts to loosen the ropes that bound him.

Daggett stepped into his line of sight and the hunter stiffened when he picked up a long, narrow knife from the table.

"Don't worry," Daggett repeated and Sam leaned as far away as he could manage.

"S-Sam?"

The new voice was groggy, thick with confusion as its owner came to in the middle of a nightmare. Sam straightened in surprise, head whipping forward, towards the far end of the table.

"Jake?"

He couldn't see much of the kid, since Jake's phone was on the table between them, the flashlight too bright to see past and not really illuminating its owner. But he was sure that it was Jake, probably tied up the same way he was.

Daggett started towards the other end of the table, and Sam renewed his struggles.

"Stay away from him!" he demanded, though it did him little good. The ghost crossed the length of the table and Sam could just make out Jake struggling in the chair as Daggett moved behind him with the knife. "Don't. Don't!"

"Sam, what is he-" Jake's words cut off with a gurgle of surprise, and then the awful sounds of someone choking on their own blood.

"No!" Sam fought in his chair as Jake drowned. "Jake! Jake, stay with me. Jake!"

"Don't listen," Daggett whispered as he pulled the knife free from Jake's neck, and the army kid went silent, slumping forward as much as the ropes allowed. "You'll stay with me, now. A good, long time."

"You son of a bitch," the younger Winchester seethed, even as the ghost started back his way. By the time he came back into the dim light, the knife was no longer in his hand, and Sam desperately searched for it, unsure if Daggett still had it. "Get away from me."

"This won't hurt," the ghost said as he crossed behind the hunter, out of his range of vision. Sam fought against the ropes, but there was little give even with all his struggles. "It's okay. Relax. Relax."

Sam stiffened as he felt hands as cold as ice brush his cheek and neck. Another shiver ran through him, this one feeling a lot less like the anticipation of death and more like death itself. Something thin snapped to his chin, a light weight settling on his head, and then the ghost was moving away.

He'd put a goddamn party hat on him. Sam had to breathe through the shaking. Fear and anger were mixing in heavy doses with adrenaline and leaving him sick to his stomach.

"I was so lonely," Daggett announced in the darkness and turned his head to either side, trying to identify where the ghost was. "It was my birthday, you know. I put on quite the party. But no one came."

Slowly, brown eyes shifted back to the table and the taxidermied guests. Sam swallowed hard.

"So at midnight, I locked them in and went upstairs." The ghost came into view on his left, and Sam stiffened again, unconsciously leaning away. He was way too vulnerable tied up like this. But Daggett walked past him to the corpse that had toppled forward. He pulled the mummified man upright by his shoulders. The body was rigid and creaked in a way that Sam shut his eyes against and hoped to forget forever. "And overdosed on horse tranquilizers."

His eyes snapped back open, locking on the ghost who stared down at his only friends – friends he'd had to make – with a look of hateful sorrow. Those hollow eyes slid back to the hunter and Sam found himself pressing back in his chair.

"Now I have many friends." Daggett drew closer, sliding along the table towards him, dead eyes locked on Sam the entire time. "I have you, Sam Winchester."

Sam fought against his ropes as the ghost came right up to him, then rounded behind. A heavy hand fell on his shoulder and the hunter froze, trying to calm his breathing as Daggett moved out of sight once again. He fought yet another shiver down his spine at the anticipated touch of steel to the base of his neck. It never came.

"And you are the one to get," Daggett continued, voice near his ear and causing Sam to recoil. Then the ghost's words registered, and Sam froze for entirely different reasons.

'The one to get?' Wait, he'd heard that before. He'd heard that phrasing before, specifically about Azazel's Battle Royale. 'The man to get is Sam Winchester.'

Where had he heard that before? And how the hell did the Morton House Ghost – a hunt that predated Sam by decades – know anything about it?

-o-o-o-

Andy came to lying on his stomach on the floor of a room he didn't know and couldn't remember coming to. Or the apparent bender he'd gone on that provided the raging headache and music that he was definitely imagining. That, or whoever's house he was in had a record player and 'It's My Party' was stuck on repeat in another room.

Maybe he was in hell, Andy thought, as he closed his eyes and focused on breathing. That seemed like the kind of thing demons would think up as a form of torture.

Andy also wondered what the hell he'd fallen asleep on that was digging so painfully into his side. Considering he was on the floor of a very dark, very disused kitchen, it could be anything, really. Knowing his luck and the searing pain, he'd fallen asleep on a freakin' knife.

Oh.

Andy pulled his hand away from his body and, even with splotches of white playing ping-pong with his vision, he could see the blood covering his fingers. Knife was a really unfortunate guess, apparently. Why couldn't he have thought of something soft, like a bunny? Or heck, he'd have taken something dull. Like a spoon.

'No,' Andy thought in a voice that sounded exactly like Alan Rickman as the Sheriff of Nottingham. At least in his head. "That would hurt more, you twit.'

He closed his eyes and focused on breathing. What had happened? How did he get himself stabbed? (Again). Or maybe shot? It didn't feel like a bullet hole, though. More like a knife wound. He'd had both before, so he could tell. And wasn't that a depressing (and, okay, also kinda badass) thought?

But if he'd been stabbed (again), why did his head hurt so badly?

With a groan, Andy gathered his knees beneath him. His side didn't hurt as much as he was initially terrified it would. Oh, it still hurt, that was for sure. It was all shooty and stabby, with fiery nerve endings that Andy absolutely wished he could not currently feel. But he'd also had way, way worse. Hell, given the completely reasonable amount of blood coating the hand pressed to his side, he wasn't even bleeding out.

That was nothing. Just another regular old Tuesday (or whatever day it actually was.)

As Andy managed to straighten up on his knees, only groaning a little, he saw a smattering of red on the edge of the kitchen counter in front of him. Out of instinct more than sequential, logic-based decision-making, Andy raised his free hand to his head. There was one heck of a lump there and his hair was matted with blood.

That was probably why his head was killing him.

Speaking of, the music was gone now. Andy blinked, realizing the silence was kind of echoey inside his pounding skull. But it wasn't complete silence. If he strained – which, ow with a headache – he could still hear the song, really faintly.

With a curious little frown, hand still pressed to his bleeding side (again, totally nothing. What honorary Winchester hadn't been stabbed once or twice? It was most definitely a Tuesday), Andy bent back down to the floor. It pulled a bit at his torn muscle and flesh, and he kind of regretted prioritizing what was still most likely an auditory hallucination, but he pressed his ear to the dirty, ancient linoleum anyway.

"It's my party and I'll cry if I want to. Cry if I want to. Cry if I want to."

Man, for an illusion, it was a real crooning one. He could even hear the scratch on the record that caused a skip for every turn of the vinyl.

'What the hell?' Andy thought as he straightened back up on his knees again, groaning because there was no one around to tell him to stop being such a baby.

In other words, Dean. Dean wasn't around to tell him to suck it up. Oh, right. Because he and Sam had been kidnapped by a yellow-eyed demon that wasn't supposed to be walking around Earth, available for kidnappings.

But there they were. In a haunted house. With… with two other kids. There were two other kids here, too! Andy couldn't really remember their names or faces at the moment. Just blurry, half-formed recall. A jittery woman Sam had known and an army guy.

He'd been with Ava (Oh! Her name is Ava. Would you look at that. Thank you, brain) while Sam had been… Sam had been upstairs, searching for Jake. And Andy had wanted to help, so he'd told Ava they could search the first floor together.

And that was the last thing he remembered.

It took a moment to get one foot under him, then push off without toppling enough to get the other leg to join, but then he was standing. The room wasn't spinning, which was a great sign. Just… throbbing. Yeah, that was a good description of the way Andy could feel blood pounding behind his eyes, vision kind of pulsing along with it.

He hoped Ava was okay. Although, given that Jake was missing, Sam had been upstairs, and ghosts didn't carry knives… he also kind of hoped Ava hadn't – literally – stabbed him in the back. She'd seemed so nice.

"…If you wake up somewhere you don't know surrounded by other kids like you, you do whatever it takes to get out of there, you hear me? You defend yourself, no matter what that means, and then you run."

Dean's voice flashed through his head, grave and serious, for the second time since the older Winchester had given him that speech. What felt like a lifetime ago, actually.

This was another Battle Royale and just like Dean had told him – just like Sam had known all along – they were going to have to fight each other to survive. Azazel would see to that. Maybe that yellow-eyed bastard had been telling that to Ava, too. Maybe she'd believed him.

He really had to stop turning his back on psychic kids. You'd think he'd have learned after that asshole, Jonathon.

Andy closed his eyes, focusing both his thoughts and breathing on the problem at hand. He began a visual search of the floor around him for the iron rod he'd had when he entered the kitchen. It was dark and there were scraps of furniture upturned, paper clippings and old trash, odds and ends kind of everywhere, so it took a couple moments for Andy to spot it. Luckily, Ava – if it had been Ava – hadn't bothered taking it with her.

If she had a knife, he supposed, she didn't need a make-shift iron club.

Andy groaned as he managed to squat down, keeping his spine as straight as possible. The wound was at his waist, a little more towards his back than his front, and Andy supposed Ava really had tried to stab him in the back. Well, she'd missed (thankfully, or he probably wouldn't be alive, let alone doing squats). He must have turned into the blade without realizing she'd had one in her hand. Just responded to her coming up behind him.

He hissed as he scooped up the rod and made it back fully upright. Next step was to find Sam. He could send out a system-wide message again, but that meant Ava would get it too. If she was the backstabber (again, literally), then the last thing Andy wanted to do was alert her to his very-much-still-aliveness.

But he didn't exactly have the energy or time to search for Sam. He may not be at Rivergrove or Cold Oak levels of dying, but he had been stabbed. Plus, he didn't know where Ava was in the house. He really didn't want to run into her again while searching for Sam. She'd have the upper hand in a fight, given that she could be armed with a knife and he had been, again, stabbed.

Andy leaned some of his weight against the kitchen counter. First thing first: get the wound to stop bleeding. He still had Bobby's scarf hanging off his neck, but the knitted material probably wasn't the best idea for an open wound. It wouldn't be much of a tourniquet, either. So, carefully, Andy stripped out of both the scarf and Bobby's heavy jacket, which now had what was most definitely a knife slice in its side, not a bullet hole.

He winced. Bobby would understand, of course, but Andy still felt bad. He hadn't even asked if it was okay to borrow it. He hadn't planned on being gone long.

A litany of curse words hissed through his brain as he tied the coat around his waist, looped the arms, and pulled as hard as he could. He quickly added another loop, knotting the fabric just beneath his navel as fast as he could before he lost his nerve and the tautness he'd achieved.

'Son of a bitch!' he swore, loudly, in a voice that was an absolute dead-ringer for Dean. At least in his head.

Now that that was taken care of.

Still working through the rise in pain levels, Andy decided sending a message to Sam was the smartest next move (or so he hoped). Finding and regrouping with the younger Winchester was not only his safest bet, but their best chance for escape. Especially if Sam was in danger, which he very well might be.

But not from the kitchen. If Ava had been the one to try to kill him, alerting her to the fact that he was still alive and then staying in the last place she had seen him was probably not a great idea. If she wanted another shot, she'd have to find him first.

So Andy eased off the counter and headed, quietly as possible, for the door to the kitchen. He peaked around the frame; the dining room and foyer beyond that were both empty. He didn't know where anyone was, but the music he'd heard was most definitely new. So, for better or worse, he was heading towards it. It had been coming up from the kitchen floor, so that meant the basement. Not his first choice, by far, but it probably wasn't Ava's either, which meant the basement could actually be the safest place in this haunted house.

Said no one in the history of ever.

Andy crossed the dining room carefully, prioritizing silence over speed (and there was that whole, you know, being stabbed thing to consider). When he made it to the foyer, he glanced down the hall and up the stairs, but neither direction yielded Ava or Sam. So Andy crept down the hall towards the basement door and opened it as quietly as he could. It creaked and he winced at the noise, halting his movement. There was no other sound in the house as he stood there. Andy hoped that meant no one had heard (and not that someone was just better at stealth than him).

Slipping inside, he started down the stairs slowly, ever aware of his burning side, and prepared his mental image as he went. If Ava was a traitorous turncoat, he should warn Sam. But he didn't actually know if she was; he had no real memory of the attack. And if she was with Sam when they both got the message… she might attack him before he could react.

Okay, simple message then. What was a single image that could quickly and easily convey: 'Hey guys. Woke up in the kitchen by my lonesome. Been stabbed. I'm a champ tho, think I'll pull through. Thumbs up emoji. Where you at?'

It took a minute to think of the best option, but once he was satisfied, Andy sent it into the ether with a confident nod and all his concentration focused on Sam Winchester.

-o-o-o-

When the bright red question mark flashed across the underside of his eyelids, Sam didn't immediately give it much thought. He was, after all, busy trying to escape his bindings as a madman of a ghost walked towards him, holding the same knife he'd used to kill Jake Tully just minutes earlier.

The second time it hit him, flashing several times on a black background, Sam had his eyes open and the interruption was much more noticeably not his own brain supplying random thoughts in panic. Also, the question mark was clearly a spray-painted one, dripping red down the black background not unlike blood. Had the very existence of the psychic image not been proof Andy was still alive, Sam's own blood would have run cold at that.

"Andy?" the younger Winchester said aloud, more out of surprise than on purpose.

The fresh blood that was on Ava's knife upstairs had been on his mind despite his own dire situation. With Jake missing and the woman actively confronting Sam, there had been only one other person that blood could have come from. Sam had been trying his best not to worry – he had enough to deal with saving himself – but he couldn't deny his genuine fear that Andy had already been dead.

"Andy!" the younger Winchester bellowed, turning his head side-to-side and repeating the call as loud as he could.

"Shh, quiet now," Daggett whispered, rounding behind the restrained hunter. That hand landed on his shoulder once more, and Sam fought against it in earnest. "Don't struggle. This won't hurt for long."

He stiffened at the touch of a sharp point to the back of his neck. In the same moment, there was a distant crash – a big one, like a large piece of furniture being knocked over – and then the room, which had been sealed for forty plus years, was flooded with fresh (well, fresher) air.

"Sam!"

The mental cry pinging through his skull was loud enough that Sam physically flinched, but his relief far outweighed the pain. Andy swung at the towering (and terrifying, good god!) ghost standing behind his surrogate brother, the iron rod still tightly clenched in his hand. Daggett disappeared with a flicker and a garbled yell, the blade clattering to the ground where he'd been standing. Andy tucked his makeshift ghost club into his elbow and squatted – as gently as possible, despite being in quite the hurry – to pick up the knife. He immediately put it to use, hacking at the ropes wrapped around Sam.

"Andy," Sam breathed out in pure relief, still panting from the close call. The ropes loosened as Andy cut through them and the hunter stood quickly, physically and mentally shaking them – and the entire experience – off. He looked at his friend with equal parts relief and thanks. "Nice timing."

The kid grinned winningly, raising both hands, fingers curling into two thumbs up. Which was when Sam noticed the layer of dark red, shining and wet in the dim light, coating the inside of one of them. His eyes dropped in an immediate once-over, quickly latching onto the red puddle on his right side, along with Bobby's jacket tied around his waist – too high and too tight to be remotely comfortable.

"You're hurt!" the younger Winchester exclaimed, reaching out for Andy's side, but the kid shook his head and pulled back a step. Instead of pushing, Sam turned around and leaned across the length of the table, careful to avoid the other 'guests' as he snagged Jake's phone. He trained the flashlight on his little brother's bloody side.

Andy didn't try to stop him from prying, but didn't relent, either. They had bigger things to worry about than stab wounds. He raised his hands to sign – the right one stained completely red from pads-to-palm, which Sam desperately tried not to think about – and asked, "Is Ava the bad guy?"

Well, actually he signed, 'Is Ava Stabby McStab Stab?' He had to finger-spell out the ridiculous title since there was no sign that matched Andy's unique sense of morbid humor. Sam kind of wanted to hug him and head-slap him in the same go.

"Yeah," Sam said, voice as downhearted as his expression. His chin dipped, eyes on the floor but also far away. "I- I think she's been here the whole time. Killing… killing the other kids Azazel put here with her."

Andy looked devastated to hear it, but quickly compartmentalized, pushing it to the back of his mind and giving a firm nod. No doubt shoving aside his own memories of lives lost in a battle royale.

"I think she has a knife," Andy signed, gesturing with one hand to his bloody side.

"She does," Sam confirmed, remembering the blood-soaked blade (coated in Andy's blood, because she'd tried to kill him before coming upstairs to confront Sam). The knife Sam had given her for protection. Clearly, she'd been using it for far more than that. The younger Winchester instantly felt another flash of guilt. And anger. A lot of anger. "I never should have left you alone with her."

Not that he'd known – how could he? The last time he'd seen her, she'd been… well, adorable, frankly. A chaotic ditz of a charming human being, who'd driven through the night to save some random stranger from getting blown up.

What had happened to her?

Sam cursed himself for not questioning any of her story sooner. He should have known something was up with the time loss. She'd been missing for three months, but she was the only one who had missing time. Only… it wasn't actually missing, was it? She'd been stuck here the whole time, killing other psychic kids. For months. Sam felt another flash of guilt. He should have found her sooner. Should have saved her from this.

They'd tried. He and Dean had really tried. They'd been looking. Cold oak was the first place they'd gone, and if they'd known where to try next, they would have.

Hell, he and Dean almost had found her. They'd only been hours away.

And months too late.

Sam closed his eyes. As much as it pained him to see what Azazel had done to Ava, what he'd successfully turned her into, he couldn't let it get to him right now. It wasn't his fault; it was Azazel's. Maybe he could still get through to her. Except the loss of her fiancé was what had finally flipped the switch. Finally broke her beyond what she could hide behind a façade of innocence and fear. She'd probably been doing what she had to to survive. To get back to her life and to Brady.

As much as Sam wanted to say he'd never turn like that, never kill innocent kids for his own survival, he couldn't actually say it with surety. Because just like Dean, Sam didn't know what he would do to get his brother back if something were to happen to him. Or Andy or Bobby. And before… before he'd been dragged back into the hunting life by Azazel, there was nothing he wouldn't have done to get back to Jess.

Sam opened his eyes at a touch to his arm, finding Andy right in front of him with a sympathetic, understanding smile. The kid gave his bicep a squeeze with a blood-covered hand (and Sam could not help but momentarily be levels of big-brother-annoyed, sure that Andy had chosen that hand on purpose) and a weak, but one hundred percent Andy smile.

"Let's get out of here before she finds us," Andy signed after releasing Sam's arm. (And yes, there was a bloody handprint on his jacket, and yes, Andy absolutely had a twinkle of mischief in his eyes and a smug little smirk in the corner of his mouth).

The kid twisted the knife he was holding around, offering the hilt to Sam. He'd be better with it to begin with, adding leaps and bounds to that when factoring in a stab wound. Then Andy grabbed his iron rod from where he'd tucked it in his armpit and turned for the door.

Sam took Freeman Daggett's knife, coated in Jake's blood (and who knew how many others), but didn't immediately follow. He was staring at the blade, trying to think.

There was no way Daggett's ghost could have known what Azazel told the other psychic children. That Sam Winchester was the one to get. Not unless one of them had told him.

"It's not a leap year," Sam suddenly said, belatedly realizing that as the sluggish gears in his head got really turning. Daggett shouldn't be active; the Morton House was famously a dead haunt every other day of every other year. Enough activity to keep trespassers and the curious away, but the disappearances and deaths only happened at midnight on February 29th.

Daggett shouldn't even be awake right now, let alone kidnapping psychic children or knowing a demon's end game.

This wasn't just bad timing, with the ghost showing up when it did. It couldn't be. Nothing about that added up.

Sam remembered the headache Ava had complained about, the way she'd been clutching her head when he'd found them after Jake's disappearance. The way she'd gripped her head again upstairs, right after Sam's gut had warned him he was in imminent danger.

Daggett hadn't just shown up; he'd been summoned. Summoned and told who to go after.

Ava could control ghosts.

Andy was already heading through the doorway he'd burst through, having to watch his step amongst a mess of papers and books scattered across the floor. Sam followed quickly, mind still reeling and dread pooling in his gut. He needed to tell Andy what Ava could do. And then they both needed to find a way out before she did it again.

The source of the crash he'd heard before Andy rescued him became apparent as he followed Andy's path over a toppled bookshelf, the contents of which they were now scrambling atop. It must have been hiding the entrance to Daggett's bomb shelter.

"What are you doing down here?"

The voice – cold, hard, and most definitely female – snapped Sam back to attention. He almost ran into Andy's back, the kid having frozen as he spotted the figure barely silhouetted in the darkness. Ava stood at the bottom of the basement stairs, staring at them. Sam raised Jake's phone, illuminating her. Hazel eyes that used to be so innocent were now deadened, locked on Andy.

The bloodied knife glinted in the new light, clasped tightly in her fist, and Sam moved in front of Andy, pushing his injured little brother behind him.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

A/Ns: I don't have a lot of end chatter, either, other than to take a no good, dirty rotten bow and head to bed! Hope you all enjoyed the chapter. I know the tension is ratcheting up but it's not going to get better anytime soon, I'm afraid. Season Finale's are not for the faint of heart. Stay strong, I believe in us!

Cheers,

Silence