Part Four: You Only Feel It When It’s Lost
Toledo, Ohio is a real place in this universe, but there’s no trace of the families Sam and Dean interviewed, no record of any strange deaths, no urban myths involving “Bloody Mary” and murderous mirrors.
“Hey,” Dean says when they’ve finished their investigation and checked into a motel with a 12-pack of beer and a couple of pizzas. “You never told me what your guilty secret was.”
“Yes, I did,” Sam insists. “I’m sure I did.”
“Nope, although I got a pretty good idea.”
Sam’s eyes narrow. “Oh yeah? What?”
“You had the hots for your brother,” Dean guesses wildly. “And you never told Jessica.”
Sam huffs out a laugh. “You’re so sick.”
He shakes his head, looking down at his beer, picking at the label, and Dean gets the distinct impression he hit the nail on the head.
Huh. He always assumed Sam’s guilty secret had to do with not telling Jessica the truth about his dreams, his premonitions of her death. Maybe he could’ve saved her, if he’d told her.
“I probably should’ve left her,” Sam says quietly. “She deserved better than being close enough to me to get herself killed.”
“Not to mention your heart belonged to someone else,” Dean reminds him. He can’t help it. He needs to hear Sam admit it. Again. “You were cheating, at least emotionally. She deserved to know.”
Sam raises his eyes, stares at Dean with such intensity Dean almost backs down.
“That’s exactly what he said,” Sam says. “How did you know?”
Dean shrugs, fighting down the way his heart pounds and his palms sweat.
“I’m him, remember?” he says, taking a sip of his beer. “I know how he thinks.”
He wraps his lips around the bottle, tips his head back to expose his neck as he swallows.
When he lowers the beer, Sam’s still staring, cheeks and nose flushed bright red.
Gotcha.
//**//**//
St. Louis is another bust, of course. There are stories about werewolves, vampires, even shapeshifters, just as there are all over the South, but that’s all they are. Stories. No sign of the shapeshifter who once took Dean’s form so it could torture and kill people.
“Well, on the upside, I’m no longer wanted,” Dean suggests after Sam hacks the police database and confirms that, according to local and national criminal records, Dean Winchester no longer exists, if he ever did.
“Yeah,” Sam agrees. “Except in our memories. I gotta say, I wish I could forget the moment you shot yourself to death, but whatever.”
“Looked pretty cool, didn’t it?”
When Sam rolls his eyes, Dean chuckles.
“Hey, remember that time when we were kids and went on that riverboat cruise up the Mississippi and you threw up the whole time?” Dean can’t help himself. The longer they do this, the more memories of their childhoods come to mind.
Sam frowns. “No, I didn’t.”
“Oh yeah, you totally did,” Dean insists. “Threw up all over me, the deck, the side of the boat. I never saw somebody get so seasick on a riverboat. Never knew you had motion sickness before that.”
“I don’t have motion sickness,” Sam insists. “You drive like a lunatic and I’ve never once gotten sick in the car.”
“Of course not,” Dean says. “Baby keeps us safe, She’s our home.”
“Yeah, she is,” Sam agrees softly, laying his hand lovingly on the car’s dash. “Hey, do you ever wonder if...”
Dean puts up a finger. “Do not finish that sentence,” he says sternly. “This car is our baby. Yours and mine. The car we grew up in.”
“Yeah, but if you and I are from different universes...”
“Sam, I’m telling you. This is our car. Don’t you think I’d know if there was anything different about her?” Dean’s mortified at the mere thought, but absolutely confident. “The door squeaks the same way it always has, the brake pedal catches once in a while, same as usual, the transmission’s a little sloppy, just like always.”
Dean knows Sam expects him to be deeply offended at the very notion that Baby might not be his Baby, and he is. He revs the engine for good measure, speeds a little faster down the dark road.
He can feel Sam smiling beside him. “You held my hair,” he says. “So I didn’t get barf in it.”
Dean’s immediately back in that other memory, helping Sam throw up into the bucket a crew member brought them.
“Must’ve been all those crawdads you ate,” Dean says, smiling despite himself. “You loved those things.”
Sam shakes his head. “Not after that,” he says. “Never again.”
It’s a good day.
//**//**//
Following the path of that first year of hunts, when their overall mission was to find their father, dredges up memories and feelings Dean has almost forgotten. So much has happened since then. It was a simpler time.
“It wasn’t really about revenge for Jessica’s death,” Sam tells him on their way to Ankeny, Iowa. “Not after Toledo. You and I were together again, and that’s what really mattered.”
Dean snorts. “You kept saying you were going back to college,” he reminds Sam. “After we found Dad, whether or not we found the demon. You told me things couldn’t go back to the way they were before.”
“Yeah, they couldn’t,” Sam agrees. “No way was I going back to playing third wheel to you and Dad. That was never gonna happen.” He shakes his head. “I was so naive. I still thought I could get out, you know? Like, after we got the demon or whatever. But I wanted you to come with me. I wanted to have a normal life, with you.”
Dean snorts again. “Sure. Fucking your brother is so normal.”
Sam turns his head, and Dean can feel the death glare he’s aiming at him.
“You’re such an asshole sometimes,” Sam breathes finally.
“And you’re a little bitch,” Dean returns easily. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
//**//**//
In Ankeny, Iowa there’s not even a hint of a hookman legend. No reverend’s daughter was ever involved in a series of murders and attempted murders.
Dean chuckles darkly. “Lori Sorenson. You kissed her, but she doesn’t even exist here.”
“She kissed me,” Sam reminds him. “And yes, you’re still jealous.”
“You were cheating, Sam,” Dean reminds him. “We were already a couple, and kissing Lori Sorenson constitutes cheating.”
“Oh, right,” Sam growls. “Like you and Cassie Robinson was just an innocent conversation.”
“A conversation with benefits,” Dean corrects smugly.
“Ew.” Sam makes a face, then shakes his head. “I was so mad at you for telling Cassie about the life.”
“Yeah, but if I hadn’t, she might have ended up dead,” Dean reminds him. “It was probably for the best that we split up.”
“She dumped you,” Sam reminds him.
“She got me through when you were at Stanford,” Dean confesses. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if I hadn’t had her in my life when I did. I was in pretty bad shape when we met.”
Dean can feel Sam looking at him. He can feel Sam’s sympathy.
“It wasn’t easy for me, either,” Sam confesses finally. “By the time I met Jessica, I was almost ready to give up.”
Dean glances sharply at him. “Giving up wasn’t an option,” he growls. “For either of us. Still isn’t.”
Sam shrugs. “All I’m saying is, it wasn’t easy.”
//**//**//
Oasis Plains, Oklahoma is fictional, of course. No demonic bugs, although there are plenty of abandoned housing developments, many of them only half-completed. Sam and Dean squat in a couple of them, bemoaning the lack of running water, remembering how good the showers were in their Oasis Plains.
They skip Lawrence, Kansas, where the ghost of their mother helped vanquish the poltergeist that threatened the family that lived there. Going to Lawrence feels personal, and neither of them is ready for that yet. The town might be real in this universe, but that doesn’t mean their old lives were.
On the other hand, Rockford, Illinois is too real. There’s even an old asylum there, slightly less creepy than the one they broke into all those years ago, hunting the ghost of Doc Ellicott.
“You were ready to off me, right there on the floor,” Dean points when they get to what might possibly be the room where lobotomies used to happen.
Sam sucks in a breath. “I wasn’t myself,” he snaps. “You know that.”
He flexes his jaw, doesn’t look at Dean, which is how Dean knows he still feels guilty about that night, all these years later.
Burkittsville, Indiana isn’t a real place, so they don’t need to think about that time Sam left, that time Dean dropped him off in the middle of nowhere to hitch a ride, on his way back to California, away from Dean.
“You called, just before you got tied up in that orchard,” Sam recalls. “Man, the things you said.”
“All lies, I swear,” Dean says. He doesn’t remember that call. All he remembers is how desperately he wanted Sam back by his side. He probably said whatever he could think of to get that to happen, so he’s not exactly proud of it.
Sam grins. “You said all the right things, actually. It was like you knew me so well. I had to face the fact I would never have anyone like you in my life ever again. You were it for me.”
Dean lets out a little laugh that probably sounds like a sigh of relief.
“Like I said, all lies.”
Dean feels Sam look at him, longer than necessary, before he opens his notebook to cross off the evil scarecrow case.
Ford City, Nebraska, where the faith healer’s wife used reaper magic to repair Dean’s damaged heart, isn’t real, and for that Dean’s relieved. No sense revisiting the site of his guilt over the death of the kid who died so that Dean could live. No sense in feeling guilty all over again about Layla Rourke.
“I’d do it again,” Sam tells him. “Even if I knew. I’d never let you die if I could do something to stop it.”
Dean shakes his head. They’re sitting across from each other at the Fiesta Brava Mexican Restaurant in Broken Bow, as near to Ford City as they can figure.
“We’ve done some messed up stuff over the years,” Dean muses, biting into his burrito.
“That Big 12 Motel doesn’t look a thing like I remember,” Sam says. “It’s the only motel in town, so it must be the place we stayed in, but it’s not.” He shakes his head, looks down at his salad. “It’s all so weird.”
Dean suddenly finds himself thinking about Sam’s hallucinations, his fractured hold on reality. Dean doesn’t want to think too hard about how disconcerting this entire road trip must be for Sam. Places not feeling familiar, even if they’ve got the same name on the map, Dean himself feeling familiar but not being Sam’s brother. Sam’s mental instability must be getting a real workout. Might even be a little torn and frayed by now.
Dean sets his burrito down, reaches across the table, and puts his hand on Sam’s forearm before he has time to think about it.
Sam looks up, startled.
“We’re in a completely different universe, Sammy,” Dean reminds him. “Everything’s different. It’s a little disorienting, I get that. But that’s just how it is. Stone number one, brother.”
He squeezes Sam’s arm, waits till Sam’s face relaxes before he pulls his hand back, satisfied.
Big brother reassurance for the win.
Again.
//**//**//
Cape Girardeau, Missouri is a real place, but it doesn’t look like Dean remembers, all those years ago when Cassie Robinson gave him a temporary reason to live after Sam left for Stanford. It doesn’t look like the place he returned to later, with Sam beside him again. It’s just another location on a map, empty and meaningless and without memories. Dean almost wishes they hadn’t bothered to visit.
It occurs to Dean that he wouldn’t go back to Cape Girardeau in his universe. He’d never deliberately visit Cassie again, although he wishes her well, hopes she’s okay. He’s barely given her a thought, in all these years.
He can tell how jealous it makes Sam, just remembering. He wonders if his Sam felt jealousy, thinks maybe he did, for reasons Dean thinks he understands because he felt the same way whenever Sam connected with someone other than him. Even without the sex, he and Sam want to be each other’s number one. Always.
Saginaw, Michigan is real. So is Hibbing, Minnesota, where that stupid hillbilly family almost stabbed Dean in the eye with a hot poker. Chicago, Illinois, is so real they don’t even bother to visit.
When they get to Richardson, Texas, Dean randomly remembers something Sam said when they were dealing with what they thought was the ghost of Mordecai Murdoch.
“‘Kind of makes you wonder if the things we hunted only exist because people believe in them.’”
Sam shoots him a look. “What?”
Dean tilts his head. “Yeah. That’s what you said, that night we torched old Mordecai’s house. So what do you think? In this universe where monsters don’t exist, is that because people here don’t believe in anything?”
“It was a tulpa, Dean,” Sam reminds him. “In our universe -- in our universes -- tulpas exist. They’re real.”
Dean bites his lower lip. He doesn’t like to be reminded that he and Sam are from different universes.
“So I guess that answers your question,” Dean says. “If it’s real somewhere, doesn’t matter whether people believe in it or not.”
Sam screws up his forehead. His lips tighten. Dean can feel his annoyance.
It’s comforting, in a way. Dean lives for Sam’s predictable reactions to his goofy comments. They know each other so well, in any universe.
//**//**//
Fitchburg, Wisconsin is a real place, although there’s no sign of the motel the Winchesters stayed in, nor the hospital where so many sick children almost died.
Fort Douglas, on the other hand, is completely fictional, which is more of a relief than Dean cares to admit. He doesn’t ever want to remember how he almost got six-year-old Sam killed, just because he needed a little break from babysitting. He’s happy never to think about that place again. Good for this universe, not even having a Fort Douglas in the first place.
New Paltz, New York is real, but they don’t bother to go there. Sarah isn’t there, in any universe, and her death is still painful. They definitely don’t need a reminder that she never existed here, even if she did. Even Sam is starting to doubt they’ll find anyone or anything they’ve ever known before.
“Sometimes it feels like we’re the ones who aren’t real,” Sam says one night, somewhere near Blue Earth, Minnesota. It’s raining, and the road looks extra dark outside of the headlights, puddles of yellow streaked with silvery lines of rain disappearing under the front end of the car. “You know? Like this world is a real place, and we’re just characters in a story.”
Dean clutches the steering wheel and grits his teeth. He hates it when Sam gets morose, hates it when Sam’s sense of reality starts to slide sideways. It’s happening more and more lately and Dean needs it to stop.
“Maybe we should take a break,” Dean suggests. “We could hit Vegas for a week. It’s a real place here, and I’ll bet it ain’t that different.”
Sam huffs out a disgusted breath, opens the notebook on his lap, and shines his flashlight at the open page.
“After Blue Earth, we head back to Lincoln, check in on Cortland,” he says. “Then Jefferson City. We can skip Manning, Colorado, and Salvation, Iowa since they don’t exist here. That’s everything before the car crash.”
Dean winces at the memory of the crash, even though he doesn’t remember much about it. In some ways, that first year after he and Sam reunited was the best. Their mission was simple and straightforward: find Dad, help him hunt the demon. Things didn’t start to go to Hell until Dad sold his soul for Dean, in the hospital after the crash, until the thing Dad whispered in Dean’s ear before he died.
“Okay,” he agrees easily, clearing his throat and shifting on the bench to try to ease the cramp in his leg. They’ve been on the road for eight hours today. They really need a break. “But next motel we pass, we’re calling it a night.”
Sam’s flashlight flicks off and he stares straight ahead, out the windshield, but Dean catches his slight nod of agreement.
//**//**//
Nothing in Blue Earth looks like it did when they were kids.
Back then, Pastor Jim took them in whenever John needed a place to leave them, as he did after the failed hunt with the shtriga. Dean has mixed feelings about the town, simply because he never liked being left behind while Dad went off to hunt something. But Pastor Jim had been a good friend. He and Sam had had a real rapport, which Dean always attributed to Sam’s weirdo religious faith.
“You think there’s a God in this universe?” he asks as they pull out of town, headed south, back to the Lincoln area. They swing through Cortland about once a month, just to see if anything’s changed.
Sam shrugs. “Maybe. Doesn’t matter.”
“Really? You don’t care anymore?” Dean frowns skeptically. “I remember how much it used to mean to you, thinking there was a higher power out there somewhere.”
Sam shakes his head. “Yeah, but now we know better, don’t we? God’s a douche, just like the angels.”
“You’re not wrong there,” Dean mutters.
He feels Sam looking at him, but when he glances over, Sam’s staring straight ahead out the windshield.
“Chuck Shurley doesn’t exist here,” Sam says after a moment. “So neither do we.”
“No God, no Winchesters,” Dean agrees. “Sounds about right.”
Sam huffs out a breath. “In our world, we’re main characters. But here, we’re just side characters in a story with no author.”
Dean thinks about that for a moment. “No story in the first place,” he says. “No angels setting us up as pawns in their stupid little games. No demons manipulating us for their own evil ends. Sounds like freedom to me.”
Sam bites his fingernails and Dean resists the urge to reach over and stop him.
“It’s kinda comforting,” Dean suggests. “No apocalypse. No world to save. No horrible disaster to stop.”
“I guess,” Sam agrees reluctantly. “Unless you count the pandemic.”
Dean shakes his head firmly. “Definitely not our fault.”
But of course, he feels a twinge of guilt anyway.
//**//**//
Next, Sam makes a list of places with possible supernatural activity, insists they visit each one. There’s the Winchester Mystery House in Northern California, which makes both of them roll their eyes. There are various abandoned mental hospitals all over the country, all with histories and stories of the horrors committed there long ago, the possibility of vengeful spirits as a result. They check out stories of hauntings in old jails, old houses, old cemeteries. They visit the Mothman statue in West Virginia.
Nothing checks out. The stories are all just that: stories.
Then Sam’s list gets personal.
They visit the site of Rufus’s cabin in Whitefish, Montana, the field near Pontiac, Illinois where Dean’s body was buried for four months while he was in Hell, even their old family home in Lawrence, Kansas. None of those places look even vaguely familiar. Nobody living there remembers them.
They stand across the street from the address of their old family home in Lawrence, staring at the duplex that’s been on the site since before they were born. Dean resists the now-ever-present desire to put a hand on Sam’s shoulder, just for comfort. They’re both grieving the loss of their home, their friends, their family, their old lives. It shouldn’t feel so awkward just to touch each other once in a while.
“Do you think our parents existed in this universe?”
Sam shrugs. “At the rate we’re going, probably not. But we can visit the graveyard in Greenville if you want, just to see if the grave is there.”
Dean’s almost forgotten about their mother’s grave, where they buried their father’s dog tags all those years ago.
“You think there’s a version of us in this universe?”
Sam shakes his head. “Probably not. No Mom and Dad, so no us. I just wish I understood how we got here, to this specific universe. It feels so random.”
As does the fact that they each came from a slightly different universe, two universes that were almost identical in every way, except one. Dean doesn’t want to think about that, but it’s not easy.
PART FIVE
“Hey,” Dean says when they’ve finished their investigation and checked into a motel with a 12-pack of beer and a couple of pizzas. “You never told me what your guilty secret was.”
“Yes, I did,” Sam insists. “I’m sure I did.”
“Nope, although I got a pretty good idea.”
Sam’s eyes narrow. “Oh yeah? What?”
“You had the hots for your brother,” Dean guesses wildly. “And you never told Jessica.”
Sam huffs out a laugh. “You’re so sick.”
He shakes his head, looking down at his beer, picking at the label, and Dean gets the distinct impression he hit the nail on the head.
Huh. He always assumed Sam’s guilty secret had to do with not telling Jessica the truth about his dreams, his premonitions of her death. Maybe he could’ve saved her, if he’d told her.
“I probably should’ve left her,” Sam says quietly. “She deserved better than being close enough to me to get herself killed.”
“Not to mention your heart belonged to someone else,” Dean reminds him. He can’t help it. He needs to hear Sam admit it. Again. “You were cheating, at least emotionally. She deserved to know.”
Sam raises his eyes, stares at Dean with such intensity Dean almost backs down.
“That’s exactly what he said,” Sam says. “How did you know?”
Dean shrugs, fighting down the way his heart pounds and his palms sweat.
“I’m him, remember?” he says, taking a sip of his beer. “I know how he thinks.”
He wraps his lips around the bottle, tips his head back to expose his neck as he swallows.
When he lowers the beer, Sam’s still staring, cheeks and nose flushed bright red.
Gotcha.
//**//**//
St. Louis is another bust, of course. There are stories about werewolves, vampires, even shapeshifters, just as there are all over the South, but that’s all they are. Stories. No sign of the shapeshifter who once took Dean’s form so it could torture and kill people.
“Well, on the upside, I’m no longer wanted,” Dean suggests after Sam hacks the police database and confirms that, according to local and national criminal records, Dean Winchester no longer exists, if he ever did.
“Yeah,” Sam agrees. “Except in our memories. I gotta say, I wish I could forget the moment you shot yourself to death, but whatever.”
“Looked pretty cool, didn’t it?”
When Sam rolls his eyes, Dean chuckles.
“Hey, remember that time when we were kids and went on that riverboat cruise up the Mississippi and you threw up the whole time?” Dean can’t help himself. The longer they do this, the more memories of their childhoods come to mind.
Sam frowns. “No, I didn’t.”
“Oh yeah, you totally did,” Dean insists. “Threw up all over me, the deck, the side of the boat. I never saw somebody get so seasick on a riverboat. Never knew you had motion sickness before that.”
“I don’t have motion sickness,” Sam insists. “You drive like a lunatic and I’ve never once gotten sick in the car.”
“Of course not,” Dean says. “Baby keeps us safe, She’s our home.”
“Yeah, she is,” Sam agrees softly, laying his hand lovingly on the car’s dash. “Hey, do you ever wonder if...”
Dean puts up a finger. “Do not finish that sentence,” he says sternly. “This car is our baby. Yours and mine. The car we grew up in.”
“Yeah, but if you and I are from different universes...”
“Sam, I’m telling you. This is our car. Don’t you think I’d know if there was anything different about her?” Dean’s mortified at the mere thought, but absolutely confident. “The door squeaks the same way it always has, the brake pedal catches once in a while, same as usual, the transmission’s a little sloppy, just like always.”
Dean knows Sam expects him to be deeply offended at the very notion that Baby might not be his Baby, and he is. He revs the engine for good measure, speeds a little faster down the dark road.
He can feel Sam smiling beside him. “You held my hair,” he says. “So I didn’t get barf in it.”
Dean’s immediately back in that other memory, helping Sam throw up into the bucket a crew member brought them.
“Must’ve been all those crawdads you ate,” Dean says, smiling despite himself. “You loved those things.”
Sam shakes his head. “Not after that,” he says. “Never again.”
It’s a good day.
//**//**//
Following the path of that first year of hunts, when their overall mission was to find their father, dredges up memories and feelings Dean has almost forgotten. So much has happened since then. It was a simpler time.
“It wasn’t really about revenge for Jessica’s death,” Sam tells him on their way to Ankeny, Iowa. “Not after Toledo. You and I were together again, and that’s what really mattered.”
Dean snorts. “You kept saying you were going back to college,” he reminds Sam. “After we found Dad, whether or not we found the demon. You told me things couldn’t go back to the way they were before.”
“Yeah, they couldn’t,” Sam agrees. “No way was I going back to playing third wheel to you and Dad. That was never gonna happen.” He shakes his head. “I was so naive. I still thought I could get out, you know? Like, after we got the demon or whatever. But I wanted you to come with me. I wanted to have a normal life, with you.”
Dean snorts again. “Sure. Fucking your brother is so normal.”
Sam turns his head, and Dean can feel the death glare he’s aiming at him.
“You’re such an asshole sometimes,” Sam breathes finally.
“And you’re a little bitch,” Dean returns easily. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
//**//**//
In Ankeny, Iowa there’s not even a hint of a hookman legend. No reverend’s daughter was ever involved in a series of murders and attempted murders.
Dean chuckles darkly. “Lori Sorenson. You kissed her, but she doesn’t even exist here.”
“She kissed me,” Sam reminds him. “And yes, you’re still jealous.”
“You were cheating, Sam,” Dean reminds him. “We were already a couple, and kissing Lori Sorenson constitutes cheating.”
“Oh, right,” Sam growls. “Like you and Cassie Robinson was just an innocent conversation.”
“A conversation with benefits,” Dean corrects smugly.
“Ew.” Sam makes a face, then shakes his head. “I was so mad at you for telling Cassie about the life.”
“Yeah, but if I hadn’t, she might have ended up dead,” Dean reminds him. “It was probably for the best that we split up.”
“She dumped you,” Sam reminds him.
“She got me through when you were at Stanford,” Dean confesses. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if I hadn’t had her in my life when I did. I was in pretty bad shape when we met.”
Dean can feel Sam looking at him. He can feel Sam’s sympathy.
“It wasn’t easy for me, either,” Sam confesses finally. “By the time I met Jessica, I was almost ready to give up.”
Dean glances sharply at him. “Giving up wasn’t an option,” he growls. “For either of us. Still isn’t.”
Sam shrugs. “All I’m saying is, it wasn’t easy.”
//**//**//
Oasis Plains, Oklahoma is fictional, of course. No demonic bugs, although there are plenty of abandoned housing developments, many of them only half-completed. Sam and Dean squat in a couple of them, bemoaning the lack of running water, remembering how good the showers were in their Oasis Plains.
They skip Lawrence, Kansas, where the ghost of their mother helped vanquish the poltergeist that threatened the family that lived there. Going to Lawrence feels personal, and neither of them is ready for that yet. The town might be real in this universe, but that doesn’t mean their old lives were.
On the other hand, Rockford, Illinois is too real. There’s even an old asylum there, slightly less creepy than the one they broke into all those years ago, hunting the ghost of Doc Ellicott.
“You were ready to off me, right there on the floor,” Dean points when they get to what might possibly be the room where lobotomies used to happen.
Sam sucks in a breath. “I wasn’t myself,” he snaps. “You know that.”
He flexes his jaw, doesn’t look at Dean, which is how Dean knows he still feels guilty about that night, all these years later.
Burkittsville, Indiana isn’t a real place, so they don’t need to think about that time Sam left, that time Dean dropped him off in the middle of nowhere to hitch a ride, on his way back to California, away from Dean.
“You called, just before you got tied up in that orchard,” Sam recalls. “Man, the things you said.”
“All lies, I swear,” Dean says. He doesn’t remember that call. All he remembers is how desperately he wanted Sam back by his side. He probably said whatever he could think of to get that to happen, so he’s not exactly proud of it.
Sam grins. “You said all the right things, actually. It was like you knew me so well. I had to face the fact I would never have anyone like you in my life ever again. You were it for me.”
Dean lets out a little laugh that probably sounds like a sigh of relief.
“Like I said, all lies.”
Dean feels Sam look at him, longer than necessary, before he opens his notebook to cross off the evil scarecrow case.
Ford City, Nebraska, where the faith healer’s wife used reaper magic to repair Dean’s damaged heart, isn’t real, and for that Dean’s relieved. No sense revisiting the site of his guilt over the death of the kid who died so that Dean could live. No sense in feeling guilty all over again about Layla Rourke.
“I’d do it again,” Sam tells him. “Even if I knew. I’d never let you die if I could do something to stop it.”
Dean shakes his head. They’re sitting across from each other at the Fiesta Brava Mexican Restaurant in Broken Bow, as near to Ford City as they can figure.
“We’ve done some messed up stuff over the years,” Dean muses, biting into his burrito.
“That Big 12 Motel doesn’t look a thing like I remember,” Sam says. “It’s the only motel in town, so it must be the place we stayed in, but it’s not.” He shakes his head, looks down at his salad. “It’s all so weird.”
Dean suddenly finds himself thinking about Sam’s hallucinations, his fractured hold on reality. Dean doesn’t want to think too hard about how disconcerting this entire road trip must be for Sam. Places not feeling familiar, even if they’ve got the same name on the map, Dean himself feeling familiar but not being Sam’s brother. Sam’s mental instability must be getting a real workout. Might even be a little torn and frayed by now.
Dean sets his burrito down, reaches across the table, and puts his hand on Sam’s forearm before he has time to think about it.
Sam looks up, startled.
“We’re in a completely different universe, Sammy,” Dean reminds him. “Everything’s different. It’s a little disorienting, I get that. But that’s just how it is. Stone number one, brother.”
He squeezes Sam’s arm, waits till Sam’s face relaxes before he pulls his hand back, satisfied.
Big brother reassurance for the win.
Again.
//**//**//
Cape Girardeau, Missouri is a real place, but it doesn’t look like Dean remembers, all those years ago when Cassie Robinson gave him a temporary reason to live after Sam left for Stanford. It doesn’t look like the place he returned to later, with Sam beside him again. It’s just another location on a map, empty and meaningless and without memories. Dean almost wishes they hadn’t bothered to visit.
It occurs to Dean that he wouldn’t go back to Cape Girardeau in his universe. He’d never deliberately visit Cassie again, although he wishes her well, hopes she’s okay. He’s barely given her a thought, in all these years.
He can tell how jealous it makes Sam, just remembering. He wonders if his Sam felt jealousy, thinks maybe he did, for reasons Dean thinks he understands because he felt the same way whenever Sam connected with someone other than him. Even without the sex, he and Sam want to be each other’s number one. Always.
Saginaw, Michigan is real. So is Hibbing, Minnesota, where that stupid hillbilly family almost stabbed Dean in the eye with a hot poker. Chicago, Illinois, is so real they don’t even bother to visit.
When they get to Richardson, Texas, Dean randomly remembers something Sam said when they were dealing with what they thought was the ghost of Mordecai Murdoch.
“‘Kind of makes you wonder if the things we hunted only exist because people believe in them.’”
Sam shoots him a look. “What?”
Dean tilts his head. “Yeah. That’s what you said, that night we torched old Mordecai’s house. So what do you think? In this universe where monsters don’t exist, is that because people here don’t believe in anything?”
“It was a tulpa, Dean,” Sam reminds him. “In our universe -- in our universes -- tulpas exist. They’re real.”
Dean bites his lower lip. He doesn’t like to be reminded that he and Sam are from different universes.
“So I guess that answers your question,” Dean says. “If it’s real somewhere, doesn’t matter whether people believe in it or not.”
Sam screws up his forehead. His lips tighten. Dean can feel his annoyance.
It’s comforting, in a way. Dean lives for Sam’s predictable reactions to his goofy comments. They know each other so well, in any universe.
//**//**//
Fitchburg, Wisconsin is a real place, although there’s no sign of the motel the Winchesters stayed in, nor the hospital where so many sick children almost died.
Fort Douglas, on the other hand, is completely fictional, which is more of a relief than Dean cares to admit. He doesn’t ever want to remember how he almost got six-year-old Sam killed, just because he needed a little break from babysitting. He’s happy never to think about that place again. Good for this universe, not even having a Fort Douglas in the first place.
New Paltz, New York is real, but they don’t bother to go there. Sarah isn’t there, in any universe, and her death is still painful. They definitely don’t need a reminder that she never existed here, even if she did. Even Sam is starting to doubt they’ll find anyone or anything they’ve ever known before.
“Sometimes it feels like we’re the ones who aren’t real,” Sam says one night, somewhere near Blue Earth, Minnesota. It’s raining, and the road looks extra dark outside of the headlights, puddles of yellow streaked with silvery lines of rain disappearing under the front end of the car. “You know? Like this world is a real place, and we’re just characters in a story.”
Dean clutches the steering wheel and grits his teeth. He hates it when Sam gets morose, hates it when Sam’s sense of reality starts to slide sideways. It’s happening more and more lately and Dean needs it to stop.
“Maybe we should take a break,” Dean suggests. “We could hit Vegas for a week. It’s a real place here, and I’ll bet it ain’t that different.”
Sam huffs out a disgusted breath, opens the notebook on his lap, and shines his flashlight at the open page.
“After Blue Earth, we head back to Lincoln, check in on Cortland,” he says. “Then Jefferson City. We can skip Manning, Colorado, and Salvation, Iowa since they don’t exist here. That’s everything before the car crash.”
Dean winces at the memory of the crash, even though he doesn’t remember much about it. In some ways, that first year after he and Sam reunited was the best. Their mission was simple and straightforward: find Dad, help him hunt the demon. Things didn’t start to go to Hell until Dad sold his soul for Dean, in the hospital after the crash, until the thing Dad whispered in Dean’s ear before he died.
“Okay,” he agrees easily, clearing his throat and shifting on the bench to try to ease the cramp in his leg. They’ve been on the road for eight hours today. They really need a break. “But next motel we pass, we’re calling it a night.”
Sam’s flashlight flicks off and he stares straight ahead, out the windshield, but Dean catches his slight nod of agreement.
//**//**//
Nothing in Blue Earth looks like it did when they were kids.
Back then, Pastor Jim took them in whenever John needed a place to leave them, as he did after the failed hunt with the shtriga. Dean has mixed feelings about the town, simply because he never liked being left behind while Dad went off to hunt something. But Pastor Jim had been a good friend. He and Sam had had a real rapport, which Dean always attributed to Sam’s weirdo religious faith.
“You think there’s a God in this universe?” he asks as they pull out of town, headed south, back to the Lincoln area. They swing through Cortland about once a month, just to see if anything’s changed.
Sam shrugs. “Maybe. Doesn’t matter.”
“Really? You don’t care anymore?” Dean frowns skeptically. “I remember how much it used to mean to you, thinking there was a higher power out there somewhere.”
Sam shakes his head. “Yeah, but now we know better, don’t we? God’s a douche, just like the angels.”
“You’re not wrong there,” Dean mutters.
He feels Sam looking at him, but when he glances over, Sam’s staring straight ahead out the windshield.
“Chuck Shurley doesn’t exist here,” Sam says after a moment. “So neither do we.”
“No God, no Winchesters,” Dean agrees. “Sounds about right.”
Sam huffs out a breath. “In our world, we’re main characters. But here, we’re just side characters in a story with no author.”
Dean thinks about that for a moment. “No story in the first place,” he says. “No angels setting us up as pawns in their stupid little games. No demons manipulating us for their own evil ends. Sounds like freedom to me.”
Sam bites his fingernails and Dean resists the urge to reach over and stop him.
“It’s kinda comforting,” Dean suggests. “No apocalypse. No world to save. No horrible disaster to stop.”
“I guess,” Sam agrees reluctantly. “Unless you count the pandemic.”
Dean shakes his head firmly. “Definitely not our fault.”
But of course, he feels a twinge of guilt anyway.
//**//**//
Next, Sam makes a list of places with possible supernatural activity, insists they visit each one. There’s the Winchester Mystery House in Northern California, which makes both of them roll their eyes. There are various abandoned mental hospitals all over the country, all with histories and stories of the horrors committed there long ago, the possibility of vengeful spirits as a result. They check out stories of hauntings in old jails, old houses, old cemeteries. They visit the Mothman statue in West Virginia.
Nothing checks out. The stories are all just that: stories.
Then Sam’s list gets personal.
They visit the site of Rufus’s cabin in Whitefish, Montana, the field near Pontiac, Illinois where Dean’s body was buried for four months while he was in Hell, even their old family home in Lawrence, Kansas. None of those places look even vaguely familiar. Nobody living there remembers them.
They stand across the street from the address of their old family home in Lawrence, staring at the duplex that’s been on the site since before they were born. Dean resists the now-ever-present desire to put a hand on Sam’s shoulder, just for comfort. They’re both grieving the loss of their home, their friends, their family, their old lives. It shouldn’t feel so awkward just to touch each other once in a while.
“Do you think our parents existed in this universe?”
Sam shrugs. “At the rate we’re going, probably not. But we can visit the graveyard in Greenville if you want, just to see if the grave is there.”
Dean’s almost forgotten about their mother’s grave, where they buried their father’s dog tags all those years ago.
“You think there’s a version of us in this universe?”
Sam shakes his head. “Probably not. No Mom and Dad, so no us. I just wish I understood how we got here, to this specific universe. It feels so random.”
As does the fact that they each came from a slightly different universe, two universes that were almost identical in every way, except one. Dean doesn’t want to think about that, but it’s not easy.
PART FIVE