The Sour for the Sweet
Title: The Sour for the Sweet
Rating: PG-15
Spoilers: Through Season 3
Summary: After Dean's death, Sam walks a knife's edge. He becomes what his brother hates, for his brother's sake.
Word Count: 7516
Notes: A companion piece to Closer to Comfort which should be read first. Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to write this as it was a pleasure. It is non-linear.
My sources include, but are in no way limited, Wikipedia, a variety of nationwide newspapers, AAA, the Egyptian Magical Papyri, Birth of the Middle Ages (Moss, 1935), epodunk.com, and coworkers and relatives. They were endlessly valuable.
Sam let Dean sleep in the passenger seat as he drove down the interstate and into New Mexico. His knuckles were white where they gripped the Impala and he made sure to go exactly at the speed limit. Periodically, his right hand would stray to run through Dean’s short hair or over his bandaged shoulder. His eyes flicked from the nearly empty road to the window where he could see the condensation caused by Dean’s continued breath.
Dean was alive. Dean was in the Impala. Dean wouldn’t leave him. Couldn’t. Should leave him. Should kill him. He wouldn’t tell him. Dean couldn’t ever know what happened. Never know how Sam saved him. Rescued him. Never know.
“Whazzah?” Dean tried to say as he woke up in the passenger seat. Sam silently handed him the oversized bottle of water he’d bought at the last rest stop in Colorado. Dean took a long sip. “Where are we going?”
“Datil.” Sam’s voice was rough. “New Mexico.”
“Thought we were in Ohio.”
“Colorado.”
“Oh.” Dean looked around the Impala as though he’d never seen the car before. “You sure? ‘Cause I remember this hot chick and…”
“We were outside Loma,” Sam told him in a sharp voice. “And now we’re going to Datil. You need to rest.”
Dean stared at his brother, but Sam studiously watched the road. “Okay…” He drank some more water. “So why do I feel like I just tried to take on an entire vampire nest by myself?”
“What?” Sam’s grip on the steering wheel tightened.
“I feel like something used me for a punching bag.” He inspected the field bandaging on his shoulder. “I don’t remember getting shot, but damn, I think I was.”
“Dean. Sleep.”
The road stretched on into the night.
*
Sam was outside Pittsfield the first time it happened, dealing with something that might have been an unruly poltergeist or a gallu. He wasn’t sure yet. His two best knives - one a curved skinning blade and the other Dean’s old best blade - were dull. Too dull. He sharpened them on his whetstone in the shabby motel room, looking at the walls. They were covered in papers, not about the unquiet dead or Mesopotamian demonology, but about the undead. The undead, the resurrected dead, spells, charts, herbs. They covered the walls. He had only been here two days, long enough to set up base camp and long enough to get ready.
His things had been touched that morning. It made him itch inside his skin. He’d gone out, out to see the haunted building and to find breakfast and caffeine, and he’d forgotten to hang the Do Not Disturb sign on the door. Someone had been here and touched his papers. Vacuumed the rug. Remade the bed.
His Dunkin’ Donuts breakfast cooled on the bedside table. He couldn’t bring himself to be interested in coffee and a greasy donut. Not when his knives were dull. Not when Dean was dead. Dead and burned, but with his effects with Sam. Sam wore Dean’s amulet around his neck, carried Dean’s best knife in the waist of his too-big jeans, wore Dean’s plaid shirt, too tight across the shoulders and chest.
“Sir?” called a voice from the other side of the door. “Mr. Langenberg? Please open the door.”
Sam rose slowly to his feet, feeling the cotton tighten across his shoulders and the balance of the knife in his right hand. He took three steps forward and opened the door to his room. On the other side was a small, balding man in a button down shirt. No threat. Next to him stood a security guard. Sam thought he recognised him as the night watchman from when he checked in. No threat. He tucked Dean’s knife into the waistband of his jeans.
The man peered around Sam a little myopically, taking in what he could. “We’re going to have to ask you to leave, sir.”
There was a demon or a poltergeist bothering the old high school. It needed to be stopped. It needed to end. “I paid for a full week. You can ask the desk clerk. Amanda.”
The man shook his head. “You’re making the staff uncomfortable, sir. You will have to leave.”
Sam’s lips set in a firm line and he closed the door. Half an hour later, his papers were organised in his own journal, new and unweathered, sitting in the passenger seat of the Impala, a poor replacement for family lost. His clothes were in a duffel on the backseat and his weapons were in the hidden compartment in the trunk. He left a message for Ellen, warning about the haunting in Pittsfield, as he turned onto the on-ramp of 90.
*
Sam didn’t know what woke him up that night on the banks of Idiot Creek. There were no motels in the vicinity that would accept his credit cards, so he set up camp near the river. He was careful, always careful now that he was wanted in three states, since the goblin broke into Becky’s apartment. The tent was surrounded by a heavy ring of salt and the tiny tent had been inscribed with protective runes in salt water and sage. He had Ruby’s knife and Dean’s knife and Colt’s Colt in the tent with him. He should have been safe. But he still woke up with a start and something compelled him to step out of Dad’s old tent.
A young man with a green mohawk was standing on the edge of the salt ring. “Hello, Sam Winchester.”
Sam turned on his flashlight. The young man’s eyes were yellow-orange, like a wolf’s. The night was dark, with the pines whispering above their heads. If this demon managed to kill him down, deep in the Oregon wood, no one would find the body, if, indeed there was one left.
“Don’t go for the Colt.” The man smirked. “Yes, I know about the Colt. You killed my brother with it. I believe you knew him as Yellow Eyes?”
“Your brother?”
“What? You don’t recognise me?” He sounded insulted. “Oh Brother Sam, Brother Sam.”
“Who are you?”
“You’re all civility now. You weren’t that kind to dear Azazel.” He clapped his hands, startling Sam. “No matter. You die the way you live, I suppose. It’s a pity you don’t remember my name, but you can call me Armaros and I am here to help you.”
Sam’s fingers itched for Ruby’s knife, to throw it between Armaros’ shining eyes.
“I heard that you and Lilith had a bit of a problem and she took something that belongs to you.”
“Dean,” Sam murmured.
“Yes. She took your Dean and in such an unkind way.” Armaros grinned, baring white teeth. “Well, that’s my specialty, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Azazel, war; Baraquiel, astrology; Armaros - ?” He tapped his foot impatiently. “Come on. I know you aced your SATs.”
Sam gritted his teeth and balled his hands into fists, but stayed behind the salt line. He didn’t dare turn his back on this Armaros, not even to grab the knife.
The feral eyes widened. “It’s true then? That human girl told the truth. You shut down after Azazel’s death.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” Sam was prepared to stand at the edge of his salt circle until dawn, if that’s what it took. He could call Bobby. Or Ellen. He could turn his back and grab the knife or the Colt.
“Meet us in Portland tomorrow morning.”
“What?”
“You seem to say that a lot, dear Brother Sam,” Armaros said with a bitter laugh. “You have a lot to learn if you want to get back your own from that bitch. Meet us in Portland. We’ll know you when you see us.”
“Us?” Sam breathed, dreaming of a thousand yellow eyes in a city night.
Armaros stepped back into the night. “We’ll know you when you see us.”
*
Dean felt like as ass, like a traitor, but he didn’t know what to do. He’d never seen Sam like this, not in the twenty-odd years he’d been alive. He wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t laugh. Damn it, Sam wasn’t the one who shot first and asked questions later. Dean couldn’t find his cell phone and that worried him, nagging at him in the back of his brain, but Sam was important, Sam came first. So, he waited until Sam was sleeping, the deep sleep of the innocent, he thought with a smile, and snagged his phone.
He stepped outside of their room and flipped open the phone. There were names he didn’t recognise in the speed dial - Sari, Delia, Pen, Jack, Elise - but he found Bobby’s number easily enough. The parking lot looked pretty much like any other parking lot along an interstate in the southwest: dusty, abandoned, and dark. Light spilled out of a couple rented rooms, rooms belonging to people who hadn’t spent the day dealing with an angry water horse, and the big neon sign on the highway flashed VACANCY. A warm dry wind was blowing up from the south, but Dean couldn’t bring himself to mind the heat, though Texas usually bothered the hell out of him. He dialed Bobby’s number.
“Boy, I don’t know what you’ve done, but you’re not going to keep sending me coordinates like your my damned captain, you hear?”
“Bobby?” Dean asked, his breath catching slightly. It had to be him, but he sounded older, more tired than Dean remembered. It was just a few days ago that Bobby and Sam had rescued him from that demon, right? Even if Sam said they’d been in Colorado when he was sure it was Ohio.
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone, so long that Dean began to wonder if Sam’s cell had dropped the call. “Dean?”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Dean said, forcing a laugh. “Takes more than a demonic possession to take down Dean Winchester.”
Bobby didn’t say anything.
“You’re not upset, are you? Because normally, I know I’m better than that, but with this deal going on and trying to figure out what’s wrong with Sam-” Dean hated how he felt about ten inches tall, but somehow Sam was gone far away, further than Stanford was, because wherever he was, Dean couldn’t even reach him, and shit, if Bobby wasn’t talking to him, mad about the deal or maybe the demon horde, he didn’t know what to do.
“You made a deal?” Bobby asked sharply, sounding more like the military sergeant that Dad always told them he was.
“Yeah, I told you about that.” Dean reined in residual anger and pain, remembering that night. “Cold Oak Creek ringing any bells? Sam dead? I did what I had to do, Bobby.”
“Where are you?”
“I just needed to ask you something about Sam,” Dean protested, feeling like he was twenty two again and on his first solo hunt, with Dad constantly calling to make sure he wasn’t dead.
“Where are you?” Bobby’s voice was sure, cold, and brooked no argument.
“Junction, Texas,” Dean told him, feeling defeated. “We’re at Junction.”
“Hold fort until I get there.”
*
“Hi, is Becky there?”
“Speaking. Is this Josh? I thought you were doing the road trip thing before taking the New York job.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s wrong? You sound upset. You get stuck in a ditch or something?”
“No… Hey, you said you saw Sam Winchester a while back, after Sam left Stanford. When he and his brother were seeing America.”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Have you seen him since?”
“He was here a couple weeks ago… I got a call from a friend of his, said his brother died, and that Sam would need a place to stay to get back on his feet. The girls didn’t mind, so we put him up on the sleeper sofa.”
“How - how was he?”
“Pretty broken up about his brother’s death… he sorta shut down, if you know what I mean? You remember how he’d get around finals. Like that. But a week later, he packed his bags and left.”
“That’s it?”
“What’s wrong? Did you run into him? Because you know…”
“Yeah, yeah. We just happened to be at the same gas station outside Pueblo… And…”
“Josh, Josh! Come on. You can tell me.”
“He looked kind of funny, hiding in his hoodie. And his eyes, they looked yellow. But then… there was this girl with him, looked like Jess. Tall, blonde hair, blue eyes. And this tiny little dress…”
“So he has a type, Josh. You can’t hang him over that.”
“But that’s not it. He looked right at her and said, ‘I’m going to break your neck and scatter your bones to the four winds,’ in this cold voice, like he wasn’t threatening to kill. And she didn’t care at all; she just stared at him and said, ‘I will salt the earth with your blood and listen to your screams as you burn in torment.’ And he said, ‘Not here. No more destruction. No more unnecessary death. There is a cabin.’ And they got in his car and took off.”
“…Oh my god.”
“And his brother’s a serial killer, right? Didn’t he try to rape you? I saw it on the news. What if Sam killed Jess? What the hell is he going to do to that girl?”
“Get out of Colorado, Josh. Just get out of there.”
*
A couple dead campers. Some missing hikers. Dogs that vanished.
Sam walked through the forest, holding Ruby’s deadly knife in his right hand. The light rain of the past few days and disappearances kept most people off of the hiking trails and Sam liked it better that way. It was easier to hunt without people around, especially after the St. Louis fiasco. It was better this way. He would save Dean. He would. There was no reason for his brother to burn in Hell for his sake. No reason at all.
Shrill screams caused Sam to burst into a jog. He kept an eye on the forest around him, watching for any potential threats, and followed the frightened sounds. As he reached the bend in the hiking trail, the screams grew louder and he could hear an accompanying otherworldly wail. When he finally reached the clearing, he saw a pack of Girl Scouts, all shrieking like, well, little girls. A vampire had its fangs deep in the neck of a young woman, probably their scout leader.
Barely even thinking about it, Sam threw Ruby’s knife. It was a well balanced blade and sailed through the air like it was made to be thrown. It buried itself deep in the back of the vampire and Sam watched it die a second death.
“You’re safe now,” Sam said, as he pulled the knife out of the vampire’s back and lifted the body off the young woman.
The woman scrambled back to her feet and tried to catch her breath through her sobs. “Don’t - don’t hurt them! Please.”
“I said you were safe.” Sam wiped the knife on his shirt. It wouldn’t do to have dried blood on his best knife.
“I don’t know what you want, but don’t hurt my troop.” She motioned for the Girl Scouts to stay back. Some of them were crying too and Sam wondered if maybe he should be doing something about that.
“I’m not -” Sam stopped mid-sentence. “Just stay out of the woods.”
*
Sam walked through the crowded streets of Portland, looking for a man with yellow eyes. He felt like a fool, but an armed fool. He had the Colt and Dean’s knife tucked into his waistband. His journal and Ruby’s knife were in his backpack; he could still pull off the ratty college student look, but not for much longer. What would his father have said, coming to Portland on the word, the instruction of a demon? What would Dean have said?
“Sam Winchester.”
Sam looked up to see a man dressed up like an honest-to-god cowboy, with a plaid shirt, tooled leather boots, a ten gallon hat and canine-yellow eyes. “New body, Armaros? Got tired of the punk look?” he asked coldly.
The cowboy whistled, attracting some attention from the other passers-by. “Got a mouth on you there, Sam.” He clapped Sam on his shoulder and directed him further down the street. “But, happily, I’m not Armaros, the poor bastard. Don’t you recognise me?”
Sam shrugged off the cowboy’s arm and continued walking.
“Hey, hey, no need to get testy.” His boots clicked on the sidewalk. “Sariel. It’s Sariel, your old buddy.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Sam snapped. “I’ve never seen you before.”
“Whoa. Dude. So where’re you staying?”
“Like I’d tell you that. Demon.”
“Stick and stones, Sam, sticks and stones.” Sariel stopped. “Anyway, I got run some errands, but Gadreel will pick you up at six.” He grinned broadly. “Wait until you see that body. Sexy, man. Sexay.” He tipped his hat at Sam. “Until then, have fun exploring Portland. Most of the cafes have decent Wi-Fi access.”
*
Channel 7 Late Breaking News: Three local teens, missing and presumed dead after tornadoes destroyed their homes, were found in an abandoned barn twenty five miles outside of Omaha, in nearby Ames, Nebraska. While shaken, other than minor bruising and dehydration, the teens are safe and in good health. The teens, who are still in Children’s Hospital, Omaha, for observation, claim that they were rescued from their homes by a tall young man with yellow eyes. Trauma specialists have suggested that the teens are not lying but instead dealing with their loss and the fear of dealing with the recent bad storms by creating a figure who is more powerful than themselves, who can rescue them from the terrible situation they were in. The parents of the teens express their thanks to everyone in the community who helped search for their children and offered condolences at their apparent death after the disappearances.
*
“What’s this?” Sam asked, his eyes staring straight ahead.
“Don’t you dare start with me,” Bobby warned. “I’ve been driving for sixteen hours, hauling my ass down here. After getting a call from that damned brother of yours.”
Sam sat on the edge of the ugly green and purple paisley coverlet with his arms folded across his chest, yet he somehow still seemed to loom. His broad shoulders and shaggy head filled the narrow motel room. His green eyes were flat, glassy, and far away. His jaw was set and he wasn’t looking at either of the other men in the room.
Bobby sagged when Sam didn’t react to him. “Are you even hearing me?”
Dean crossed his arms, unconsciously mimicking his brother. His shoulder and side were still sore where Sam had helped him replace the bandages that morning, a near silent ritual under the florescent lights in their blue tiled bathroom. He felt small and weak, weaker than he should. It bothered him that he didn’t know where those wounds came from - they looked more like gouge wounds than bullet holes, but he couldn’t remember - and they were an angry red, infected but not oozing. Somehow more worrying, though, was the fact that Sam looked at them like he knew, like they cut him to his core, but he wouldn’t say anything.
“What kind of game do you think you’re playing, Sam?” Bobby asked.
Sam turned his head slightly and stared at Bobby balefully, his long face impassive. He looked like a well carved statue of Sam Winchester, cold and unmoving, an anomaly of Junction, TX.
“You scared your brother into calling me,” Bobby told him, all gruff and anger. “Your brother.
Dean leaned against the window and pretended the shiver was because the dilapidated air conditioner was working over time. Bobby was strained and bone weary, moving like an old man. There were dark circles under his eyes to match Sam’s and God knew both his shirt and car had seen better days. Surely Bobby hadn’t sounded like this, looked like this, the last time Dean had seen him. And Sam. Sam just wasn’t - wasn’t here, wasn’t caring, wasn’t talking. And no one was telling Dean anything, or even looking at him.
*
“Bobby?”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Jo. Jo Harvelle.”
“What on earth compelled you to call meet at 3:30 in the morning, girl?”
“You’re close to Sam Winchester, right? Mom always said you and John were close.”
“That’s right.”
“I think - I think something’s wrong with him.”
“Possessed again?”
“No… I put some holy water in his drink, but he didn’t notice.”
“What?”
“He - he and a friend of his, from Stanford I think, came into the bar tonight. I’ve never seen the other one before, but something’s wrong with Sam.”
“Dean’s dead, Jo. ‘Course something’s wrong with him. He’s mourning.”
“No, it’s more than that. It’s like… It’s like he’s become someone else, someone who isn’t anything like Sam Winchester at all. He didn’t smile or laugh or anything. Just went and sat in the back with his friend and left right after. Didn’t say anything to me or anything.”
“Jo, go to sleep. He’s lost his brother and the last time he saw you, he hurt you because he was possessed. Leave it be.”
“Hunters talked about there being something wrong with Sam, back before the Devil’s Gate opened, when we still had the roadhouse. I heard Gordon Walker went after them, that Sam killed him. What if something is wrong with him?”
“Sleep, Jo.”
“Will you at least think about it?”
“I’m hanging up the phone and going to sleep.”
*
The Impala growled as she ate up the highway miles, up 95 in the dark of the early morning. She carried Sam just as she’d carried his family before him, dutifully and efficiently, but Sam though that she missed Dean almost as much as he did. She felt empty now, with Sam sitting behind the wheel and old books in dead languages taking his place in the passenger seat. She was dark, empty and hollow. With Dean’s life and his father’s pride gone, she was this much closer to being just another car, becoming just a prize in a show room and not a part of a family, a one vehicle caravan on the road. She was silent now; Dean’s cassettes stayed in their cardboard box under the passenger seat and Sam didn’t let anyone touch her, much less ride shotgun with him. She was waiting, waiting for Sam to do what he must, to bring Dean back to them both.
Ruby’s words echoed in his head. Ruby’s new body was pretty, with short dark hair and grey eyes, except now he only could remember them as demon black. She had smiled when she saw him coming, sauntered down the stairs of the cheap motel. “Great Rebellion,” she had said, her lips curving wickedly, “I see you are coming into your own.”
He had looked at her and seen what he thought Dean might have seen, on the day he died: the shape of a mortal woman warped as a demon and possessing the young woman. He saw that the woman with eyes like gunmetal was already dead, her soul long departed from the earth. “What do you call yourself now, Elizabeth?” he had asked, drawing upon what Chazaquiel and Armaros had taught him.
“Do you like it?” she replied instead. “It would be yours. They say, they say in Hell that you have a taste for the daughters of men.”
“I have a taste for knowledge,” he had told her, feeling as though important memories were locked behind a wall of glass and light, “not for bodies that already taste like death.”
She had frowned then. The body was pretty even then, the lips pouting into a rosebud and eyes gazing up at him under black eyelashes. “I already tried to give you what I could, to save your brother. It isn’t my fault he burns in Hell.”
“Stay away from me,” Sam had said, in voice that reminded him of Andy and Max and all the other psychics he couldn’t save. “If you talk like that, it is better to stay away from me.”
“You will lead us,” she had told him earnestly. “You will lead us and you can save him. You can bring him back, whole and unharmed. You are Samyaza; you are the rebellion, you can see what we cannot. With you, we will not fail.”
Sam sighed into the North Carolina night and shifted into third gear. If Ruby was right and the demons were telling the truth, he was their Samyaza, their second coming. He was and would be great and powerful. If he came into his own, if he broke that fragile wall, Dean would be back, would be whole, wouldn’t burn in Hell for the sake of his already damned brother.
What he was going to do was unforgivable and unimaginable. He would rain fire from the sky and salt the earth and the people would cower in fear.
Dean would be home.
Sam put his foot to the gas and sped north.
*
“Jesus,” the man said at the door to the cabin, staring at the chaos inside. “Jesus. Ronald! Ronald!” he yelled into the night. “Call 911! And get Henry, he’s a doctor, right? Get his ass in here!”
Sam looked up from where he’d fallen, protective and prostrate, over Dean’s broken body. “Est nisus,” he murmured. “No more.”
The man, broad shouldered and young, came over to kneel by Sam. “What the hell happened here, man? We heard something ungodly but…”
“Est nisus.” Sam could feel the burn of the tattoos at his waist and the painful gouge Lilith left in his shoulder, but it didn’t matter. “Dean.” He could feel Dean’s chest rise and fall under his hands. “Dean.”
“Oh god.” The man sounded like he was going to be ill as he got a better look. “God.”
Sam looked up at him, cradling Dean in his arms. “Don’t.” He could feel thrumming under his skin and flooding his veins. “Don’t hurt him.”
“Holy fuck,” another man, following on the heels of the first, swore as he saw Sam and the wreckage of the cabin.
“Is she - is she alive?” Sam croaked, still holding onto Dean.
“She who?”
“Lilith.”
And then, the world went white.
*
Sam stared down the crevice at the little boy and little girl. They were both dirty. The boy still had his baseball cap, a red and blue Atlanta Braves cap, and one of the girl’s pigtails had fallen out. It wasn’t a hala after all. If it had been, he wouldn’t be finding a crying little girl being hugged by her big brother. If he were lucky he’d be finding their bones.
“Do you think you could hold onto some rope, if I dropped some down there?” Sam asked.
The little boy’s head bobbed and his hat fell off. “I’m hungry,” the girl cried.
“I’ve got, uh, some Powerbars?” Sam told her, as he lowered the rope. He wasn’t sure what most little kids ate. When Dean took care of him as he’d had sugary cereal and spaghetti and, when money was especially tight, endless nights of ramen. When Dad was home, sometimes they’d get pizza or fried chicken. He was fairly sure, from the lives of the other kids he’d seen and stories that people told at Stanford, that that was not normal. Whatever normal was.
The little boy put his sister’s hands on the rope and his hat on her head. Before Sam could start pulling the rope up, the boy whispered something in the girl’s ear and she stopped crying quite so hard. It was slow going, leading the little girl up the almost ninety degree incline of the crevice, but Sam managed it. And then he had to do it all over again for the boy. When he had gotten out of the crevice and onto flat ground again, the first thing the little boy did, as Sam began to reach into his backpack to find a Powerbar for the girl, was take his hat back from his sister.
When Sam turned around again, no threat from unpossessed small children who were likely half starving and dehydrated, the little boy was looking up at him with big brown eyes and holding his sister close. “Why don’t you have wings?” he asked, with all of the grave seriousness of a seven year old. “Mommy says angels have wings.”
*
News of the Weird
2008 - Fairview, CO - Several towns can attest to a earthquake like blast that rattled central Colorado residents late last night. Some late season campers and early hunters claim to have heard “ungodly wails” and screams coming from an area outside of the town itself. Three hunters - Ronald Farrell, Henry White, and Dale Mayo - have suggested that two young men were hurt in the blast. The body of a young woman, identified as Caroline Jokinen, a missing high school student, was found in the cabin the hunters located. Her cause of death is still unknown. The young men from the hunters’ tale have not been found. A few local enthusiasts have attributed the blast and injuries to UFOs, while some with more religious fervor, in nearby Colorado Springs, have suggested that this is an act of God.
*
Gadreel was just as gorgeous as Sariel had promised. She had black-brown hair, creamy white skin, large breasts, and, when she smiled at Sam, yellow eyes. What startled Sam more than knowing that a demon was possessing the pretty girl - he was beginning to think of everyone as potential victims, potential enemies - was that no one else seemed to notice her eyes. After picking him up at his motel in a red Corvette, she took him to a trendy downtown microbrewery where everyone knew her as Delia.
Everyone at the table had frighteningly yellow eyes. Or, Sam assumed they would be frightening if he felt anything other than numb. They were mostly men, with another woman besides Delia. They were clearly all friends and enjoyed varying degrees of success. Armaros sat beside Sam and encouraged him to order a porterhouse steak and try the house summer brew, claiming, “It’s to die for - or it would be, if you could.”
The microbrewery was loud, crowded, and unabashedly trendy. The demons laughed with one another and one of them, whom everyone called Chaz, flirted with their waitress, who blushed and stammered. Penny, a demon who wore a woman with dyed red hair and a Hawaiian shirt, scolded him for it. They ate their food and drank their beer like any other group of friends in the brewery. Their eyes, however, flashed yellow when they looked at one another. Somehow, no one at the brewery thought the strange menagerie was odd - two men in three piece suits, an older couple in matching print shirts, the punk with the two foot mohawk, a cowboy, and a woman who ought to have been a model or dancer. And then, of course, there was Sam, road weary and road dirty, still carrying his high school backpack and wearing another man’s shirt. But no one asked any questions and the service was beyond impeccable. Sam wondered if the demons choice this place because no one asked questions or if they’d cast a geas on the servers.
When dinner was over and they were working on their after dinner drinks, Armaros clapped his hands together several times to attract everyone’s attention. “While I’m sure that everyone is pleased that Sam is back with us, there are some things that require explaining.”
Sariel muttered something under his breath, but was quelled with a glare from Armaros.
“Azazel, while sorely missed among us all, was hot headed and tempestuous. It was by the art of war that he lived and also by the art of war that he died.”
“Hear ye, hear ye,” Penny rejoined, raising a forkful of cheesecake.
“And though he is gone, be he in the depths of Hell enduring the flaming lash, or elsewhere have rejoined that from which we were made, he did, in the end, bring us, Sam Winchester.”
Sam shuddered slightly at the feral smiles that lit up the faces around the tables. He wondered if the bodies were dead, decaying even as they were possessed, or if the people were screaming from the inside, unable to control their own motions and eventually doomed to madness, just as he had been. What if he just killed them all? What would happen then?
“Stop that,” Armaros told him, tapping him on the shoulder. “It won’t do you any good.” He continued in a louder voice, “However, the witch-girl told us the truth when we saw her last.” He smiled when Chaz cursed, his silver lip ring catching slightly on his teeth. “Sam, for all that he is of Azazel’s blood and thus our own, does not know us. He does not remember ourselves or himself. And he will need to know, if he wants to fight Lilith for what she has done.”
The man next to Sam, one in a navy blue suit, rested his hand gently on Sam’s arm. “We heard about what she did. And what you did to her. You’ll come into your own soon enough.”
*
To: Bobby Singer
From: Sam Winchester
Lawrence AL. Weiss Lake. Rawhead. 3 dead.
*
Sam sat in the kitchen and allowed himself to be plied with sweet tea and fresh bread. The room was bright and cheery; butter yellow walls, white furniture, and everything spotlessly clean. He could hear children shouting upstairs and the noise of a motorcycle in the distance. It had been a long time since he’d been in such a normal house, talking to such normal people. It might have been as long ago as the last time he visited the Moores.
“What was that thing?” Matt Fitzroy asked, drinking his own glass of sweet tea.
“It was just a bonnacon.”
“A what?” Matt’s wife Regina was pretty, all dark hair and big eyes. She seemed more wary of Sam than Matt did, telling the children to stay upstairs when Matt brought him inside. She was the one, though, who had given him the iced tea and helped mop up the blood on his face.
“It was a type of bison.”
Matt frowned, lines etching into his face. “We don’t usually get bison this far south. And they usually can’t set fires.”
Dean is better at this, Sam thought, suddenly and painfully. “Not sure where the fires came from.”
“Who’s Dean?” Regina asked.
“What?” Sam felt a flash of fear, and the thrumming under his skin increased with the adrenaline rush, but Regina’s eyes were just a rich human brown, not demon black or red.
“You just said, ‘Dean is better at this.’”
Sam stared at them, two Texas ranchers, quietly living out their lives, never knowing what they were close to, never knowing what hid in the dark and the night and even walked in human form by day. Fools. “Dean is my brother.”
“Does he hunt pyromaniac bison on other folks’ ranches, too?” Matt asked, his face and eyes smiling gently.
“He’s burning in Hell,” Sam said coldly. “I watched him die. But yes, he hunted this kind of thing before he died.”
Regina flinched at Sam’s words and silently crossed herself, but Matt was less outwardly perturbed, only saying, “Don’t speak ill of the dead, son.” Sam thought he felt a flicker of something else from Matt, anger and a little fear.
Time passed in silence. Sam drank his tea and ate his food under Matt’s watchful eye. After wiping down the counters and cleaning the area of the bonnacon blood Sam had tracked into the house, Regina disappeared upstairs. Sam could hear her talking to the children. He could feel something like forgotten memories and skills hum in the back of his mind and flood through his bloodstream. He’d felt like this since talking to Armaros and Sariel at length, but, somehow, here, in the middle of nowhere, it was stronger, more powerful, close at hand.
“So how much land do you have here?” Sam asked suddenly, feeling as though someone else were using his mouth and speaking with his voice.
“I’ve got about two hundred acres… Some of it’s better as game land, not all good for the sheep and goats,” Matt said slowly, clearly confused by Sam’s interest. “Some parts don’t have any decent access to water, either, so I can’t pasture them out there…”
“Could I use it, then? Not now… But soon?” Sam green eyes flecked a little with gold and he leaned forward in his chair, toward Matt.
“For hunting? I suppose… It’s not season, of course, but you could come down when it is. No reason not to… I usually rent it out to some hunters every year.”
“Not for hunting,” Sam told him. “For Dean. I need the space.”
“Son, you said your brother was dead.”
Sam nodded slowly. “Yes. He’s in Hell. I need to get him out.”
Matt’s eyes hardened and his jaw set. “You get the hell out of my house. I won’t have any of that here. If I see you on my land again, I’ll have you arrested for trespassing and illegal hunting. And if I catch you trying to raise something from Hell, I’ll kill you myself.”
*
“Jo!” Sam cried with surprise, seeing her wiping down the counter.
The Arkansas bar was a little seedy, a little grimy, and Sam hadn’t been expecting to see anyone he knew. He’d been counting on it actually. He assumed, when he’d driven out of Batesville the previous night and into the small off-highway town, that this would be a safe, neutral place. There hadn’t been a haunting or supernatural occurrence reported in the area in over 150 years. There would be no reason for a hunter to even stop by the bar and none of his Stanford friends would think to go here.
“I see you know our lovely bartender,” Sariel said, coming up behind him. “So pretty,” he added, in a low voice that didn’t carry further than Sam’s ears.
“You know Sam?” Jo asked, with some surprise.
“Oh, Sam and I go way back,” Sariel told her lightly, his eyes and smile bright in the dim light of the bar. He’d dropped the cowboy outfit and was in bar-standard jeans and dark shirt. “You know, he gave up a full ride to law school?”
Jo’s eyes went wide.
“Oh, yeah.” Sariel’s grin widened. “Terrible tragedy. But you could really have anything you wanted, couldn’t you, Sam?” He wrapped an arm around Sam’s shoulders. “He’s so modest, but really, he could do anything, be anything.”
Sam lifted Sariel’s arm off of him. “Why don’t we go sit down and leave Jo to her work?” he said coldly.
Though Sam and Sariel sat in the back of the smoky bar, drinking whiskey and beer, discussing logistics and resurrections in dead languages, Sariel’s eyes were never off Jo for very long. He did not know all of the art and skill and knowledge that Sam would need, but he, for reasons Sam did not quite understand and did not quite want to understand, was more willing to offer his aid than any other of the demons, other than Armaros, and Sam was willing to take what he could get. Ever since that first meeting in Portland, as Sam crisscrossed the country, he could feel himself growing closer to what he needed.
And when Sariel left that night, with a bedazzled and laughing Jo on his arm, Sam couldn’t bring himself to care, but he still drove on through the night, needing to put the town behind him.
*
“What’s going on?” Dean finally asked, tiring of the silent staring contest between Sam and Bobby. He tried to sound angry and authoritative, but couldn’t muster it. He was tired and in pain and scared and scared that he was scared. He didn’t like feeling small and helpless and he liked feeling invisible and meaningless even less. “What’s with you Bobby? You’re acting like I’m not even here. You’re worse than Sam.”
Bobby sighed, deep and heavy in his chest. “You’re dead, son. You’ve been dead since May.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t die until next May.”
“You died.” Sam’s voice was flat and broken. “You were torn apart by Hell Hounds and destroyed by the demon Lillith. I watched as they dragged you into Hell.”
“No,” Dean whispered, “no. You won’t be there to see it. I’m going to go away, going to be alone when it happens. That’s not fair. That’s not how it will happen.”
Sam stood and towered over both Dean and Bobby, his presence like a pillar of anger in the room. “No. It won’t. They won’t have you. I heard you screaming. You screamed my name, endlessly into the night. You were in pain and I was alone. And it won’t happen again.”
“I don’t know how you brought him back, if that’s even your brother, but you can’t keep them from taking him back again.”
Sam looked him in the eyes. “Can’t I?” His eyes were yellow and feral and his voice boomed like the voice of God.
*
Sam pulled the Impala into the Getty station. It was only September, but the air was chilly in the mountains. The Rockies were a rough necessity of life in crisscrossing the country, but he hated Colorado as much as he hated anything anymore. There were too many memories, to much pain, in Colorado; memories of wendigos and vampires and family feuds.
“Sam? Sam Winchester?”
Sam looked up from the pump, half expecting Sariel or Nakir to be checking in on him unexpectedly, but was surprised to see a young man in a heavy sweatshirt standing by a small green Honda. It was still daylight and the man’s irises were a healthy brown, with the whites standing out against his dark skin. Sam relaxed minutely, sliding the gun back into his waistband.
“Josh, man, it’s Josh,” the man cried excitedly, leaving his car to step closer to Sam. “Remember me? From Stanford? It’s been ages, just ages. And that is one sweet car.”
“My brother’s,” Sam said automatically, the words like thorns in his mouth.
“Yeah, I heard you were on a road trip. One long-ass road trip if you’re still on it. Where is he?” Josh moved to touch the car, but Sam stepped between him and his brother’s baby.
“Whoa, dude.” Josh cocked his head to get a better look at Sam, whose face was hidden in his hoodie. “You okay?”
Sam blinked hard. He could feel the hidden knowledge thrumming in his mind and blood as he always could, but here, here he could feel it in the sky and the very mountains themselves. Armaros and Sariel believed it was normal, this pounding burning of something he couldn’t touch. Penny had told him in his/her motherly way that with all great knowledge came suffering. He had seen the pain in his/her golden eyes. Staring at Josh, it flooded through him and he was burning with fever and drowning in an ocean of ice. It was there; it had always been there, and yet it was something new, something that could save him.
“You okay?” Josh repeated. “Your eyes… You got contacts, man?”
He felt like his skin was on fire, like he was standing naked midday in Death Valley, like his blood was boiling in his veins. He knew how to read the signs in the sky and on the earth, how to write contracts that bound the soul beyond death and hellfire or heaven’s sun, how to appear as he wasn’t, and how to win the hearts of the daughters of men. He knew how to stay the hand of a killer, how to incite the anger of God, and how to summon angels and demons with his very breath. He knew who he was, who he had been, and who he was destined to be.
“Lilith,” he said calmly, precisely, calling her name across the four corners of the earth and into the rancid pits of Hell.
She walked out of the convenience store attached to the gas station, her body a mockery. The body she now possessed was no little girl, no tool to terrorize parents and family pets. She was statuesque, with honey blonde hair and glass blue eyes. Her dress, blue with pink roses, was more suited to a southern beach than the Colorado mountains, but Sam didn’t care. He saw red.
“What?” she asked, in her little girl’s voice. “You don’t like how I look?” She pouted, her lips rose red. “And you’re the one who asked me here.”
Rating: PG-15
Spoilers: Through Season 3
Summary: After Dean's death, Sam walks a knife's edge. He becomes what his brother hates, for his brother's sake.
Word Count: 7516
Notes: A companion piece to Closer to Comfort which should be read first. Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to write this as it was a pleasure. It is non-linear.
My sources include, but are in no way limited, Wikipedia, a variety of nationwide newspapers, AAA, the Egyptian Magical Papyri, Birth of the Middle Ages (Moss, 1935), epodunk.com, and coworkers and relatives. They were endlessly valuable.
Sam let Dean sleep in the passenger seat as he drove down the interstate and into New Mexico. His knuckles were white where they gripped the Impala and he made sure to go exactly at the speed limit. Periodically, his right hand would stray to run through Dean’s short hair or over his bandaged shoulder. His eyes flicked from the nearly empty road to the window where he could see the condensation caused by Dean’s continued breath.
Dean was alive. Dean was in the Impala. Dean wouldn’t leave him. Couldn’t. Should leave him. Should kill him. He wouldn’t tell him. Dean couldn’t ever know what happened. Never know how Sam saved him. Rescued him. Never know.
“Whazzah?” Dean tried to say as he woke up in the passenger seat. Sam silently handed him the oversized bottle of water he’d bought at the last rest stop in Colorado. Dean took a long sip. “Where are we going?”
“Datil.” Sam’s voice was rough. “New Mexico.”
“Thought we were in Ohio.”
“Colorado.”
“Oh.” Dean looked around the Impala as though he’d never seen the car before. “You sure? ‘Cause I remember this hot chick and…”
“We were outside Loma,” Sam told him in a sharp voice. “And now we’re going to Datil. You need to rest.”
Dean stared at his brother, but Sam studiously watched the road. “Okay…” He drank some more water. “So why do I feel like I just tried to take on an entire vampire nest by myself?”
“What?” Sam’s grip on the steering wheel tightened.
“I feel like something used me for a punching bag.” He inspected the field bandaging on his shoulder. “I don’t remember getting shot, but damn, I think I was.”
“Dean. Sleep.”
The road stretched on into the night.
*
Sam was outside Pittsfield the first time it happened, dealing with something that might have been an unruly poltergeist or a gallu. He wasn’t sure yet. His two best knives - one a curved skinning blade and the other Dean’s old best blade - were dull. Too dull. He sharpened them on his whetstone in the shabby motel room, looking at the walls. They were covered in papers, not about the unquiet dead or Mesopotamian demonology, but about the undead. The undead, the resurrected dead, spells, charts, herbs. They covered the walls. He had only been here two days, long enough to set up base camp and long enough to get ready.
His things had been touched that morning. It made him itch inside his skin. He’d gone out, out to see the haunted building and to find breakfast and caffeine, and he’d forgotten to hang the Do Not Disturb sign on the door. Someone had been here and touched his papers. Vacuumed the rug. Remade the bed.
His Dunkin’ Donuts breakfast cooled on the bedside table. He couldn’t bring himself to be interested in coffee and a greasy donut. Not when his knives were dull. Not when Dean was dead. Dead and burned, but with his effects with Sam. Sam wore Dean’s amulet around his neck, carried Dean’s best knife in the waist of his too-big jeans, wore Dean’s plaid shirt, too tight across the shoulders and chest.
“Sir?” called a voice from the other side of the door. “Mr. Langenberg? Please open the door.”
Sam rose slowly to his feet, feeling the cotton tighten across his shoulders and the balance of the knife in his right hand. He took three steps forward and opened the door to his room. On the other side was a small, balding man in a button down shirt. No threat. Next to him stood a security guard. Sam thought he recognised him as the night watchman from when he checked in. No threat. He tucked Dean’s knife into the waistband of his jeans.
The man peered around Sam a little myopically, taking in what he could. “We’re going to have to ask you to leave, sir.”
There was a demon or a poltergeist bothering the old high school. It needed to be stopped. It needed to end. “I paid for a full week. You can ask the desk clerk. Amanda.”
The man shook his head. “You’re making the staff uncomfortable, sir. You will have to leave.”
Sam’s lips set in a firm line and he closed the door. Half an hour later, his papers were organised in his own journal, new and unweathered, sitting in the passenger seat of the Impala, a poor replacement for family lost. His clothes were in a duffel on the backseat and his weapons were in the hidden compartment in the trunk. He left a message for Ellen, warning about the haunting in Pittsfield, as he turned onto the on-ramp of 90.
*
Sam didn’t know what woke him up that night on the banks of Idiot Creek. There were no motels in the vicinity that would accept his credit cards, so he set up camp near the river. He was careful, always careful now that he was wanted in three states, since the goblin broke into Becky’s apartment. The tent was surrounded by a heavy ring of salt and the tiny tent had been inscribed with protective runes in salt water and sage. He had Ruby’s knife and Dean’s knife and Colt’s Colt in the tent with him. He should have been safe. But he still woke up with a start and something compelled him to step out of Dad’s old tent.
A young man with a green mohawk was standing on the edge of the salt ring. “Hello, Sam Winchester.”
Sam turned on his flashlight. The young man’s eyes were yellow-orange, like a wolf’s. The night was dark, with the pines whispering above their heads. If this demon managed to kill him down, deep in the Oregon wood, no one would find the body, if, indeed there was one left.
“Don’t go for the Colt.” The man smirked. “Yes, I know about the Colt. You killed my brother with it. I believe you knew him as Yellow Eyes?”
“Your brother?”
“What? You don’t recognise me?” He sounded insulted. “Oh Brother Sam, Brother Sam.”
“Who are you?”
“You’re all civility now. You weren’t that kind to dear Azazel.” He clapped his hands, startling Sam. “No matter. You die the way you live, I suppose. It’s a pity you don’t remember my name, but you can call me Armaros and I am here to help you.”
Sam’s fingers itched for Ruby’s knife, to throw it between Armaros’ shining eyes.
“I heard that you and Lilith had a bit of a problem and she took something that belongs to you.”
“Dean,” Sam murmured.
“Yes. She took your Dean and in such an unkind way.” Armaros grinned, baring white teeth. “Well, that’s my specialty, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Azazel, war; Baraquiel, astrology; Armaros - ?” He tapped his foot impatiently. “Come on. I know you aced your SATs.”
Sam gritted his teeth and balled his hands into fists, but stayed behind the salt line. He didn’t dare turn his back on this Armaros, not even to grab the knife.
The feral eyes widened. “It’s true then? That human girl told the truth. You shut down after Azazel’s death.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” Sam was prepared to stand at the edge of his salt circle until dawn, if that’s what it took. He could call Bobby. Or Ellen. He could turn his back and grab the knife or the Colt.
“Meet us in Portland tomorrow morning.”
“What?”
“You seem to say that a lot, dear Brother Sam,” Armaros said with a bitter laugh. “You have a lot to learn if you want to get back your own from that bitch. Meet us in Portland. We’ll know you when you see us.”
“Us?” Sam breathed, dreaming of a thousand yellow eyes in a city night.
Armaros stepped back into the night. “We’ll know you when you see us.”
*
Dean felt like as ass, like a traitor, but he didn’t know what to do. He’d never seen Sam like this, not in the twenty-odd years he’d been alive. He wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t laugh. Damn it, Sam wasn’t the one who shot first and asked questions later. Dean couldn’t find his cell phone and that worried him, nagging at him in the back of his brain, but Sam was important, Sam came first. So, he waited until Sam was sleeping, the deep sleep of the innocent, he thought with a smile, and snagged his phone.
He stepped outside of their room and flipped open the phone. There were names he didn’t recognise in the speed dial - Sari, Delia, Pen, Jack, Elise - but he found Bobby’s number easily enough. The parking lot looked pretty much like any other parking lot along an interstate in the southwest: dusty, abandoned, and dark. Light spilled out of a couple rented rooms, rooms belonging to people who hadn’t spent the day dealing with an angry water horse, and the big neon sign on the highway flashed VACANCY. A warm dry wind was blowing up from the south, but Dean couldn’t bring himself to mind the heat, though Texas usually bothered the hell out of him. He dialed Bobby’s number.
“Boy, I don’t know what you’ve done, but you’re not going to keep sending me coordinates like your my damned captain, you hear?”
“Bobby?” Dean asked, his breath catching slightly. It had to be him, but he sounded older, more tired than Dean remembered. It was just a few days ago that Bobby and Sam had rescued him from that demon, right? Even if Sam said they’d been in Colorado when he was sure it was Ohio.
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone, so long that Dean began to wonder if Sam’s cell had dropped the call. “Dean?”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Dean said, forcing a laugh. “Takes more than a demonic possession to take down Dean Winchester.”
Bobby didn’t say anything.
“You’re not upset, are you? Because normally, I know I’m better than that, but with this deal going on and trying to figure out what’s wrong with Sam-” Dean hated how he felt about ten inches tall, but somehow Sam was gone far away, further than Stanford was, because wherever he was, Dean couldn’t even reach him, and shit, if Bobby wasn’t talking to him, mad about the deal or maybe the demon horde, he didn’t know what to do.
“You made a deal?” Bobby asked sharply, sounding more like the military sergeant that Dad always told them he was.
“Yeah, I told you about that.” Dean reined in residual anger and pain, remembering that night. “Cold Oak Creek ringing any bells? Sam dead? I did what I had to do, Bobby.”
“Where are you?”
“I just needed to ask you something about Sam,” Dean protested, feeling like he was twenty two again and on his first solo hunt, with Dad constantly calling to make sure he wasn’t dead.
“Where are you?” Bobby’s voice was sure, cold, and brooked no argument.
“Junction, Texas,” Dean told him, feeling defeated. “We’re at Junction.”
“Hold fort until I get there.”
*
“Hi, is Becky there?”
“Speaking. Is this Josh? I thought you were doing the road trip thing before taking the New York job.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s wrong? You sound upset. You get stuck in a ditch or something?”
“No… Hey, you said you saw Sam Winchester a while back, after Sam left Stanford. When he and his brother were seeing America.”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Have you seen him since?”
“He was here a couple weeks ago… I got a call from a friend of his, said his brother died, and that Sam would need a place to stay to get back on his feet. The girls didn’t mind, so we put him up on the sleeper sofa.”
“How - how was he?”
“Pretty broken up about his brother’s death… he sorta shut down, if you know what I mean? You remember how he’d get around finals. Like that. But a week later, he packed his bags and left.”
“That’s it?”
“What’s wrong? Did you run into him? Because you know…”
“Yeah, yeah. We just happened to be at the same gas station outside Pueblo… And…”
“Josh, Josh! Come on. You can tell me.”
“He looked kind of funny, hiding in his hoodie. And his eyes, they looked yellow. But then… there was this girl with him, looked like Jess. Tall, blonde hair, blue eyes. And this tiny little dress…”
“So he has a type, Josh. You can’t hang him over that.”
“But that’s not it. He looked right at her and said, ‘I’m going to break your neck and scatter your bones to the four winds,’ in this cold voice, like he wasn’t threatening to kill. And she didn’t care at all; she just stared at him and said, ‘I will salt the earth with your blood and listen to your screams as you burn in torment.’ And he said, ‘Not here. No more destruction. No more unnecessary death. There is a cabin.’ And they got in his car and took off.”
“…Oh my god.”
“And his brother’s a serial killer, right? Didn’t he try to rape you? I saw it on the news. What if Sam killed Jess? What the hell is he going to do to that girl?”
“Get out of Colorado, Josh. Just get out of there.”
*
A couple dead campers. Some missing hikers. Dogs that vanished.
Sam walked through the forest, holding Ruby’s deadly knife in his right hand. The light rain of the past few days and disappearances kept most people off of the hiking trails and Sam liked it better that way. It was easier to hunt without people around, especially after the St. Louis fiasco. It was better this way. He would save Dean. He would. There was no reason for his brother to burn in Hell for his sake. No reason at all.
Shrill screams caused Sam to burst into a jog. He kept an eye on the forest around him, watching for any potential threats, and followed the frightened sounds. As he reached the bend in the hiking trail, the screams grew louder and he could hear an accompanying otherworldly wail. When he finally reached the clearing, he saw a pack of Girl Scouts, all shrieking like, well, little girls. A vampire had its fangs deep in the neck of a young woman, probably their scout leader.
Barely even thinking about it, Sam threw Ruby’s knife. It was a well balanced blade and sailed through the air like it was made to be thrown. It buried itself deep in the back of the vampire and Sam watched it die a second death.
“You’re safe now,” Sam said, as he pulled the knife out of the vampire’s back and lifted the body off the young woman.
The woman scrambled back to her feet and tried to catch her breath through her sobs. “Don’t - don’t hurt them! Please.”
“I said you were safe.” Sam wiped the knife on his shirt. It wouldn’t do to have dried blood on his best knife.
“I don’t know what you want, but don’t hurt my troop.” She motioned for the Girl Scouts to stay back. Some of them were crying too and Sam wondered if maybe he should be doing something about that.
“I’m not -” Sam stopped mid-sentence. “Just stay out of the woods.”
*
Sam walked through the crowded streets of Portland, looking for a man with yellow eyes. He felt like a fool, but an armed fool. He had the Colt and Dean’s knife tucked into his waistband. His journal and Ruby’s knife were in his backpack; he could still pull off the ratty college student look, but not for much longer. What would his father have said, coming to Portland on the word, the instruction of a demon? What would Dean have said?
“Sam Winchester.”
Sam looked up to see a man dressed up like an honest-to-god cowboy, with a plaid shirt, tooled leather boots, a ten gallon hat and canine-yellow eyes. “New body, Armaros? Got tired of the punk look?” he asked coldly.
The cowboy whistled, attracting some attention from the other passers-by. “Got a mouth on you there, Sam.” He clapped Sam on his shoulder and directed him further down the street. “But, happily, I’m not Armaros, the poor bastard. Don’t you recognise me?”
Sam shrugged off the cowboy’s arm and continued walking.
“Hey, hey, no need to get testy.” His boots clicked on the sidewalk. “Sariel. It’s Sariel, your old buddy.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Sam snapped. “I’ve never seen you before.”
“Whoa. Dude. So where’re you staying?”
“Like I’d tell you that. Demon.”
“Stick and stones, Sam, sticks and stones.” Sariel stopped. “Anyway, I got run some errands, but Gadreel will pick you up at six.” He grinned broadly. “Wait until you see that body. Sexy, man. Sexay.” He tipped his hat at Sam. “Until then, have fun exploring Portland. Most of the cafes have decent Wi-Fi access.”
*
Channel 7 Late Breaking News: Three local teens, missing and presumed dead after tornadoes destroyed their homes, were found in an abandoned barn twenty five miles outside of Omaha, in nearby Ames, Nebraska. While shaken, other than minor bruising and dehydration, the teens are safe and in good health. The teens, who are still in Children’s Hospital, Omaha, for observation, claim that they were rescued from their homes by a tall young man with yellow eyes. Trauma specialists have suggested that the teens are not lying but instead dealing with their loss and the fear of dealing with the recent bad storms by creating a figure who is more powerful than themselves, who can rescue them from the terrible situation they were in. The parents of the teens express their thanks to everyone in the community who helped search for their children and offered condolences at their apparent death after the disappearances.
*
“What’s this?” Sam asked, his eyes staring straight ahead.
“Don’t you dare start with me,” Bobby warned. “I’ve been driving for sixteen hours, hauling my ass down here. After getting a call from that damned brother of yours.”
Sam sat on the edge of the ugly green and purple paisley coverlet with his arms folded across his chest, yet he somehow still seemed to loom. His broad shoulders and shaggy head filled the narrow motel room. His green eyes were flat, glassy, and far away. His jaw was set and he wasn’t looking at either of the other men in the room.
Bobby sagged when Sam didn’t react to him. “Are you even hearing me?”
Dean crossed his arms, unconsciously mimicking his brother. His shoulder and side were still sore where Sam had helped him replace the bandages that morning, a near silent ritual under the florescent lights in their blue tiled bathroom. He felt small and weak, weaker than he should. It bothered him that he didn’t know where those wounds came from - they looked more like gouge wounds than bullet holes, but he couldn’t remember - and they were an angry red, infected but not oozing. Somehow more worrying, though, was the fact that Sam looked at them like he knew, like they cut him to his core, but he wouldn’t say anything.
“What kind of game do you think you’re playing, Sam?” Bobby asked.
Sam turned his head slightly and stared at Bobby balefully, his long face impassive. He looked like a well carved statue of Sam Winchester, cold and unmoving, an anomaly of Junction, TX.
“You scared your brother into calling me,” Bobby told him, all gruff and anger. “Your brother.
Dean leaned against the window and pretended the shiver was because the dilapidated air conditioner was working over time. Bobby was strained and bone weary, moving like an old man. There were dark circles under his eyes to match Sam’s and God knew both his shirt and car had seen better days. Surely Bobby hadn’t sounded like this, looked like this, the last time Dean had seen him. And Sam. Sam just wasn’t - wasn’t here, wasn’t caring, wasn’t talking. And no one was telling Dean anything, or even looking at him.
*
“Bobby?”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Jo. Jo Harvelle.”
“What on earth compelled you to call meet at 3:30 in the morning, girl?”
“You’re close to Sam Winchester, right? Mom always said you and John were close.”
“That’s right.”
“I think - I think something’s wrong with him.”
“Possessed again?”
“No… I put some holy water in his drink, but he didn’t notice.”
“What?”
“He - he and a friend of his, from Stanford I think, came into the bar tonight. I’ve never seen the other one before, but something’s wrong with Sam.”
“Dean’s dead, Jo. ‘Course something’s wrong with him. He’s mourning.”
“No, it’s more than that. It’s like… It’s like he’s become someone else, someone who isn’t anything like Sam Winchester at all. He didn’t smile or laugh or anything. Just went and sat in the back with his friend and left right after. Didn’t say anything to me or anything.”
“Jo, go to sleep. He’s lost his brother and the last time he saw you, he hurt you because he was possessed. Leave it be.”
“Hunters talked about there being something wrong with Sam, back before the Devil’s Gate opened, when we still had the roadhouse. I heard Gordon Walker went after them, that Sam killed him. What if something is wrong with him?”
“Sleep, Jo.”
“Will you at least think about it?”
“I’m hanging up the phone and going to sleep.”
*
The Impala growled as she ate up the highway miles, up 95 in the dark of the early morning. She carried Sam just as she’d carried his family before him, dutifully and efficiently, but Sam though that she missed Dean almost as much as he did. She felt empty now, with Sam sitting behind the wheel and old books in dead languages taking his place in the passenger seat. She was dark, empty and hollow. With Dean’s life and his father’s pride gone, she was this much closer to being just another car, becoming just a prize in a show room and not a part of a family, a one vehicle caravan on the road. She was silent now; Dean’s cassettes stayed in their cardboard box under the passenger seat and Sam didn’t let anyone touch her, much less ride shotgun with him. She was waiting, waiting for Sam to do what he must, to bring Dean back to them both.
Ruby’s words echoed in his head. Ruby’s new body was pretty, with short dark hair and grey eyes, except now he only could remember them as demon black. She had smiled when she saw him coming, sauntered down the stairs of the cheap motel. “Great Rebellion,” she had said, her lips curving wickedly, “I see you are coming into your own.”
He had looked at her and seen what he thought Dean might have seen, on the day he died: the shape of a mortal woman warped as a demon and possessing the young woman. He saw that the woman with eyes like gunmetal was already dead, her soul long departed from the earth. “What do you call yourself now, Elizabeth?” he had asked, drawing upon what Chazaquiel and Armaros had taught him.
“Do you like it?” she replied instead. “It would be yours. They say, they say in Hell that you have a taste for the daughters of men.”
“I have a taste for knowledge,” he had told her, feeling as though important memories were locked behind a wall of glass and light, “not for bodies that already taste like death.”
She had frowned then. The body was pretty even then, the lips pouting into a rosebud and eyes gazing up at him under black eyelashes. “I already tried to give you what I could, to save your brother. It isn’t my fault he burns in Hell.”
“Stay away from me,” Sam had said, in voice that reminded him of Andy and Max and all the other psychics he couldn’t save. “If you talk like that, it is better to stay away from me.”
“You will lead us,” she had told him earnestly. “You will lead us and you can save him. You can bring him back, whole and unharmed. You are Samyaza; you are the rebellion, you can see what we cannot. With you, we will not fail.”
Sam sighed into the North Carolina night and shifted into third gear. If Ruby was right and the demons were telling the truth, he was their Samyaza, their second coming. He was and would be great and powerful. If he came into his own, if he broke that fragile wall, Dean would be back, would be whole, wouldn’t burn in Hell for the sake of his already damned brother.
What he was going to do was unforgivable and unimaginable. He would rain fire from the sky and salt the earth and the people would cower in fear.
Dean would be home.
Sam put his foot to the gas and sped north.
*
“Jesus,” the man said at the door to the cabin, staring at the chaos inside. “Jesus. Ronald! Ronald!” he yelled into the night. “Call 911! And get Henry, he’s a doctor, right? Get his ass in here!”
Sam looked up from where he’d fallen, protective and prostrate, over Dean’s broken body. “Est nisus,” he murmured. “No more.”
The man, broad shouldered and young, came over to kneel by Sam. “What the hell happened here, man? We heard something ungodly but…”
“Est nisus.” Sam could feel the burn of the tattoos at his waist and the painful gouge Lilith left in his shoulder, but it didn’t matter. “Dean.” He could feel Dean’s chest rise and fall under his hands. “Dean.”
“Oh god.” The man sounded like he was going to be ill as he got a better look. “God.”
Sam looked up at him, cradling Dean in his arms. “Don’t.” He could feel thrumming under his skin and flooding his veins. “Don’t hurt him.”
“Holy fuck,” another man, following on the heels of the first, swore as he saw Sam and the wreckage of the cabin.
“Is she - is she alive?” Sam croaked, still holding onto Dean.
“She who?”
“Lilith.”
And then, the world went white.
*
Sam stared down the crevice at the little boy and little girl. They were both dirty. The boy still had his baseball cap, a red and blue Atlanta Braves cap, and one of the girl’s pigtails had fallen out. It wasn’t a hala after all. If it had been, he wouldn’t be finding a crying little girl being hugged by her big brother. If he were lucky he’d be finding their bones.
“Do you think you could hold onto some rope, if I dropped some down there?” Sam asked.
The little boy’s head bobbed and his hat fell off. “I’m hungry,” the girl cried.
“I’ve got, uh, some Powerbars?” Sam told her, as he lowered the rope. He wasn’t sure what most little kids ate. When Dean took care of him as he’d had sugary cereal and spaghetti and, when money was especially tight, endless nights of ramen. When Dad was home, sometimes they’d get pizza or fried chicken. He was fairly sure, from the lives of the other kids he’d seen and stories that people told at Stanford, that that was not normal. Whatever normal was.
The little boy put his sister’s hands on the rope and his hat on her head. Before Sam could start pulling the rope up, the boy whispered something in the girl’s ear and she stopped crying quite so hard. It was slow going, leading the little girl up the almost ninety degree incline of the crevice, but Sam managed it. And then he had to do it all over again for the boy. When he had gotten out of the crevice and onto flat ground again, the first thing the little boy did, as Sam began to reach into his backpack to find a Powerbar for the girl, was take his hat back from his sister.
When Sam turned around again, no threat from unpossessed small children who were likely half starving and dehydrated, the little boy was looking up at him with big brown eyes and holding his sister close. “Why don’t you have wings?” he asked, with all of the grave seriousness of a seven year old. “Mommy says angels have wings.”
*
News of the Weird
2008 - Fairview, CO - Several towns can attest to a earthquake like blast that rattled central Colorado residents late last night. Some late season campers and early hunters claim to have heard “ungodly wails” and screams coming from an area outside of the town itself. Three hunters - Ronald Farrell, Henry White, and Dale Mayo - have suggested that two young men were hurt in the blast. The body of a young woman, identified as Caroline Jokinen, a missing high school student, was found in the cabin the hunters located. Her cause of death is still unknown. The young men from the hunters’ tale have not been found. A few local enthusiasts have attributed the blast and injuries to UFOs, while some with more religious fervor, in nearby Colorado Springs, have suggested that this is an act of God.
*
Gadreel was just as gorgeous as Sariel had promised. She had black-brown hair, creamy white skin, large breasts, and, when she smiled at Sam, yellow eyes. What startled Sam more than knowing that a demon was possessing the pretty girl - he was beginning to think of everyone as potential victims, potential enemies - was that no one else seemed to notice her eyes. After picking him up at his motel in a red Corvette, she took him to a trendy downtown microbrewery where everyone knew her as Delia.
Everyone at the table had frighteningly yellow eyes. Or, Sam assumed they would be frightening if he felt anything other than numb. They were mostly men, with another woman besides Delia. They were clearly all friends and enjoyed varying degrees of success. Armaros sat beside Sam and encouraged him to order a porterhouse steak and try the house summer brew, claiming, “It’s to die for - or it would be, if you could.”
The microbrewery was loud, crowded, and unabashedly trendy. The demons laughed with one another and one of them, whom everyone called Chaz, flirted with their waitress, who blushed and stammered. Penny, a demon who wore a woman with dyed red hair and a Hawaiian shirt, scolded him for it. They ate their food and drank their beer like any other group of friends in the brewery. Their eyes, however, flashed yellow when they looked at one another. Somehow, no one at the brewery thought the strange menagerie was odd - two men in three piece suits, an older couple in matching print shirts, the punk with the two foot mohawk, a cowboy, and a woman who ought to have been a model or dancer. And then, of course, there was Sam, road weary and road dirty, still carrying his high school backpack and wearing another man’s shirt. But no one asked any questions and the service was beyond impeccable. Sam wondered if the demons choice this place because no one asked questions or if they’d cast a geas on the servers.
When dinner was over and they were working on their after dinner drinks, Armaros clapped his hands together several times to attract everyone’s attention. “While I’m sure that everyone is pleased that Sam is back with us, there are some things that require explaining.”
Sariel muttered something under his breath, but was quelled with a glare from Armaros.
“Azazel, while sorely missed among us all, was hot headed and tempestuous. It was by the art of war that he lived and also by the art of war that he died.”
“Hear ye, hear ye,” Penny rejoined, raising a forkful of cheesecake.
“And though he is gone, be he in the depths of Hell enduring the flaming lash, or elsewhere have rejoined that from which we were made, he did, in the end, bring us, Sam Winchester.”
Sam shuddered slightly at the feral smiles that lit up the faces around the tables. He wondered if the bodies were dead, decaying even as they were possessed, or if the people were screaming from the inside, unable to control their own motions and eventually doomed to madness, just as he had been. What if he just killed them all? What would happen then?
“Stop that,” Armaros told him, tapping him on the shoulder. “It won’t do you any good.” He continued in a louder voice, “However, the witch-girl told us the truth when we saw her last.” He smiled when Chaz cursed, his silver lip ring catching slightly on his teeth. “Sam, for all that he is of Azazel’s blood and thus our own, does not know us. He does not remember ourselves or himself. And he will need to know, if he wants to fight Lilith for what she has done.”
The man next to Sam, one in a navy blue suit, rested his hand gently on Sam’s arm. “We heard about what she did. And what you did to her. You’ll come into your own soon enough.”
*
To: Bobby Singer
From: Sam Winchester
Lawrence AL. Weiss Lake. Rawhead. 3 dead.
*
Sam sat in the kitchen and allowed himself to be plied with sweet tea and fresh bread. The room was bright and cheery; butter yellow walls, white furniture, and everything spotlessly clean. He could hear children shouting upstairs and the noise of a motorcycle in the distance. It had been a long time since he’d been in such a normal house, talking to such normal people. It might have been as long ago as the last time he visited the Moores.
“What was that thing?” Matt Fitzroy asked, drinking his own glass of sweet tea.
“It was just a bonnacon.”
“A what?” Matt’s wife Regina was pretty, all dark hair and big eyes. She seemed more wary of Sam than Matt did, telling the children to stay upstairs when Matt brought him inside. She was the one, though, who had given him the iced tea and helped mop up the blood on his face.
“It was a type of bison.”
Matt frowned, lines etching into his face. “We don’t usually get bison this far south. And they usually can’t set fires.”
Dean is better at this, Sam thought, suddenly and painfully. “Not sure where the fires came from.”
“Who’s Dean?” Regina asked.
“What?” Sam felt a flash of fear, and the thrumming under his skin increased with the adrenaline rush, but Regina’s eyes were just a rich human brown, not demon black or red.
“You just said, ‘Dean is better at this.’”
Sam stared at them, two Texas ranchers, quietly living out their lives, never knowing what they were close to, never knowing what hid in the dark and the night and even walked in human form by day. Fools. “Dean is my brother.”
“Does he hunt pyromaniac bison on other folks’ ranches, too?” Matt asked, his face and eyes smiling gently.
“He’s burning in Hell,” Sam said coldly. “I watched him die. But yes, he hunted this kind of thing before he died.”
Regina flinched at Sam’s words and silently crossed herself, but Matt was less outwardly perturbed, only saying, “Don’t speak ill of the dead, son.” Sam thought he felt a flicker of something else from Matt, anger and a little fear.
Time passed in silence. Sam drank his tea and ate his food under Matt’s watchful eye. After wiping down the counters and cleaning the area of the bonnacon blood Sam had tracked into the house, Regina disappeared upstairs. Sam could hear her talking to the children. He could feel something like forgotten memories and skills hum in the back of his mind and flood through his bloodstream. He’d felt like this since talking to Armaros and Sariel at length, but, somehow, here, in the middle of nowhere, it was stronger, more powerful, close at hand.
“So how much land do you have here?” Sam asked suddenly, feeling as though someone else were using his mouth and speaking with his voice.
“I’ve got about two hundred acres… Some of it’s better as game land, not all good for the sheep and goats,” Matt said slowly, clearly confused by Sam’s interest. “Some parts don’t have any decent access to water, either, so I can’t pasture them out there…”
“Could I use it, then? Not now… But soon?” Sam green eyes flecked a little with gold and he leaned forward in his chair, toward Matt.
“For hunting? I suppose… It’s not season, of course, but you could come down when it is. No reason not to… I usually rent it out to some hunters every year.”
“Not for hunting,” Sam told him. “For Dean. I need the space.”
“Son, you said your brother was dead.”
Sam nodded slowly. “Yes. He’s in Hell. I need to get him out.”
Matt’s eyes hardened and his jaw set. “You get the hell out of my house. I won’t have any of that here. If I see you on my land again, I’ll have you arrested for trespassing and illegal hunting. And if I catch you trying to raise something from Hell, I’ll kill you myself.”
*
“Jo!” Sam cried with surprise, seeing her wiping down the counter.
The Arkansas bar was a little seedy, a little grimy, and Sam hadn’t been expecting to see anyone he knew. He’d been counting on it actually. He assumed, when he’d driven out of Batesville the previous night and into the small off-highway town, that this would be a safe, neutral place. There hadn’t been a haunting or supernatural occurrence reported in the area in over 150 years. There would be no reason for a hunter to even stop by the bar and none of his Stanford friends would think to go here.
“I see you know our lovely bartender,” Sariel said, coming up behind him. “So pretty,” he added, in a low voice that didn’t carry further than Sam’s ears.
“You know Sam?” Jo asked, with some surprise.
“Oh, Sam and I go way back,” Sariel told her lightly, his eyes and smile bright in the dim light of the bar. He’d dropped the cowboy outfit and was in bar-standard jeans and dark shirt. “You know, he gave up a full ride to law school?”
Jo’s eyes went wide.
“Oh, yeah.” Sariel’s grin widened. “Terrible tragedy. But you could really have anything you wanted, couldn’t you, Sam?” He wrapped an arm around Sam’s shoulders. “He’s so modest, but really, he could do anything, be anything.”
Sam lifted Sariel’s arm off of him. “Why don’t we go sit down and leave Jo to her work?” he said coldly.
Though Sam and Sariel sat in the back of the smoky bar, drinking whiskey and beer, discussing logistics and resurrections in dead languages, Sariel’s eyes were never off Jo for very long. He did not know all of the art and skill and knowledge that Sam would need, but he, for reasons Sam did not quite understand and did not quite want to understand, was more willing to offer his aid than any other of the demons, other than Armaros, and Sam was willing to take what he could get. Ever since that first meeting in Portland, as Sam crisscrossed the country, he could feel himself growing closer to what he needed.
And when Sariel left that night, with a bedazzled and laughing Jo on his arm, Sam couldn’t bring himself to care, but he still drove on through the night, needing to put the town behind him.
*
“What’s going on?” Dean finally asked, tiring of the silent staring contest between Sam and Bobby. He tried to sound angry and authoritative, but couldn’t muster it. He was tired and in pain and scared and scared that he was scared. He didn’t like feeling small and helpless and he liked feeling invisible and meaningless even less. “What’s with you Bobby? You’re acting like I’m not even here. You’re worse than Sam.”
Bobby sighed, deep and heavy in his chest. “You’re dead, son. You’ve been dead since May.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t die until next May.”
“You died.” Sam’s voice was flat and broken. “You were torn apart by Hell Hounds and destroyed by the demon Lillith. I watched as they dragged you into Hell.”
“No,” Dean whispered, “no. You won’t be there to see it. I’m going to go away, going to be alone when it happens. That’s not fair. That’s not how it will happen.”
Sam stood and towered over both Dean and Bobby, his presence like a pillar of anger in the room. “No. It won’t. They won’t have you. I heard you screaming. You screamed my name, endlessly into the night. You were in pain and I was alone. And it won’t happen again.”
“I don’t know how you brought him back, if that’s even your brother, but you can’t keep them from taking him back again.”
Sam looked him in the eyes. “Can’t I?” His eyes were yellow and feral and his voice boomed like the voice of God.
*
Sam pulled the Impala into the Getty station. It was only September, but the air was chilly in the mountains. The Rockies were a rough necessity of life in crisscrossing the country, but he hated Colorado as much as he hated anything anymore. There were too many memories, to much pain, in Colorado; memories of wendigos and vampires and family feuds.
“Sam? Sam Winchester?”
Sam looked up from the pump, half expecting Sariel or Nakir to be checking in on him unexpectedly, but was surprised to see a young man in a heavy sweatshirt standing by a small green Honda. It was still daylight and the man’s irises were a healthy brown, with the whites standing out against his dark skin. Sam relaxed minutely, sliding the gun back into his waistband.
“Josh, man, it’s Josh,” the man cried excitedly, leaving his car to step closer to Sam. “Remember me? From Stanford? It’s been ages, just ages. And that is one sweet car.”
“My brother’s,” Sam said automatically, the words like thorns in his mouth.
“Yeah, I heard you were on a road trip. One long-ass road trip if you’re still on it. Where is he?” Josh moved to touch the car, but Sam stepped between him and his brother’s baby.
“Whoa, dude.” Josh cocked his head to get a better look at Sam, whose face was hidden in his hoodie. “You okay?”
Sam blinked hard. He could feel the hidden knowledge thrumming in his mind and blood as he always could, but here, here he could feel it in the sky and the very mountains themselves. Armaros and Sariel believed it was normal, this pounding burning of something he couldn’t touch. Penny had told him in his/her motherly way that with all great knowledge came suffering. He had seen the pain in his/her golden eyes. Staring at Josh, it flooded through him and he was burning with fever and drowning in an ocean of ice. It was there; it had always been there, and yet it was something new, something that could save him.
“You okay?” Josh repeated. “Your eyes… You got contacts, man?”
He felt like his skin was on fire, like he was standing naked midday in Death Valley, like his blood was boiling in his veins. He knew how to read the signs in the sky and on the earth, how to write contracts that bound the soul beyond death and hellfire or heaven’s sun, how to appear as he wasn’t, and how to win the hearts of the daughters of men. He knew how to stay the hand of a killer, how to incite the anger of God, and how to summon angels and demons with his very breath. He knew who he was, who he had been, and who he was destined to be.
“Lilith,” he said calmly, precisely, calling her name across the four corners of the earth and into the rancid pits of Hell.
She walked out of the convenience store attached to the gas station, her body a mockery. The body she now possessed was no little girl, no tool to terrorize parents and family pets. She was statuesque, with honey blonde hair and glass blue eyes. Her dress, blue with pink roses, was more suited to a southern beach than the Colorado mountains, but Sam didn’t care. He saw red.
“What?” she asked, in her little girl’s voice. “You don’t like how I look?” She pouted, her lips rose red. “And you’re the one who asked me here.”