An Ancient Pitch 2/?
Title: An Ancient Pitch
Author: Deanish
Rating: PG-13
Length: 4,100 words
Characters/Pairings: Dean. Sam. More to come.
Summary: Dean's out of hell, and the brothers are enjoying their version of normal. Until a couple of witches get in the way.
Sorry for the excessive delay. And many thanks to Mirandajel and QueeblerQuabbler for their heaping amounts of help.
Chapter 1: Of Cursed Band-Aids Fame is here.
Chapter 2: Eat and Love It Until It's All Over
"Doesn’t look much like a witch’s hovel," Dean said, doubtfully.
Sam scrunched down in his seat and craned his neck to try and get a better view out of Dean’s window. They were idling across the street from the address of the only Fischer that Sam had found listed in Chapel Hill. He squinted at it before grunting noncommittally. Those women back in Sherwood had lived in nice enough houses.
"Maybe it’s candy coated," Dean continued, brightening.
"Um," Sam ran that one over in his head, but still came up blank. "Huh?"
"Candy coated," Dean enthused, unhelpfully.
Then it clicked, and Sam straightened up - the better to glare at his brother. "As in the kind of house you would use to fatten up the children you plan to turn into stew?" he asked.
Dean was unperturbed. "Hey, those Grimm guys knew their stuff."
Almost against his will, Sam considered the idea. It’s not like he could say it was outside the realm of …Then shook his head. "Haven’t come across any reports of missing children in the area, so I think we can safely assume she’s not that kind of witch."
Dean frowned at Sam but didn’t let him ruin his fun. "Betcha she’s thought about it, though," he mused.
Sam had to admit that the house was decidedly uncreepy. It was, in fact, a very cozy-looking cottage. Dove gray with bright white trim and lots of shady trees that clearly grew up around the house, hugging its corners protectively.
And actually, when you looked a little closer maybe it was all a little too picturesque. How did they manage to grow all that thick, green grass and those cheerful flowers with all that shade?
"Let’s just get inside," Sam finally answered.
Dean parked a discreet distance away, and together they made their way up the tea rose-lined walk. After a casual glance around, Sam slipped his lock pick kit out of his pocket. But as he reached for the knob, the door fell open. He looked back at Dean, who raised questioning eyebrows at him. "Door was already open," he explained.
Dean’s eyebrows turned suspicious, and his hand moved to the gun at his back, though he didn’t pull it out. Sam took another look around. No one was in sight, and nothing was moving, except the porch swing in the corner of the wrap-around porch, which was swaying invitingly.
Even though there wasn’t a breeze.
Sam opened his mouth to point that out, but Dean was already pushing cautiously through the front door with the excuse, "Well, it is a small town."
When Sam looked back, the swing was still again. He frowned at it and moved on.
Whatever the reason for the lax security, the house was definitely empty. The air was completely still, without even the hum of the air conditioner or refrigerator to mask the silence - as though the whole house was holding its breath.
And it definitely didn’t look like the kind of house that was used to quiet. It was larger than it appeared on the outside, and while the exterior was sunny but sedate, the interior was a riot of color - reds, yellows and oranges mixed brightly with gleaming hardwood floors and lots and lots of flowers. The furniture was overstuffed, the rugs plush and the pillows abundant. It looked … comfortable.
And Sam was no expert, but he knew enough to tell that the home was positively littered with antiques, eclectic and expensive - 18th century end tables holding up lamps on either side of the couch; a wire dressmaker’s form collecting bags and scarves in the entry way; remnants of stained-glass windows distilling sunlight behind airy curtains. It shouldn’t have gone together, but it did, and it certainly didn’t scream ‘witches live here.’ Or really even whisper it.
It did, however, scream ‘girls live here.’ Sam felt elephantine just trying to maneuver down the hall.
"Hey," he said, slapping Dean’s hand away from a fragile-looking bud vase of red poppies. Then, by way of staving off the complaint he could see coming, "If you were a witch, where would you keep your potion ingredients?"
"Kitchen," Dean promptly answered.
It wasn’t where Sam would keep his potion ingredients, but he supposed it was as good a place as any to start. He shrugged and led the way down a hall lined with family photos dating back to what must have been the early days of photography - some of which Sam recognized from his perusal of the Chapel Hill Newsboys’ archives - and through a cozy formal dining room decorated in bright blue with white china that gleamed despite its obvious age.
Both were as neat and carefully thought out as the living room had been, which made the state of the kitchen that much more surprising.
It wasn’t … dirty, exactly. There were no crumbs or streaks of grease or grime. And there were lingering smells of something sweet recently baked.
But it was a mess.
There were haphazard piles of dishes everywhere - on the table, on the island, on the counters. Even inside the microwave, which Sam guessed wasn’t used much, judging by the way the door seemed to have been removed to accommodate the girth of the serving bowls stored inside. A heap of unsorted silver lay tangled in a drying cloth draped over a punch bowl; tea cups teetered on the edge of every windowsill.
And where there weren’t dishes, there were ingredients. No discernible rhyme or reason to it. The standard canisters of salt (but in table and sea and a number of other varieties), sugar (white, brown, powered and raw) and flour (lots and lots of flours). As well as teas and coffees, cocoa, all the standard spices and a few not so standard - saffron, sage, celery seed, star anise, juniper, coriander, cardamom, sumac, lime leaves. Plus … Marshmallows?
A quick look inside the walk-in pantry and stainless-steel industrial-sized refrigerator revealed why none of this was put away - both were crammed full, as were all of the cabinets. There were little pockets of work space carved out here and there, and room left for two place settings at the table. But otherwise, Sam estimated that there were no more than a few square inches of free space left in the kitchen. He supposed that - witch or not - it made sense for a caterer’s kitchen to be well stocked, but he couldn’t imagine how anyone could find anything in all this.
"Wow," Dean said, prying the lid off the marshmallow canister and popping a few into his mouth. He seemed impressed by the abundance, though, as opposed to overwhelmed by the mess, like Sam.
"Yeah," Sam said, fighting the urge to slap Dean’s hand again as he reached for more marshmallows.
"So," Dean garbled around the mouthful, "is it safe to assume that somewhere in all this, there’s probably some marigold, rose petals and nasturtium, or do we actually have to look?"
Sam looked around, bracing for the response he expected to get when he answered that it would irresponsible to just assume, when he spotted a slouching bag of garden soil crammed into the corner by a back door. Next to it were a mound of spades and trowels, and a pair of those weird plastic shoes that seemed to be so popular lately. He walked over and peered out the door’s window.
If the kitchen was a mess, the garden was chaos. A jungle of honeysuckle vines and rose bushes running riot under a blossoming peach tree. Lilies, lavender, irises and asters. Silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row.
Chaos, but in the sense that nature was untamable. It reminded Sam of that book one of his third grade teachers read to the class during a string of rainy days - The Secret Garden. They moved before the class made it through the book, but it looked like Sam’s mental picture of the garden. Wild and untamed. But clearly someone had put a lot of work into cultivating it. Because he was pretty sure half of the things he was seeing shouldn’t grow in this hemisphere, much less this climate. Certainly not in the baking heat of a southern almost-July.
Regardless, Sam had no trouble picking out of the snarl delicate pink roses, sunny marigolds and showy nasturtiums. It wasn’t the kind of smoking gun that would hold up in court, but it was good enough for a Winchester.
"Looks like we found our witch," he told Dean.
A more extensive search of the house didn’t turn up any spare bird bones lying around. But Dean did uncover what he considered an unusually large store of band-aids in one of the upstairs bathrooms. And Sam hit pay dirt in the library.
The smell hit him first, and like at the library, he had to brace himself before he went in. Unlike the library, however, these titles weren’t written in English. The shelves spanned centuries and several continents, and Sam thought that if he’d had access to this library two months ago, Dean never would have spent May in Hell.
His breath caught at the thought, and he clenched his fists against a sudden surge of resentment and rage. These books had no business in the home of a caterer and an architect, and definitely not in the hands of a witch. He couldn’t keep them himself, of course - they’d hardly fit in the trunk of the car - but maybe they could haul them to Bobby’s. Bobby’d give ‘em a good home, and then they’d be there if Sam ever needed them again.
Not that he ever - ever - intended to need them again.
A car door slamming outside pulled him out of his head. He hurried from the room and met Dean scrambling down the stairs. They were heading for the back door when they heard a rattle from the kitchen doorknob, followed by a loud thump. Dean grabbed Sam by the collar and pulled him into the pantry just as the sounds of the key scrapping against the lock reached them. The pantry door swung shut mere seconds before the backdoor swung open.
"Not funny!" a woman’s voice rang out, and Sam stiffened thinking they’d been caught. The woman just sighed, though, and plunked several somethings heavily to the ground. Sam peeked through the crack of the door, and saw a pile of environmentally-friendly grocery bags. He couldn’t get a good look with his limited scope, but a dark-haired figure the size and shape of a woman flitted in and out of view around the edges of the pile, humming what sounded like Blondie. For a moment Sam worried that she’d need to put something away in the pantry, then decided that based on the utter lack of free space he’d noted earlier, they were probably safe.
"What could she possibly be out of?" he wondered aloud to Dean.
He couldn’t see Dean, but felt him shrug in the darkness. "Eye of newt?" he suggested in a whisper.
A trio of tinny voices piped up from nowhere, singing, "Sisters, sisters, there were never such devoted sisters …" The dark-haired figure tripped back into view and began digging frantically through the bags. The song made it to "Lord help the mister who-" before the woman pulled a cell phone out with a triumphant "ah ha!"
"Don’t tell me you can’t find any!" she answered in lieu of hello.
After listening for a second, she groaned. "Elie, I told you, they won’t feel a thing, I promise. They’ll just eat and eat and love it until it’s all over."
Sam’s mouth fell open, and he felt Dean tense beside him.
"I meant to, I swear," said the woman, whom he presumed to be Anna. "But I was almost home by the time I realized I forgot it, and I’ve got a bazillionty things to do tonight, so can you just stop and pick some up for me on your way home? Pleeease? Just this once? I’ll never ask you to help again, I promise."
Another pause. "Yeah, I know I said that last time, but this time I really -" She trailed off, apparently listening to Elinore.
"No!" she moaned. "It has to be tonight! It works best under a full moon!"
After that, there was a minute or two of intermittent "But … but … but"s followed by a "Wait, Elie, jus-" and a heavy sigh. A faint beep signaled the end of the conversation.
Sam could just make out the back of Anna’s head as she slid down the counter with a pouty, "Fine." She sat still for a second then started gathering the contents she’d flung from her purse in her search for the cell phone, muttering "ungrateful little brat" all the while. Two minutes and an upended bag of apples later, and Sam and Dean were alone in the house once again.
Sam cautiously pushed the pantry door all the way open, and turned to look at Dean in the light of the kitchen. Dean looked about as stunned as he felt. It was never this easy.
"I guess we know what we’re doing tonight, then."
OOO
Being that it was just a week past the solstice and still hours before the moonrise, Sam and Dean decided they had plenty of time to grab some dinner and talk strategy before they needed to be back at the house on Peachtree Street. Dean pointed them toward the Courthouse Square Café while Sam riffled through one of his mounting pile of journals.
"I’m sure I … yeah. Yeah. Here it is," he mumbled. "OK. Obviously I’ve never tried it, but I came across a ritual a couple of months ago while I was … uh, looking … that claims to be able to strip a witch of her power."
Dean noted the hesitation in Sam’s reference to his year of research, but decided not to pursue it at the moment. He wasn’t sure if that was for Sam’s benefit or his own. He didn’t know if Sam’s avoidance of the subject was for his or Sam’s benefit, come to it.
Regardless, what he said was, "That’s a start."
"A start?"
Dean sighed, not liking the direction this conversation - this job - was going to have to take. "I don’t know if stripping her of her power is going to be enough. If she’s mostly using garden herbs and spices to do her dirty work … she may not need powers to keep it up."
He watched out of the corner of his eye as Sam thought through that logic. He could see when he came to the conclusion Dean had already reached.
"Oh," he said. He opened and closed his mouth around aborted arguments a few times but didn’t actually say anything more.
Dean let the silence sit like that for a moment, then decided he couldn’t leave it there. "Are you … OK with that?" He wasn’t sure what answer he was hoping for these days.
Sam didn’t answer for awhile, but Dean knew he wasn’t ignoring the question. Finally he said, carefully, "I don’t know."
Neither did Dean. He couldn’t consign things to Hell so easily these days. He couldn’t remember it, but what he was forgetting made him wonder what it took to deserve it. Not that he was feeling sorry for evil. But … what kind of monster has a vase of poppies on their coffee table?
He shook his head, trying to shake the image out of his mind as he pulled into the restaurant parking lot. The woman had killed one person already - was planning to kill more. And poppies or not, what he’d felt at Jonathan’s sure wasn’t sweet.
Still. Shooting a real person would be bad enough. Shooting them, knowing they were heading for Hell …
Christ, he was just going in circles now. Dean turned off the engine with an impatient flick of his wrist and barreled out of the car. He didn’t bother to wait for Sam, but heard him scrambling to catch up as he pushed through the diner’s door. The cowbell that had seemed friendly yesterday just jangled against his nerves today.
"Thought I’d see you again!" Cammie stepped out from behind the counter, reaching for a couple of menus. "You just here for the pie, or did ya want some dinner first?"
Dean just stared at her, no idea - for a moment - what she was talking about. Luckily Sam got there in time to intervene.
"Uh, dinner first, please," he said. Cammie shot Dean a funny look but didn’t ask as she led them to the same booth they’d sat in the day before.
They ate a quiet dinner of meatloaf as the light outside began to turn pink. The same string of thoughts were wearing a groove in Dean’s grey matter as they circled in on themselves like an ouroboros: No one deserves that, no one deserves Hell. Where else are you going to send evil? OK, evil deserves to go to Hell. What counts as evil? Murder is evil. Anna Fischer murdered, she as much as admitted it. But … surely she didn’t seem bad enough to deserve to go to Hell. No one deserves Hell.
A glance up at Sam indicated that his thoughts were probably traveling in the same vein, though Dean didn’t know if he was giving the same attention to the subject of Hell that Dean was. He wondered if Sam had thought much about it at all before last year. Dean certainly hadn’t. It had been the place where demons went if you were lucky, and nothing more. Even when Dad was down there, Dean had been so worried about what was going on with Sam that he hadn’t had time to think about it much past being angry about the whole thing.
Now though-
Dean was mercifully jarred out starting that whole train of thought over again when Cammie slammed two plates of pie down on the table.
"Figured I knew pretty well what you’d be wanting," she said, grinning.
Dean wasn’t so sure she did, but he managed to paste on a smile and thank her anyway. She waited expectantly for them to pick up their forks.
"You’re gonna love this," she promised.
Sharing a tight smile across the table with Sam, they both picked up their forks and dug in.
And …
Dean’s anxiety seemed to melt away in the face of peaches. God, they were … he could practically … He leaned back in the booth to savor the taste. It was like being transported to a back porch somewhere. Freshly mowed grass sweetening the air and lazy bees buzzing just out of sight. It’d be OK. They’d know the right thing to do when the time came. They always did.
His gaze wandered toward the window, which he hadn’t thought to look out before. Directly across the street was the sprawling seat of government from which the café got its name. And catty cornered from that was a little white church with bright stain-glass windows and a gleaming steeple perched over a tiny bell tower. Probably where the town got its name. It looked nice.
Suddenly Dean heard himself saying, "Maybe we should go to church on Sunday."
Jesus H. Christ, where had that come from?
Dean shot up in his seat - he hadn’t meant to say that out loud. Was he even thinking that? He tried to remember. Maybe a little, but, you know …. not really. He didn’t do church. Shit.
Sam gaped at him. "You? Go to church? Are you on crack?"
Well it wasn’t that big a deal, Dean couldn’t help but think defensively. "You’re the one who prays every night," he accused.
"Not anymore," Sam threw back.
Dean lost track of whatever he’d been planning to say next. "You don’t? Since when?"
Sam tilted his head to the angle that Dean always interpreted as incredulousness. "Since about the time I figured out there wasn’t going to be any divine intervention keeping you out of Hell."
They hadn’t actually said the word ‘Hell’ out loud much during the past month, and it seemed to have so much more weight now than it had before. But that wasn’t what forced Dean to look away, to find a small gouge in the edge of the table to focus on while the white noise ringing in his ears drowned out the sounds of the diner.
So. He was single handedly responsible for Sam’s loss of faith in all things good.
Well crap.
"You know," he said slowly, "I’m not in Hell."
When he looked back up, Sam looked more incredulous, if anything. "So what, you’re a Bible thumper now?"
"No!" Dean spat. Then, "But, I mean … " He fish-mouthed for a minute trying to go on.
"What?" Sam earlier indignation seemed to be edging toward honest curiosity now.
Dean let out a long breath and directed his gaze back toward the hole in the side of the table. "Well, it’s right, isn’t it? About Hell."
When he chanced a quick glance up, Sam was giving him that look he sometimes got, that wistful look like Dean was the saddest book he’d ever read.
Dean grumbled, exasperated, and looked away again. "Shuddup," he growled.
Sam just grinned, and they lapsed back into a more comfortable silence. After a few beats of it, Sam cleared his throat and, glancing out the window at the church Dean had spotted, said in a sidling voice, "You know, that’s a Baptist church."
Dean followed his gaze and shrugged in agreement. "So?"
"So the Baptist are usually pretty solidly against drinking and gambling and sleeping around."
Dean thought about that, then pulled out his best leer. "Soo … you’re a Baptist."
That earned him an eye roll and his own, "Shuddup."
But then-
The leer slid of Dean’s face. "Hey," he said. "So that drinking and stuff …" He coughed, stalling. "They, uh, they think those things send you to Hell?"
Sam’s eyes went distant and thoughtful. "Depends, I guess. On how fundamental a Baptist you’re talking to. Some might say that if you’re doing those things, you must not be a Christian and are therefore going to Hell. Others - just that those are things Christians should avoid."
"Well who’s right?" Dean said, wincing a bit at the unintended sharpness in his voice. But honestly, shouldn’t that be a pretty cut and dried answer? They’ve had what? 2,000 years to figure this out?
Sam didn’t seem to notice right away. "Who knows?" he shrugged.
He couldn’t miss it, however, when Dean demanded, "What do you mean, ‘who knows?’" in the voice he usually reserved for intimidating someone into telling where they’d buried the body. Dean watched Sam blink in surprised confusion and visibly pull himself out of his daydreams.
"Well," he said finally, apologetically "that’s the kind of thing that people have been fighting over for centuries. Like, literally."
"So what? People are supposed to just guess and hope for the best? Bullshit. You can’t leave people hanging like that - they need to know how not to end up in Hell!"
Sam froze, realization dawning on his face. "Dean-"
The stricken tone told Dean that the gig was well and truly up. Sam was onto him. Not that there was anything to be onto. He didn’t even remember anything, so it wasn’t like it mattered. Not that that would necessarily stop Sam - his policy was that if the subject was brought up, it must be pursued. And possibly beaten to death.
It made Dean tired just thinking about it, so he hurried to head his brother off.
"We’d better get going," Dean said before Sam had a chance to figure out what he wanted to say. "Moon’ll be up soon."