SUPERWHO BIG BANG - PART THREE.
Part Three
Dean didn’t speak. Not immediately. He walked around the Impala, opened the trunk. He might have been getting something to torture the truth out of Sam with. As it happens, he closed the trunk, and walked back round to the front of the car with two bottle of beer. El Sol. He held one out to Sam, who was half sat on the hood of the car, supporting his weight with his hands. He straightened up, however, and took the beer.
“Thanks.” he said, twisted the cap off, and taking a drink from the bottle. Dean hadn’t opened his bottle yet. He was watching Sam. The beer had been a peace offering - setting the precedent of the conversation as a friendly chat, not confrontational.
Neither brother spoke. Dean was waiting for Sam to break the silence, which, eventually, he did.
“So...uh. What do you want to know?”
Dean could tell he was finding this slightly awkward. He realised then that there might be more to Sam’s missing years than he’d previously hazarded guesses at.
“Uh.” he resisted the urge to demand everything. All of it. Sam’s memories of every day spent hiking through space and time. And he didn’t want to know what Sam did immediately after leaving - he didn’t want to know whether his little brother had missed his family, or whether he’d not given them any mind. Because deep down, he knew, and he didn’t want to think about that.
“How about starting with...uh. Before you came here...as younger you, I mean. Where had you been before that?”
Starting backwards. Retracing steps. It might be easier that way.
Sam stared down at the beaten ground of the yard, one hands curled around the cool glass of the bottle, eyes far away as he though. His posture was relaxed, knees apart, arms loose. After a few moments of silence, one side of his mouth quirked up into a sort-of smile, like he was remembering a trip with a long dead friend, recalling anecdotes and jokes with fondness. He cleared his throat.
“The creation of the Universe.” There was no ceremony with his reply, just stating the facts.
Dean stared.
“Shut up.” he told him. “Like, for real?”
“Yeah.” Sam replied, with an underlying laugh. “For real. I told him after that I wanted to see the end of the world, to balance it out. Guess the TARDIS took me literally. I meant the end of the Universe. Not...here.”
Dean was still trying to wrap his head around the creation of the Universe, and that Sam witnessed it. But, like the wax paper that cheeseburgers come in, once the paper comes off, or in Sam’s case, once the words were out, it was impossible to wrap the paper back exactly as it had been. It just didn’t seem to fit.
“Well?” his tone was more demanding than he intended.
“...Well, what?” Sam asked.
“What was it like? Give me details, man! How did it go down?”
Sam’s eyes were distant again. Watching something so...intense, so awesome and...vast - it almost hurt to recall it.
“Well, there was nothing. And then it was filled with everything. Always.”
That made no sense to Dean. He screwed his face up, finally popping the cap from his beer and taking a drink. He had long since become borderline immune to the weak alcohol content in beer - he could drink it like soda to little effect - but it still managed to calm him as he felt it enter his bloodstream.
“Where did it come from?” he asked, finally.
Sam was silent. At first, Dean thought maybe he didn’t know, but it became clear that he was just trying to think how to word it so that Dean would understand. Sure, Dean had travelled through time with the assistance of an Angel, but never through space (Sam had a hard enough time getting him onto an aeroplane, let alone a stolen - uh - borrowed spaceship.) and as a result, Sam had to watch his words as if explaining the concept of how a computer works to someone from a tribe from deep in a jungle somewhere. Dean wasn’t stupid - he just lacked the experience.
“It split off from something bigger.”
If Dean had been expecting anything, that was not it.
“...come again?”
If he had been speaking to anyone but his brother, those words were usually a proposition, never him not understanding something.
Sam seemed to have been expecting that, because he gave an easy grin.
“Come on, man. You’ve seen the movies, you should get this no problem. It’s...” he was struggling. “Okay. Every time someone makes a decision, another part of...let’s call it The Core, just for the sake of this discussion. Every time someone, anywhere, makes a decision, another part of The Core breaks off, creating a dimensional universe where life continues with what would have happened if someone had made a different choice.”
Dean was silent, trying to keep his mind together - it was trying to blow.
“You...you’re telling me that--that this, all of this, exists just because somebody made a choice somewhere?”
“Well...yeah, basically.” Sam rolled his shoulders in an almost-shrug. He’d had a lot longer to come to terms with that than Dean had.
Dean was apparently speechless. His mouth was opening and closing, eyes wide with something similar, but not quite, disbelief as he tried to process what Sam had told him. Dean himself had never been anywhere that involved crossing any expanse of water, and yet Sam had been...everywhere. To the start and the end of...not quite time, but life as they knew it. And that was difficult to deal with.
“How--” He cleared his throat. “How many Universes even are there?”
The question hung, unanswered, in the air. Sam took a long drink before attempting to answer with what Dean assumed to be a hazarded guess rather than an informed answer.
“Thousands. Millions. Billions. Some of them...without monsters. Without angels, demons...without all this crap.”
Dean was...jealous. There was no other way to describe it. His mind was blown at the thought of anything but the ocean of crap that he was constantly swimming against the tide in existing, at hundreds of versions of himself, doing normal things, drinking a beer with his brother talking not about other said Universes, but about football, what to get Mom for her birthday, or even what shenanigans their respective kids were getting into...
“That’s not all.” Sam broke him from his reverie by continuing his explanation. “Some of them have burnt themselves out already, though, I’m guessing. Someone made a choice that killed everything else. Or didn’t make the choice, and The Core split to reflect that...”
“Huh.” Dean raised his eyebrows, shrugged, drained the rest of his beer. “I guess time is fluid after all.”
Sam nodded, smiled, but Dean noticed the pain is little brother was trying to mask with it.
“Alright.” he said, setting his bottle down on the ground. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing.” came the immediate reply.
“Don’t give me that, Sam.” he insisted, using his warning tone.
Sam looked down, sad. No... more than that. He looked miserable. “I... just know what I’m about to go through. As myself, I mean.”
“Yeah...I couldn’t help but notice you seemed a little...” Dean searched for the right word, failed, made up a new one. “Emotastic, way back when we first picked up again to go find Dad in Jericho. I never asked why. Not then. And now I am.”
“Emota...?” Sam trailed off, shaking his head. “Yeah, well, I couldn’t see it back then. It’s taken me almost five years to figure things out for myself. I just felt... abandoned. Ditched. Like my best friend had just left, or died, even. I was grieving, not ‘emotastic’. And I... younger me... is about to go through that. I feel bad for him. In a weird, self-pitying sorta way.”
Paying no mind to Sam’s baring of his soul, Dean picked up on something he’d heard at the beginning of Sam’s reply. “Couldn’t see what back then?”
Sam breathed a shaky laugh.
“Oh, c’mon, Dean. You know. You’ve always known.”
Yes, Dean knew. But he wanted to hear Sam say it. Confirm it. In his own words. He just stared at Sam, waiting. Sam laughed, shook his head, rolled his eyes.
“I love him, Dean. Loved. But, to be perfectly honest with you? I don’t think there’s anyone who ever travelled with him that doesn’t.”
Way back when Sam had told Dean that he wasn’t sleeping with the weird dude in a bow tie that had just crashed in on the worst night of Dean’s adult life, Dean had believed him. And he believed him now - he didn’t think for a second that there had been anything between them. But despite that, hearing Sam confess his love for someone - the same bow tied British spaceman that Dean had developed and nurtured a special type of hate for over the years... well. That ached. A fresh, new hate for The Doctor stirred in Dean. The type of hate he’d feel towards anyone who hurt his brother, played with his emotions. He felt almost as if he ought to get him another beer, some snacks, and put on a Jet Li movie marathon or something to cheer him up.
Although, he was five years too late. And besides - Dean had always hated the Doctor. This was just another reminder why.
Dean hated the Doctor in the same way he’d hate anyone that drove a wedge between his family. Hated him in the way he’d hated Ruby - before the setting Lucifer free bit. Dean didn’t have a lot of family left - less now than ever - and he blamed the Doctor solely for stealing Sam away, all those years ago, on that dark and wet night they’d been squatting in the rotting old split-level.
He’d hated something intensely that had made Sam so beyond happy. Because it had made him happy for all the wrong reasons, with all the wrong people. People that weren’t his brother and Father. That was so... Dean.
He ran a hand through his hair, smiling, although it was a bitter, rueful smile. His eyes were on the ground, out at the salvage yard...anywhere but on Sam. He shrugged.
“Well, you’re right.” he agreed, voice low, flushed with regret. “I suppose I have always known.”
And that, that was why he’d found himself growing to hate the Doctor. Because he was the object of Sam’s love, he was who Sam wanted to travel with. Dean and John had just been Sam’s lack of options, not choice. And they never would be. That was why Dean had hated the Doctor.
Sam’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “And...you’re okay with that?” he asked. Dean sensed the disbelief bordering on the edge on incredulity in Sam’s voice, and didn’t blame him. He was a possessive brother, he got that.
“Well, no, I’m not.” he shrugged. “But what can I do about it? I might not like it, but you...well. You’re legal, you can...love...” he said it like even the concept left a bad-taste in his mouth, “...whoever you want. Except. Y’know. Demons bent on unleashing Armageddon.”
It hadn’t been easy for him to get that out, and he knew Sam knew it. He met his eyes, defiantly, almost challenging Sam to question him.
Sam didn’t. He shrugged. “Right. Well. Thanks, I guess.”
“Yeah, well, don’t mention it.”
Silence.
“He sent you back, didn’t he? This is your last trip with him, isn’t it?”
Silence.
“Sam?”
Sam cleared his throat. “...yeah. Yeah, he did. It is. But... I don’t wanna-- I don’t wanna talk about it. Please.”
Dean threw up his hands, defeated. “Alright. Chick-flick moment over.” he announced, getting up from where he was leaning against the hood of his beloved Impala, and arching his back until he felt his spine crack. “We’re still no closer on how to ice the devil. And Michael, whilst we’re at it. First time in my life I’ve wanted to go for extra-credit.” he gave a grin that wasn’t entirely forced, trying to get the atmosphere back to normal.
Sam smiled and looked back down at the bottle in his hands.
“Um. Excuse me...”
Both brothers turned to face the source of the voice. The Doctor. Dean rolled his eyes, but bit his tongue. Sam kept his eyes away, his body language sealed off. Hostile. Bitter. Angry. Dean almost called him Havisham, but that would mean admitting to knowing Great Expectations. And he knew he’d never live it down (his tenth grade English teacher - or rather, one of them - had been hot. And seeing as he was planning on blowing town anyway, he’d thought maybe, if he impressed her enough...it hadn’t worked, and then Dean was stuck with knowledge that he’d never use, and had spent five nights trying to ingest from the book before skipping it and watching the movie). So, instead, he mirrored Sam’s body language, arms crossed across his chest. Compared to the double bulk of the Winchester boys, the Doctor suddenly looked tiny.
“What do you want? We’re kinda having a private chat here.” Dean raised his eyebrows, pointedly, not worrying about sounding rude. He never did. As much as he hated the Doctor for stealing Sam away, he hated even more for hurting Sam. Family were supposed to make you miserable. They were allowed, as family. Aliens were not. Dean was protective. Dean was pissed.
“Yes. I understand that but...I thought you ought to know that your brother...the younger, fringier version, I mean--”
“Oh, you mean the one you’re about to hump’n’dump all the way back to 2005?” Dean didn’t keep the venom from his voice, despite having done the same as he accused many a time. More than he could count. Without the time-travel part, of course. And he’d never spent long enough with a woman for her to actually fall in love with him before he ditched her.
“Dean!” Sam protested. “There was no h--”
“Whilst I’m aware you’re angry... Um. Very angry. Possibly at me...”
Dean stared at The Doctor.
“Definitely at me... I thought you might want a progress report on the other Sam.”
“He’s not good.” Sam replied looking anywhere but at the Doctor, who was still wearing that ridiculous fez. “Clammy. Cold. Nauseous.”
“Double Trouble Disease.” The Doctor nodded, looking almost wise. “I coined that.” he was trying unsuccessfully not to smile, proudly. The smile slid off of his face, and he put on his best serious expression when Dean shot him a glare, though. “Basically, being here is bad for his health. There being two of you here is bad for his health. He’s only been here an hour or so, and he’s already suffering. I’m afraid it’s just going to get steadily worse. And Sam, I’m sorry--”
“This is where you send me - him - home.” Sam finished for him, sounding flat. “Yeah, I know. I remember.”
“I can’t send him immediately.” The Doctor added. “It seems having two of you here is affecting the TARDIS. Confusing her. I’ll need to rejiggle the controls a little.”
“Well, why don’t you go do that?” Dean asked, coldly.
The Doctor had had over 900 years of practice at smiling at people who hurt him, or showed spite for reasons beyond his vast understanding. He nodded, and gave one of those special, practiced smiles. “I think I will.” and turned, began walking away, to where his blue box was standing, a few hundred yards away.
Dean waited until The Doctor was about ten paces gone before turning to Sam and saying “It would be pretty cool, though.”
“What would?”
“Busting through into an empty Universe. Sticking a flag down, claiming it...being Supreme Ruler of All.” he grinned, picturing himself as a Han Solo type, staking claim on an entire Universe.
Sam smiled, shook his head. “Dude. I don’t even wanna think about what laws you would-- hey!”
The Doctor it seemed, was akin to Castiel when it came to personal space. He was suddenly right in front of the brothers again, the front of their shirts grasped in each of his fists.
“That’s it!” he exclaimed. “That’s how you can stop the battle!”
“Uh. No. Hate to break it to you, but in case you haven’t noticed this Universe isn’t empty.” Dean pointed out, closing his hand around The Doctor’s wrist and removing it from his shirt.
“Yeah.” Sam agreed. “I don’t think telling the devil that he can’t fight Michael because the rules of the Universe say so is going to work.”
“No... no, no, no, no, no, no, no.” The Doctor shook his head. “We can trap them, lead them to an empty Universe, lock them there. Then the fight still technically takes place, just not here. Damage limitation, without altering what must happen.”
“And how do you suggest we do that, huh, Doc?” Dean asked. “Leave a trail of their favourite cookies and wait at the end with a net? If it were that easy to trap the devil, we’d have done it already!”
There it was again. The silent sound of everything they were trying for as it crashed into an impasse. Nobody wanting to be the first to speak. Nobody knowing what to say.
“We’ll find a way.” Sam said, eventually, his voice firm. “Right now, it’s the best plan we’ve got.”
Dean hated to admit it, but he agreed.
Apparently, so did the Doctor.
“We’d better get our thinking caps on, then.” he said cheerfully, seeming to relish the challenge. “Scratch that. Thinking fezzes. Fezi. No, actually, unscratch. Let’s stick with thinking caps.”
“... What are you even talking about?” Dean asked.
“Does it matter? We have a way to keep the world safe.” Sam reminded him.
The Doctor smiled. Dean did not, but he didn’t scowl, either.
“I really ought to fix the TARDIS, though. Fringey Sam really isn’t doing too well.”
“We don’t want him dying.” Dean sounded grudging, and he was - not at Sam, but at the fact he was now apparently working with the Time Lord. “We’ve all seen Back to the Future - we don’t want Sammy from now to start fading away.”
Sam’s spine went rigid. “... say that again?”
Dean frowned. “Geez, Sam, it was just a jo--”
“Doctor.” Sam called to the retreating shoulders that belonged to the Doctor. “We can go one better than locking Lucifer away.”
“What?” Dean asked.
“What?” The Doctor asked.
“There’s a Universe for every scenario, right?” Sam reminded them. “And time isn’t linear. Dean. Think. What happened when Old Man Biff went back in time, altered things so he ended up dying earlier, and tried to return to his own time?” he was speaking fast, trying to convey his point immediately - to make them understand. Dean shrugged, not understanding the relevance.
“He disappeared.”
“And why?” Sam pressed, needing Dean to reach the conclusion himself for full effect of the brilliance of the plan.
“Because...he...didn’t exist anymore?”
Sam waited. Silently counted down. Three...two...one...the look of amazement of Dean’s face told him that he had realised what Sam was driving at. The penny had dropped.
“There’s a universe for every scenario.” Dean echoed. “Including ones where Lucifer never existed.”
The Doctor’s face split into a wide grin. “Have you ever considered space travel, Dean?” he asked.
One poisonous look from Dean was enough to quash that suggestion. The Doctor’s serious-face returned.
“Now we have an end, we just need the means.” Sam sounded almost excited, understandably.
“We’re not just gonna kill the devil.” Dean was resisting the urge to rub his hands together with glee. “We’re gonna erase him from existence...”
PART FOUR
Dean didn’t speak. Not immediately. He walked around the Impala, opened the trunk. He might have been getting something to torture the truth out of Sam with. As it happens, he closed the trunk, and walked back round to the front of the car with two bottle of beer. El Sol. He held one out to Sam, who was half sat on the hood of the car, supporting his weight with his hands. He straightened up, however, and took the beer.
“Thanks.” he said, twisted the cap off, and taking a drink from the bottle. Dean hadn’t opened his bottle yet. He was watching Sam. The beer had been a peace offering - setting the precedent of the conversation as a friendly chat, not confrontational.
Neither brother spoke. Dean was waiting for Sam to break the silence, which, eventually, he did.
“So...uh. What do you want to know?”
Dean could tell he was finding this slightly awkward. He realised then that there might be more to Sam’s missing years than he’d previously hazarded guesses at.
“Uh.” he resisted the urge to demand everything. All of it. Sam’s memories of every day spent hiking through space and time. And he didn’t want to know what Sam did immediately after leaving - he didn’t want to know whether his little brother had missed his family, or whether he’d not given them any mind. Because deep down, he knew, and he didn’t want to think about that.
“How about starting with...uh. Before you came here...as younger you, I mean. Where had you been before that?”
Starting backwards. Retracing steps. It might be easier that way.
Sam stared down at the beaten ground of the yard, one hands curled around the cool glass of the bottle, eyes far away as he though. His posture was relaxed, knees apart, arms loose. After a few moments of silence, one side of his mouth quirked up into a sort-of smile, like he was remembering a trip with a long dead friend, recalling anecdotes and jokes with fondness. He cleared his throat.
“The creation of the Universe.” There was no ceremony with his reply, just stating the facts.
Dean stared.
“Shut up.” he told him. “Like, for real?”
“Yeah.” Sam replied, with an underlying laugh. “For real. I told him after that I wanted to see the end of the world, to balance it out. Guess the TARDIS took me literally. I meant the end of the Universe. Not...here.”
Dean was still trying to wrap his head around the creation of the Universe, and that Sam witnessed it. But, like the wax paper that cheeseburgers come in, once the paper comes off, or in Sam’s case, once the words were out, it was impossible to wrap the paper back exactly as it had been. It just didn’t seem to fit.
“Well?” his tone was more demanding than he intended.
“...Well, what?” Sam asked.
“What was it like? Give me details, man! How did it go down?”
Sam’s eyes were distant again. Watching something so...intense, so awesome and...vast - it almost hurt to recall it.
“Well, there was nothing. And then it was filled with everything. Always.”
That made no sense to Dean. He screwed his face up, finally popping the cap from his beer and taking a drink. He had long since become borderline immune to the weak alcohol content in beer - he could drink it like soda to little effect - but it still managed to calm him as he felt it enter his bloodstream.
“Where did it come from?” he asked, finally.
Sam was silent. At first, Dean thought maybe he didn’t know, but it became clear that he was just trying to think how to word it so that Dean would understand. Sure, Dean had travelled through time with the assistance of an Angel, but never through space (Sam had a hard enough time getting him onto an aeroplane, let alone a stolen - uh - borrowed spaceship.) and as a result, Sam had to watch his words as if explaining the concept of how a computer works to someone from a tribe from deep in a jungle somewhere. Dean wasn’t stupid - he just lacked the experience.
“It split off from something bigger.”
If Dean had been expecting anything, that was not it.
“...come again?”
If he had been speaking to anyone but his brother, those words were usually a proposition, never him not understanding something.
Sam seemed to have been expecting that, because he gave an easy grin.
“Come on, man. You’ve seen the movies, you should get this no problem. It’s...” he was struggling. “Okay. Every time someone makes a decision, another part of...let’s call it The Core, just for the sake of this discussion. Every time someone, anywhere, makes a decision, another part of The Core breaks off, creating a dimensional universe where life continues with what would have happened if someone had made a different choice.”
Dean was silent, trying to keep his mind together - it was trying to blow.
“You...you’re telling me that--that this, all of this, exists just because somebody made a choice somewhere?”
“Well...yeah, basically.” Sam rolled his shoulders in an almost-shrug. He’d had a lot longer to come to terms with that than Dean had.
Dean was apparently speechless. His mouth was opening and closing, eyes wide with something similar, but not quite, disbelief as he tried to process what Sam had told him. Dean himself had never been anywhere that involved crossing any expanse of water, and yet Sam had been...everywhere. To the start and the end of...not quite time, but life as they knew it. And that was difficult to deal with.
“How--” He cleared his throat. “How many Universes even are there?”
The question hung, unanswered, in the air. Sam took a long drink before attempting to answer with what Dean assumed to be a hazarded guess rather than an informed answer.
“Thousands. Millions. Billions. Some of them...without monsters. Without angels, demons...without all this crap.”
Dean was...jealous. There was no other way to describe it. His mind was blown at the thought of anything but the ocean of crap that he was constantly swimming against the tide in existing, at hundreds of versions of himself, doing normal things, drinking a beer with his brother talking not about other said Universes, but about football, what to get Mom for her birthday, or even what shenanigans their respective kids were getting into...
“That’s not all.” Sam broke him from his reverie by continuing his explanation. “Some of them have burnt themselves out already, though, I’m guessing. Someone made a choice that killed everything else. Or didn’t make the choice, and The Core split to reflect that...”
“Huh.” Dean raised his eyebrows, shrugged, drained the rest of his beer. “I guess time is fluid after all.”
Sam nodded, smiled, but Dean noticed the pain is little brother was trying to mask with it.
“Alright.” he said, setting his bottle down on the ground. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing.” came the immediate reply.
“Don’t give me that, Sam.” he insisted, using his warning tone.
Sam looked down, sad. No... more than that. He looked miserable. “I... just know what I’m about to go through. As myself, I mean.”
“Yeah...I couldn’t help but notice you seemed a little...” Dean searched for the right word, failed, made up a new one. “Emotastic, way back when we first picked up again to go find Dad in Jericho. I never asked why. Not then. And now I am.”
“Emota...?” Sam trailed off, shaking his head. “Yeah, well, I couldn’t see it back then. It’s taken me almost five years to figure things out for myself. I just felt... abandoned. Ditched. Like my best friend had just left, or died, even. I was grieving, not ‘emotastic’. And I... younger me... is about to go through that. I feel bad for him. In a weird, self-pitying sorta way.”
Paying no mind to Sam’s baring of his soul, Dean picked up on something he’d heard at the beginning of Sam’s reply. “Couldn’t see what back then?”
Sam breathed a shaky laugh.
“Oh, c’mon, Dean. You know. You’ve always known.”
Yes, Dean knew. But he wanted to hear Sam say it. Confirm it. In his own words. He just stared at Sam, waiting. Sam laughed, shook his head, rolled his eyes.
“I love him, Dean. Loved. But, to be perfectly honest with you? I don’t think there’s anyone who ever travelled with him that doesn’t.”
Way back when Sam had told Dean that he wasn’t sleeping with the weird dude in a bow tie that had just crashed in on the worst night of Dean’s adult life, Dean had believed him. And he believed him now - he didn’t think for a second that there had been anything between them. But despite that, hearing Sam confess his love for someone - the same bow tied British spaceman that Dean had developed and nurtured a special type of hate for over the years... well. That ached. A fresh, new hate for The Doctor stirred in Dean. The type of hate he’d feel towards anyone who hurt his brother, played with his emotions. He felt almost as if he ought to get him another beer, some snacks, and put on a Jet Li movie marathon or something to cheer him up.
Although, he was five years too late. And besides - Dean had always hated the Doctor. This was just another reminder why.
Dean hated the Doctor in the same way he’d hate anyone that drove a wedge between his family. Hated him in the way he’d hated Ruby - before the setting Lucifer free bit. Dean didn’t have a lot of family left - less now than ever - and he blamed the Doctor solely for stealing Sam away, all those years ago, on that dark and wet night they’d been squatting in the rotting old split-level.
He’d hated something intensely that had made Sam so beyond happy. Because it had made him happy for all the wrong reasons, with all the wrong people. People that weren’t his brother and Father. That was so... Dean.
He ran a hand through his hair, smiling, although it was a bitter, rueful smile. His eyes were on the ground, out at the salvage yard...anywhere but on Sam. He shrugged.
“Well, you’re right.” he agreed, voice low, flushed with regret. “I suppose I have always known.”
And that, that was why he’d found himself growing to hate the Doctor. Because he was the object of Sam’s love, he was who Sam wanted to travel with. Dean and John had just been Sam’s lack of options, not choice. And they never would be. That was why Dean had hated the Doctor.
Sam’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “And...you’re okay with that?” he asked. Dean sensed the disbelief bordering on the edge on incredulity in Sam’s voice, and didn’t blame him. He was a possessive brother, he got that.
“Well, no, I’m not.” he shrugged. “But what can I do about it? I might not like it, but you...well. You’re legal, you can...love...” he said it like even the concept left a bad-taste in his mouth, “...whoever you want. Except. Y’know. Demons bent on unleashing Armageddon.”
It hadn’t been easy for him to get that out, and he knew Sam knew it. He met his eyes, defiantly, almost challenging Sam to question him.
Sam didn’t. He shrugged. “Right. Well. Thanks, I guess.”
“Yeah, well, don’t mention it.”
Silence.
“He sent you back, didn’t he? This is your last trip with him, isn’t it?”
Silence.
“Sam?”
Sam cleared his throat. “...yeah. Yeah, he did. It is. But... I don’t wanna-- I don’t wanna talk about it. Please.”
Dean threw up his hands, defeated. “Alright. Chick-flick moment over.” he announced, getting up from where he was leaning against the hood of his beloved Impala, and arching his back until he felt his spine crack. “We’re still no closer on how to ice the devil. And Michael, whilst we’re at it. First time in my life I’ve wanted to go for extra-credit.” he gave a grin that wasn’t entirely forced, trying to get the atmosphere back to normal.
Sam smiled and looked back down at the bottle in his hands.
“Um. Excuse me...”
Both brothers turned to face the source of the voice. The Doctor. Dean rolled his eyes, but bit his tongue. Sam kept his eyes away, his body language sealed off. Hostile. Bitter. Angry. Dean almost called him Havisham, but that would mean admitting to knowing Great Expectations. And he knew he’d never live it down (his tenth grade English teacher - or rather, one of them - had been hot. And seeing as he was planning on blowing town anyway, he’d thought maybe, if he impressed her enough...it hadn’t worked, and then Dean was stuck with knowledge that he’d never use, and had spent five nights trying to ingest from the book before skipping it and watching the movie). So, instead, he mirrored Sam’s body language, arms crossed across his chest. Compared to the double bulk of the Winchester boys, the Doctor suddenly looked tiny.
“What do you want? We’re kinda having a private chat here.” Dean raised his eyebrows, pointedly, not worrying about sounding rude. He never did. As much as he hated the Doctor for stealing Sam away, he hated even more for hurting Sam. Family were supposed to make you miserable. They were allowed, as family. Aliens were not. Dean was protective. Dean was pissed.
“Yes. I understand that but...I thought you ought to know that your brother...the younger, fringier version, I mean--”
“Oh, you mean the one you’re about to hump’n’dump all the way back to 2005?” Dean didn’t keep the venom from his voice, despite having done the same as he accused many a time. More than he could count. Without the time-travel part, of course. And he’d never spent long enough with a woman for her to actually fall in love with him before he ditched her.
“Dean!” Sam protested. “There was no h--”
“Whilst I’m aware you’re angry... Um. Very angry. Possibly at me...”
Dean stared at The Doctor.
“Definitely at me... I thought you might want a progress report on the other Sam.”
“He’s not good.” Sam replied looking anywhere but at the Doctor, who was still wearing that ridiculous fez. “Clammy. Cold. Nauseous.”
“Double Trouble Disease.” The Doctor nodded, looking almost wise. “I coined that.” he was trying unsuccessfully not to smile, proudly. The smile slid off of his face, and he put on his best serious expression when Dean shot him a glare, though. “Basically, being here is bad for his health. There being two of you here is bad for his health. He’s only been here an hour or so, and he’s already suffering. I’m afraid it’s just going to get steadily worse. And Sam, I’m sorry--”
“This is where you send me - him - home.” Sam finished for him, sounding flat. “Yeah, I know. I remember.”
“I can’t send him immediately.” The Doctor added. “It seems having two of you here is affecting the TARDIS. Confusing her. I’ll need to rejiggle the controls a little.”
“Well, why don’t you go do that?” Dean asked, coldly.
The Doctor had had over 900 years of practice at smiling at people who hurt him, or showed spite for reasons beyond his vast understanding. He nodded, and gave one of those special, practiced smiles. “I think I will.” and turned, began walking away, to where his blue box was standing, a few hundred yards away.
Dean waited until The Doctor was about ten paces gone before turning to Sam and saying “It would be pretty cool, though.”
“What would?”
“Busting through into an empty Universe. Sticking a flag down, claiming it...being Supreme Ruler of All.” he grinned, picturing himself as a Han Solo type, staking claim on an entire Universe.
Sam smiled, shook his head. “Dude. I don’t even wanna think about what laws you would-- hey!”
The Doctor it seemed, was akin to Castiel when it came to personal space. He was suddenly right in front of the brothers again, the front of their shirts grasped in each of his fists.
“That’s it!” he exclaimed. “That’s how you can stop the battle!”
“Uh. No. Hate to break it to you, but in case you haven’t noticed this Universe isn’t empty.” Dean pointed out, closing his hand around The Doctor’s wrist and removing it from his shirt.
“Yeah.” Sam agreed. “I don’t think telling the devil that he can’t fight Michael because the rules of the Universe say so is going to work.”
“No... no, no, no, no, no, no, no.” The Doctor shook his head. “We can trap them, lead them to an empty Universe, lock them there. Then the fight still technically takes place, just not here. Damage limitation, without altering what must happen.”
“And how do you suggest we do that, huh, Doc?” Dean asked. “Leave a trail of their favourite cookies and wait at the end with a net? If it were that easy to trap the devil, we’d have done it already!”
There it was again. The silent sound of everything they were trying for as it crashed into an impasse. Nobody wanting to be the first to speak. Nobody knowing what to say.
“We’ll find a way.” Sam said, eventually, his voice firm. “Right now, it’s the best plan we’ve got.”
Dean hated to admit it, but he agreed.
Apparently, so did the Doctor.
“We’d better get our thinking caps on, then.” he said cheerfully, seeming to relish the challenge. “Scratch that. Thinking fezzes. Fezi. No, actually, unscratch. Let’s stick with thinking caps.”
“... What are you even talking about?” Dean asked.
“Does it matter? We have a way to keep the world safe.” Sam reminded him.
The Doctor smiled. Dean did not, but he didn’t scowl, either.
“I really ought to fix the TARDIS, though. Fringey Sam really isn’t doing too well.”
“We don’t want him dying.” Dean sounded grudging, and he was - not at Sam, but at the fact he was now apparently working with the Time Lord. “We’ve all seen Back to the Future - we don’t want Sammy from now to start fading away.”
Sam’s spine went rigid. “... say that again?”
Dean frowned. “Geez, Sam, it was just a jo--”
“Doctor.” Sam called to the retreating shoulders that belonged to the Doctor. “We can go one better than locking Lucifer away.”
“What?” Dean asked.
“What?” The Doctor asked.
“There’s a Universe for every scenario, right?” Sam reminded them. “And time isn’t linear. Dean. Think. What happened when Old Man Biff went back in time, altered things so he ended up dying earlier, and tried to return to his own time?” he was speaking fast, trying to convey his point immediately - to make them understand. Dean shrugged, not understanding the relevance.
“He disappeared.”
“And why?” Sam pressed, needing Dean to reach the conclusion himself for full effect of the brilliance of the plan.
“Because...he...didn’t exist anymore?”
Sam waited. Silently counted down. Three...two...one...the look of amazement of Dean’s face told him that he had realised what Sam was driving at. The penny had dropped.
“There’s a universe for every scenario.” Dean echoed. “Including ones where Lucifer never existed.”
The Doctor’s face split into a wide grin. “Have you ever considered space travel, Dean?” he asked.
One poisonous look from Dean was enough to quash that suggestion. The Doctor’s serious-face returned.
“Now we have an end, we just need the means.” Sam sounded almost excited, understandably.
“We’re not just gonna kill the devil.” Dean was resisting the urge to rub his hands together with glee. “We’re gonna erase him from existence...”
PART FOUR