SPN FIC - Libera nos a malo
The title means "Deliver Us from Evil." Missing scene, at the end of the Pilot. Enjoy. (I hope.) Do I need to include the disclaimer again? No money. Kripke's boys. I'm playing.
Sam was still sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the rug, but there was noise coming out of his mouth. Noise that a human shouldn’t be making and yet was undeniably human. It was a howl and a sob and a wail and a scream all at once. Wordless, anguished, made of suffering. Dean hit his knees in front of Sam, got hold of Sam’s arms at the elbows, tried to get Sam to look at him.
“Sammy, Sammy, no,” he crooned. “It’s okay, man. It’s okay.”
Length: 3,150 words
Pairings: None
Rating: PG for language
Spoilers: just the Pilot
Libera nos a malo
By Carol Davis
Sam’s determination to kick something’s butt faded out after about three hours.
He’d held up okay back at the apartment - across the street from the apartment - watching firefighters and police swarm in and out of what had been his home. His chin had done a Mexican-jumping-bean a couple of times, but he’d held it together. Answered questions from people in uniform in a way that almost made sense. He looked a little pinched after a while, and started gnawing on the nail of his left index finger, but he held it together.
“I was on a little road trip with my brother. We hadn’t seen each other in a while, so we took a drive for the weekend. We got back late, and I went inside, and I saw…”
That was a big hurdle, right there.
“Fire. The ceiling was on fire. It spread very fast.”
The cops were sympathetic, but they told him not to leave town.
“They think it’s my fault,” he said to Dean.
“No they don’t, Sam.”
“They do. Just like they did with Dad. They think I started the fire.”
“They won’t find any proof.”
“Jessica’s family. They’ll think it was my fault.” Sam’s mouth stayed open, like he intended to say something more. Then his face started to collapse. “Am I supposed to call them? Do I have to… Am I supposed to tell them what happened?”
“No, Sam.”
“Then who’s going to?”
“The cops can go tell them. They do that all the time.”
“But is it better coming from me?”
Dean grimaced. “Better than what?”
“Than some stranger showing up at their door. It’s the middle of the night.”
“It’s not gonna be better if you go over there. Unless you want to. If you want to, I’ll go with you.”
Honestly, Dean would rather have gotten the bolt cutters out of the trunk and cut off his own fingers one at a time than accompany Sam to wherever it was that Jessica’s family lived and stand there while Sam stammered out the news that she was dead. Assuming Sam held it together long enough to do that. If it came down to Dean having to tell them about Jessica, he would rather jam the bolt cutters through his eye into his brain.
One of the cops, a stocky woman with a nametag that said M. Burns, drifted by for what seemed like the fortieth time. She’d been making notes in a little spiral notebook. “If you like, we can talk to Ms. Moore’s -“
Dean cut her off. “Please. Yes. Could you do that?”
“I should go,” Sam said.
Officer Burns peered at him and shook her head. “You’re not in the best of shape, Mr. Winchester. Why don’t you let us handle it. And you can see them tomorrow. You should get some rest.”
“There a motel near here?” Dean asked her.
She pointed. “That way. Take the third right, go down about a quarter of a mile. It’s cheap. And quiet.”
So here they were, at the Blue Bell Inn.
Three hours ago, Sam had stood gazing into the cache of weapons in the trunk of the Impala and announced, “We’ve got work to do.” That’d been all well and good three hours ago, but the Sam that was sitting on the edge of the bed now was no more capable of taking part in a hunt than he was of piloting the space shuttle. For almost an hour he’d been staring at the carpet between his shoes, not moving, not talking.
Don’t leave town, the cops had said. But that was just a formality. They’d find nothing in that apartment to say Sam had set the fire, or prompted somebody else to set it. It was his home, one he’d been anxious to return to. He had an interview in a few hours to set himself up for law school. He had no reason to wreck his life and end Jessica’s. None. Zero.
That fire had been caused by faulty wiring in the ceiling. Old building, old wiring.
Just like back in Lawrence. When…
Frowning, Dean skirted around his brother and opened the door. With a murmured, “Be right back, Sammy,” he slipped out and walked down the path to the motel office. The clerk who’d signed them in was still on duty, half-dozing at the desk, but Dean didn’t need him. All he needed was the metal box of newspapers outside the office. It was still too early for the morning delivery, so the box still held a couple of copies of yesterday’s paper. Dean held his breath as he crouched and peered through the glass at the front page, at the date in the upper right corner.
November 1, 2005.
“Son of a bitch,” he murmured.
The late-autumn air, heavy with the salt tang of the Pacific, hung around him in foggy wisps as he walked back down the path to the room. He stopped halfway, near the alcove that housed the ice and soda machines, and pulled his cell phone out of his jeans pocket. He stood looking at the little phone for a while, knowing that making the call probably wouldn’t accomplish anything; he hadn’t gotten through to Dad for three weeks.
Where are you? he wondered. Where the hell are you?
Then he made the call. Waited for his father’s voicemail to kick in, listened to the message. Tried to convince himself to hold it together as much as Sam had three hours ago.
“Dad,” he said softly. “Something bad happened. There was a fire, Dad. Just like back home. Sammy, he’s okay, but his girlfriend…she’s dead. Like Mom. I don’t know where you are, but can you call me? Please.”
Did you know? Is that why you took off?
Sound cut through the foggy, pre-dawn quiet, a noise that made Dean’s hackles jerk to attention. He covered the rest of the distance to Room 18 in a couple of steps, fumbled with the key, got the door open. Sam was still sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the rug, but there was noise coming out of his mouth. Noise that a human shouldn’t be making and yet was undeniably human. It was a howl and a sob and a wail and a scream all at once. Wordless, anguished, made of suffering. Dean hit his knees in front of Sam, got hold of Sam’s arms at the elbows, tried to get Sam to look at him.
“Sammy, Sammy, no,” he crooned. “It’s okay, man. It’s okay.”
Of course it wasn’t; it wasn’t anything like okay. Sammy’s girl, the pretty girl with the long legs and the nice eyes and the very decent rack, was dead, dead just like Mom, burned to death on the ceiling. Awake and aware and cut open, more than likely: very drunk one night, Dad had muttered into a glass of Jack what he’d seen in Sammy’s nursery, his last image of his wife. Sliced open, bleeding, wide-eyed, terrified.
Sam howled again, and the pain in it was horrible.
“Sam,” Dean begged.
Did you know? Is that what the voicemail was, what you were trying to say to me? If you knew, why didn’t you tell him?
Why didn’t you come?
A cascade of tears and thin, runny snot started to roll down Sam’s face. He was turning red in big blotches, and it made him look like the baby he had been that night back in Lawrence. The sirens and the cold and all the strange faces had made him shriek and scream and flail his arms and legs. He would not be comforted, not for hours, not until he’d worn himself out. Even then his eyes had roamed back and forth, searching for Mom. His small fingers had grasped at air, wanting her, needing her.
Now, his eyes found Dean, stayed there for a moment, then roamed back and forth, back and forth. He was keening like a wounded animal, like he’d forgotten where he was, who he was, and was aware of nothing but pain.
It went on for a long time, until he wore himself out.
He didn’t sleep even then, just lay back on the bed when Dean nudged him in that direction. After a while he shifted over onto his side and pulled his knees up toward his chest, huddling into himself, trembling but silent except for an occasional gulpy noise. Dean sat on the other bed and tried not to look at him too much, both because he was afraid staring would freak Sam out even worse, and because seeing his brother like that made him want to stop breathing. Around sunup Sam started to cry again, with his face buried in his pillow.
What Dad had done back in Lawrence wasn’t clear in Dean’s mind; it was more a series of fuzzy pictures, like an out-of-focus slide show. He was relatively sure there had been no crying. Not much talking, either.
What Dad had done was hold them, him and Sammy. Hold them, rock them, stroke their hair.
If it hadn’t been for the two of them, Dean thought sometimes, their father would have gone completely bugshit crazy.
Sammy didn’t seem to want his hair stroked right now. Having to do that was right up on Dean’s “no thank you” list close to being struck by lightning and being eaten alive, but he would have given in if that was what Sam needed. Whether Sam wanted to be touched at all, in any kind of way, Dean wasn’t sure, but for the time being he was going with “no.” He considered pulling the spread off his own bed and laying it over Sam to keep him warm, but Sam still had his jacket and shoes on, and the room was warm enough.
It was just gonna be…
We were gonna go…
The words lay there in his mind like a message floating in a bowl of alphabet soup. He hadn’t known about Jessica, hadn’t known there was anyone in Sam’s life, let alone a live-in. They were halfway to Jericho before he considered that maybe it was crappy of him to drag Sam away from his girl, fully intending not to bring Sam back. But the hell with that, he’d thought back there in the car, out on the road to Jericho. He needed Sam as much as that girl did. Needed him to help find Dad.
Just needed him, because two years of silence between them was absolutely fucking enough.
And now there was silence again, punctuated by Sam’s small, muffled burbles of grief for the girl Dean hadn’t known about.
After a while Dean got up off his bed, murmured a “be right back, Sammy,” and walked over to the convenience store a couple of doors down from the motel. He stopped at the Impala on the way back and took something out of the trunk. With no response from Sam he placed his purchases on the night table between the two beds together with the item from the trunk: a bottle of chocolate milk, a box of animal crackers, and a half-empty bottle of Jack. He had no idea if Sam wanted any of that, or none of it, but either way all three were close to Sam’s sight line.
He said, “I’m outside, man. I’m just outside,” then went back out.
He stood next to the Impala, his butt resting against her sun-warmed metal and his arms folded over his chest, thinking there would have be a nuclear war for things to get any worse. Maybe, with a little luck, whoever was aiming the bombs would drop one right here, right smack on Palo Alto. There was stuff near here, he was pretty sure: government stuff. A military base, some kind of NASA facility. And all that think-tank business in Silicon Valley. Well worth nuking the shit out of.
A couple people went by and pretty much ignored him, which was fine with him.
The newspaper machine was full now, with the new edition. November 2, 2005. Feeling as if he was slogging through deep snow Dean walked over to the machine, stuck a couple of quarters in the slot and took a paper. He carried it back to the car and laid it on the hood, then paged through it without being sure what he wanted to find. It was too soon, he figured; the paper would have been printed around the time of the fire. The paper’s website would be a better place to look.
Look for what? he thought, and was angry at himself. You figure it didn’t really happen unless you see it in the paper?
Traffic was going by on the street, regular Monday traffic. It made him think of Sam’s interview. If he knew who it was that Sam was supposed to see, he could call them. Tell them what had happened, see if he could get Sam a postponement. Because it was law school that was on the line.
Whoever those people were, they’d understand why Sam was a no-show. They’d let him come in in a few days.
That was what Sam wanted. Law school.
Not…
With a pain like claws digging deep into his neck he unlocked the door and edged back into the room, keeping the door mostly closed so the morning sunlight wouldn’t hit Sam in the face. After he’d shut it all the way, he said softly, “Sammy? Do you want me to call those people? The ones you had the meeting with?”
Sam didn’t answer him. His face was buried in the pillow.
Maybe he was asleep.
Maybe he’d suffocated himself.
Dean sat down on the other bed, hands woven together between his knees. He could feel the cell phone in his pocket and thought about pulling it out. But making another call wouldn’t do any more good than the first one had.
Goddamn you, Dad. Just call, would you? Call us?
Twenty-two years ago Dad had taken them to the home of his business partner - to sleep, to get in out of the cold, to take refuge with friends. He’d seemed numb then, Dean thought in retrospect. Mostly silent. Moving like all of it was a dream.
No crying.
The sonofabitching thing found us again, Dad. You thought it would. That’s why you got us out of Lawrence. Took it a while to catch up, but it found Sammy. And on the same goddamn day.
The truth of that clutched at him and made him grunt softly.
The same day. So it planned this. It knew where he was. It let me take him away, because otherwise he would have been in the room with her. And for all his yapping about not wanting to hunt, he would have known what to do.
He would have…
Dean’s hand found the cell phone in his pocket and pulled it out. Dad’s number was set up for speed-dial, so he’d need to press a single button to dial it.
Dial it, and get voicemail.
Did you KNOW? You crazy bastard, did you KNOW it was around?
Sam shifted on the bed, took a long, shuddering breath. When his eyes opened he was looking pretty much straight at Dean. There was enough light in the room for Dean to see the heartbroken surrender on Sam’s face. “I can call those people,” Dean offered again, not knowing whether Sam had heard him the first time.
“No,” Sam muttered.
Maybe Sam thought he meant Jessica’s parents. “The interview,” Dean clarified.
“No.”
“Okay,” Dean said.
Without saying anything more Sam got up off the bed and shambled into the bathroom. Dean could hear things hitting the floor as Sam got undressed, then fired up the shower. He stood in there until there could not have been any hot water left in the entire state of California. When he came back out his skin looked sunburned. “Bags?” he said to Dean.
Dean had to fetch them out of the car. Sam went slowly through the duffel he’d packed for their trip to Jericho, found clean underwear, socks. Jeans and shirt. He pulled everything on as if it hurt him to move.
Finally, after he was dressed, he noticed the stuff on the nightstand. “What’s all that?”
“Didn’t know what you’d want.”
“Animal crackers?” Sam said mildly.
“You used to like ‘em.”
Maybe because there was nothing else available, Sam opened the little box and slowly ate a handful of the cookies. Washed them down with the chocolate milk. He glanced at the bottle of Jack but didn’t touch it. “I have to go,” he said after a while.
“Where?”
“To see Jessica’s family.”
Dean’s thumb rubbed over the keys on the cell phone. “Sam?”
“What?”
“The date. It’s November second.”
“I know,” Sam said.
“I don’t figure it’s a coincidence.”
Sam’s eyes were bloodshot almost solid red. He closed them for a minute and pinched the skin between his eyebrows with his thumb and forefinger. He was breathing more steadily, for now, at least. “I can’t drive. Will you take me there?”
“Maybe you should -“
“That message you got. From Dad. Did he know?”
“I don’t know, man.”
“I never got it,” Sam said, his gaze roving around the room. “The way he’s been chasing that thing all these years. The way he wouldn’t let go. What I said to you - about Mom being gone…” He let that trail off, then went on, “I want that son of a bitch, Dean. If it’s still here, we need to find it. And if it’s gone somewhere else -“ He had to stop again. “We need to find Dad.”
“We will.”
Sam’s big hands knotted into fists. Watching the determination drain back out of him was like watching water drain out of a sink. He sat down on the end of the bed and hung his head as if he no longer had the strength to hold it up. “She’s gone, Dean,” he said to the floor.
“I know, man. I’m sorry.”
“What am I - Jesus, what am I gonna -“
Tears rolled down Sam’s face and dripped off onto the legs of his jeans.
What seemed like weeks ago, Dean had stepped away from the possibility of an embrace from his brother and warned him, “No chick-flick moments.” Now, he sat down beside Sam and slid an arm around him, leaning in so that Sam’s head came to rest in the crook of Dean’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, man,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I wish I had.”
“Will you help me?”
“Anything,” Dean said. “Anything at all.”
“I want it.”
“Then we’ll get it,” Dean promised.