Fic: Mirror, Water Glass
Mirror, Water, Glass
Summary: A follow up to A Hole in the World, features post-hell!traumatized!Dean. AU and severely damaged Dean. Stands alone pretty well, with some passing references to the previous fic.
Warnings: POV shifts, suggestions of het relationships (nothing shown), language, blood. General weirdness. Bilateral timelines.
Spoilers: General S4, specific 4.9 and 4.10.
I'm dedicating this to maypoles, who wanted to know what happened next.
Mirror, Water, Glass
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The Sea terrified us: we learned how to drown
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Sam sat down next to his brother. Dean’s eyes were closed, his hands clasped softly in his lap.
“Better?” Sam asked quietly, and Dean rolled his shoulder in what was maybe intended to be a shrug. He lifted a hand and passed it across his mouth, opened his eyes enough to allow his gaze to rest on some point beyond the far wall.
“Yeah,” he said hoarsely, and dropped his hand into his lap.
Sam had heard him retching in the bathroom for the past ten minutes, but knew better than to intervene. Now he resisted the urge to reach out, or even to gently allow their shoulders to touch. This wasn’t the time.
It might never be time.
“Here,” he said instead, and held the bottle of water he’d dug up, when Dean had retreated to the bathroom, somewhere in the vicinity of his brother’s knee. Dean looked at it blankly for a moment, before accepting it with a surprisingly steady hand.
“You could get me a goddamn drink,” Dean grated out. Sam shook his head once, sharply.
“I don’t think so.”
Sam didn’t know if he was being cruel. His brother hadn’t had any alcohol since his return; Sam was making sure of it. Sometimes, though, he thought maybe Dean needed something else. Something a little stronger, and more direct.
Dean grimaced and took two big mouthfuls of water. Shut his eyes again with a slightly pained look on his face.
“Dean? You’re not gonna-I mean…”
Dean glanced at him, briefly. Handed back the plastic bottle and got to his feet. Paced a few steps away and shook his head slightly, strangely, as if he had water in his ears.
“The angels,” he said. “They’re looking for that girl.”
“I’ll find her first. Don’t worry.”
Dean pushed the palms of his hands hard against his thighs, looking away and swallowing convulsively.
“They’ll kill her.”
“We’ll stop it.” Sam kept his voice low and even. Dean didn’t bristle, or accuse him of being patronizing. Just hunched his shoulders a little, gave another abrupt little head shake. Lifted his eyes and met Sam’s gaze directly for the first time in days.
“They’ll kill her if they find her,” he repeated, and Sam didn’t ask Dean how he knew.
He knew.
--
Walls and walls. They’d left him here with nothing but walls and they’d left him. Here. They whispered and sometimes they screamed and the noise blew out mirrors and the empty glass over paintings, and they never spoke to him. He tried talking to them, tried the words he knew in Latin and tried calling for them in English. Tried screaming for them sometimes, until his voice split and he was sure he would bleed out from the inside, all over the perfect white walls and the golden floors. But they didn’t come.
They left him alone.
“How does this work?” he asked, resting his forehead against the cool wall, hands splayed on either side. “How does this work?”
How long had it been?
He listened for the sound of wings, the rustle like bodies running through the long grass. Running through the grass and laughing up at the sky, the blue sky, huge and falling backward, away into the dark. Into the starry void. Sammy running, running, long legs new and unsure, tearing across the little prairie, whooping and laughing, calling his name.
“Dean!”
An echo, a far-away noise. A whisper. He grabbed for it, for that fading sound, the thread pulling away from him. The smell of the summer air and the color of the sky. His brother’s face.
When the noise started up this time he yanked his hands off the wall and pressed them to his ears. Let himself slide to his knees and curled up, top of his head pressed to the wall, face pushed against his thighs, and the soft soft pants he still wore from the…from the other place.
“It’s twister country,” someone there had said, voice leaden and serious.
It’s a storm.
He tried to hold the noise inside himself, tried to gather it up, but it wasn’t his to have, and it pitched up higher and louder, a whine rising to a scream, beating against the walls in waves, shaking the foundations, cracking the paint, splintering the beautiful floor under his feet. Not again. Not again. It clawed its way out of his throat, an ugly terrified sound that hurt on the way out. He gulped it back, little retching sobs, saliva drooling from his teeth. It hurt. It hurt.
And then the world exploded.
--
He splayed his hands on the window, breathing out and watching the fog of his breath coalesce and dissipate on the glass.
“Dean.”
Sam spoke softly, the way he tended to these days. Dean drew back from the window and pressed his hands together tightly to suppress the tingling in his skin, the sense of something present, but hidden. Sam was fidgeting near the door, shifting his weight from foot to foot in a childlike manner that contrasted sharply with his sheer size. It didn’t suit him.
“It’s okay, Sam,” he said, “I-you go. Find her. I’ll stay here. You do what you need to do.”
Sam smiled, faintly, though it was impossible to ignore the sadness he tried to hide, tucked into the folds around his eyes, the creases at his mouth. As if he could ever keep it concealed.
“I’ll be fine, Sam,” Dean told him, though he couldn’t manage to unstick his hands. “Just go.”
He stood there under his little brother’s scrutiny and stayed as still as he’d ever learned to be. Sam searched his face, looking for something. Evidence of something. Fear, maybe, or some hint that Dean was lying. That he wouldn’t be all right left on his own.
“Go find her,” he said again. “Before the angels do.”
Sam hesitated another moment, then with a little sigh swept up his jacket and the keys to the car. He riffled through his pockets and with overly deliberate care placed the phone-the red one he’d bought for Dean just days ago-on the nightstand between the beds.
“If you need anything, you call me.”
Dean hung a smile on his face, like the curve of a crooked moon.
“Sure, Sammy.”
“Dean.”
He huffed an exasperated breath, rolled his eyes and waved the younger man in the direction of the door.
“Go, you moron, before I drop-kick you outta here myself.”
That at least got a genuine, if small, smile out of Sam, and it lifted years of worry from his face. When he was gone, Dean went on standing in the middle of the room for a few moments, before rubbing his hand over his face, and pushing his fingers briefly against his eyes.
He crossed the little room and stood by the window again, rested his hands lightly on the sill and looked out at the grey sky and the line of pine trees along the road. A tiny blemish marred the glass in the lower left-hand corner of the window. He pressed his thumb over it. As if a drop of blood would well up through the almost-crack. Stain his skin, warm and precious.
He remembered things like this.
“Cas,” he murmured to the empty air. “Castiel.”
--
Softness pressed in on him, against his head, on all sides. The air smelled different. Strange. Damp, with an underlying impression of mildew.
Too many places. Too far away.
Too damn far.
He heard the rustle of movement. He wasn’t alone hewasn’talone. Deep down his muscles stiffened, crackled against his bones. This place. This new place. Who had found him now? Had they come back for him? Was it Alastair?
“This isn’t real,” someone whispered. The words were desperate, anguished. “It’s not-”
“Sam.” Another voice. Older. Rough edges softened by grief, by too many years.
Sam.
He knew that one. That sound, that word. That name. A name from a faraway place.
He needed to open his eyes. Sit up. Right goddamn now.
He opened his eyes.
“Sam!” The older voice barked, and there was the sound of a sudden scramble, a curse.
Strong hands grabbed his arms as he surged upright, gulping in ragged breaths. Torn. Torn from sleep, from the deep water. Torn.
“Sam, help me goddammit!”
He jerked against the hands holding him, the iron fingers. Wrenched himself backward desperately, kicking, driving his heels hard against a soft surface. He didn’t scream but pushed breath out through a tight throat, high and dragging. Sucked in shallow breaths over and over and over.
Deep water.
Call his name. Call his-
“Sammy!” his voice split on the word but it was true. Fell out of his mouth like a benediction. Bright and clean. Awful and wonderful. Bones breaking and the sky tearing open.
“Sammy!” Tearing tearing tearing.
(“He’s the only one that gets to call me that.”)
Huge hands pressed suddenly on either side of his face and he gasped, jaw trembling. Whole body suddenly still. Rough and callused fingers and palms hemmed him in, held him immobile. A voice edged with something cracking, something on the verge of desperation, seeped into the world. Sank heavy and real below everything else. Weighted the world, gave everything the solidity of the real. Edges and pieces coalesced.
“Here! Here, Dean. I-I’m here.”
And he could see. He could see. Long hair and the planes of a face, eyesnosemouth. Cheekbones. Forehead. Devastated noises spilling from a terrified mouth. “Dean, shit you-just calm down, settle down. It’s okay. It’s okay. Jesus, it’s okay.”
He punched out a viscous noise, thick and ropy as tendons splitting. Grabbed at the hands holding him, at the wrists. Rolled his head back, pulling away.
“Sam, he’s gonna hurt himself. We need to-”
“No! No…Bobby no, let me-I have to try. Let me try.”
He clenched his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut. Blotting out the face, familiar and strange. How long? Years? How long?
“Dean?” A whisper. Small but trying to be strong. “Dean. Hey.”
He was being lowered back down, to the soft surface. Always soft, too soft. He wasn’t going to lie back down.
Not ever again.
“Nn-stop, stop it-”grabbed again for the hands, clawed his way back up big arms, spitting out ugly noises, hunger and fear. “No, let go, don’t put me, don’t let me-”
“Shh.” And Sam. And Sam. It was him. (Laughing at the sky.) Here, in this place. This new place. Pulling him upright, hauling him into an awkward clutching embrace. He scrabbled at Sam’s arms, at his shoulders, fingers digging in deep. Digging into his (his brother’s) skin. Claws. Hooking in.
Not blood.
There wouldn’t be any blood.
“Where have you been? Dean, Christ, where have you been?”
The other man (and he knew that voice, where did he know it from?), knelt down. Said, “You believe it’s him now?”
And Sam adjusted his grip, rested one hand on the back of Dean’s skull. Pushed his fingers through the still-short hair. Said, “Yeah, Bobby. Yeah I-I do.”
Dean shivered, and turned his face away.
--
The moment Sam pushed the door open, he knew. Felt his nostrils flare in the wash of fresh air, damp and heavy with the scent of pine. His skin prickled and adrenaline punched up his heart rate. His mouth and throat dried. Behind him, Anna drew a short breath, a gasp cut off before it became a curse.
“The angels-Sam.”
He shoved through the door, Anna on his heels. Took in the shattered window, the cracked sill, the fallen wardrobe. The chunks of plaster on the beds, the white dust over everything, Dean’s new red phone lying exactly where Sam had left it.
“No. No no no….” He crossed the room and grabbed at his brother where he lay propped against the far wall. Rivulets of blood caked the sides of his face where it had leaked from his ears.
“Dean. C’mon man, don’t-don’t do this. Open your eyes. Please.”
In the doorway, Anna said, “Sam.” Her tone full of warning.
Dean’s eyes snapped open. He grabbed at Sam, both hands clamping on the sides of his face.
“Sam,” he gasped, eyes so wide Sam could see the whites all the way around his irises. “They’ll kill her. They’re going to kill her, you have to get her outta here!”
“Not without you,” Sam said grimly, getting his arm under Dean’s and around his back, hauling him upright. His brother clutched at him, legs unsteady, whole body awkward. He’d never been this clumsy, but these days-it was as if his whole body was new. As if it didn’t belong to him.
“I can help,” Anna said softly, reaching out for the both of them, and Sam let her prop up his brother as he grabbed their bags, covered in dust, and hustled them out the door and down the hall.
“You’re okay,” Anna was murmuring quietly, though Dean had his eyes closed and a hand pressed to one ear, face tight with pain. “You’re gonna be okay.”
Sam reminded himself that she was trying to help.
They peeled out of the parking lot with more drama than Sam would have liked, considering. Anna sat in the back with his brother, a rag and a bottle of water in her hands, trying to clean up the worst of the blood. Sam shot them glances in the rearview mirror. Anna was murmuring softly, and whatever she was saying seemed to have got his brother’s attention. Dean’s eyes were cracked open, not exactly fixed on the young woman, but at least tracking a bit when she wiped gently at the mess on his face.
“They’re still far away, Dean,” she said at one point, and Dean made a soft, distressed noise.
He said, “It’s my fault.”
“Shh,” she murmured, and Sam clenched his hands on the steering wheel. “Shh.”
--
“Okay?” Sam was asking, and he swallowed and looked down at his hands.
His brother (he was his brother) was doing his best. Was desperately uncertain, that much was clear, but he was trying. Dean appreciated it, the fact that he was trying.
Bobby had gone. Away somewhere. To try, he’d said, to figure out what the hell was going on. Dean wasn’t sure exactly when the man had left, but he’d been alone with Sam for a little while now.
Sam. His brother.
“Found you some clothes,” the other man was saying, shoulders hunched a little, uneasy. Uncertain. Dean looked down at his own clothes, the soft hospital-issue pants, the white shirt. Smoothed a hand over the material. There were scars on his hands. He’d torn them open, not long ago.
They were his only scars.
“Dean, we’ll figure this out, all right? Just…right now you need to get dressed. Can you-you should take a shower. Can you do that?”
He looked up. Tried not to move his head too quickly, on the off chance that the walls might run together, or the furniture slide across the floor. The world was made up of pieces of things.
“I don’t-” he began, and stopped. Wasn’t sure what the rest of the sentence was supposed to be. Looked back at his brother. “Sam,” he said helplessly.
“Okay.” Sam put the clothes he’d dug out down on the bed, pushed a hand through his hair. He sounded young. He sounded like he didn’t know what he was doing.
“Okay, Dean.” He sat down and put a hand on Dean’s shoulder, briefly, and Dean reminded himself not to pull away. Sam was trying so hard. “We’ll just-we’ll work it out. We’ll get there. I promise.” His smile was small, hesitant. It wasn’t right.
Sam shouldn’t have to smile like that.
“We’ll work it out,” Dean echoed, and took a breath. Couldn’t stop himself from shrugging off his brother’s hand, but winced a little at the flicker in Sam’s eye when it fell away.
“How long were you-how long, Dean? Since you…came back?” Sam was looking hard at the hospital-issue pants and shirt Dean still wore, the soft shoes and thin socks. Dean shook his head.
It felt like a personal failure, to admit that he didn’t know.
Sam pressed his lips together, then shook his head a little. Said, “You need to get dressed. You can’t go around in, in that.”
Dean held on to the edge of the mattress, blanket bunched up under his hands.
“You need to clean up, at least a little.” Sam’s voice faded, became hesitant. “I…could help.”
Dean passed a hand across his eyes, fingers skipping lightly over the delicate skin of his eyelids. He knew what he would find in the bathroom. Mirrors, and water.
Or maybe it was the other way around.
“Okay,” he said faintly, and Sam offered a wan smile. But he wouldn’t let Sam in the bathroom and his brother backed off, clearly uncertain. Dean shut the door with care.
He turned the water on in the sink and in the shower, let them run and run. Sat down on the floor, in the middle of the little room, and folded himself up until his forehead touched his crossed ankles. His body had a new, childlike flexibility that Dean found eerie. His body was strange, alien and awkward.
He laced his fingers behind his neck, palms smooth against this skin. Took comfort in the steady pulse on both sides of his throat. The noise of water filled up the world and he let his chest rise and fall.
When a hand softly touched his hair, he forgot to be surprised. When a whisper brushed the air beside his ear, he barely stirred.
“Dean,” the voice murmured. “Open your eyes, Dean.”
There were no crashing walls, no shattering lights. No chaos of noise and breaking glass. Just a quiet voice, calm as still water.
“My name is Castiel,” it went on, and slowly Dean unlocked his fingers and began to unfold himself.
“I’m an angel of the Lord.”
Dean looked up.
Later, Sam burst in and found him curled up in the corner, next to the shower. Dean tried to tell his brother what had happened but couldn’t make the words fit into the shape of what had happened. He said, “I heard,” and he said, “Castiel,” and he said, “I saw I saw,” and Sam just shook his head and didn’t understand.
Dean could hardly get his limbs to cooperate and Sam wound up stripping his shirt off and scrubbing him down as much as possible from the waist up. He reminded Dean briefly of the big nurses at the hospital, capable in his own way, and fearless. But in that moment when he yanked the shirt over Dean’s head and saw the scars on his shoulders for the first time, Sam’s face drained of color and he looked away, fumbling for the washcloth on the sink.
“It’s a bad idea,” Dean said to the air, and wasn’t sure what he meant. Sam shook his head, face tight and eyes deliberately blank. Dean didn’t think he was listening anymore.
--
Anna patted lightly at the side of Dean’s face with a dry cloth. His face was as clean as it was going to get, for the time being, with nothing but water available. The rags lying on the table were stained rusty brown and streaked with fresher red. She favored him with a small smile.
“There,” she said. “Much better.”
Dean started a little at the touch and the smile, though she had been working carefully at his face for at least ten minutes, since they’d arrived at the little cabin and Sam had bundled them both out of the car and gone off to confer with his demon girl.
He looked down at her hands, which were small and fine-boned and pale. She caught his gaze and smiled a little more completely.
“Dean Winchester is saved,” she said, and he knew where she had heard those words.
“You know about the angels,” he offered, tilting his head a little without breaking her gaze. “You know about them.”
“I don’t.” She shook her head, looking away quickly, all self-deprecation and faint wonder. “I just hear them, is all. Sometimes it’s hard to tell one from another.” She paused. “Sometimes.”
She turned away, busying herself tidying up the bloody rags, then paused with both hands cupping the basin of cold water, stained dull red.
“Thank you,” she offered, eyes on the still, smooth surface. Dean shifted a little on the couch.
“For what?”
“You begged them for me,” she murmured, still not looking at him. “For my life.”
Dean grunted. “I didn’t beg,” he snapped, annoyed, and she gave an amused little snort and smile and finally looked at him again.
“You…argued,” she amended, and lifting a hand rested the backs of her fingers on the side of his freshly-scrubbed face. “You argued with Castiel, for my life. He might have listened, I think. And then…Uriel came….”
Dean stared at her. At her pale, too-young face. Her earnestness, her confusion masked by desperate hope.
“I heard,” she whispered.
Dean lifted his hands, slowly. With great care, barely shifting her hair, he laid them gently on either side of her head, palms cupped over her ears. She shivered, very slightly, and then was still.
They stayed that way for a long time. Until Sam came back with the demon.
--
He jerked out of sleep so violently that he kicked the table and sent its contents, books and a newspaper and pens and a glass of water, spilling all over the floor. The room was dark. It was dark and empty and Sam (Sam?) wasn’t there.
The dream hung all around him, in the walls and on his skin. Unseen wings and empty eyes and a voice (voices) that screamed over things and whispered like leaves and grass and that sang and promised and promised and lied.
“Shit,” he hissed into the dark, staggering up from the sofa, fumbling for the edge of the table when he dropped to his knees on the threadbare carpet, cold water soaking through his pants. He pushed himself upright, again, and stumbled around the sofa toward the other side of the room. Made it as far as the nearest lamp, between the beds. His bed. Sam’s bed. Never mind that Dean couldn’t sleep in a bed. Never mind.
He couldn’t get the lamp to work, wasn’t sure he remembered how. Got his fingers around the bulb and tipped the whole thing onto the floor and for good measure slapped the notepad and clock away and picked up the phone and slammed it against the wall, once and then again, then spun and flung it across the empty dark room where it smashed into the mirror over the little dresser. He grabbed the edge of the table, swaying a little on odd unsteady legs, then looked at the dresser and the shards of glass sprayed over its surface.
Lies and eyes that said, “I pulled you out of Hell,” and hands that hung and did nothing and a pale memory, a face in the walls, always watching. In the walls and eyes like holes, like windows and mirrors.
“Castiel you bastard,” he snarled and pushed the back of his hand across his mouth. “You bastard you bastard.”
He wasn’t going to be a part of this.
There was a laptop on the table by the window. It split open on the floor and bits of plastic went everywhere. He broke the table and both chairs, put his fist through the window for good measure, and he found a knife in Sam’s bag and went to work on the walls and the beds and pillows and mattresses. He would cut out all the pieces if he had to. If that was what it took. Dig them out at the source, all the faces and eyes and wings and the voices of angels.
“Dammit Cas,” he chanted under his breath as he worked, “Dammit dammit dammit….”
He wasn’t expecting Sam. Wasn’t prepared to be grabbed or to have the knife smacked out of his bloodied hand or to be shoved backward into the center of the room until he fetched up against the back of the sofa. His knees buckled again and this time he didn’t hit the floor because his brother caught him, spitting a curse, voice strangled. He leaned drunkenly between the sofa and Sam’s body, and his brother grabbed at his arms and his injured, sticky hand.
“Dean what did you-shit, what the hell? Christ, Dean…”
“You knew about this!” Dean hissed at him, shoving at his brother, and Sam let himself be moved. Dean’s throat was closing up, the closeness too much. “You knew you knew!”
“Knew what? Dean, what are you-holy Christ, why don’t you-here, sit, sit down before you fall, oh holy Christ….”
Dean let Sam fold him down until they were both on the floor, Dean sitting, Sam squatting on his haunches. His brother’s hands closed on Dean’s face, both sides, tilting it back so the light from the streetlamps outside shone in his eyes.
“What the hell is this, Dean?” and Sam shook him, just a little.
There was a blank space where Sam’s face should have been. Dean stared at it, knew his eyes were wide, could feel his eyelids pushing against bone. But Sam’s face was gone, just gone, and for a moment Dean couldn’t remember anything because all he could see was that savage emptiness, the huge sucking darkness. He made a noise. He heard it jerk out of his throat.
“S-Sam…” he breathed, and couldn’t stop the tremors that shook his ribs, his heart and lungs. “Sammy?”
Sam said, “I’m here, Dean.” And Dean hauled back the scream that tried to spill out because suddenly he could see again, Sam’s eyes and nose and mouth. All the parts. All the pieces in place. Everything fit together where it was supposed to. He fumbled, pawed at his brother’s face with his good hand. Swallowed against his fear.
“What did Ruby give you?” Dean whispered, and Sam went very still.
“What?”
“Don’t. Don’t you lie to me, Sam.” He pressed his thumb hard against Sam’s cheekbone to ground himself. Tried to push away the memory of Castiel’s words.
“Your brother will lie,” he’d said, and for a moment seemed so sad. “Don’t let him tell you lies.”
“I’m not-what are you talking about?”
“Ruby. At the bar. I know she was there. I know you saw her.”
Sam tilted back, and regarded Dean warily.
“What are you talking about?”
“She gave you something,” Dean repeated, and without waiting any longer started patting at Sam’s pockets, sticking his hands in and ignoring Sam’s yelp of indignation until he pulled out a piece of paper, printed with a name. “Behavioral Medicine Center.” His hand clenched in a fist.
“Anna,” he said quietly. “Anna.”
“How did you-” Sam began, and broke off at Dean’s look.
“I wasn’t going to go after her,” Sam offered, and Dean shook his head sharply.
“You have to. Before the angels find her.”
“Angels? No, Dean, it’s-the demons are looking for her. It’s-it’s the demons.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed.
“Heard from who?”
Dean pushed upward, away from his brother, hanging on to the back of the sofa and forcing his legs to support him. He shut his eyes and shook his head, trying not to remember the dream.
“Cas said-he told me. He said.”
“Cas?” Sam said the word as if it hurt him. “Cas…tiel? The angel? He was here?”
Sam was holding on to his arm again, his voice low and urgent. Dean didn’t pull away this time.
“He wasn’t,” Dean shook his head again, pushing away the memory of eyes and wings and the sounds of voices (one voice). “Wasn’t here. He’s somewhere else, far away. I-he-I had. A dream. He was in, in my dream.”
Slowly, Sam drew back. Stepped back, feet crunching over glass.
“Castiel was in…your dream.”
Dean said, “It wasn’t my fault.”
“Jesus.” Sam looked away, at the open door and the black sky and the parking lot. “Jesus, Dean.”
“He told me about Anna,” Dean said softly. “That’s her name, right?” Now it was Dean’s turn to push closer.
“He said they’re looking for her. That Ruby would tell you where she was, that when we found her, he-Cas and Uriel, they would want to know.”
“Dean…” Sam’s eyes were wide in the dark. He looked young, and genuinely afraid.
“We have to find her. Before they do. They’ll kill her, Sam. They will. We have to go. We have to save her.”
Sam stared at him, motionless, the both of them standing in the middle of the destroyed motel room, the door wide open to the night.
Finally Sam said, “Let me look at your hand.”
--
Sam had to physically force his brother away from Anna, peeling Dean’s hands from her injured arm, scarred palms and fingers all smeared with her blood. The shape she’d drawn on the mirror was strange and hard to look at, and blood was spattered all over the table and had dripped onto the floor.
“Ruby, dammit, help me!”
She stepped in as Sam hauled his brother backward, away toward the far wall. Dean made a wordless agonized noise that chilled Sam’s skin. Ruby grabbed at the cloth Anna was holding to her arm and shook her head sharply, then urged the girl upright and dragged her out into the hall. Dean jerked in their direction and Sam shook him, once, just a little. Until his brother looked at him. Until his eyes focused.
“We’re going to the car,” Sam said. “Ruby can help Anna. She’ll be fine. She’s going to be fine.”
Dean said, “Castiel….”
“No. They’re gone. The angels are gone. Whatever Anna did it-it got rid of them.”
“She said she was sending them away,” Dean murmured, and started to laugh. Little bubbling exhalations, awful and joyless. “I couldn’t stop her.”
He lifted a bloody hand toward his eyes and Sam grabbed his wrist, more tightly than he intended, grinding muscle against bone. He resisted the urge to shake him again.
“Stop, Dean,” he whispered, voice breaking, as his brother laughed and tears leaked from his eyes. “Dean, stop.”
Dean curled up a little, and Sam held on to his wrist and gripped his upper arm and forced him to remain upright. Dean wasn’t really laughing, Sam realized, and didn’t seem aware of the tears on his face. He was just spilling out strange, high-pitched noises like some wounded thing, while his free hand grasped at the air.
“They can’t do this,” Dean gasped. He bent over again and this time Sam held him as his body jerked and he gagged and retched and spit out saliva and bile. “They can’t.” His hands pushed and scraped against the floor, smearing Anna’s blood into the wood.
“They won’t, Dean,” Sam promised, though he wasn’t sure his brother could hear him at all. “They won’t. I’ll stop it.”
Dean’s throat worked and he listed weakly to the side, rolling his head back, murmuring the names of angels. Castiel, Adiriah, Uriel, Zachariah…. Sam held on, his fingers clutching hard at his brother’s arms. Dean was still in there somewhere. He was. Sam just needed to find him again.
He could bring him back. He could get him back. Dean wasn’t going to be this way forever.
Oh God. My brother. Give me back my brother.
He manhandled Dean out of the cabin. In the car, Ruby climbed into the front seat and Anna, again, took it upon herself to get Dean cleaned up in the back-as much as possible with their stash of dwindling supplies. She hummed while she worked and Sam caught bits of lullabies, snatches of Beatles’ songs. Once there was a way to get back homeward. Dean stared vaguely into some middle distance, some inner reality, and barely responded as his palms and fingers were slowly wiped clean. He shifted with the motion of the car like a boat rocking on the sea-insensate, and without volition.
“Golden slumbers fill your eyes,” Anna sang softly.
Ruby said, “We need to hide her somewhere. From the demons and the angels.”
Sam nodded. “I know a place. I know where we can go.” Didn’t say, We need to hide them both. But it was what he meant.
He glanced in the rearview mirror. Anna had placed a hand on the back of Dean’s neck and pulled him a little closer, so her lips were brushing his ear.
“They’re far away now,” she murmured, over the roar of the Impala’s engine. “They’re a long, long way away.”
Sam looked back at the road. Beside him, Ruby shifted, and lightly rested her fingertips against his thigh.
“Hey,” she said. “We’ll figure it out. It’s gonna be okay.”
Sam didn’t look at her, but he didn’t push her hand away.
-End
_________________________
Followed by: Zero
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Notes: The quote at the top is from a Rumi poem.
This story developed a theme pretty much on its own. Somehow water and human interactions with water (and mirrors and glass and things that break and those that reflect) kept cropping up and finally I surrendered to the inevitable. Sometimes themes and symbols stick themselves in stories. I have no idea why.
The changes in events and plot points from the eps in question are due mostly to the fact that this story isn’t trying to accomplish the same ends, so there wasn’t much reason to follow events to the letter. And too many characters would have made a mess of it anyway. I debated briefly about sticking in Alastair, but that would have been a whole other thing and frankly I didn’t want to deal with that kind of complexity. This this is long enough as it is.
Summary: A follow up to A Hole in the World, features post-hell!traumatized!Dean. AU and severely damaged Dean. Stands alone pretty well, with some passing references to the previous fic.
Warnings: POV shifts, suggestions of het relationships (nothing shown), language, blood. General weirdness. Bilateral timelines.
Spoilers: General S4, specific 4.9 and 4.10.
I'm dedicating this to maypoles, who wanted to know what happened next.
Mirror, Water, Glass
-
The Sea terrified us: we learned how to drown
-
Sam sat down next to his brother. Dean’s eyes were closed, his hands clasped softly in his lap.
“Better?” Sam asked quietly, and Dean rolled his shoulder in what was maybe intended to be a shrug. He lifted a hand and passed it across his mouth, opened his eyes enough to allow his gaze to rest on some point beyond the far wall.
“Yeah,” he said hoarsely, and dropped his hand into his lap.
Sam had heard him retching in the bathroom for the past ten minutes, but knew better than to intervene. Now he resisted the urge to reach out, or even to gently allow their shoulders to touch. This wasn’t the time.
It might never be time.
“Here,” he said instead, and held the bottle of water he’d dug up, when Dean had retreated to the bathroom, somewhere in the vicinity of his brother’s knee. Dean looked at it blankly for a moment, before accepting it with a surprisingly steady hand.
“You could get me a goddamn drink,” Dean grated out. Sam shook his head once, sharply.
“I don’t think so.”
Sam didn’t know if he was being cruel. His brother hadn’t had any alcohol since his return; Sam was making sure of it. Sometimes, though, he thought maybe Dean needed something else. Something a little stronger, and more direct.
Dean grimaced and took two big mouthfuls of water. Shut his eyes again with a slightly pained look on his face.
“Dean? You’re not gonna-I mean…”
Dean glanced at him, briefly. Handed back the plastic bottle and got to his feet. Paced a few steps away and shook his head slightly, strangely, as if he had water in his ears.
“The angels,” he said. “They’re looking for that girl.”
“I’ll find her first. Don’t worry.”
Dean pushed the palms of his hands hard against his thighs, looking away and swallowing convulsively.
“They’ll kill her.”
“We’ll stop it.” Sam kept his voice low and even. Dean didn’t bristle, or accuse him of being patronizing. Just hunched his shoulders a little, gave another abrupt little head shake. Lifted his eyes and met Sam’s gaze directly for the first time in days.
“They’ll kill her if they find her,” he repeated, and Sam didn’t ask Dean how he knew.
He knew.
--
Walls and walls. They’d left him here with nothing but walls and they’d left him. Here. They whispered and sometimes they screamed and the noise blew out mirrors and the empty glass over paintings, and they never spoke to him. He tried talking to them, tried the words he knew in Latin and tried calling for them in English. Tried screaming for them sometimes, until his voice split and he was sure he would bleed out from the inside, all over the perfect white walls and the golden floors. But they didn’t come.
They left him alone.
“How does this work?” he asked, resting his forehead against the cool wall, hands splayed on either side. “How does this work?”
How long had it been?
He listened for the sound of wings, the rustle like bodies running through the long grass. Running through the grass and laughing up at the sky, the blue sky, huge and falling backward, away into the dark. Into the starry void. Sammy running, running, long legs new and unsure, tearing across the little prairie, whooping and laughing, calling his name.
“Dean!”
An echo, a far-away noise. A whisper. He grabbed for it, for that fading sound, the thread pulling away from him. The smell of the summer air and the color of the sky. His brother’s face.
When the noise started up this time he yanked his hands off the wall and pressed them to his ears. Let himself slide to his knees and curled up, top of his head pressed to the wall, face pushed against his thighs, and the soft soft pants he still wore from the…from the other place.
“It’s twister country,” someone there had said, voice leaden and serious.
It’s a storm.
He tried to hold the noise inside himself, tried to gather it up, but it wasn’t his to have, and it pitched up higher and louder, a whine rising to a scream, beating against the walls in waves, shaking the foundations, cracking the paint, splintering the beautiful floor under his feet. Not again. Not again. It clawed its way out of his throat, an ugly terrified sound that hurt on the way out. He gulped it back, little retching sobs, saliva drooling from his teeth. It hurt. It hurt.
And then the world exploded.
--
He splayed his hands on the window, breathing out and watching the fog of his breath coalesce and dissipate on the glass.
“Dean.”
Sam spoke softly, the way he tended to these days. Dean drew back from the window and pressed his hands together tightly to suppress the tingling in his skin, the sense of something present, but hidden. Sam was fidgeting near the door, shifting his weight from foot to foot in a childlike manner that contrasted sharply with his sheer size. It didn’t suit him.
“It’s okay, Sam,” he said, “I-you go. Find her. I’ll stay here. You do what you need to do.”
Sam smiled, faintly, though it was impossible to ignore the sadness he tried to hide, tucked into the folds around his eyes, the creases at his mouth. As if he could ever keep it concealed.
“I’ll be fine, Sam,” Dean told him, though he couldn’t manage to unstick his hands. “Just go.”
He stood there under his little brother’s scrutiny and stayed as still as he’d ever learned to be. Sam searched his face, looking for something. Evidence of something. Fear, maybe, or some hint that Dean was lying. That he wouldn’t be all right left on his own.
“Go find her,” he said again. “Before the angels do.”
Sam hesitated another moment, then with a little sigh swept up his jacket and the keys to the car. He riffled through his pockets and with overly deliberate care placed the phone-the red one he’d bought for Dean just days ago-on the nightstand between the beds.
“If you need anything, you call me.”
Dean hung a smile on his face, like the curve of a crooked moon.
“Sure, Sammy.”
“Dean.”
He huffed an exasperated breath, rolled his eyes and waved the younger man in the direction of the door.
“Go, you moron, before I drop-kick you outta here myself.”
That at least got a genuine, if small, smile out of Sam, and it lifted years of worry from his face. When he was gone, Dean went on standing in the middle of the room for a few moments, before rubbing his hand over his face, and pushing his fingers briefly against his eyes.
He crossed the little room and stood by the window again, rested his hands lightly on the sill and looked out at the grey sky and the line of pine trees along the road. A tiny blemish marred the glass in the lower left-hand corner of the window. He pressed his thumb over it. As if a drop of blood would well up through the almost-crack. Stain his skin, warm and precious.
He remembered things like this.
“Cas,” he murmured to the empty air. “Castiel.”
--
Softness pressed in on him, against his head, on all sides. The air smelled different. Strange. Damp, with an underlying impression of mildew.
Too many places. Too far away.
Too damn far.
He heard the rustle of movement. He wasn’t alone hewasn’talone. Deep down his muscles stiffened, crackled against his bones. This place. This new place. Who had found him now? Had they come back for him? Was it Alastair?
“This isn’t real,” someone whispered. The words were desperate, anguished. “It’s not-”
“Sam.” Another voice. Older. Rough edges softened by grief, by too many years.
Sam.
He knew that one. That sound, that word. That name. A name from a faraway place.
He needed to open his eyes. Sit up. Right goddamn now.
He opened his eyes.
“Sam!” The older voice barked, and there was the sound of a sudden scramble, a curse.
Strong hands grabbed his arms as he surged upright, gulping in ragged breaths. Torn. Torn from sleep, from the deep water. Torn.
“Sam, help me goddammit!”
He jerked against the hands holding him, the iron fingers. Wrenched himself backward desperately, kicking, driving his heels hard against a soft surface. He didn’t scream but pushed breath out through a tight throat, high and dragging. Sucked in shallow breaths over and over and over.
Deep water.
Call his name. Call his-
“Sammy!” his voice split on the word but it was true. Fell out of his mouth like a benediction. Bright and clean. Awful and wonderful. Bones breaking and the sky tearing open.
“Sammy!” Tearing tearing tearing.
(“He’s the only one that gets to call me that.”)
Huge hands pressed suddenly on either side of his face and he gasped, jaw trembling. Whole body suddenly still. Rough and callused fingers and palms hemmed him in, held him immobile. A voice edged with something cracking, something on the verge of desperation, seeped into the world. Sank heavy and real below everything else. Weighted the world, gave everything the solidity of the real. Edges and pieces coalesced.
“Here! Here, Dean. I-I’m here.”
And he could see. He could see. Long hair and the planes of a face, eyesnosemouth. Cheekbones. Forehead. Devastated noises spilling from a terrified mouth. “Dean, shit you-just calm down, settle down. It’s okay. It’s okay. Jesus, it’s okay.”
He punched out a viscous noise, thick and ropy as tendons splitting. Grabbed at the hands holding him, at the wrists. Rolled his head back, pulling away.
“Sam, he’s gonna hurt himself. We need to-”
“No! No…Bobby no, let me-I have to try. Let me try.”
He clenched his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut. Blotting out the face, familiar and strange. How long? Years? How long?
“Dean?” A whisper. Small but trying to be strong. “Dean. Hey.”
He was being lowered back down, to the soft surface. Always soft, too soft. He wasn’t going to lie back down.
Not ever again.
“Nn-stop, stop it-”grabbed again for the hands, clawed his way back up big arms, spitting out ugly noises, hunger and fear. “No, let go, don’t put me, don’t let me-”
“Shh.” And Sam. And Sam. It was him. (Laughing at the sky.) Here, in this place. This new place. Pulling him upright, hauling him into an awkward clutching embrace. He scrabbled at Sam’s arms, at his shoulders, fingers digging in deep. Digging into his (his brother’s) skin. Claws. Hooking in.
Not blood.
There wouldn’t be any blood.
“Where have you been? Dean, Christ, where have you been?”
The other man (and he knew that voice, where did he know it from?), knelt down. Said, “You believe it’s him now?”
And Sam adjusted his grip, rested one hand on the back of Dean’s skull. Pushed his fingers through the still-short hair. Said, “Yeah, Bobby. Yeah I-I do.”
Dean shivered, and turned his face away.
--
The moment Sam pushed the door open, he knew. Felt his nostrils flare in the wash of fresh air, damp and heavy with the scent of pine. His skin prickled and adrenaline punched up his heart rate. His mouth and throat dried. Behind him, Anna drew a short breath, a gasp cut off before it became a curse.
“The angels-Sam.”
He shoved through the door, Anna on his heels. Took in the shattered window, the cracked sill, the fallen wardrobe. The chunks of plaster on the beds, the white dust over everything, Dean’s new red phone lying exactly where Sam had left it.
“No. No no no….” He crossed the room and grabbed at his brother where he lay propped against the far wall. Rivulets of blood caked the sides of his face where it had leaked from his ears.
“Dean. C’mon man, don’t-don’t do this. Open your eyes. Please.”
In the doorway, Anna said, “Sam.” Her tone full of warning.
Dean’s eyes snapped open. He grabbed at Sam, both hands clamping on the sides of his face.
“Sam,” he gasped, eyes so wide Sam could see the whites all the way around his irises. “They’ll kill her. They’re going to kill her, you have to get her outta here!”
“Not without you,” Sam said grimly, getting his arm under Dean’s and around his back, hauling him upright. His brother clutched at him, legs unsteady, whole body awkward. He’d never been this clumsy, but these days-it was as if his whole body was new. As if it didn’t belong to him.
“I can help,” Anna said softly, reaching out for the both of them, and Sam let her prop up his brother as he grabbed their bags, covered in dust, and hustled them out the door and down the hall.
“You’re okay,” Anna was murmuring quietly, though Dean had his eyes closed and a hand pressed to one ear, face tight with pain. “You’re gonna be okay.”
Sam reminded himself that she was trying to help.
They peeled out of the parking lot with more drama than Sam would have liked, considering. Anna sat in the back with his brother, a rag and a bottle of water in her hands, trying to clean up the worst of the blood. Sam shot them glances in the rearview mirror. Anna was murmuring softly, and whatever she was saying seemed to have got his brother’s attention. Dean’s eyes were cracked open, not exactly fixed on the young woman, but at least tracking a bit when she wiped gently at the mess on his face.
“They’re still far away, Dean,” she said at one point, and Dean made a soft, distressed noise.
He said, “It’s my fault.”
“Shh,” she murmured, and Sam clenched his hands on the steering wheel. “Shh.”
--
“Okay?” Sam was asking, and he swallowed and looked down at his hands.
His brother (he was his brother) was doing his best. Was desperately uncertain, that much was clear, but he was trying. Dean appreciated it, the fact that he was trying.
Bobby had gone. Away somewhere. To try, he’d said, to figure out what the hell was going on. Dean wasn’t sure exactly when the man had left, but he’d been alone with Sam for a little while now.
Sam. His brother.
“Found you some clothes,” the other man was saying, shoulders hunched a little, uneasy. Uncertain. Dean looked down at his own clothes, the soft hospital-issue pants, the white shirt. Smoothed a hand over the material. There were scars on his hands. He’d torn them open, not long ago.
They were his only scars.
“Dean, we’ll figure this out, all right? Just…right now you need to get dressed. Can you-you should take a shower. Can you do that?”
He looked up. Tried not to move his head too quickly, on the off chance that the walls might run together, or the furniture slide across the floor. The world was made up of pieces of things.
“I don’t-” he began, and stopped. Wasn’t sure what the rest of the sentence was supposed to be. Looked back at his brother. “Sam,” he said helplessly.
“Okay.” Sam put the clothes he’d dug out down on the bed, pushed a hand through his hair. He sounded young. He sounded like he didn’t know what he was doing.
“Okay, Dean.” He sat down and put a hand on Dean’s shoulder, briefly, and Dean reminded himself not to pull away. Sam was trying so hard. “We’ll just-we’ll work it out. We’ll get there. I promise.” His smile was small, hesitant. It wasn’t right.
Sam shouldn’t have to smile like that.
“We’ll work it out,” Dean echoed, and took a breath. Couldn’t stop himself from shrugging off his brother’s hand, but winced a little at the flicker in Sam’s eye when it fell away.
“How long were you-how long, Dean? Since you…came back?” Sam was looking hard at the hospital-issue pants and shirt Dean still wore, the soft shoes and thin socks. Dean shook his head.
It felt like a personal failure, to admit that he didn’t know.
Sam pressed his lips together, then shook his head a little. Said, “You need to get dressed. You can’t go around in, in that.”
Dean held on to the edge of the mattress, blanket bunched up under his hands.
“You need to clean up, at least a little.” Sam’s voice faded, became hesitant. “I…could help.”
Dean passed a hand across his eyes, fingers skipping lightly over the delicate skin of his eyelids. He knew what he would find in the bathroom. Mirrors, and water.
Or maybe it was the other way around.
“Okay,” he said faintly, and Sam offered a wan smile. But he wouldn’t let Sam in the bathroom and his brother backed off, clearly uncertain. Dean shut the door with care.
He turned the water on in the sink and in the shower, let them run and run. Sat down on the floor, in the middle of the little room, and folded himself up until his forehead touched his crossed ankles. His body had a new, childlike flexibility that Dean found eerie. His body was strange, alien and awkward.
He laced his fingers behind his neck, palms smooth against this skin. Took comfort in the steady pulse on both sides of his throat. The noise of water filled up the world and he let his chest rise and fall.
When a hand softly touched his hair, he forgot to be surprised. When a whisper brushed the air beside his ear, he barely stirred.
“Dean,” the voice murmured. “Open your eyes, Dean.”
There were no crashing walls, no shattering lights. No chaos of noise and breaking glass. Just a quiet voice, calm as still water.
“My name is Castiel,” it went on, and slowly Dean unlocked his fingers and began to unfold himself.
“I’m an angel of the Lord.”
Dean looked up.
Later, Sam burst in and found him curled up in the corner, next to the shower. Dean tried to tell his brother what had happened but couldn’t make the words fit into the shape of what had happened. He said, “I heard,” and he said, “Castiel,” and he said, “I saw I saw,” and Sam just shook his head and didn’t understand.
Dean could hardly get his limbs to cooperate and Sam wound up stripping his shirt off and scrubbing him down as much as possible from the waist up. He reminded Dean briefly of the big nurses at the hospital, capable in his own way, and fearless. But in that moment when he yanked the shirt over Dean’s head and saw the scars on his shoulders for the first time, Sam’s face drained of color and he looked away, fumbling for the washcloth on the sink.
“It’s a bad idea,” Dean said to the air, and wasn’t sure what he meant. Sam shook his head, face tight and eyes deliberately blank. Dean didn’t think he was listening anymore.
--
Anna patted lightly at the side of Dean’s face with a dry cloth. His face was as clean as it was going to get, for the time being, with nothing but water available. The rags lying on the table were stained rusty brown and streaked with fresher red. She favored him with a small smile.
“There,” she said. “Much better.”
Dean started a little at the touch and the smile, though she had been working carefully at his face for at least ten minutes, since they’d arrived at the little cabin and Sam had bundled them both out of the car and gone off to confer with his demon girl.
He looked down at her hands, which were small and fine-boned and pale. She caught his gaze and smiled a little more completely.
“Dean Winchester is saved,” she said, and he knew where she had heard those words.
“You know about the angels,” he offered, tilting his head a little without breaking her gaze. “You know about them.”
“I don’t.” She shook her head, looking away quickly, all self-deprecation and faint wonder. “I just hear them, is all. Sometimes it’s hard to tell one from another.” She paused. “Sometimes.”
She turned away, busying herself tidying up the bloody rags, then paused with both hands cupping the basin of cold water, stained dull red.
“Thank you,” she offered, eyes on the still, smooth surface. Dean shifted a little on the couch.
“For what?”
“You begged them for me,” she murmured, still not looking at him. “For my life.”
Dean grunted. “I didn’t beg,” he snapped, annoyed, and she gave an amused little snort and smile and finally looked at him again.
“You…argued,” she amended, and lifting a hand rested the backs of her fingers on the side of his freshly-scrubbed face. “You argued with Castiel, for my life. He might have listened, I think. And then…Uriel came….”
Dean stared at her. At her pale, too-young face. Her earnestness, her confusion masked by desperate hope.
“I heard,” she whispered.
Dean lifted his hands, slowly. With great care, barely shifting her hair, he laid them gently on either side of her head, palms cupped over her ears. She shivered, very slightly, and then was still.
They stayed that way for a long time. Until Sam came back with the demon.
--
He jerked out of sleep so violently that he kicked the table and sent its contents, books and a newspaper and pens and a glass of water, spilling all over the floor. The room was dark. It was dark and empty and Sam (Sam?) wasn’t there.
The dream hung all around him, in the walls and on his skin. Unseen wings and empty eyes and a voice (voices) that screamed over things and whispered like leaves and grass and that sang and promised and promised and lied.
“Shit,” he hissed into the dark, staggering up from the sofa, fumbling for the edge of the table when he dropped to his knees on the threadbare carpet, cold water soaking through his pants. He pushed himself upright, again, and stumbled around the sofa toward the other side of the room. Made it as far as the nearest lamp, between the beds. His bed. Sam’s bed. Never mind that Dean couldn’t sleep in a bed. Never mind.
He couldn’t get the lamp to work, wasn’t sure he remembered how. Got his fingers around the bulb and tipped the whole thing onto the floor and for good measure slapped the notepad and clock away and picked up the phone and slammed it against the wall, once and then again, then spun and flung it across the empty dark room where it smashed into the mirror over the little dresser. He grabbed the edge of the table, swaying a little on odd unsteady legs, then looked at the dresser and the shards of glass sprayed over its surface.
Lies and eyes that said, “I pulled you out of Hell,” and hands that hung and did nothing and a pale memory, a face in the walls, always watching. In the walls and eyes like holes, like windows and mirrors.
“Castiel you bastard,” he snarled and pushed the back of his hand across his mouth. “You bastard you bastard.”
He wasn’t going to be a part of this.
There was a laptop on the table by the window. It split open on the floor and bits of plastic went everywhere. He broke the table and both chairs, put his fist through the window for good measure, and he found a knife in Sam’s bag and went to work on the walls and the beds and pillows and mattresses. He would cut out all the pieces if he had to. If that was what it took. Dig them out at the source, all the faces and eyes and wings and the voices of angels.
“Dammit Cas,” he chanted under his breath as he worked, “Dammit dammit dammit….”
He wasn’t expecting Sam. Wasn’t prepared to be grabbed or to have the knife smacked out of his bloodied hand or to be shoved backward into the center of the room until he fetched up against the back of the sofa. His knees buckled again and this time he didn’t hit the floor because his brother caught him, spitting a curse, voice strangled. He leaned drunkenly between the sofa and Sam’s body, and his brother grabbed at his arms and his injured, sticky hand.
“Dean what did you-shit, what the hell? Christ, Dean…”
“You knew about this!” Dean hissed at him, shoving at his brother, and Sam let himself be moved. Dean’s throat was closing up, the closeness too much. “You knew you knew!”
“Knew what? Dean, what are you-holy Christ, why don’t you-here, sit, sit down before you fall, oh holy Christ….”
Dean let Sam fold him down until they were both on the floor, Dean sitting, Sam squatting on his haunches. His brother’s hands closed on Dean’s face, both sides, tilting it back so the light from the streetlamps outside shone in his eyes.
“What the hell is this, Dean?” and Sam shook him, just a little.
There was a blank space where Sam’s face should have been. Dean stared at it, knew his eyes were wide, could feel his eyelids pushing against bone. But Sam’s face was gone, just gone, and for a moment Dean couldn’t remember anything because all he could see was that savage emptiness, the huge sucking darkness. He made a noise. He heard it jerk out of his throat.
“S-Sam…” he breathed, and couldn’t stop the tremors that shook his ribs, his heart and lungs. “Sammy?”
Sam said, “I’m here, Dean.” And Dean hauled back the scream that tried to spill out because suddenly he could see again, Sam’s eyes and nose and mouth. All the parts. All the pieces in place. Everything fit together where it was supposed to. He fumbled, pawed at his brother’s face with his good hand. Swallowed against his fear.
“What did Ruby give you?” Dean whispered, and Sam went very still.
“What?”
“Don’t. Don’t you lie to me, Sam.” He pressed his thumb hard against Sam’s cheekbone to ground himself. Tried to push away the memory of Castiel’s words.
“Your brother will lie,” he’d said, and for a moment seemed so sad. “Don’t let him tell you lies.”
“I’m not-what are you talking about?”
“Ruby. At the bar. I know she was there. I know you saw her.”
Sam tilted back, and regarded Dean warily.
“What are you talking about?”
“She gave you something,” Dean repeated, and without waiting any longer started patting at Sam’s pockets, sticking his hands in and ignoring Sam’s yelp of indignation until he pulled out a piece of paper, printed with a name. “Behavioral Medicine Center.” His hand clenched in a fist.
“Anna,” he said quietly. “Anna.”
“How did you-” Sam began, and broke off at Dean’s look.
“I wasn’t going to go after her,” Sam offered, and Dean shook his head sharply.
“You have to. Before the angels find her.”
“Angels? No, Dean, it’s-the demons are looking for her. It’s-it’s the demons.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed.
“Heard from who?”
Dean pushed upward, away from his brother, hanging on to the back of the sofa and forcing his legs to support him. He shut his eyes and shook his head, trying not to remember the dream.
“Cas said-he told me. He said.”
“Cas?” Sam said the word as if it hurt him. “Cas…tiel? The angel? He was here?”
Sam was holding on to his arm again, his voice low and urgent. Dean didn’t pull away this time.
“He wasn’t,” Dean shook his head again, pushing away the memory of eyes and wings and the sounds of voices (one voice). “Wasn’t here. He’s somewhere else, far away. I-he-I had. A dream. He was in, in my dream.”
Slowly, Sam drew back. Stepped back, feet crunching over glass.
“Castiel was in…your dream.”
Dean said, “It wasn’t my fault.”
“Jesus.” Sam looked away, at the open door and the black sky and the parking lot. “Jesus, Dean.”
“He told me about Anna,” Dean said softly. “That’s her name, right?” Now it was Dean’s turn to push closer.
“He said they’re looking for her. That Ruby would tell you where she was, that when we found her, he-Cas and Uriel, they would want to know.”
“Dean…” Sam’s eyes were wide in the dark. He looked young, and genuinely afraid.
“We have to find her. Before they do. They’ll kill her, Sam. They will. We have to go. We have to save her.”
Sam stared at him, motionless, the both of them standing in the middle of the destroyed motel room, the door wide open to the night.
Finally Sam said, “Let me look at your hand.”
--
Sam had to physically force his brother away from Anna, peeling Dean’s hands from her injured arm, scarred palms and fingers all smeared with her blood. The shape she’d drawn on the mirror was strange and hard to look at, and blood was spattered all over the table and had dripped onto the floor.
“Ruby, dammit, help me!”
She stepped in as Sam hauled his brother backward, away toward the far wall. Dean made a wordless agonized noise that chilled Sam’s skin. Ruby grabbed at the cloth Anna was holding to her arm and shook her head sharply, then urged the girl upright and dragged her out into the hall. Dean jerked in their direction and Sam shook him, once, just a little. Until his brother looked at him. Until his eyes focused.
“We’re going to the car,” Sam said. “Ruby can help Anna. She’ll be fine. She’s going to be fine.”
Dean said, “Castiel….”
“No. They’re gone. The angels are gone. Whatever Anna did it-it got rid of them.”
“She said she was sending them away,” Dean murmured, and started to laugh. Little bubbling exhalations, awful and joyless. “I couldn’t stop her.”
He lifted a bloody hand toward his eyes and Sam grabbed his wrist, more tightly than he intended, grinding muscle against bone. He resisted the urge to shake him again.
“Stop, Dean,” he whispered, voice breaking, as his brother laughed and tears leaked from his eyes. “Dean, stop.”
Dean curled up a little, and Sam held on to his wrist and gripped his upper arm and forced him to remain upright. Dean wasn’t really laughing, Sam realized, and didn’t seem aware of the tears on his face. He was just spilling out strange, high-pitched noises like some wounded thing, while his free hand grasped at the air.
“They can’t do this,” Dean gasped. He bent over again and this time Sam held him as his body jerked and he gagged and retched and spit out saliva and bile. “They can’t.” His hands pushed and scraped against the floor, smearing Anna’s blood into the wood.
“They won’t, Dean,” Sam promised, though he wasn’t sure his brother could hear him at all. “They won’t. I’ll stop it.”
Dean’s throat worked and he listed weakly to the side, rolling his head back, murmuring the names of angels. Castiel, Adiriah, Uriel, Zachariah…. Sam held on, his fingers clutching hard at his brother’s arms. Dean was still in there somewhere. He was. Sam just needed to find him again.
He could bring him back. He could get him back. Dean wasn’t going to be this way forever.
Oh God. My brother. Give me back my brother.
He manhandled Dean out of the cabin. In the car, Ruby climbed into the front seat and Anna, again, took it upon herself to get Dean cleaned up in the back-as much as possible with their stash of dwindling supplies. She hummed while she worked and Sam caught bits of lullabies, snatches of Beatles’ songs. Once there was a way to get back homeward. Dean stared vaguely into some middle distance, some inner reality, and barely responded as his palms and fingers were slowly wiped clean. He shifted with the motion of the car like a boat rocking on the sea-insensate, and without volition.
“Golden slumbers fill your eyes,” Anna sang softly.
Ruby said, “We need to hide her somewhere. From the demons and the angels.”
Sam nodded. “I know a place. I know where we can go.” Didn’t say, We need to hide them both. But it was what he meant.
He glanced in the rearview mirror. Anna had placed a hand on the back of Dean’s neck and pulled him a little closer, so her lips were brushing his ear.
“They’re far away now,” she murmured, over the roar of the Impala’s engine. “They’re a long, long way away.”
Sam looked back at the road. Beside him, Ruby shifted, and lightly rested her fingertips against his thigh.
“Hey,” she said. “We’ll figure it out. It’s gonna be okay.”
Sam didn’t look at her, but he didn’t push her hand away.
-End
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Followed by: Zero
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Notes: The quote at the top is from a Rumi poem.
This story developed a theme pretty much on its own. Somehow water and human interactions with water (and mirrors and glass and things that break and those that reflect) kept cropping up and finally I surrendered to the inevitable. Sometimes themes and symbols stick themselves in stories. I have no idea why.
The changes in events and plot points from the eps in question are due mostly to the fact that this story isn’t trying to accomplish the same ends, so there wasn’t much reason to follow events to the letter. And too many characters would have made a mess of it anyway. I debated briefly about sticking in Alastair, but that would have been a whole other thing and frankly I didn’t want to deal with that kind of complexity. This this is long enough as it is.