Traces >> Five
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It took Sam another three weeks after his and Dean’s consummation in the bedroom to find what he was looking for: a witch who could heal Dean’s eyes without using any sort of blood sacrifice. He’d given up on trying to find someone who wasn’t a witch shortly after he realized that was the only kind of person that would be able to help them. This witch that he’d found was supposedly very powerful. On her website, there was a quote from a man who said he’d been cured of cancer by her and Sam figured this was the most reliable bit of information they were going to find, but he still spent another week trying to find more information about her before he finally went up to Dean’s bedroom, where his brother still spent most of his time, and said, “I’ve found someone I think can help you.”
Dean looked up from his place on the bed and, as usual, looked just past Sam as he asked, “Who is it?”
He took a deep breath before he said, “A witch. From what I can tell she’s really powerful and she’s the real deal. She even had a section for hunters, swearing up and down that she doesn’t use any sort of blood sacrifice in her rituals. It’s all herbal. She says it’s not as powerful as it would be if she did use blood sacrifices, but she’s learned how to make it powerful enough that she can help anyone who needs it.”
For a moment, there was silence and Sam was half worried that his brother might be angry with him for not finding someone sooner. Then Dean asked, “I thought you weren’t looking into witches, doctors, or faith healers.” His tone was bitter and Sam understood why. The last time they’d discussed this, Dean had told him that maybe those were their only options. It had taken Sam a little over two months to realize that his brother was right.
Huffing, Sam replied, “Because I couldn’t find anyone else.”
This time when Dean didn’t reply, Sam knew it was because his brother was gloating, if only silently without an expression on his face.
“So,” Sam said, ignoring the rotten feeling of being proven wrong in his chest, “I’ve arranged an appointment with her for tomorrow afternoon. I’ve told her you’re blind and that we need that fixed. She said she should be able to fix you.”
Neither of them said anything. Nothing needed to be said. Within twenty-four hours, Dean would either be cured or he would still be blind. In any event, it was really out of their hands now and in the hands of a woman they didn’t know, which, in Sam’s opinion, was almost worse, especially considering she was a witch.
“You just said she’s reliable,” Lucifer reminded him, showing himself for the first time in days. “Who were you trying to convince? Dean? Or yourself?”
Sam didn’t respond. He had a point, but he didn’t want to admit that.
“Dean’ll hate you if you can’t help him, you know,” Lucifer told him, perching atop the counter once Sam got back to the sparse kitchen. The devil pulled over a chair to rest his feet on. It happened to be the one Sam had been using earlier. He sighed heavily, the acknowledgement he would give to the hallucination and pulled another one around to where his computer was. “I know he said he forgives you, but he’s probably just saying that to make you feel better. He doesn’t like seeing his little brother sad. Even when he is the reason that he’s blind now.”
“Shut up,” Sam hissed. He plugged a pair of earphones into the computer in front of him and turned on some music. He really doubted he could drown out Lucifer that way if the devil really wanted to bother him, but it was worth a try. And, to his everlasting shock, it did work. Sam focused on surfing the web instead of the possibility that this woman was a fraud Dean was never going to see again.
-
The two spent the majority of the day leading up to the appointment lounging around the house. They weren’t sure how much longer it would be their house. For all they knew, a government official could walk in at any second and arrest them for trespassing. Maybe someone nicer would just come in and tell them they had twenty-four hours to vacate the premises. Sam hoped that if that did happen, it was the latter. He’d been in jail and prison before and neither were fun places to be. He’d had Dean to protect him on both occasions, but with his brother blind, he wasn’t sure how much protecting Dean would be able to do. Best to avoid it altogether.
Once he can see again, we’ll leave, he promised, sifting through webpages on his computer to kill time, until they had to leave at one-thirty for the woman’s house. They can’t arrest us after we leave, right?
“Whoa, Sam,” Lucifer said, sitting on the table directly behind his computer. “Better calm down your anxiety, there. It’s going to leave you to an early grave.”
As per usual, Sam ignored him.
It took longer than it might have normally for Sam and Dean to get ready and out the door. Half because Dean couldn’t see where his shoes were, since he never left the house and he couldn’t remember where he’d put them, and when Sam asked if he could help, he yelled at him to leave him alone. And half because they were both terrified of what they were going to find at the house they were going to. They were both too scared to hope. Hoping had gotten them nowhere in the past. They’d learned to expect the worst always. It was a safer move.
For the first time in a very long time, Sam drove the impala out of the driveway and in the direction of the house where the woman lived. It was on the other side of town and that was why they’d left thirty minutes early. Sam wasn’t sure what her late policy was and he didn’t want to test it. This could be his only chance to make things right again and there was no way he was going to even think about passing it up.
He parked on the street as there was no driveway and, despite Dean’s protesting, helped him out of the car and up the walk. Dean stopped grumbling about halfway, but he kept his mouth set in a grim line. Even when Sam knocked on the door and the woman answered.
“I’m Sam Winchester,” Sam began. “This is my brother, Dean. I emailed you yesterday and you said we could come around this time today.”
The woman gave them both a confused and wary look and for a moment Sam thought they had the wrong house, despite all of the mystical things hanging from the overhang of the porch and crowded around the rocking chairs and wicker tables placed on it as well. But then her expression turned into one of pleasure and she said, waving past herself towards a living room that was stereotypical of any twentieth century fortune teller, “Ah, yes, the Winchester boys. Come in, come in.”
Now Sam was wary. The only people that had ever called them the Winchester boys were demons and other such creatures they wanted nothing to do with. Still, giving her the benefit of the doubt, he led Dean inside and towards one of the overstuffed couches near a table in a room covered in scarves. He felt as though he were in a gypsy’s tent rather than an elderly witch’s living room.
“So you’re the young man that talked to me about fixing your brother’s eyes?” the woman said, coming around and sitting in front of them.
“Yes,” Sam said, glancing at Dean, who was fiddling with a fraying end of a blanket that was draped over the back of his chair.
“I can help him,” the woman said, an air of warning in her tone, “but he will not be able to see in the same way he could before. He will have to learn how to use his new sight and that could take a very long time.”
Sam swallowed. She hadn’t told him this over the email, but he figured that even a sight, such as the one she was suggesting, was better than no sight at all. Still, he hesitated. What would Dean prefer? He glanced at him, just as he was opening his mouth to say maybe he should talk it over with him, when Dean burst out, “Do it.”
There was a short, stunned silence during which Sam and the woman both turned to look at Dean. Then, they both spoke at once.
“Dean, are you sure?”
“Are you sure, young man?”
Dean responded to both of them with a sarcastic laugh.
“Of course, I’m sure,” he said finally. “For the past several months, I’ve been living blind. I can’t drive my car, I can’t get around the house without bumping into things, I can’t see my little brother smile…” Dean took a shuddering breath and Sam realized there were tears in his eyes and when he spoke next, his voice broke. “I can’t see the stars.” Then, the emotion was gone as quickly as it’d come. “I want to be able to see again. I want to do things on my own. I don’t want to feel so helpless anymore and even if I have to work at this new sight…it’ll be worth it.”
The woman nodded. Sam nodded. Everyone agreed.
It had to be done.
-
Because Dean was blind and therefore unable to see what the woman was referring to, Sam was the one that helped her gather the herbs for the ritual she would need to perform to help him. It took them nearly twenty minutes to assemble all the herbs needed, then another ten minutes to put them in the right places, and another five minutes after that to spread the smoke of two different herbs around the room. By the time they were finished and back in their seats, Sam felt as though he were sitting in an opium den in the late 1800s.
The woman said nothing before she took Dean’s hands, holding them carefully in her own, as she began to chant in Latin. At first, Sam panicked. He associated Latin with exorcisms and those were associated with demons. She’d promised there would be no demons, no sacrifices, during the ritual. But then Sam heard the words she was saying and he relaxed. He’d forgotten that Latin was also the language of Heaven.
“Come, oh Lord, and cure this righteous man of his affliction. Give him a sight to see the world in your perception. Oh Lord, let him see again. Let him see again.”
She said this over and over again, her eyes closed, her body swaying slightly in time with her words. Finally, after nearly a half an hour, after the smoke and the smell of it, had become cloying and Sam was wondering if anything was happening. He was just starting to assume that this woman was another phony and he’d brought Dean here for nothing when the woman and Dean started to glow. It wasn’t bright, nothing painful to look at. More like they’d gained the powers of fireflies and they were glowing just as brightly and gently as one of them might.
Sam watched in awe as their brightness slowly increased. He watched as the light became brighter and brighter. Just before he looked away, the light began to shine from Dean’s eyes in an almost eerie way. The light filled the room, almost as bright as the grace of an angel before it finally vanished just as quickly as it had come.
Once the light had become dangerously bright, Sam had curled himself up against his seat, shielding his eyes, and once he registered the light was gone, he carefully opened one eye, then the other. The woman was standing erect, her hands no longer holding Dean’s. She was staring at the tarot cards sitting on the wicker table between them. Sam’s gaze moved from her to his brother, who was slumped and unmoving in the chair next to him.
Instantly, he began to panic. There had been too many times in Sam’s life where he’d seen Dean not moving and it meant that his brother was badly hurt or dying. Vaguely, he remembered that if Dean was hurt or dying there would be a lot of blood, that’s usually what accompanied those sorts of things, but Sam was too worried to listen to logic. He pulled his brother up and shook him.
“Dean,” he gasped out, pressing his fore- and middle fingers to his neck, feeling for a pulse. It was there. It was strong. His brother was alive. His panic calmed, then flared up again as he realized that his brother still wasn’t responding to him.
“Dean!” This time he shook him much more violently and after a brief moment, Dean’s eyes snapped opened and he gasped for air. His eyes were still the foggy blue of blindness, but when he looked at Sam, he didn’t look past him, he looked right at him and after several moments of heavy breathing, though Sam already knew what he was going to tell him, he said the one thing he’d wanted to say for months.
“I can see you…”
Sam let out a breath and smiled. Tears filled Dean’s eyes as he said again, embracing Sam, “I can see you.”
The brothers clutched at each other, gasping and crying. It had been only a few months since Dean was rendered irreversibly blind, told by doctors that he would never see again, told by his brother that this was all his fault, but, for both of them, it felt as though it had been years, decades, eons.
Sam thought back to when this nightmare had begun and he felt as though that had happened in another lifetime and, maybe, in many ways, it had. They were in a new place now. There was no longer darkness. Dean could see again and, to him, that was what mattered.
-
After they’d managed to regain their composure, they thanked the woman for her troubles, paying her handsomely. She tried to refuse the large amount of money Sam shoved at her and it was only when Sam explained that he felt bad paying her any less that she finally took it, smiling at them as she led them to the door. Just as they left, she warned Dean that his sight would fade again and he would have to teach himself to see as clearly as he could now.
“You can only see this well right now because the spell is still strong,” she told him as they headed down the steps of her porch back towards the impala. “Tomorrow it will be fainter and the day after that it will even fainter. Soon it will seem as though you are sitting in a room lit only by moonlight, but, if you work at seeing, you will be able to see as well as you can now. I promise you that.”
Dean believed her and called back, “I’ll work on it, lady, don’t worry!” Sam felt he should say something as well, but he wasn’t sure what. The right words weren’t coming to him, so all he did was wave. Later they would, but it would be late at night after he and Dean’d had sex for the first time and were wrapped up in each other and he wouldn’t care as much then. He would vow to go back to the woman and say exactly what he was thinking, but, of course, he never would. They would leave the town and the woman behind and find someplace else where Dean would be able to practice strengthening his sight, until it was as strong as it was the day he regained it.
For the first time in their lives, something had gone right. There hadn’t even been a catch. And, as they clambered into the impala, heading back to their temporary home, they finally, finally, dared to do what they’d given up doing years ago.
Hope.
On to Afterward
It took Sam another three weeks after his and Dean’s consummation in the bedroom to find what he was looking for: a witch who could heal Dean’s eyes without using any sort of blood sacrifice. He’d given up on trying to find someone who wasn’t a witch shortly after he realized that was the only kind of person that would be able to help them. This witch that he’d found was supposedly very powerful. On her website, there was a quote from a man who said he’d been cured of cancer by her and Sam figured this was the most reliable bit of information they were going to find, but he still spent another week trying to find more information about her before he finally went up to Dean’s bedroom, where his brother still spent most of his time, and said, “I’ve found someone I think can help you.”
Dean looked up from his place on the bed and, as usual, looked just past Sam as he asked, “Who is it?”
He took a deep breath before he said, “A witch. From what I can tell she’s really powerful and she’s the real deal. She even had a section for hunters, swearing up and down that she doesn’t use any sort of blood sacrifice in her rituals. It’s all herbal. She says it’s not as powerful as it would be if she did use blood sacrifices, but she’s learned how to make it powerful enough that she can help anyone who needs it.”
For a moment, there was silence and Sam was half worried that his brother might be angry with him for not finding someone sooner. Then Dean asked, “I thought you weren’t looking into witches, doctors, or faith healers.” His tone was bitter and Sam understood why. The last time they’d discussed this, Dean had told him that maybe those were their only options. It had taken Sam a little over two months to realize that his brother was right.
Huffing, Sam replied, “Because I couldn’t find anyone else.”
This time when Dean didn’t reply, Sam knew it was because his brother was gloating, if only silently without an expression on his face.
“So,” Sam said, ignoring the rotten feeling of being proven wrong in his chest, “I’ve arranged an appointment with her for tomorrow afternoon. I’ve told her you’re blind and that we need that fixed. She said she should be able to fix you.”
Neither of them said anything. Nothing needed to be said. Within twenty-four hours, Dean would either be cured or he would still be blind. In any event, it was really out of their hands now and in the hands of a woman they didn’t know, which, in Sam’s opinion, was almost worse, especially considering she was a witch.
“You just said she’s reliable,” Lucifer reminded him, showing himself for the first time in days. “Who were you trying to convince? Dean? Or yourself?”
Sam didn’t respond. He had a point, but he didn’t want to admit that.
“Dean’ll hate you if you can’t help him, you know,” Lucifer told him, perching atop the counter once Sam got back to the sparse kitchen. The devil pulled over a chair to rest his feet on. It happened to be the one Sam had been using earlier. He sighed heavily, the acknowledgement he would give to the hallucination and pulled another one around to where his computer was. “I know he said he forgives you, but he’s probably just saying that to make you feel better. He doesn’t like seeing his little brother sad. Even when he is the reason that he’s blind now.”
“Shut up,” Sam hissed. He plugged a pair of earphones into the computer in front of him and turned on some music. He really doubted he could drown out Lucifer that way if the devil really wanted to bother him, but it was worth a try. And, to his everlasting shock, it did work. Sam focused on surfing the web instead of the possibility that this woman was a fraud Dean was never going to see again.
-
The two spent the majority of the day leading up to the appointment lounging around the house. They weren’t sure how much longer it would be their house. For all they knew, a government official could walk in at any second and arrest them for trespassing. Maybe someone nicer would just come in and tell them they had twenty-four hours to vacate the premises. Sam hoped that if that did happen, it was the latter. He’d been in jail and prison before and neither were fun places to be. He’d had Dean to protect him on both occasions, but with his brother blind, he wasn’t sure how much protecting Dean would be able to do. Best to avoid it altogether.
Once he can see again, we’ll leave, he promised, sifting through webpages on his computer to kill time, until they had to leave at one-thirty for the woman’s house. They can’t arrest us after we leave, right?
“Whoa, Sam,” Lucifer said, sitting on the table directly behind his computer. “Better calm down your anxiety, there. It’s going to leave you to an early grave.”
As per usual, Sam ignored him.
It took longer than it might have normally for Sam and Dean to get ready and out the door. Half because Dean couldn’t see where his shoes were, since he never left the house and he couldn’t remember where he’d put them, and when Sam asked if he could help, he yelled at him to leave him alone. And half because they were both terrified of what they were going to find at the house they were going to. They were both too scared to hope. Hoping had gotten them nowhere in the past. They’d learned to expect the worst always. It was a safer move.
For the first time in a very long time, Sam drove the impala out of the driveway and in the direction of the house where the woman lived. It was on the other side of town and that was why they’d left thirty minutes early. Sam wasn’t sure what her late policy was and he didn’t want to test it. This could be his only chance to make things right again and there was no way he was going to even think about passing it up.
He parked on the street as there was no driveway and, despite Dean’s protesting, helped him out of the car and up the walk. Dean stopped grumbling about halfway, but he kept his mouth set in a grim line. Even when Sam knocked on the door and the woman answered.
“I’m Sam Winchester,” Sam began. “This is my brother, Dean. I emailed you yesterday and you said we could come around this time today.”
The woman gave them both a confused and wary look and for a moment Sam thought they had the wrong house, despite all of the mystical things hanging from the overhang of the porch and crowded around the rocking chairs and wicker tables placed on it as well. But then her expression turned into one of pleasure and she said, waving past herself towards a living room that was stereotypical of any twentieth century fortune teller, “Ah, yes, the Winchester boys. Come in, come in.”
Now Sam was wary. The only people that had ever called them the Winchester boys were demons and other such creatures they wanted nothing to do with. Still, giving her the benefit of the doubt, he led Dean inside and towards one of the overstuffed couches near a table in a room covered in scarves. He felt as though he were in a gypsy’s tent rather than an elderly witch’s living room.
“So you’re the young man that talked to me about fixing your brother’s eyes?” the woman said, coming around and sitting in front of them.
“Yes,” Sam said, glancing at Dean, who was fiddling with a fraying end of a blanket that was draped over the back of his chair.
“I can help him,” the woman said, an air of warning in her tone, “but he will not be able to see in the same way he could before. He will have to learn how to use his new sight and that could take a very long time.”
Sam swallowed. She hadn’t told him this over the email, but he figured that even a sight, such as the one she was suggesting, was better than no sight at all. Still, he hesitated. What would Dean prefer? He glanced at him, just as he was opening his mouth to say maybe he should talk it over with him, when Dean burst out, “Do it.”
There was a short, stunned silence during which Sam and the woman both turned to look at Dean. Then, they both spoke at once.
“Dean, are you sure?”
“Are you sure, young man?”
Dean responded to both of them with a sarcastic laugh.
“Of course, I’m sure,” he said finally. “For the past several months, I’ve been living blind. I can’t drive my car, I can’t get around the house without bumping into things, I can’t see my little brother smile…” Dean took a shuddering breath and Sam realized there were tears in his eyes and when he spoke next, his voice broke. “I can’t see the stars.” Then, the emotion was gone as quickly as it’d come. “I want to be able to see again. I want to do things on my own. I don’t want to feel so helpless anymore and even if I have to work at this new sight…it’ll be worth it.”
The woman nodded. Sam nodded. Everyone agreed.
It had to be done.
-
Because Dean was blind and therefore unable to see what the woman was referring to, Sam was the one that helped her gather the herbs for the ritual she would need to perform to help him. It took them nearly twenty minutes to assemble all the herbs needed, then another ten minutes to put them in the right places, and another five minutes after that to spread the smoke of two different herbs around the room. By the time they were finished and back in their seats, Sam felt as though he were sitting in an opium den in the late 1800s.
The woman said nothing before she took Dean’s hands, holding them carefully in her own, as she began to chant in Latin. At first, Sam panicked. He associated Latin with exorcisms and those were associated with demons. She’d promised there would be no demons, no sacrifices, during the ritual. But then Sam heard the words she was saying and he relaxed. He’d forgotten that Latin was also the language of Heaven.
“Come, oh Lord, and cure this righteous man of his affliction. Give him a sight to see the world in your perception. Oh Lord, let him see again. Let him see again.”
She said this over and over again, her eyes closed, her body swaying slightly in time with her words. Finally, after nearly a half an hour, after the smoke and the smell of it, had become cloying and Sam was wondering if anything was happening. He was just starting to assume that this woman was another phony and he’d brought Dean here for nothing when the woman and Dean started to glow. It wasn’t bright, nothing painful to look at. More like they’d gained the powers of fireflies and they were glowing just as brightly and gently as one of them might.
Sam watched in awe as their brightness slowly increased. He watched as the light became brighter and brighter. Just before he looked away, the light began to shine from Dean’s eyes in an almost eerie way. The light filled the room, almost as bright as the grace of an angel before it finally vanished just as quickly as it had come.
Once the light had become dangerously bright, Sam had curled himself up against his seat, shielding his eyes, and once he registered the light was gone, he carefully opened one eye, then the other. The woman was standing erect, her hands no longer holding Dean’s. She was staring at the tarot cards sitting on the wicker table between them. Sam’s gaze moved from her to his brother, who was slumped and unmoving in the chair next to him.
Instantly, he began to panic. There had been too many times in Sam’s life where he’d seen Dean not moving and it meant that his brother was badly hurt or dying. Vaguely, he remembered that if Dean was hurt or dying there would be a lot of blood, that’s usually what accompanied those sorts of things, but Sam was too worried to listen to logic. He pulled his brother up and shook him.
“Dean,” he gasped out, pressing his fore- and middle fingers to his neck, feeling for a pulse. It was there. It was strong. His brother was alive. His panic calmed, then flared up again as he realized that his brother still wasn’t responding to him.
“Dean!” This time he shook him much more violently and after a brief moment, Dean’s eyes snapped opened and he gasped for air. His eyes were still the foggy blue of blindness, but when he looked at Sam, he didn’t look past him, he looked right at him and after several moments of heavy breathing, though Sam already knew what he was going to tell him, he said the one thing he’d wanted to say for months.
“I can see you…”
Sam let out a breath and smiled. Tears filled Dean’s eyes as he said again, embracing Sam, “I can see you.”
The brothers clutched at each other, gasping and crying. It had been only a few months since Dean was rendered irreversibly blind, told by doctors that he would never see again, told by his brother that this was all his fault, but, for both of them, it felt as though it had been years, decades, eons.
Sam thought back to when this nightmare had begun and he felt as though that had happened in another lifetime and, maybe, in many ways, it had. They were in a new place now. There was no longer darkness. Dean could see again and, to him, that was what mattered.
-
After they’d managed to regain their composure, they thanked the woman for her troubles, paying her handsomely. She tried to refuse the large amount of money Sam shoved at her and it was only when Sam explained that he felt bad paying her any less that she finally took it, smiling at them as she led them to the door. Just as they left, she warned Dean that his sight would fade again and he would have to teach himself to see as clearly as he could now.
“You can only see this well right now because the spell is still strong,” she told him as they headed down the steps of her porch back towards the impala. “Tomorrow it will be fainter and the day after that it will even fainter. Soon it will seem as though you are sitting in a room lit only by moonlight, but, if you work at seeing, you will be able to see as well as you can now. I promise you that.”
Dean believed her and called back, “I’ll work on it, lady, don’t worry!” Sam felt he should say something as well, but he wasn’t sure what. The right words weren’t coming to him, so all he did was wave. Later they would, but it would be late at night after he and Dean’d had sex for the first time and were wrapped up in each other and he wouldn’t care as much then. He would vow to go back to the woman and say exactly what he was thinking, but, of course, he never would. They would leave the town and the woman behind and find someplace else where Dean would be able to practice strengthening his sight, until it was as strong as it was the day he regained it.
For the first time in their lives, something had gone right. There hadn’t even been a catch. And, as they clambered into the impala, heading back to their temporary home, they finally, finally, dared to do what they’d given up doing years ago.
Hope.
On to Afterward