Stolen Soul, Part 2
Continued from Part 1...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Echo, Romeo, will you go see Topher, please?”
Romeo looked up from his blocks with some surprise, his expression of concentration broken. Shaking his head, he began to put the blocks away as Echo began to seal her paints. The handler walked a little ways away to talk to someone, and Echo leaned down to help Romeo tidy up his space.
“We’re going out together,” she whispered.
Romeo nodded slowly, eyebrows knitting together. “Maybe I’ll see him again.”
Echo nodded encouragingly and patted Romeo’s pocket. He had a small picture in there, painted by Sierra, of something he thought he remembered from his times out. Echo had pushed him to remember something every time he came down from Topher’s room, asking him over yoga sessions or block building. Most times he couldn’t, but some times he said he remembered someone.
“A man. Tall. Protects me, like Juliet,” was all he could ever say.
Echo smiled. Juliet was like Paul: she protected people, and if the tall man Romeo remembered could do that, then he was a good man. Not like the one Sierra had remembered, the one who was gone now. Sierra had been happy to paint the protective man for Romeo. It didn’t look a whole lot like a person, just a smear of color with the suggestion of eyes and a smile, but Romeo had said it was just right. After he had the picture, he could remember more easily. He made tally marks now, showing each time he’d seen him. It was a lot of times recently. That was good. If they were going out, maybe he’d see the man again. Maybe he would talk to the man, or the man would talk to him, and they would both remember. Then they’d both be their best.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“They’re in,” Paul said, shutting the door to the van behind him and sitting down next to Romeo’s handler at the monitors. Her name was actually Jamie, but no one had been surprised at her getting tagged with the nickname Juliet the second she’d gotten assigned to Romeo.
“Settle in, this is going to be a long one. The client planned an all-nighter,” she said, handing him a coffee.
Paul looked at the monitors closely, even though Echo was highly unlikely to have any kind of risk in this scenario. She might well get bored, “tied up” and waiting to get rescued, but stood no real chance of getting hurt. And, hopefully, no real chance of remembering something she wasn’t supposed to and going off-grid either. Paul only hoped she hadn’t managed to meddle with Romeo too much; he’d noticed him spending time with Echo, Victor, and Sierra. The weapons the client was using were blunted, but still could present a danger if Romeo started glitching. Paul made sure his own weapons were secure before sitting down, and hoped Topher had double-checked his work this time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“It’s close,” Castiel said, pointing into the junkyard. Sam stared at the huge maze of crushed cars and piles of twisted metal with amazement. The place was huge. He had no idea how they were going to be able to get to the place in time even though they’d arrived hours early. Though their work might be done for them if the place of emergence was covered by cars.
Taking a deep breath to help him focus, Sam began to examine the place more closely when his eye caught a vehicle parked further down the fence. It was the van. That damned black van that Sam had been seeing around town sometimes when he thought he’d spotted Dean. It was right there, not even a dozen yards away, parked along the fence. Sam tuned out Castiel, the job, everything, and ran straight for the van. He caught himself at the last second, skidded to a halt, and pulled the slim jim from an inner pocket to trip the locked door. Drawing his gun, he took a deep breath and threw the door open.
Inside, in front of bank of monitors, the pale-eyed brunette and a tough-looking man in a suit had their own weapons drawn and pointed at him.
“Where’s Dean?” Sam demanded, not wavering his grip one inch.
The man exchanged a lightning-quick glance with the woman, both of them looking at first confused, and then amused. They didn’t slacken their grip on their weapons, but lost the hair-trigger edge of vigilance.
“Uh, the game is actually inside the junkyard, pal,” the woman said carefully. “And you should know better than to bring a real weapon to a LARP. Dwayne always enforces the rules and he won’t like it.”
Sam felt incredibly confused. “I don’t know about any damned game, or LARP, or Dwayne,” he spat. “I do know that damn near every time I’ve seen you, you’ve been hanging around my brother. I don’t know what you did to him, or how the hell you’ve been making him do what I’ve seen him do, but I want you to let him go. Now!”
“I think you have the wrong idea. ‘Dean’ is an actor, he was hired for this LARP. We’re his bodyguards. We’re supposed to be monitoring this for him. If you’re a fan of his, you’ll just have to wait until after he’s done,” the woman said smoothly. Behind her, the man had firmed his grip on his weapon.
Sam was starting to see red, and recklessly dove his hand into his jacket to pull out a picture of him and Dean. It was a few years old, one Bobby had taken after they’d finished rebuilding the Impala, but it clearly showed both of their faces. It was the one he’d been going to use to find Dean if he’d gotten the chance.
“This is him. This is my brother, Dean Winchester.” Sam thrust the picture towards the woman and she stared at it, eyes going wide. Sam recognized that look, that was the “oh, shit” expression.
“Paul, call Topher,” she said tightly.
“Juliet-.”
“Do it!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Aw yeah, this is my baby right here,” Dean said fondly, patting his boss’s black Impala appreciatively. “Dwayne, you got all the details right man, this looks awesome.”
“Thanks man! Uh, what do you think about the rest of the set-up?”
“It’s right on, my man. So, ghost hunt, yeah?”
“Right!” Dwayne said, slicking his hair back nervously. “Gather ‘round everyone!” he shouted to the rest of the LARPers.
“The Apocalypse is upon us!” Dwayne shouted dramatically. “The unquiet dead are about to rise unless we can find a way to stop them! The demons are determined to see the dead rise, and they’ve captured a sacrifice to open the gateway!”
Which wasn’t exactly how it went in the books, but it gave Dwayne the opportunity to save a hot chick, which was sort of the point of the whole game. Dwayne might be an overweight nerd, but he was a huge Supernatural fan. So much so he’d been able to use his contacts at a publishing company to get advance copies of the new Supernatural books Charles Edlund was going to put out. It was going to make for a killer game.
Dean listened as Dwayne outlined the new Supernatural storyline, everything from the end of the last books. The other players hung onto every word, but Dean found himself getting inexplicably angry as Dwayne detailed what had happened to and between the Winchester brothers after Dean had come back from hell. It felt like a violation, like someone was telling his life story to strangers, and he couldn’t understand why. He was just a character actor, a good one that happened to share the same first name as one of his favorite characters. Having other people hear about that character shouldn’t feel like someone was putting his soul on public display.
Dean shook his head to try to dispel the feeling and double-checked the popguns and prop knife he had stuck in his belt. All he had to do here was guide Dwayne through the maze to where the “ghosts” were going to be, taking care of any ambushes on the way, help him fight off some “demons,” and then Dwayne would rescue the “sacrificial victim.” Dean would get paid a crapload of cash and Dwayne would get laid. It wasn’t a bad wage for six hours’ work.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Topher swatted at the ringing phone, barely breaking pace as he tried to annihilate a few more pixels on his computer screen.
“Resident genius,” he answered.
“Topher, it’s Paul. We have a situation with Romeo.”
“Who the hell is Romeo?”
A second voice could be heard in the background, a seriously pissed-off voice, and not one Topher recognized. His stomach froze, and he quit the game without a second thought, quickly pulling up Romeo’s bio monitor screen. He was terrified he’d find him glitching like Echo, and felt almost faint with relief when everything came back nominal.
“He looks fine from here,” Topher said tentatively, wondering if he should call Adele. Or Boyd. Or maybe Boyd had already heard and was on his way down. Topher considered if he had enough time to run if that were the case. Probably not.
“Who did you use for the imprint?” Juliet asked urgently.
“Uh… what do you mean?” Topher tried to stall as he pulled up the files, the frozen feeling in his stomach rapidly becoming something like pain. Had he messed up again? Was this going to be like Priya all over again?
“Topher!” Juliet barked. It snapped him out of his daze and right into talking without stopping to think what he was saying.
“Ok, ok, I used his original! I mean, I modified it so he’d know all this ghost stuff wasn’t real and he wouldn’t be violent because he was like some crazy superfan of this ‘Supernatural’ series before he came in and this was why he was here so he could pay for what he’d done and then we’d fix all the delusions and crap before he left and I thought this would be a good trial run and I had like four hours’ lead time on this imprint so sue me for trying a shortcut!” Topher gasped for air when he’d finally gotten all that out and waited for the other shoe to drop.
“You have stolen his soul,” a different voice declared in the background, a deep and raspy voice with no compromise in it.
“No!” Topher shouted. “No! I didn’t, he was sick, I was helping, I didn’t-.” He stopped himself and quickly grabbed a stress ball to squeeze until he was sure he wasn’t going to throw up.
“Sam, midnight is approaching. We must find Dean and quickly if we are to stop the rising of the dead,” the raspy voice continued. “Christopher, you must return all of Dean’s soul to him, or he will be consumed by the murderous ghosts before he can be saved.”
Topher hadn’t heard his full first name used since he was five, and it shocked him out of his nausea.
“Look, I don’t know who you two think you are, or what the hell you’re babbling about ghosts and souls, but if you don’t back off right now you’re both going to regret it!” Juliet said sternly.
Topher could hear something in the background, a creaking like someone was stepping in or out of the van.
“If you must prove your faith, do it now. Fire, and believe.”
“Cas, don’t-.”
“There is no time, Sam, not if we are to save your brother.”
“Last chance, whack-job,” Juliet said, and Topher could hear the safety come off.
“I will not move,” the raspy voice said solemnly.
Bang! Bang!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sam almost had a heart attack when Castiel had pushed past him to put himself in the line of fire, but shuddered in relief in the next second when Juliet’s bullets went right through the angel with no visible effect. Both her and Paul’s jaws dropped, and Juliet actually checked her gun for the spent bullets, and Castiel himself for a vest. Sam watched her suddenly begin to believe when she found the spent rounds and no protection between Cas and what should have been two fatal shots.
“My brother,” Sam repeated. Juliet looked up at him, her face white with shock. “Look lady, I don’t care if you believe in ghosts or not, but you know where Dean is, and how to fix him, and I need him back.”
“Wait, brother? Romeo’s family is supposed to be dead!” Topher yelled through the phone.
“Obviously someone lied to you!” Sam snapped.
“Dr. Tregan wouldn’t-.”
“Dr. Tregan?” Sam interrupted. The name sounded familiar. It hadn’t been all ghosts, over the past several months he and Castiel had been taking out zombies, monsters, and demons galore… “About three months ago, we met someone with that name. Tall guy in his sixties, blonde, with glasses…”
“Yeah, that’s him!”
“He’s dead. He was possessed, the demon killed him when it left-.” Sam stopped talking, taking the clues into consideration. Tregan had captured Dean, or at least been part of it, had delivered him to these people, the demon inside the doctor knowing it would be an effective way to get Dean out of the way without killing him.
“Demon?” Paul asked, sounding somewhere in between incredulous and resigned.
“If you don’t believe in demons, then pretend the man was on crack, I don’t care. He wasn’t in control of himself and it killed him,” Sam said, not willing to waste more time. “It had to be a trick so you’d take Dean. I don’t have any more time to argue with you people. Now where is he?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Somewhere outside the junkyard a car backfired twice, but Dean ignored it. His prop EMF was going crazy, thanks so some clever little transmitters Dwayne had scattered around the place, and it meant they were going to get ambushed pretty soon. They had to be close; this was the third group of bad guys they’d run into. The whole atmosphere was charged with malice, and it felt positively frigid. Maybe he was just psyching himself out for the role, but Dean had rarely felt this… connected to a part before. It really felt like he was on his way to a den of evil spirits.
Roars from either side heralded an attack, and Dean swung his popgun into play, firing off round after round of fake rock salt bullets into the white-clad “ghosts,” shouting at Dwayne to cover his side. Predictably, even though Dwayne tended to shoot wide, the ghosts crumpled anyway. Dean shook his head as he leveled his gun at the last ghost and blew it away-.
-blew it away, dissolving into smoke and ether as the salt imbedded in the wall in the other side. “You ok, Sammy?” he called.
Dean stumbled from a burst of memory so strong it had blocked out everything for a moment. Memory… couldn’t be. He didn’t know anyone called Sammy in real life. It was like a vivid representation of something from the book series but… couldn’t be.
“Dean, you ok?” Dwayne called anxiously.
“Yeah, yeah, just… a bit tired. Let’s go man, forty-five minutes to midnight.”
Reloading his gun, Dean began loping towards the center of the junkyard.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Topher?” Paul asked.
“Dr. Tregan is dead,” Topher said numbly, looking at the obituary on screen. Seeing some kind of confirmation of what Sam had said had pretty much put him out on a ledge. Topher felt like he was perched on the edge of something huge, and he could either let himself fall, or just cling to the ground, or let go and fly.
“Is it true about Romeo?” Juliet demanded.
“I just checked the original, yeah, he has a brother named Sam.”
A beat of silence between the three Dollhouse employees, and Topher knew that Sam and Cas were waiting for them to do the right thing. If they didn’t… apparently there was a bulletproof man and a desperate family member with a gun in the van with Paul and Juliet, and if the two handlers died, Echo and Romeo would be on their own.
Priya had had no safe place to go, which was why she’d come back to the Dollhouse. Dean had family that would do anything to get him back.
Topher decisively spun up some other files, the ones he’d been working on for Adele.
“I gave Romeo his original imprint, but put blocks and mods on some of his memories. I didn’t actually change anything underneath, just put more stuff on top to make sure he was to specs,” he told the others.
“Topher, English,” Paul warned.
“I’m going to do a partial remote wipe to get rid of everything I did and leave him with his original imprint.”
“You can do that?” Juliet asked, astonished.
“I will do that,” Topher said harshly. The silence from Juliet and Paul showed their complicit agreement. Either that or they’d been shocked into speechlessness.
“Thank you, Christopher, for returning Dean’s soul to him.” That was the deep-voiced man, the one that sounded like he was pronouncing things from on high. Topher shuddered at his words. He’d been called a lot of things, amoral, a genius, reckless, a technical wizard, foolish, brilliant, but never a soul-stealer, or at least not to the point where he believed it. He never wanted to hear that again.
“Give me an hour.”
“You have forty-five minutes before the shit hits the fan, Topher. Do it,” Sam said.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Whoa.”
Dean rounded the last pile of crushed cars to see a huge circle inscribed in the ground, a pretty young woman tied up in the middle of it being menaced by two “demons” with their black sclera contacts and sneering expressions. Dwayne stepped up next to him, wheezing a bit from all the running, but still grinning widely at the pure awesomeness of it all. Dean couldn’t blame him: this was the best game he’d ever played. The costumes were insane, the gear was top-notch, and Dwayne was a pretty good player, even if he couldn’t shoot for shit.
“Help me!” the girl shouted. “Please!”
The demons took a few steps forward-.
forward, black eyes blazing with menace. Sam stretched out his hands and clenched his fist, black smoke pouring from their mouths and burning into the floor. Dean barely had time to see it as he swung Ruby’s knife to slit the throat of another demon who’d been about to kill him…
“-never free her! Her blood will set the dead free to paint this town red with blood! BWAHAHAHAHA!”
“I don’t think so, you demon slime!” Dwayne shouted, and tossed salt at the advancing demons.
They shouted and cringed convincingly, writhing in apparent pain.
“Uh, Dean?” Dwayne asked, jerking his head at the actors.
Dean snapped back to the present. Right. He pulled out the rune-covered wooden dagger, the safe version of Ruby’s knife, and plunged into the fray. Ducking and weaving between the demons, he stabbed one in his padded armor and slashed at the other as Dwayne slipped past and hauled the girl to safety. The first demon “died” dramatically and the other screamed blood-curdling oaths of vengeance, long enough to give Dwayne enough time to get clear before Dean “killed” the other demon too.
The blood dripped to the floor from Alastair’s mouth and Dean’s hands as the demon grinned at him, knowing he was losing a piece of himself with every cut he made to try to extract information.
The girl called Dwayne her hero and gave him a hearty kiss as Dean tried to recover from another unexpected burst of vivid memory.
I’ve been working too hard, damn, need to lay off the energy drinks… Dean told himself, shaking his head.
Fear suddenly pooled in the pit of his stomach, and Dean felt an atavistic need to get off the circle inscribed in the ground.
“Guys, let’s go home. We can stop by Mickey’s on the way out of here, beer’s on me!” Dean said cheerfully, letting a smile cover up his unease.
“Aw, come on Dean, don’t break character yet!” Dwayne whined as the “dead demons” stirred.
“It’s late, man, let’s get out of here. This place is seriously giving me the creeps.”
The fear was starting to grow, and the demon actors seemed to pick up on it, getting as antsy as he was.
“Yeah, Mr. Williams, please, it’s really cold out here. Can we go home?” one of them asked, popping out the sclera contacts.
Dwayne looked stubborn, but the girl- what was her name? Angie, that was it- Angie put her hand around his waist and whispered in his ear.
“Ok, ok, I’m outvoted, let’s get going!” he said with a laugh.
Dean relaxed a hair, feeling like he’d just dodged some unknown bullet, when the fear returned, redoubled. Cold hammered up from the ground, frost spreading like a stain, their breath all hanging in the air. Cold blue light began to spread with the frost, and Dean retreated from it instinctively.
“Guys, let’s get the hell out of here!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Use the phone, just get it to Romeo’s- Dean’s ear and let him listen,” Juliet said, still looking pale and shaken. “It’s almost time for the endgame, they should be at the center of the junkyard.”
“Juliet, get back in here, Echo and Romeo’s stress levels just spiked!” Paul called.
Sam and Castiel looked to the junkyard. Sam didn’t need the angel’s extraordinary senses to know the ghosts were coming, and soon. He closed his eyes as Castiel grabbed his shoulder, and felt his feet leave the ground.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Dean!”
Dean whirled around to see a dark haired man in a trench coat and a much taller one in a pale jacket right behind him.
“Who the hell?!” he yelled.
“Dean, it’s me, it’s Sam!”
-his brother, the man he’d trusted above all others, had picked a demon over him-
“I’m sorry Dean, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I’ll make it up to you, I swear-.”
“-We keep each other human, Sammy.”
“I don’t know anyone named Sam. Look dude, we have to get away from here. I don’t know what’s happening, but I don’t want to stay to find out!” Dean said. He wasn’t willing to include these strangers in whatever little personal meltdown he was experiencing.
The two demon actors were already gone, and Dwayne had run away screaming, but Angie had suddenly appeared at his side. She looked at him strangely, not in the cutely suggestive way he’d seen earlier before they’d all gotten ready, but in a way that was both childlike and protective. She handed him a folded piece of paper, and he felt a jolt of memory, of strange calmness and firm determination.
“Dean, you must take this,” the dark-haired man said solemnly, holding out a phone. Dean’s mind seemed to slow as he looked between the paper, the phone, and the rising sense of menace at his back.
“Dean, please!” Sam said, stepping forward to grab Dean’s shoulders and look him in the face, silently pleading for understanding-.
-silently pleading for him to give in, to surrender. Dean threw his head back even as he gripped Sam harder with his hands, drawing him deeper, further into his body, wanting everything Sam could give him. He needed to be closer, connect with him, try to bridge the gap they’d made from separating themselves at a time when they needed each other more than ever.
“Yeah Sammy, give it to me, please!” Dean let himself break as Sam silenced him with his mouth, hips slamming hard as the flood of heat burst inside him…
“Sam…?” Dean said tentatively.
“Dean, it’s me!” Sam sounded frantic, and the feeling of menace at Dean’s back intensified.
“Look at the picture,” Angie said, her voice high and childlike. As if in a trance, Dean unfolded the picture, seeing a smear of colors and the suggestion of eyes and a smile-.
Sam’s eyes. Sam’s smile. Brother. Friend.
Dean lifted the phone to his ear.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Topher had never prayed for a miracle in his life. But the old saying was apparently true: there were no atheists in foxholes, or for those in the midst of life-or-death technological struggles. Fingers burning from the rapid-fire programming, he jabbed the send button so hard he nearly broke it, and felt a palpable relief as the tones were transmitted to Juliet’s phone.
I’m not a damned soul-stealer.
Not ever.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dean started as he jerked the phone away from his head, whirling to see the freezing mists of impending undead doom starting to coalesce behind him. What the hell were they doing just standing here looking like someone had just died?
“Sam, move your ass, we need to seal this thing!” he snapped. “Hallmark moments later!”
Sam let out something that sounded suspiciously like a sob as he moved to the far side of the circle. Dean checked his watch, almost midnight. Damn, this was going to have to be a rush job.
He spat out the words of the sealing ritual as fast as he could without slurring them, trusting Sammy to get his own responses right. They’d done shit like this too many times to screw up now; he refused to even contemplate failure. He ignored everything but Sam and the ghost-circle, knowing Cas could take care of the girl.
Each phrase, spoken in tandem, activated the runes on the circle, making them glow with golden light. Palpable heat poured from them, driving back the chill of the grave. Arcs of light began to weave between the paired runes from Sam’s side to Dean’s, making a cage of power and heat that began to contract over the rising cold and fear in the center of the circle. The words got harder to speak as the light descended over the rising ghosts, the dead fighting the power of the living. It felt like something was trying to push him away, to make him stop, to give up and give in to the inevitable. Just take a step sideways and burn up in the power, or take a step forwards and let the dead take him…
Dean looked across the circle at Sam, trembling with exertion, and forced the words out even though the air itself seemed to be fighting him. He’d been taken and used, separated from Sam, forced away from saving the world, and now he was back. Even the dead had to realize that no one, no one forced the Winchester brothers to do anything.
Sam’s voice joined his, ripping across the too-solid air, and the light slammed into the chill, white ground with a roar of fire covering up the furious screams of thwarted ghosts. Heat exploded outward from the circle, knocking Dean back over a half dozen yards of ground and into a crushed car.
When the pain stopped, and his vision finally came back, Dean blinked to see the circle had been melted into an enormous puddle of flawed black glass from the heat of the spell. He could only stare at it for a long moment, until Sam came into his line of vision, looking down at him as if he were afraid Dean was going to vanish in the next second.
“Cutting it a little close, Sammy?” Dean asked into the deafening silence, watching Sam’s reaction.
He supposed he would have deserved a punch in the face for a remark like that. Instead Sam just caught him up in a bone-crunching hug and refused to let him go. Dean just let his joints get relocated as he gave Sam back everything he had and more.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Where are Romeo and Juliet?” Boyd asked
Paul didn’t even pause as he directed Echo into Topher’s lab.
“Romeo split and she went after him. You really shouldn’t rush Topher’s work,” he said blandly.
Boyd watched for a moment as Topher started Echo’s wipe, knowing Topher was very carefully ignoring him.
“What happens when we rush Topher’s work?”
“We end up taking shortcuts when we don’t have enough time to check the background properly. Then people can get hurt,” Paul said, crossing his arms.
Echo blinked sleepily as she rose from her chair, going through her call-and-response set with Topher before she stepped from the room. She paused at the doorway and turned back.
“Romeo is happy,” she said, and walked away.
Boyd took a single deep breath and turned back to Topher. He was fiddling with his knobs and buttons nervously, shoulders hunched as if for a blow.
“Topher,” Boyd said, and Topher looked up nervously, seemingly trying to hide behind his bangs. “I apologize for rushing your work. Adele and I will do everything we can to make certain an accidental loss like that doesn’t happen again.”
Boyd turned and left, Paul a moment after him after giving Topher a small nod of encouragement.
Topher didn’t care who saw as he slumped down on the floor, holding a folded piece of paper in his hands, something Echo had given him. Opening it, he saw a smear of color and the suggestion of eyes and a smile. It was signed “Dean.”
Swallowing hard, Topher walked over and stuck it to his refrigerator.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“What do you remember?” Sam asked.
Castiel was politely spending the evening away, carefully explaining the enormity of the whole Apocalypse situation to a very receptive Juliet, who’d suddenly found herself in need of a new line of work. She’d probably make a great hunter once she got over the shock-and-awe stage of things. That had left Sam and Dean alone in their motel, and by mutual agreement, in the same bed.
Dean shifted. His body curled around Sam’s, ignoring the twinge of pain from the new anti-possession tattoo on his chest, freshly inked this morning. “Bits and pieces mostly. I mean, I remember me. I remember most of the junkyard. Juliet. Castiel. You.” Another beat of silence. “The girl. Her name’s not Angie, but I don’t know what it really is. She was helping me, trying to get me to remember.” Another pause. “That’s about it really. I’m missing a hell of a lot of time between when Tregan’s goons grabbed me and last night.”
“I thought I was going insane. I kept seeing you everywhere… The things those people were having you do…” Sam whispered, seeing Dean in a hundred different guises in his mind’s eye.
“Do I even want to know?”
“People’s dates, a lot of the time, I think.”
“Doesn’t sound too bad-.”
“Sex slave bitch.”
“Did I have a collar?”
“Dean!”
“What? A guy’s allowed to think about it!”
Sam filed that idea away for future use.
“Babysitter, dogwalker-.”
“Boring!”
“Latin professor.”
“Bullshit,” Dean said, snorting with laughter.
“Shit you not, with a tweed suit and an English accent, declining Latin verbs.”
“Damn,” Dean sounded thoughtful. “Bet that got you all hot and bothered, brainiac.
“How can you laugh about it?” Sam demanded. “Dean, you were gone. Castiel said they’d stolen your soul!”
Dean wrenched Sam’s head around for a hard kiss, prolonging it with intimate skill of a lifetime’s worth of illicit affection. “I’m gonna laugh,” Dean said, punctuating every other word with another kiss, “Because you look like you haven’t laughed in four months, Sammy. I’m gonna make you laugh.”
He kissed lower, lavishing attention on Sam’s throat.
“I’m going to make you scream.”
Lower, circling Sam’s nipples with his tongue and making Sam gasp.
“I’m going to make you forget your own name, and then we’ll be even, got it?”
Sam got it. He got it over and over as Dean claimed him, talked to him, spoke to him about every intimate secret no stranger could ever know. As they loved each other, body and soul.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Echo, Romeo, will you go see Topher, please?”
Romeo looked up from his blocks with some surprise, his expression of concentration broken. Shaking his head, he began to put the blocks away as Echo began to seal her paints. The handler walked a little ways away to talk to someone, and Echo leaned down to help Romeo tidy up his space.
“We’re going out together,” she whispered.
Romeo nodded slowly, eyebrows knitting together. “Maybe I’ll see him again.”
Echo nodded encouragingly and patted Romeo’s pocket. He had a small picture in there, painted by Sierra, of something he thought he remembered from his times out. Echo had pushed him to remember something every time he came down from Topher’s room, asking him over yoga sessions or block building. Most times he couldn’t, but some times he said he remembered someone.
“A man. Tall. Protects me, like Juliet,” was all he could ever say.
Echo smiled. Juliet was like Paul: she protected people, and if the tall man Romeo remembered could do that, then he was a good man. Not like the one Sierra had remembered, the one who was gone now. Sierra had been happy to paint the protective man for Romeo. It didn’t look a whole lot like a person, just a smear of color with the suggestion of eyes and a smile, but Romeo had said it was just right. After he had the picture, he could remember more easily. He made tally marks now, showing each time he’d seen him. It was a lot of times recently. That was good. If they were going out, maybe he’d see the man again. Maybe he would talk to the man, or the man would talk to him, and they would both remember. Then they’d both be their best.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“They’re in,” Paul said, shutting the door to the van behind him and sitting down next to Romeo’s handler at the monitors. Her name was actually Jamie, but no one had been surprised at her getting tagged with the nickname Juliet the second she’d gotten assigned to Romeo.
“Settle in, this is going to be a long one. The client planned an all-nighter,” she said, handing him a coffee.
Paul looked at the monitors closely, even though Echo was highly unlikely to have any kind of risk in this scenario. She might well get bored, “tied up” and waiting to get rescued, but stood no real chance of getting hurt. And, hopefully, no real chance of remembering something she wasn’t supposed to and going off-grid either. Paul only hoped she hadn’t managed to meddle with Romeo too much; he’d noticed him spending time with Echo, Victor, and Sierra. The weapons the client was using were blunted, but still could present a danger if Romeo started glitching. Paul made sure his own weapons were secure before sitting down, and hoped Topher had double-checked his work this time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“It’s close,” Castiel said, pointing into the junkyard. Sam stared at the huge maze of crushed cars and piles of twisted metal with amazement. The place was huge. He had no idea how they were going to be able to get to the place in time even though they’d arrived hours early. Though their work might be done for them if the place of emergence was covered by cars.
Taking a deep breath to help him focus, Sam began to examine the place more closely when his eye caught a vehicle parked further down the fence. It was the van. That damned black van that Sam had been seeing around town sometimes when he thought he’d spotted Dean. It was right there, not even a dozen yards away, parked along the fence. Sam tuned out Castiel, the job, everything, and ran straight for the van. He caught himself at the last second, skidded to a halt, and pulled the slim jim from an inner pocket to trip the locked door. Drawing his gun, he took a deep breath and threw the door open.
Inside, in front of bank of monitors, the pale-eyed brunette and a tough-looking man in a suit had their own weapons drawn and pointed at him.
“Where’s Dean?” Sam demanded, not wavering his grip one inch.
The man exchanged a lightning-quick glance with the woman, both of them looking at first confused, and then amused. They didn’t slacken their grip on their weapons, but lost the hair-trigger edge of vigilance.
“Uh, the game is actually inside the junkyard, pal,” the woman said carefully. “And you should know better than to bring a real weapon to a LARP. Dwayne always enforces the rules and he won’t like it.”
Sam felt incredibly confused. “I don’t know about any damned game, or LARP, or Dwayne,” he spat. “I do know that damn near every time I’ve seen you, you’ve been hanging around my brother. I don’t know what you did to him, or how the hell you’ve been making him do what I’ve seen him do, but I want you to let him go. Now!”
“I think you have the wrong idea. ‘Dean’ is an actor, he was hired for this LARP. We’re his bodyguards. We’re supposed to be monitoring this for him. If you’re a fan of his, you’ll just have to wait until after he’s done,” the woman said smoothly. Behind her, the man had firmed his grip on his weapon.
Sam was starting to see red, and recklessly dove his hand into his jacket to pull out a picture of him and Dean. It was a few years old, one Bobby had taken after they’d finished rebuilding the Impala, but it clearly showed both of their faces. It was the one he’d been going to use to find Dean if he’d gotten the chance.
“This is him. This is my brother, Dean Winchester.” Sam thrust the picture towards the woman and she stared at it, eyes going wide. Sam recognized that look, that was the “oh, shit” expression.
“Paul, call Topher,” she said tightly.
“Juliet-.”
“Do it!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Aw yeah, this is my baby right here,” Dean said fondly, patting his boss’s black Impala appreciatively. “Dwayne, you got all the details right man, this looks awesome.”
“Thanks man! Uh, what do you think about the rest of the set-up?”
“It’s right on, my man. So, ghost hunt, yeah?”
“Right!” Dwayne said, slicking his hair back nervously. “Gather ‘round everyone!” he shouted to the rest of the LARPers.
“The Apocalypse is upon us!” Dwayne shouted dramatically. “The unquiet dead are about to rise unless we can find a way to stop them! The demons are determined to see the dead rise, and they’ve captured a sacrifice to open the gateway!”
Which wasn’t exactly how it went in the books, but it gave Dwayne the opportunity to save a hot chick, which was sort of the point of the whole game. Dwayne might be an overweight nerd, but he was a huge Supernatural fan. So much so he’d been able to use his contacts at a publishing company to get advance copies of the new Supernatural books Charles Edlund was going to put out. It was going to make for a killer game.
Dean listened as Dwayne outlined the new Supernatural storyline, everything from the end of the last books. The other players hung onto every word, but Dean found himself getting inexplicably angry as Dwayne detailed what had happened to and between the Winchester brothers after Dean had come back from hell. It felt like a violation, like someone was telling his life story to strangers, and he couldn’t understand why. He was just a character actor, a good one that happened to share the same first name as one of his favorite characters. Having other people hear about that character shouldn’t feel like someone was putting his soul on public display.
Dean shook his head to try to dispel the feeling and double-checked the popguns and prop knife he had stuck in his belt. All he had to do here was guide Dwayne through the maze to where the “ghosts” were going to be, taking care of any ambushes on the way, help him fight off some “demons,” and then Dwayne would rescue the “sacrificial victim.” Dean would get paid a crapload of cash and Dwayne would get laid. It wasn’t a bad wage for six hours’ work.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Topher swatted at the ringing phone, barely breaking pace as he tried to annihilate a few more pixels on his computer screen.
“Resident genius,” he answered.
“Topher, it’s Paul. We have a situation with Romeo.”
“Who the hell is Romeo?”
A second voice could be heard in the background, a seriously pissed-off voice, and not one Topher recognized. His stomach froze, and he quit the game without a second thought, quickly pulling up Romeo’s bio monitor screen. He was terrified he’d find him glitching like Echo, and felt almost faint with relief when everything came back nominal.
“He looks fine from here,” Topher said tentatively, wondering if he should call Adele. Or Boyd. Or maybe Boyd had already heard and was on his way down. Topher considered if he had enough time to run if that were the case. Probably not.
“Who did you use for the imprint?” Juliet asked urgently.
“Uh… what do you mean?” Topher tried to stall as he pulled up the files, the frozen feeling in his stomach rapidly becoming something like pain. Had he messed up again? Was this going to be like Priya all over again?
“Topher!” Juliet barked. It snapped him out of his daze and right into talking without stopping to think what he was saying.
“Ok, ok, I used his original! I mean, I modified it so he’d know all this ghost stuff wasn’t real and he wouldn’t be violent because he was like some crazy superfan of this ‘Supernatural’ series before he came in and this was why he was here so he could pay for what he’d done and then we’d fix all the delusions and crap before he left and I thought this would be a good trial run and I had like four hours’ lead time on this imprint so sue me for trying a shortcut!” Topher gasped for air when he’d finally gotten all that out and waited for the other shoe to drop.
“You have stolen his soul,” a different voice declared in the background, a deep and raspy voice with no compromise in it.
“No!” Topher shouted. “No! I didn’t, he was sick, I was helping, I didn’t-.” He stopped himself and quickly grabbed a stress ball to squeeze until he was sure he wasn’t going to throw up.
“Sam, midnight is approaching. We must find Dean and quickly if we are to stop the rising of the dead,” the raspy voice continued. “Christopher, you must return all of Dean’s soul to him, or he will be consumed by the murderous ghosts before he can be saved.”
Topher hadn’t heard his full first name used since he was five, and it shocked him out of his nausea.
“Look, I don’t know who you two think you are, or what the hell you’re babbling about ghosts and souls, but if you don’t back off right now you’re both going to regret it!” Juliet said sternly.
Topher could hear something in the background, a creaking like someone was stepping in or out of the van.
“If you must prove your faith, do it now. Fire, and believe.”
“Cas, don’t-.”
“There is no time, Sam, not if we are to save your brother.”
“Last chance, whack-job,” Juliet said, and Topher could hear the safety come off.
“I will not move,” the raspy voice said solemnly.
Bang! Bang!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sam almost had a heart attack when Castiel had pushed past him to put himself in the line of fire, but shuddered in relief in the next second when Juliet’s bullets went right through the angel with no visible effect. Both her and Paul’s jaws dropped, and Juliet actually checked her gun for the spent bullets, and Castiel himself for a vest. Sam watched her suddenly begin to believe when she found the spent rounds and no protection between Cas and what should have been two fatal shots.
“My brother,” Sam repeated. Juliet looked up at him, her face white with shock. “Look lady, I don’t care if you believe in ghosts or not, but you know where Dean is, and how to fix him, and I need him back.”
“Wait, brother? Romeo’s family is supposed to be dead!” Topher yelled through the phone.
“Obviously someone lied to you!” Sam snapped.
“Dr. Tregan wouldn’t-.”
“Dr. Tregan?” Sam interrupted. The name sounded familiar. It hadn’t been all ghosts, over the past several months he and Castiel had been taking out zombies, monsters, and demons galore… “About three months ago, we met someone with that name. Tall guy in his sixties, blonde, with glasses…”
“Yeah, that’s him!”
“He’s dead. He was possessed, the demon killed him when it left-.” Sam stopped talking, taking the clues into consideration. Tregan had captured Dean, or at least been part of it, had delivered him to these people, the demon inside the doctor knowing it would be an effective way to get Dean out of the way without killing him.
“Demon?” Paul asked, sounding somewhere in between incredulous and resigned.
“If you don’t believe in demons, then pretend the man was on crack, I don’t care. He wasn’t in control of himself and it killed him,” Sam said, not willing to waste more time. “It had to be a trick so you’d take Dean. I don’t have any more time to argue with you people. Now where is he?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Somewhere outside the junkyard a car backfired twice, but Dean ignored it. His prop EMF was going crazy, thanks so some clever little transmitters Dwayne had scattered around the place, and it meant they were going to get ambushed pretty soon. They had to be close; this was the third group of bad guys they’d run into. The whole atmosphere was charged with malice, and it felt positively frigid. Maybe he was just psyching himself out for the role, but Dean had rarely felt this… connected to a part before. It really felt like he was on his way to a den of evil spirits.
Roars from either side heralded an attack, and Dean swung his popgun into play, firing off round after round of fake rock salt bullets into the white-clad “ghosts,” shouting at Dwayne to cover his side. Predictably, even though Dwayne tended to shoot wide, the ghosts crumpled anyway. Dean shook his head as he leveled his gun at the last ghost and blew it away-.
-blew it away, dissolving into smoke and ether as the salt imbedded in the wall in the other side. “You ok, Sammy?” he called.
Dean stumbled from a burst of memory so strong it had blocked out everything for a moment. Memory… couldn’t be. He didn’t know anyone called Sammy in real life. It was like a vivid representation of something from the book series but… couldn’t be.
“Dean, you ok?” Dwayne called anxiously.
“Yeah, yeah, just… a bit tired. Let’s go man, forty-five minutes to midnight.”
Reloading his gun, Dean began loping towards the center of the junkyard.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Topher?” Paul asked.
“Dr. Tregan is dead,” Topher said numbly, looking at the obituary on screen. Seeing some kind of confirmation of what Sam had said had pretty much put him out on a ledge. Topher felt like he was perched on the edge of something huge, and he could either let himself fall, or just cling to the ground, or let go and fly.
“Is it true about Romeo?” Juliet demanded.
“I just checked the original, yeah, he has a brother named Sam.”
A beat of silence between the three Dollhouse employees, and Topher knew that Sam and Cas were waiting for them to do the right thing. If they didn’t… apparently there was a bulletproof man and a desperate family member with a gun in the van with Paul and Juliet, and if the two handlers died, Echo and Romeo would be on their own.
Priya had had no safe place to go, which was why she’d come back to the Dollhouse. Dean had family that would do anything to get him back.
Topher decisively spun up some other files, the ones he’d been working on for Adele.
“I gave Romeo his original imprint, but put blocks and mods on some of his memories. I didn’t actually change anything underneath, just put more stuff on top to make sure he was to specs,” he told the others.
“Topher, English,” Paul warned.
“I’m going to do a partial remote wipe to get rid of everything I did and leave him with his original imprint.”
“You can do that?” Juliet asked, astonished.
“I will do that,” Topher said harshly. The silence from Juliet and Paul showed their complicit agreement. Either that or they’d been shocked into speechlessness.
“Thank you, Christopher, for returning Dean’s soul to him.” That was the deep-voiced man, the one that sounded like he was pronouncing things from on high. Topher shuddered at his words. He’d been called a lot of things, amoral, a genius, reckless, a technical wizard, foolish, brilliant, but never a soul-stealer, or at least not to the point where he believed it. He never wanted to hear that again.
“Give me an hour.”
“You have forty-five minutes before the shit hits the fan, Topher. Do it,” Sam said.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Whoa.”
Dean rounded the last pile of crushed cars to see a huge circle inscribed in the ground, a pretty young woman tied up in the middle of it being menaced by two “demons” with their black sclera contacts and sneering expressions. Dwayne stepped up next to him, wheezing a bit from all the running, but still grinning widely at the pure awesomeness of it all. Dean couldn’t blame him: this was the best game he’d ever played. The costumes were insane, the gear was top-notch, and Dwayne was a pretty good player, even if he couldn’t shoot for shit.
“Help me!” the girl shouted. “Please!”
The demons took a few steps forward-.
forward, black eyes blazing with menace. Sam stretched out his hands and clenched his fist, black smoke pouring from their mouths and burning into the floor. Dean barely had time to see it as he swung Ruby’s knife to slit the throat of another demon who’d been about to kill him…
“-never free her! Her blood will set the dead free to paint this town red with blood! BWAHAHAHAHA!”
“I don’t think so, you demon slime!” Dwayne shouted, and tossed salt at the advancing demons.
They shouted and cringed convincingly, writhing in apparent pain.
“Uh, Dean?” Dwayne asked, jerking his head at the actors.
Dean snapped back to the present. Right. He pulled out the rune-covered wooden dagger, the safe version of Ruby’s knife, and plunged into the fray. Ducking and weaving between the demons, he stabbed one in his padded armor and slashed at the other as Dwayne slipped past and hauled the girl to safety. The first demon “died” dramatically and the other screamed blood-curdling oaths of vengeance, long enough to give Dwayne enough time to get clear before Dean “killed” the other demon too.
The blood dripped to the floor from Alastair’s mouth and Dean’s hands as the demon grinned at him, knowing he was losing a piece of himself with every cut he made to try to extract information.
The girl called Dwayne her hero and gave him a hearty kiss as Dean tried to recover from another unexpected burst of vivid memory.
I’ve been working too hard, damn, need to lay off the energy drinks… Dean told himself, shaking his head.
Fear suddenly pooled in the pit of his stomach, and Dean felt an atavistic need to get off the circle inscribed in the ground.
“Guys, let’s go home. We can stop by Mickey’s on the way out of here, beer’s on me!” Dean said cheerfully, letting a smile cover up his unease.
“Aw, come on Dean, don’t break character yet!” Dwayne whined as the “dead demons” stirred.
“It’s late, man, let’s get out of here. This place is seriously giving me the creeps.”
The fear was starting to grow, and the demon actors seemed to pick up on it, getting as antsy as he was.
“Yeah, Mr. Williams, please, it’s really cold out here. Can we go home?” one of them asked, popping out the sclera contacts.
Dwayne looked stubborn, but the girl- what was her name? Angie, that was it- Angie put her hand around his waist and whispered in his ear.
“Ok, ok, I’m outvoted, let’s get going!” he said with a laugh.
Dean relaxed a hair, feeling like he’d just dodged some unknown bullet, when the fear returned, redoubled. Cold hammered up from the ground, frost spreading like a stain, their breath all hanging in the air. Cold blue light began to spread with the frost, and Dean retreated from it instinctively.
“Guys, let’s get the hell out of here!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Use the phone, just get it to Romeo’s- Dean’s ear and let him listen,” Juliet said, still looking pale and shaken. “It’s almost time for the endgame, they should be at the center of the junkyard.”
“Juliet, get back in here, Echo and Romeo’s stress levels just spiked!” Paul called.
Sam and Castiel looked to the junkyard. Sam didn’t need the angel’s extraordinary senses to know the ghosts were coming, and soon. He closed his eyes as Castiel grabbed his shoulder, and felt his feet leave the ground.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Dean!”
Dean whirled around to see a dark haired man in a trench coat and a much taller one in a pale jacket right behind him.
“Who the hell?!” he yelled.
“Dean, it’s me, it’s Sam!”
-his brother, the man he’d trusted above all others, had picked a demon over him-
“I’m sorry Dean, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I’ll make it up to you, I swear-.”
“-We keep each other human, Sammy.”
“I don’t know anyone named Sam. Look dude, we have to get away from here. I don’t know what’s happening, but I don’t want to stay to find out!” Dean said. He wasn’t willing to include these strangers in whatever little personal meltdown he was experiencing.
The two demon actors were already gone, and Dwayne had run away screaming, but Angie had suddenly appeared at his side. She looked at him strangely, not in the cutely suggestive way he’d seen earlier before they’d all gotten ready, but in a way that was both childlike and protective. She handed him a folded piece of paper, and he felt a jolt of memory, of strange calmness and firm determination.
“Dean, you must take this,” the dark-haired man said solemnly, holding out a phone. Dean’s mind seemed to slow as he looked between the paper, the phone, and the rising sense of menace at his back.
“Dean, please!” Sam said, stepping forward to grab Dean’s shoulders and look him in the face, silently pleading for understanding-.
-silently pleading for him to give in, to surrender. Dean threw his head back even as he gripped Sam harder with his hands, drawing him deeper, further into his body, wanting everything Sam could give him. He needed to be closer, connect with him, try to bridge the gap they’d made from separating themselves at a time when they needed each other more than ever.
“Yeah Sammy, give it to me, please!” Dean let himself break as Sam silenced him with his mouth, hips slamming hard as the flood of heat burst inside him…
“Sam…?” Dean said tentatively.
“Dean, it’s me!” Sam sounded frantic, and the feeling of menace at Dean’s back intensified.
“Look at the picture,” Angie said, her voice high and childlike. As if in a trance, Dean unfolded the picture, seeing a smear of colors and the suggestion of eyes and a smile-.
Sam’s eyes. Sam’s smile. Brother. Friend.
Dean lifted the phone to his ear.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Topher had never prayed for a miracle in his life. But the old saying was apparently true: there were no atheists in foxholes, or for those in the midst of life-or-death technological struggles. Fingers burning from the rapid-fire programming, he jabbed the send button so hard he nearly broke it, and felt a palpable relief as the tones were transmitted to Juliet’s phone.
I’m not a damned soul-stealer.
Not ever.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dean started as he jerked the phone away from his head, whirling to see the freezing mists of impending undead doom starting to coalesce behind him. What the hell were they doing just standing here looking like someone had just died?
“Sam, move your ass, we need to seal this thing!” he snapped. “Hallmark moments later!”
Sam let out something that sounded suspiciously like a sob as he moved to the far side of the circle. Dean checked his watch, almost midnight. Damn, this was going to have to be a rush job.
He spat out the words of the sealing ritual as fast as he could without slurring them, trusting Sammy to get his own responses right. They’d done shit like this too many times to screw up now; he refused to even contemplate failure. He ignored everything but Sam and the ghost-circle, knowing Cas could take care of the girl.
Each phrase, spoken in tandem, activated the runes on the circle, making them glow with golden light. Palpable heat poured from them, driving back the chill of the grave. Arcs of light began to weave between the paired runes from Sam’s side to Dean’s, making a cage of power and heat that began to contract over the rising cold and fear in the center of the circle. The words got harder to speak as the light descended over the rising ghosts, the dead fighting the power of the living. It felt like something was trying to push him away, to make him stop, to give up and give in to the inevitable. Just take a step sideways and burn up in the power, or take a step forwards and let the dead take him…
Dean looked across the circle at Sam, trembling with exertion, and forced the words out even though the air itself seemed to be fighting him. He’d been taken and used, separated from Sam, forced away from saving the world, and now he was back. Even the dead had to realize that no one, no one forced the Winchester brothers to do anything.
Sam’s voice joined his, ripping across the too-solid air, and the light slammed into the chill, white ground with a roar of fire covering up the furious screams of thwarted ghosts. Heat exploded outward from the circle, knocking Dean back over a half dozen yards of ground and into a crushed car.
When the pain stopped, and his vision finally came back, Dean blinked to see the circle had been melted into an enormous puddle of flawed black glass from the heat of the spell. He could only stare at it for a long moment, until Sam came into his line of vision, looking down at him as if he were afraid Dean was going to vanish in the next second.
“Cutting it a little close, Sammy?” Dean asked into the deafening silence, watching Sam’s reaction.
He supposed he would have deserved a punch in the face for a remark like that. Instead Sam just caught him up in a bone-crunching hug and refused to let him go. Dean just let his joints get relocated as he gave Sam back everything he had and more.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Where are Romeo and Juliet?” Boyd asked
Paul didn’t even pause as he directed Echo into Topher’s lab.
“Romeo split and she went after him. You really shouldn’t rush Topher’s work,” he said blandly.
Boyd watched for a moment as Topher started Echo’s wipe, knowing Topher was very carefully ignoring him.
“What happens when we rush Topher’s work?”
“We end up taking shortcuts when we don’t have enough time to check the background properly. Then people can get hurt,” Paul said, crossing his arms.
Echo blinked sleepily as she rose from her chair, going through her call-and-response set with Topher before she stepped from the room. She paused at the doorway and turned back.
“Romeo is happy,” she said, and walked away.
Boyd took a single deep breath and turned back to Topher. He was fiddling with his knobs and buttons nervously, shoulders hunched as if for a blow.
“Topher,” Boyd said, and Topher looked up nervously, seemingly trying to hide behind his bangs. “I apologize for rushing your work. Adele and I will do everything we can to make certain an accidental loss like that doesn’t happen again.”
Boyd turned and left, Paul a moment after him after giving Topher a small nod of encouragement.
Topher didn’t care who saw as he slumped down on the floor, holding a folded piece of paper in his hands, something Echo had given him. Opening it, he saw a smear of color and the suggestion of eyes and a smile. It was signed “Dean.”
Swallowing hard, Topher walked over and stuck it to his refrigerator.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“What do you remember?” Sam asked.
Castiel was politely spending the evening away, carefully explaining the enormity of the whole Apocalypse situation to a very receptive Juliet, who’d suddenly found herself in need of a new line of work. She’d probably make a great hunter once she got over the shock-and-awe stage of things. That had left Sam and Dean alone in their motel, and by mutual agreement, in the same bed.
Dean shifted. His body curled around Sam’s, ignoring the twinge of pain from the new anti-possession tattoo on his chest, freshly inked this morning. “Bits and pieces mostly. I mean, I remember me. I remember most of the junkyard. Juliet. Castiel. You.” Another beat of silence. “The girl. Her name’s not Angie, but I don’t know what it really is. She was helping me, trying to get me to remember.” Another pause. “That’s about it really. I’m missing a hell of a lot of time between when Tregan’s goons grabbed me and last night.”
“I thought I was going insane. I kept seeing you everywhere… The things those people were having you do…” Sam whispered, seeing Dean in a hundred different guises in his mind’s eye.
“Do I even want to know?”
“People’s dates, a lot of the time, I think.”
“Doesn’t sound too bad-.”
“Sex slave bitch.”
“Did I have a collar?”
“Dean!”
“What? A guy’s allowed to think about it!”
Sam filed that idea away for future use.
“Babysitter, dogwalker-.”
“Boring!”
“Latin professor.”
“Bullshit,” Dean said, snorting with laughter.
“Shit you not, with a tweed suit and an English accent, declining Latin verbs.”
“Damn,” Dean sounded thoughtful. “Bet that got you all hot and bothered, brainiac.
“How can you laugh about it?” Sam demanded. “Dean, you were gone. Castiel said they’d stolen your soul!”
Dean wrenched Sam’s head around for a hard kiss, prolonging it with intimate skill of a lifetime’s worth of illicit affection. “I’m gonna laugh,” Dean said, punctuating every other word with another kiss, “Because you look like you haven’t laughed in four months, Sammy. I’m gonna make you laugh.”
He kissed lower, lavishing attention on Sam’s throat.
“I’m going to make you scream.”
Lower, circling Sam’s nipples with his tongue and making Sam gasp.
“I’m going to make you forget your own name, and then we’ll be even, got it?”
Sam got it. He got it over and over as Dean claimed him, talked to him, spoke to him about every intimate secret no stranger could ever know. As they loved each other, body and soul.