There's Nothing Like The Smell of Death
It was the smell that hit him before anything else. Dean knew it well, and had he the chance to think for a second he would have seriously assessed his life for the fact he knew the scent of rotting flesh before he knew the scent of the vanilla coming from the candles Sam was lighting.
"It's kind of this thing we do, she likes vanilla," Sam explained before Dean could say anything about it-- not that he was going to, given the smell that was so considerably stronger. He almost wanted to throw up, and that took a lot, especially after the crap he saw in Purgatory. Sam was smiling though, like he was so excited to show off this part of his world to him, and Dean wanted to smack his overgrown little brother for being like an adorable six year old even at this age. Dean wanted to ask, but Sam was as hyperactive as a six year old too, buzzing about, putting things away that he'd brought, groceries and some fruit he put in a bowl, after tossing away the rotten fruit that had been sat in the bowl first.
"She'll be down in a second," Sam murmured, looking at Dean from under a curtain of brown hair, and Dean nodded a bit, forcing a quick smile and looking at Sam with what he already knew was a distraught expression in his eyes. He didn't like this one bit and he knew what was going on before he could even let himself think about it. It made his skin crawl; something was so wrong here that it hurt him down to his bones in a way that nothing short of losing his family ever had before.
It was a minute or so that Dean stood in the doorway, trying to take a deep breath, but the air was cloying and the smell was so pungent that he could taste it on his tongue as he breathed. Christ, he thought Purgatory stank of death, but this house held the scent like it was bathed in it, like it was Hell itself, and Dean had to grip the door-frame to stop himself for a moment, to ground himself. It wasn't the smell. That wasn't the problem. It was that Sam didn't seem to notice, that Sam wasn't all there anymore, and Dean didn't know what to even do.
Search. Find the source of it all. It was best to act like he was working whenever he smelled the thick scent, at least then he didn't need to pretend that it was a normal thing or something so far out of his scale of normal that he needed to panic, but even at that he couldn't quite calm down the nervous twitching throughout him.
"Uh, hey, Sammy you got a bathroom I can use?"
"First door on the left, upstairs." Sam gave him a boyish grin he hadn't worn in years and Dean nodded, giving his brother a pat on the back as he moved by him for the stairs that he'd walked by in the hallway.
The smell got thicker and Dean would have joked about it if it didn't screw with his fucking head in a way that never had before. No, it definitely wasn't the smell making him sick, but he wasn't able to go there in his head, not yet, he couldn't reach that point, and he knew his grip was too rough on the rails as he made his way up. His heart pounded in a way that he could feel it in his throat, in his ears, making his eyes ache and his skin prickle. It wasn't fear, or maybe it was, it was something that was making him want to run. He felt like he was a child too, all of a sudden, and the one thing he wanted most in that second was to run and hide behind his dad, because dad could fix anything and that was a thought he hadn't had in quite a few years.
It was his job to protect Sammy, it was his job to stop him from going off the deep end. It was his job to make sure he was safe and sane and, here he was, damn certain Sam was anything but that. It wasn't until he reached the top of the stairs in this house that Sam and Amelia had shared in their year of life together that Dean had finally gotten a grip on himself. He needed to be strong, because he was supposed to be the tough older brother that Sam could rely on.
He glanced to the door on the left and ignored it after noting it as the bathroom. He needed to find the source of the rotting, gory stench. Downstairs stank of grime; everything was layered in dust, the food there was rotten, but there was that bloody, filthy stink that he knew anywhere was rotting flesh and the more he let the thought settle in the more he couldn't bring himself admit it was actually happening.
It's a job, pretend it's a job. There's nothin' wrong with Sammy, there's probably a totally logical explanation for it... Yeah. Right.
Dean pushed open a door, a hall closet, and he let out a sharp breath he hadn't realised he'd taken in at all. He didn't take another then, he held it until he opened another door. A spare bedroom. Nothing here. Then his eyes fell on the last door and Dean reached for the gun tucked in his waistband.
He could smell it before he could see it, like the vile stink was a curtain over the doorway, but once he saw what was on the bed, he recoiled, his heart hitting his throat again. The heavy footsteps behind him didn't register until after Sam was already pushing past him to get into the bedroom. He awaited the initial grief, he awaited Sam breaking down at the sight of it, but none of that came and that made it infinitely worse.
Sam sat on the edge of the bed, reaching for a gored, rotting hand, his touch gentle and tender, like he was coddling living flesh, and Dean pursed his lips to keep from retching. He'd seen so much death and blood, guts and gore, he'd seen Hell and everything it had to offer, but this was a whole new level of wrong. He'd take another forty years in Hell and another year in Purgatory if it meant this wasn't real, if he could just wake up from this nightmare. If Sam was okay and normal and, God, he would give anything for Sam to have really had a normal life he wanted to go back to if it just meant this sight wasn't true.
"Amelia, I want you to meet someone. This is my big brother, Dean. Dean, this is," Sam's flushed face and the little breathy grin that came broke Dean's heart, "this is Amelia."
Dean's eyes stung with the tears he wasn't sure were just from the smell, and he hung his head as he choked them back down. The dog on the end of the bed was the icing on the psychotic cake and Dean nodded a bit, licking his suddenly dry lips to try to be able to talk.
"It's uh... shit..." He let out another rough breath and Sam's quizzical look made him break inside all over again. "It's nice to meet you, Amelia."
Dean's hands shook a little as he gripped the doorknob and his gun, and as his eyes raked over the human corpse and the canine one at her feet, the blood, filth, flesh, all of it, he could easily tell she'd been dead well before he got back from Purgatory. It shook him to his core in a way that Alastair and Hell and Purgatory never could have, and Dean finally took a deep breath of the clotted air and stepped into the room, reaching for his little brother, his hands reaching up to his face, to get Sam to look at him.
"Dean?"
"Sammy, come on, you--" He almost swallowed his tongue at the feeling of revulsion and Dean gripped the front of Sam's shirt, hauling him to his feet and out of the room with a force that he rarely showed with Sam, not unless he was furious or trying his damnedest to protect the kid.
Sam fought the motion, arguing with him in that way he always did, but Dean got him out of the room and up the wall. The door was slammed shut if only because Dean couldn't look at that mess anymore, and he took a chance to yank Sam a few inches from the wall only to slam him up it again. "What the Hell is wrong with you, man?!"
"Dean, what the Hell? You're being an ass--"
Dean cut him off with another slam up the wall and he bit hard into his lip to keep himself from crying. This was no time to go getting emotional at the kid, not when he was in this kind of state. "We're leavin', now, or I swear I'll knock you out so fast and just drag your gigantor self out to the car."
Sam argued being dragged down the hall and it was a sudden motion that followed as Dean's fist collided with Sam's jaw. The younger brother was knocked on his ass -- of course he was, Dean was the only one who could really do that to him now -- and Dean followed through with another punch to knock him out.
It was mechanical as Dean carried (dragged) Sam out to the car, and he hoisted him into the back with what little energy he had left in him to keep going at all. For the briefest second he remembered what he'd said in the voicemail to Bobby when the house burned down -- "I'm going to strap my Beautiful Mind brother into the car and I'm gonna drive us off the pier." -- and he wanted to do it, so badly, because it was always one thing after another and he didn't want there to be this time, he wanted it to be done with, but the warrior in him that he found in Purgatory, he was something stronger than Dean had been in the last few years and he wouldn't just give up on Sammy like that.
Sitting behind the wheel, Dean's hands shook as he drove. He could hear Sam breathing and he could still smell the gore on them, it stank out the car so bad he had to roll the windows down, but he'd make things okay because he was Dean Fucking Winchester and he wasn't going to let anything break him or his brother again.
He needed to get rid of that place, though, and Dean knew he needed to stop Sam from ever having anything to go back to, because it was a bloody, filthy mess there. His fingers shook worse still as he found his phone and his instinct told him to call Bobby.
Bobby's dead, you idiot, who else you got left now?
No one, that's who. You're all alone and Sammy's broken again and you can't fix him.
You've got no one that can help you on this one, not even Cas, no o--
Dean pressed "dial" on Benny's name and he just hoped for a minute the vampire would pick up just as much as he hoped for a briefer second that he would let the call drop. He didn't know what he'd even say. Benny knew he had a brother, Dean had said as much, but this was too much to drag the guy into. There was Purgatory and there was now and they'd agreed not to let the two things collide, but with no one else left and only one person in the world he trusted besides Sam, he had to do it.
"I thought you said what's done is done and not to call unless I got into trouble;" Benny's Southern drawl made Dean feel a wash of relief for just a second.
"Yeah, about that--" Dean's voice was hoarse and he swallowed the lump in his throat.
"What's wrong?" Benny didn't need a reason to call Dean, he'd have done it just because he liked the human, but Dean damn sure needed a reason to call Benny and the vampire was certain in that second that something was very, very wrong.
Dean hesitated, because the only person he would have asked for help like this besides Bobby would have been Cas. Cas was gone, though, and Dean let out a breath of resignation at everything. "I need a favour. Something's wrong with my brother, and I gotta destroy some... some evidence, but I can't do it myself. You any good with fire?"
"Gimme some gasoline and a match and I'm as good as anyone else. What needs to go?"
Dean reeled off the address and Benny assured him he'd gut the place for him, and the second the vampire started asking him what was really wrong, Dean hung up. The relationship he had with Benny was not part of the bond he had with Sam, and as much as he cared about Benny he just couldn't bring himself to open himself and Sam up that way again, not yet, maybe if things got worse, but for now Dean would take Sam somewhere, maybe a few states away, and he'd fix him. God knew how, but he'd do it.
"It's kind of this thing we do, she likes vanilla," Sam explained before Dean could say anything about it-- not that he was going to, given the smell that was so considerably stronger. He almost wanted to throw up, and that took a lot, especially after the crap he saw in Purgatory. Sam was smiling though, like he was so excited to show off this part of his world to him, and Dean wanted to smack his overgrown little brother for being like an adorable six year old even at this age. Dean wanted to ask, but Sam was as hyperactive as a six year old too, buzzing about, putting things away that he'd brought, groceries and some fruit he put in a bowl, after tossing away the rotten fruit that had been sat in the bowl first.
"She'll be down in a second," Sam murmured, looking at Dean from under a curtain of brown hair, and Dean nodded a bit, forcing a quick smile and looking at Sam with what he already knew was a distraught expression in his eyes. He didn't like this one bit and he knew what was going on before he could even let himself think about it. It made his skin crawl; something was so wrong here that it hurt him down to his bones in a way that nothing short of losing his family ever had before.
It was a minute or so that Dean stood in the doorway, trying to take a deep breath, but the air was cloying and the smell was so pungent that he could taste it on his tongue as he breathed. Christ, he thought Purgatory stank of death, but this house held the scent like it was bathed in it, like it was Hell itself, and Dean had to grip the door-frame to stop himself for a moment, to ground himself. It wasn't the smell. That wasn't the problem. It was that Sam didn't seem to notice, that Sam wasn't all there anymore, and Dean didn't know what to even do.
Search. Find the source of it all. It was best to act like he was working whenever he smelled the thick scent, at least then he didn't need to pretend that it was a normal thing or something so far out of his scale of normal that he needed to panic, but even at that he couldn't quite calm down the nervous twitching throughout him.
"Uh, hey, Sammy you got a bathroom I can use?"
"First door on the left, upstairs." Sam gave him a boyish grin he hadn't worn in years and Dean nodded, giving his brother a pat on the back as he moved by him for the stairs that he'd walked by in the hallway.
The smell got thicker and Dean would have joked about it if it didn't screw with his fucking head in a way that never had before. No, it definitely wasn't the smell making him sick, but he wasn't able to go there in his head, not yet, he couldn't reach that point, and he knew his grip was too rough on the rails as he made his way up. His heart pounded in a way that he could feel it in his throat, in his ears, making his eyes ache and his skin prickle. It wasn't fear, or maybe it was, it was something that was making him want to run. He felt like he was a child too, all of a sudden, and the one thing he wanted most in that second was to run and hide behind his dad, because dad could fix anything and that was a thought he hadn't had in quite a few years.
It was his job to protect Sammy, it was his job to stop him from going off the deep end. It was his job to make sure he was safe and sane and, here he was, damn certain Sam was anything but that. It wasn't until he reached the top of the stairs in this house that Sam and Amelia had shared in their year of life together that Dean had finally gotten a grip on himself. He needed to be strong, because he was supposed to be the tough older brother that Sam could rely on.
He glanced to the door on the left and ignored it after noting it as the bathroom. He needed to find the source of the rotting, gory stench. Downstairs stank of grime; everything was layered in dust, the food there was rotten, but there was that bloody, filthy stink that he knew anywhere was rotting flesh and the more he let the thought settle in the more he couldn't bring himself admit it was actually happening.
It's a job, pretend it's a job. There's nothin' wrong with Sammy, there's probably a totally logical explanation for it... Yeah. Right.
Dean pushed open a door, a hall closet, and he let out a sharp breath he hadn't realised he'd taken in at all. He didn't take another then, he held it until he opened another door. A spare bedroom. Nothing here. Then his eyes fell on the last door and Dean reached for the gun tucked in his waistband.
He could smell it before he could see it, like the vile stink was a curtain over the doorway, but once he saw what was on the bed, he recoiled, his heart hitting his throat again. The heavy footsteps behind him didn't register until after Sam was already pushing past him to get into the bedroom. He awaited the initial grief, he awaited Sam breaking down at the sight of it, but none of that came and that made it infinitely worse.
Sam sat on the edge of the bed, reaching for a gored, rotting hand, his touch gentle and tender, like he was coddling living flesh, and Dean pursed his lips to keep from retching. He'd seen so much death and blood, guts and gore, he'd seen Hell and everything it had to offer, but this was a whole new level of wrong. He'd take another forty years in Hell and another year in Purgatory if it meant this wasn't real, if he could just wake up from this nightmare. If Sam was okay and normal and, God, he would give anything for Sam to have really had a normal life he wanted to go back to if it just meant this sight wasn't true.
"Amelia, I want you to meet someone. This is my big brother, Dean. Dean, this is," Sam's flushed face and the little breathy grin that came broke Dean's heart, "this is Amelia."
Dean's eyes stung with the tears he wasn't sure were just from the smell, and he hung his head as he choked them back down. The dog on the end of the bed was the icing on the psychotic cake and Dean nodded a bit, licking his suddenly dry lips to try to be able to talk.
"It's uh... shit..." He let out another rough breath and Sam's quizzical look made him break inside all over again. "It's nice to meet you, Amelia."
Dean's hands shook a little as he gripped the doorknob and his gun, and as his eyes raked over the human corpse and the canine one at her feet, the blood, filth, flesh, all of it, he could easily tell she'd been dead well before he got back from Purgatory. It shook him to his core in a way that Alastair and Hell and Purgatory never could have, and Dean finally took a deep breath of the clotted air and stepped into the room, reaching for his little brother, his hands reaching up to his face, to get Sam to look at him.
"Dean?"
"Sammy, come on, you--" He almost swallowed his tongue at the feeling of revulsion and Dean gripped the front of Sam's shirt, hauling him to his feet and out of the room with a force that he rarely showed with Sam, not unless he was furious or trying his damnedest to protect the kid.
Sam fought the motion, arguing with him in that way he always did, but Dean got him out of the room and up the wall. The door was slammed shut if only because Dean couldn't look at that mess anymore, and he took a chance to yank Sam a few inches from the wall only to slam him up it again. "What the Hell is wrong with you, man?!"
"Dean, what the Hell? You're being an ass--"
Dean cut him off with another slam up the wall and he bit hard into his lip to keep himself from crying. This was no time to go getting emotional at the kid, not when he was in this kind of state. "We're leavin', now, or I swear I'll knock you out so fast and just drag your gigantor self out to the car."
Sam argued being dragged down the hall and it was a sudden motion that followed as Dean's fist collided with Sam's jaw. The younger brother was knocked on his ass -- of course he was, Dean was the only one who could really do that to him now -- and Dean followed through with another punch to knock him out.
It was mechanical as Dean carried (dragged) Sam out to the car, and he hoisted him into the back with what little energy he had left in him to keep going at all. For the briefest second he remembered what he'd said in the voicemail to Bobby when the house burned down -- "I'm going to strap my Beautiful Mind brother into the car and I'm gonna drive us off the pier." -- and he wanted to do it, so badly, because it was always one thing after another and he didn't want there to be this time, he wanted it to be done with, but the warrior in him that he found in Purgatory, he was something stronger than Dean had been in the last few years and he wouldn't just give up on Sammy like that.
Sitting behind the wheel, Dean's hands shook as he drove. He could hear Sam breathing and he could still smell the gore on them, it stank out the car so bad he had to roll the windows down, but he'd make things okay because he was Dean Fucking Winchester and he wasn't going to let anything break him or his brother again.
He needed to get rid of that place, though, and Dean knew he needed to stop Sam from ever having anything to go back to, because it was a bloody, filthy mess there. His fingers shook worse still as he found his phone and his instinct told him to call Bobby.
Bobby's dead, you idiot, who else you got left now?
No one, that's who. You're all alone and Sammy's broken again and you can't fix him.
You've got no one that can help you on this one, not even Cas, no o--
Dean pressed "dial" on Benny's name and he just hoped for a minute the vampire would pick up just as much as he hoped for a briefer second that he would let the call drop. He didn't know what he'd even say. Benny knew he had a brother, Dean had said as much, but this was too much to drag the guy into. There was Purgatory and there was now and they'd agreed not to let the two things collide, but with no one else left and only one person in the world he trusted besides Sam, he had to do it.
"I thought you said what's done is done and not to call unless I got into trouble;" Benny's Southern drawl made Dean feel a wash of relief for just a second.
"Yeah, about that--" Dean's voice was hoarse and he swallowed the lump in his throat.
"What's wrong?" Benny didn't need a reason to call Dean, he'd have done it just because he liked the human, but Dean damn sure needed a reason to call Benny and the vampire was certain in that second that something was very, very wrong.
Dean hesitated, because the only person he would have asked for help like this besides Bobby would have been Cas. Cas was gone, though, and Dean let out a breath of resignation at everything. "I need a favour. Something's wrong with my brother, and I gotta destroy some... some evidence, but I can't do it myself. You any good with fire?"
"Gimme some gasoline and a match and I'm as good as anyone else. What needs to go?"
Dean reeled off the address and Benny assured him he'd gut the place for him, and the second the vampire started asking him what was really wrong, Dean hung up. The relationship he had with Benny was not part of the bond he had with Sam, and as much as he cared about Benny he just couldn't bring himself to open himself and Sam up that way again, not yet, maybe if things got worse, but for now Dean would take Sam somewhere, maybe a few states away, and he'd fix him. God knew how, but he'd do it.