A Womb of His Own - 19/21
Masterpost
Rufus started collecting the papers on the table. “All right, well, here’s our next move. We’re gonna go round up everybody who used to sleep in a coffin. Bring them here where we can keep an eye on them.”
“And then what?” Gwen asked doubtfully.
Rufus shrugged in that too-casual way he had of doing everything. “Then we’ll figure out what’s what.”
Dean asked to be partnered with Samuel, since he didn’t trust the guy at all and wanted to keep an eye on him. Rufus flicked his eyes toward Sam in a way that said something to the effect of, Hey, don’t forget your little brother. Do you really trust anyone else? So, in the end, they partnered off predictably: Sam and Dean, Samuel and Gwen, and Rufus on his own.
Sam and Dean were driving toward Crum Lynne to find a guy named James Jackson. It wasn’t that the case wasn’t imperative or that they were being less than expedient on their mission, but riding in the Impala, just the two of them, put them in the mood to talk about serious stuff.
“I hate to say it,” Sam began, which was right up there with Not that I’m a racist or don’t be mad. I hate to say it never meant anything about hating to say anything. It meant I am delighted to reveal this thing to you, which I know will thoroughly piss you off. Dean steeled himself for the inevitable fallout. “Maybe Samuel had a point. I mean, is he really so despicable that you need to kill him in cold blood? Isn’t it possible you’re just channeling some of your frustration about me being soulless at him?”
“Shut up, Dr. Phil.”
“No, I mean it, Dean.”
I mean it, Dean. That was Sam’s favorite expression. When he was eight, it was “Don’t tease me, I mean it, Dean,” with an implied threat that he was going to tell Dad. As if a. Dad was ever around, b. he actually cared what they did when he was, and c. on those rare occasions when both conditions a. and b. were met, Dad didn’t just say, “Knock it off, Dean,” and then tell Sammy not to be so sensitive and run a hand through Sammy’s hair before sending them away.
When Sam was fourteen, Dean took an unholy amount of pleasure in mocking those telltale signs of puberty that had already come and gone in his own body: that fuzz on his upper lip that wasn’t enough to be shaved but refused to grow into a full mustache, the acne, and - the best of all - the voice change. “Stop laughing at me! I mean it, Dean!” Sam would scream, his face going red and his fists balled up. “You’re a jerkface!” And, if Dean was extra lucky, Sam would slam the door to whatever room they were sharing and try to lock him out.
By seventeen Sam had already turned into a total bitch with one foot out the door, though Dean hadn’t realized it at the time, and I mean it, Dean was no longer I’m gonna tell Dad or I’m frustrated and don’t know what else to say. It had gotten a lot more dangerous. “Drive me to the library now, or I’ll walk there and I won’t ever come home. I mean it, Dean.” And Sam would say it all growly, with his eyes narrowed like they were going to fire lasers directly into everything in his path.
Really, it should have been their first clue that Sam would someday run around with Lucifer inside him.
Oh, shut up, Dean loved his brother more than life itself, okay?
“Are you listening to me at all?”
“What? Yeah, of course I am. I always listen when you try to show off your college education.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “I barely remember Samuel,” he said. “And what I remember, it’s not good. But I can’t help but think, ‘What would Mom say?’”
“You know what I think Mom would say? She’d say just because you’re blood doesn’t make you family. You gotta earn that.” Dean took a deep breath. “And that goes for brothers, too. You should feel free to stop calling me family, too, after what happened. I mean it.”
“You’re not Samuel,” Sam said immediately. “And we talked about this. I mean, yeah, it’s kind of weird, and we probably want to make sure nobody else ever finds out about it, but it’s not your fault, you know? Any more than it’s mine. You were a vampire, and I didn’t have a soul.”
“Right, ’cause it was just the one time,” Dean said at half-volume. Loud enough that maybe he had wanted Sam to hear, so that the lie could finally be over, but quiet enough that there was a possibility Sam wouldn’t and they wouldn’t have to hash through all that.
Sam didn’t hear. Or, if he did, he didn’t react. “Goes the other way, too, you know. I mean, we always thought Cas was like family, Dean, but I don’t think we can pretend that’s true anymore.”
He was right, Dean knew, even as he wanted to cling to the last vestiges of hope that somehow there had just been a giant misunderstanding.
“I mean,” Sam continued, “Balthazar is scared of him. This is big, Dean. We need to find out what he and Crowley are doing.”
“We need to find James Jackson and figure out what to do with him and the other Lazaruses first.”
“Right,” Sam agreed. “Yeah, of course.”
James Jackson wasn’t home, but his wife was immensely helpful, even if she was a bit fat lying liar who lied. She denied that he’d ever been dead, claiming it was all a mix-up at the coroner’s, but Sam just gave her one of his patented looks and sweet-talked her into spilling everything. Twenty minutes later, they pulled James out of his hiding place in a friend’s basement and were heading back to the warehouse.
“So I don’t have a soul?” James repeated for the third time. “Inside? People have souls, and I don’t have one?”
“Yes,” Dean answered, his eyes bugging out a little in exasperation. “You’re a freak, and if you don’t let us help you, you could destroy the world. Now shut up until we get there.”
“Dean,” Sam said.
“But I don’t understand. How don’t I have a soul?”
Sam looked over his shoulder at the backseat. “Because you were dead, James. And then something brought you back, but it left your soul in heaven. It’s probably there right now. What’s your favorite memory?”
“Uh…” James thought for a second. “Birth of my daughter.”
“Well, your soul is probably living that moment right now. Could be worse.”
“How could it be worse?” Dean asked quietly.
Sam shrugged. “His soul could be in hell? He could end up like me?”
That prompted Dean to ask, “Hey, James, do you like anal?”
“Dean!”
He ignored Sam. It was for the sake of the case, after all, although really it was more like a compulsion. It was important to ask and get an answer, though if he’d been pressed to explain why at that moment, Dean couldn’t have said anything more than that it was a hunch. “And, if so, giving or receiving?”
James’s mouth hung open. “Excuse me? I don’t see how -”
“So that’s a yes?” Dean drummed a hand on the steering wheel. “How long you been back now?”
“Three days,” Sam supplied.
“You find anybody attractive in the last three days, James? Any dudes?”
“Are you - are you coming onto me?”
“No!” Sam jumped in. “He’s not.” Then to Dean, “You’re not, are you?”
“No!” he told Sam. Then louder, “I’m not hitting on you. Trust me, you’re not my type. I’m just working out a theory.”
“Uh…”
He heard the sound of metal rattling as James tested the strength of his handcuffs, probably to see if he could make an escape.
Dean gave him a broad, fake smile in the rearview mirror.
After a few hours the break room was crowded with replicants, most pissy, some confused, a select few angry bordering on homicidal. Once they’d brought the first round in, Rufus volunteered to stay behind to guard them. But Sam and Dean pointed out that they had firsthand experience with how wily soulless people could be when they were tied up. Dean made use of the down time by asking questions until Marjorie Kent slugged him. She clearly had no idea how to throw a punch, but what she lacked in skill, she more than made up for with a sharply cut diamond ring.
Sam made a bundle out of some ice and paper towels and pressed it to Dean’s chin. Dean swatted his hands away because he could take care of himself and because he really didn’t want a room full of soulless people to think that one of their prison guards was Sergeant Schultz.
“I can’t believe she hit me.”
“You freaked her out.”
“I just asked her when her last period was.”
“Why are you prying into everybody’s sex life?” Sam asked. “It’s kind of freaking me out, and that’s saying something because I live with you.”
Dean looked around the room. “All right, the only way to make new souls is by making babies, right? Or by creating one in a person who doesn’t have one already?”
“So bringing these people back was a calculated plan to make new souls? Why?”
“Death said something about souls being powerful. And valuable.”
Sam nodded. “Like how Balthazar was buying them up.”
Dean looked at him. “You remember that?”
Sam’s forehead went wrinkly. “Yeah,” he realized. “Just now. Hey, do you - Dean, do you think by the time the soul comes out, I’ll remember everything I missed in that year?”
Dean swallowed the acid that was rising up in his chest.
The double doors swung open, and Rufus walked in with Gwen and Samuel hot on their heels. Samuel was leading a brown-haired man with a ripped shirt and a face smeared with dirt. The man’s hands were tied behind his back.
“We got a problem,” Samuel announced. “The pitchforks and torches have found us.”
“Oh, fuck,” Dean muttered. He and Sam headed toward the loading dock.
The people who didn’t like the idea of the dead coming back - the pitchforks and torches, as they were being called - were clearly untrained civilians. They hadn’t figured out that they should spread out around the warehouse to look for other entrances, and they weren’t rushing the loading dock with actual pitchforks and torches. Mostly they were just standing there, screaming.
“How did you find us?” Dean couldn’t help asking.
“Her,” one of the men pointed at Religious Right, who was pushing her way through the crowd.
“Dean Winchester,” she said, pushing her glasses up her nose. She handed her sign off to the guy.
“How do you know who I am?”
She pursed her lips and opened her notebook. “Oh, I know all about you,” she said, flipping pages. “You’re an affront to the natural order.”
Dean chanced a glance at Sam, wondering what exactly she meant by that and whether or not she was about to elaborate and humiliate them in front of a crowd of crazy people.
“Ah! Here it is.” She stabbed a manicured index finger at the open page of the notebook. “You were supposed to be gone in 2008. And Sam two years later.” She closed the book with a snap. “I want you and all those other people you have inside. I’ll tell them not to hurt anyone else.”
“Hold on, why am I turning people over to Legally Blonde?”
She put one hand on her hip and used the other to toss her hair over her shoulder. “The name’s Atropos.”
“At - what?” Dean looked at Sam.
“One of the Fates,” he explained quietly. “Why don’t you come inside with us?”
Religious Right - At-whoever strode past them, her tweed pants making swish-swish sounds as she went. Dean gave the crowd a smile. “Uh, everybody stay here. This will all be solved in just a minute, okay?”
Inside Samuel emerged from the shadows. “Dean, what’s going on?”
“Samuel Campbell,” At-whoever said. “1973. Nearly thirty years. Do you have any idea what kind of damage thirty years causes?”
“What are you talking about? What’s she talking about?”
“Enough is enough! We have to restore the natural order!” She snatched a pen from her shirt pocket, clicked it open, and scribbled something in her notebook with great flourish. Samuel’s eyes bulged out, and he gasped, and then he fell over. Dead.
“Sam Winchester,” she said, turning the page.
“You book that put down,” Dean warned. He rushed toward her, and she raised the pen as if to write again, but Dean kneed her in the groin and then elbowed her in the face and wrenched the notebook from her hand. He threw it as far as he could and pulled out his gun. “Stay back.”
At-whoever adjusted her clothing and glasses. She smoothed a hand over her hair. “Two years. For two years Sam Winchester has been upsetting the order of things.”
“Check your records, sister,” Dean said with some pride. “It’s been, like, six.”
“This isn’t a joke! You have no idea what kind of repercussions all this death and resurrection has caused!” Dean half-expected her to stomp her foot in anger.
“Actually, I have some idea,” he corrected. “See, Death explained it to me when we were eating hot dogs together a few months ago.”
“Death?” she repeated, eyes going wide. “What - what did he say?”
Dean couldn’t help gloating a little that he’d one-upped a Greek Fate. That didn’t happen every day.
“Atropos.” They spun around to see Cas standing there, projecting the same false image of vulnerable flakiness as always in his rumpled clothing. Only Dean wasn’t fooled anymore. Cas wasn’t the Balki Bartokomous of angels. He was the J.R. Ewing.
Dean’s first instinct was to light a ring of holy fire and demand answers and maybe kill Cas anyway, even if he had them. But they didn’t have any supplies on hand, and the thing they’d learned about matches between monsters was that it was better to just take a step back and let them duke it out.
“You look well,” Cas told the Fate.
“I look like stomped over crap because of you.”
“All right, let’s talk about this.”
“Talk?” she laughed. “About what? Maybe about how you and that demon destroyed my work. And don’t get me started on those two circus clowns. You ruined my life.”
“Let’s not get emotional.”
“Not get emotional? I had a job. I worked hard. I was really, really good at what I did. Until the day of the big prizefight. And then what happens?” She turned her glare on Sam and Dean as well. “You throw out the book. Literally.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but freedom is more preferable.”
“Freedom? This is chaos! How is this better?”
“I’m sorry,” Cas said again. “Your services are no longer required.”
“What’s he talking about?” Dean mumbled to Sam.
“Atropos,” Sam whispered back. “She’s the one who makes the list.”
“The death list?” Sam nodded. “So Death works for her?”
“I wish,” Atropos interrupted them. “I work for him. I have for millennia. And now he won’t even talk to me.” She looked at Cas. “We have to put an end to this. You know it. Sam, you’ve had a good, long life -”
“He’s twenty-nine,” Dean protested.
“You’re not supposed to be here anymore,” she continued. “Can you really live, knowing that everything you do has changed the entire outline for everyone else? Just let me put you back on the list, Sam.”
“Where will I go?”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Dean barked, but Atropos spoke over him.
“You’ve already done your service. You’ll go to heaven this time.”
“And the soul?” Sam rasped. “What about it?”
“Sam,” she said sympathetically, “it wasn’t meant to be. If it hadn’t been for him -” she pointed at Cas - “it wouldn’t exist in the first place.”
“Cas?” Sam asked plaintively. “What’s she talking about?”
Cas took two steps forward, then stopped and looked at Dean, like he wanted to get Dean’s approval to get closer to Sam. Dean wasn’t giving it. He made a face that he hoped said to stay back and not fuck with his little brother. “You shouldn’t listen to her. Listen to me. I’m your friend. I’m the one who pulled you out.”
“Are you?” Sam was on the verge of tears. “No offense, but you did a pretty piss poor job.” His jaw dropped. “Wait, did you bring me back without a soul on purpose?”
Cas looked from Sam to Dean and back again.
“Answer the damn question, Cas!” Dean ordered.
“Dean…”
“My invitation to this party must have gotten lost in the mail.” It was Crowley this time. He came forward out of nowhere with his hands in the pockets of his well-tailored suit. “I guess I can forgive you, so long as you let me stay till last call.” He winked at Cas. “Hello, partner.”
“Cas? Is it true? Are you working with Crowley?”
Crowley sighed and spun on a heel to look at Dean. “He won’t own up to it,” he warned. “You know how some people are, never confessing to relationships they know the world wouldn’t understand. Am I right, Sam?”
“I don’t - what are you - I…”
“Crowley,” Cas said angrily, “what are you doing here?”
Crowley ignored him. “You see, Cas here had this brilliant little plan. You come up, and Samuel comes down, an even exchange. And if we forget to bring your souls with you, well then.” He covered his mouth with his hand like somebody just accidentally spilled the milk. “Oops.”
“What about all the people in this town?” Sam asked.
“That was phase two of the plan,” Crowley explained. “Sam here was our beta test. Phase one: figure out a way to generate new souls. Thank you, by the way, for the very creative way you accomplished that, Dean.” Dean looked at his boots as his face flushed red. “Phase two: bring back a new crop, and let them get started on the second generation.”
“Why are you telling us this?”
“Because, Sam, it turns out, some people can’t be trusted to stay true to their word. Unlike yours truly.” He took off his wool overcoat and draped it over his arm. “So, Atropos, my dear, I’ve come to humbly request that you put Castiel and all his minions on your list.”
“No,” Cas insisted. “Not until I get that soul. I need to stop Raphael, Crowley.”
“From what?” Crowley scoffed. “You’ve become as totalitarian as him.”
“You know that isn’t true.”
“And you know we said fifty-fifty, but how many of the good people of Chester came from my backyard? And the spying.” He clucked his tongue. “Really, Cas, if you’re going to watch what the Winchesters do in private, you could at least have the decency to invite me along with you.”
Dean was trying hard to keep up with the conversation, to figure out what the other side of the story that he hadn’t seen the last year was, but so far what he was getting was that everybody and their demon knew how Sam got the baby soul inside him. He didn’t exactly have time to dwell on that, though.
“What are you going to do with the soul?” he asked them.
“Use it as a weapon, of course.” Cas looked disappointed that Dean hadn’t figured that much out on his own.
“What do you mean, a weapon?” Sam’s voice was like ice.
“Okay, elementary school metaphysics lesson,” Crowley said. “Soul equals energy. Energy yields power. More energy, more power. So, our buddy here, wants to reneg on our deal to split the souls fifty-fifty -”
“To defeat Raphael,” Cas interrupted.
“To defeat Raphael, and then raise your hand if you think he’ll return my share?” Crowley actually held his hand up and spun around the circle. “No takers then?” He shrugged at Cas. “Sorry, mate, looks like they’re losing their faith in you.”
The sound of a cell phone ringing interrupted their chat. Everybody glanced around for a second before Dean realized it was his and pulled it out. Atropos, Cas, and Crowley all made angry eyes at each other, and he wasn’t sure it was the best time to interrupt the conversation. Then Crowley sighed and said, “Would you just answer it already?”
“Hello?”
“Dean Winchester?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“This is Jody Mills.”
“Who?”
“I’m the sheriff of Sioux Falls. We worked together on that, um, zombie case awhile back?”
Ah, yes, he wouldn’t have recognized her voice or even her name, but Dean certainly could remember tasty delicious pie homemade by one zombie Karen Singer.
“How’d you get this number?” he asked.
“Listen, it’s Bobby,” she said, sounding gravelly serious. “They don’t think he’s going to make it through the night. You should probably get here if you want to say goodbye.”
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