A Womb of His Own - 20/21
Masterpost
The first flight they could make was at 8:30 and didn’t arrive in Sioux Falls until 9:30 the next morning because of a dumb ass stop in Raleigh. Driving would take at least eighteen hours, and that was assuming Dean sped the entire way. And if even if they could get out of Chester, they couldn’t leave the king of hell, a librarian monster, a Machiavellian angel, and thirty-five psychos behind.
“Damn it!” Dean punched one of the boxes, and it gave under his fist. He at least had the minor satisfaction of knowing that something had to bend to his will. “You know who could beam us there in, like, a second? And you know who won’t?”
Cas. It didn’t need to be said aloud.
“Balthazar,” Sam suggested. “He can do it.”
Dean leaned around the aisle to look at the open floor of the loading dock, where the Five Families meeting was still going on over the body of their dead grandfather. “He’s afraid of Cas.”
“So we don’t give him a choice.”
Instead of praying for Balthazar, they decided to summon him. But that meant sneaking out of the warehouse to the car, where their supplies were. And leaving the warehouse meant dealing with the crowd outside. Sam volunteered for the job, and when he came back ten minutes later unscathed, Dean had to ask him how he’d managed it.
“I told them I had rosaries and holy water in here.” Sam held up a bag with a shrug. “Wasn’t a lie, either.”
Five minutes later, Balthazar was back, in a bitchy mood that he’d been forced to return. “It was so nice earlier when you had the courtesy to pray to me. This - this is just rude!”
“Shut up,” Dean ordered. “I don’t have time. Bobby’s in trouble. Can you help him?”
“No,” the angel told him earnestly.
“Can you get us there?”
“You think you’re going to help him?” he scoffed.
“Yes or no, Balthazar,” Sam pushed. “Can you get us there?”
“All right, but -” He stopped and smiled over Sam’s shoulder. “Cassie. How’s it going, love?”
“You betrayed me,” Cas growled. “After I saved your life.”
“I saved yours first!”
“You told Sam and Dean. You betrayed all of heaven.” Cas advanced on him, and Dean got pretty nervous at being in the middle of a wing-on-wing smackdown. Then right as Cas brandished an angel sword, Balthazar reached his hands out and touched Sam and Dean on the forehead.
In the nanosecond before everything blinked out of sight, Dean saw the telltale flash of light that meant a smiting. Balthazar had helped them, and it had cost him his life.
They materialized in a hospital corridor right as that lady sheriff came out of a room. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she was sniffling a little. She recognized them immediately.
“What’s going on?” Sam asked.
“Tom Walker got wind of what’s going on in Chester and remembered the zombie thing. He decided to resurrect his brother.”
“Idiot,” Dean said. Not that resurrecting a dead brother was always a bad thing. Just ninety percent of the time. If your name wasn’t Winchester.
“What happened to him?”
“Brother ate him.”
“All right,” Sam said. “I’ll go - ”
“No, you should get in there. Both of you.” She pointed to the open door to Bobby’s room. “I’ll take care of it. Headshot, right?”
“How do you -”
She cut Dean off with a look. “I might be a local yokel, but I’m not actually stupid. The good news is that Tom was the only one. Nobody else in town seems to know what he was up to. And I haven’t heard about any…feedings yet, other than him. I’ll let you know when it’s taken care of.”
“Be careful,” Sam urged. She nodded.
They pushed past her and into Bobby’s room. He was lying in bed with fifty things connected to various parts of his body. He looked old and weak, worse than he had after the stabbing. Dean had to blink really fast to keep his tears from falling out, and although Sam wasn’t crying, his nose was dripping.
Sam reached for the chart at the foot of the bed.
“What’s it say?”
They were interrupted by a knock at the door. Sam shoved the chart back guiltily while a guy in a lab coat entered. He had salt and pepper hair and a kind face. “Are you Bobby Singer’s nephews?”
“Yes,” Dean told him. “I’m Dean.”
“He has you listed as his next of kin. I’m Dr. Kildare. I’d like to explain what’s going on with Mr. Singer, if this is a good time.”
Dean tried really hard to pay attention to the Dr. Sexy moment, but mostly what he got out of the conversation was that people who’d once had shredded livers shouldn’t go on hunts where they might get thrown into coat racks. There was some other stuff about blood clots or blood loss, but his head was spinning, so he let Sammy handle the dialoguing.
“I don’t understand,” he said when there was a pause. “He was fine. He was walking around and drinking beer. Did you guys release him too early last time?”
“Dean,” Sam said quietly, “it’s not his fault.”
“I know. Just…”
The doctor made a sympathetic smile-frown that they probably taught him in medical school. “A nurse will be in to check on him soon,” he said, excusing himself.
“We gotta call Rufus,” Dean said. “We shouldn’t have left him with that.”
“And we should have left Bobby here?” Sam challenged.
Dean was about to yell at his brother for being selfish, but he saw that Sam was as torn as he was. They’d always known a day like this might come, when they got the call about Bobby, and Dean had always presumed that, since it was the nature of the job, the call would come after the fact. He’d finish whatever he was working on, and then he’d come to take care of the body. Not that he wouldn’t cry, of course, and not that he wouldn’t feel like shit for missing the final hours. But that was what hunting required of you. Now, though, as much as he knew there was a guy in a hospital in Florida who could benefit from him getting his act together, and a battle between heaven and hell in Pennsylvania that demanded his help, he was glad he was here. He put a hand on Bobby’s shoulder.
“Go for Rufus,” the guy said over the phone.
“Calling for an update,” Dean managed to say. “How’s it going there?”
“Yeeaaahh,” Rufus said slowly, the way he would if he was stroking his chin. “Everything’s taken care of.”
“We’ve been gone, like, ten minutes. Do I want to know?”
“No. Not right now. What’s going on there?”
“They don’t think he’s going to make it through the night,” Dean admitted. He waited a second for the lump in his throat to go down so he could speak. “Just thought I’d give you the update.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. “You know, he was just a job. He was Joe Mechanic. Then his wife got possessed, and the poor bastard didn’t know what he was doing. I came in, sent the thing back to hell, helped him clean up. And he - ” Rufus gave a little laugh. “He followed me around like a lost puppy after that. I didn’t even want him to. He just tailed me and laughed at my jokes, and pretty soon we were a team. Kind of like you two chuckleheads.”
“I don’t follow Sam like a lost puppy,” Dean couldn’t help pointing out.
“We have to do something, Dean,” Sam interrupted.
“What do you want me to do?”
“You’re not going to do anything,” Rufus said sharply. “You hear me?”
“You can’t expect us to just let him die.”
“That’s exactly what you’re gonna do.”
“Rufus, it’s Bobby,” Dean whispered. “You’ve already accepted - you just -”
“You want me to make a deal for him? Is that what you want?”
“I want you to do something! If it was Sam - hell, even with Bobby, I’m not just going to accept -”
“He wouldn’t want that, Dean,” Sam interrupted.
“Can you even put two and two together?” Rufus snapped. “I just cleaned up a big mess of what happens when you don’t let the dead stay dead. You want that for Bobby? You think he wants that for himself?”
“No, I -”
“Don’t you question how much I care about him. I’ve known him a lot longer than you.” Rufus sighed. “Let’s all take a breather. Call me when there’s news.”
News, of course, meant when he’s dead.
“Sorry I yelled,” Dean mumbled into the phone before hanging up.
He stewed out in the hallway for a minute, staring at the dingy yellow-white floor which could absolutely not be sanitary enough to be in a hospital. It was unbelievable that the day before he’d been happily gobbling down French fries with Sam, making jokes about pregnancy symptoms and having a kid that was older than him, and now Bobby was going to die.
It was his fault, too. For leaving Bobby’s side when they knew he’d had a serious injury. For leaving Sam alone with him in the first place, when he’d skipped off to play Death for a day. And for letting Sam jump in the cage alone, which had caused him to come back all soulless and ready to kill.
As much as Dean didn’t believe in fate and destiny, he couldn’t help but wonder if this was some kind of karmic revenge. By whom, he didn’t know. But it seemed like something or someone wanted to punish him for everything. For being so fucked up. For being foolish enough to believe he could ever climb out of his own fucked-upness.
“You gonna be okay?” Sam asked quietly.
“No. You?”
“No.” Sam sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Dean, this is all -”
“If you say ‘my fault,’ so help me, god, Sam…”
“I’m the one who stabbed him in the first place.”
“Keep your voice down,” Dean hissed. “It wasn’t you.”
Sam looked at him skeptically. “Wasn’t it? I remember it, Dean. Very clearly.”
The thing about guilt was that it ran in the family.
They stood in silence for a moment. The elevator door opened with a ding and closed with a thunk. A nurse in plastic shoes clomped down the hall and went into a patient’s room. A doctor in a white lab coat came out of another room, took a pen from his breast pocket, clicked it open. He made a scribble on a chart before plopping it on the counter at the central station.
“We have to do something,” Sam pleaded.
“I know.” Dean turned to him and saw that their faces mirrored each other. Tears and pain and disbelief. If they’d have known Dad’s death was coming, it was probably how they would have looked then.
Except they hadn’t known Dad’s death was coming, because everyone was too busy thinking about how Dean was dying. Until Dad traded places.
Thirty minutes later, they were still leaning against the wall outside Bobby’s room when Cas showed up, coming off the elevator as it dinged with a quizzical look on his face.
“I can’t believe you expect my help here, now, after everything.”
“It’s Bobby, Cas,” Dean tried to explain, but it was the first time he’d spoken in a half hour and he didn’t realize how choked up he was until he heard his voice come out all raspy and strained.
“I know about Bobby.”
“Look,” Sam said, “we’re not asking you to help us, okay? We’re asking you to do it for him. He’s always been there for you.”
Cas sighed and squinted. “What Atropos told you earlier - you’ve thwarted destiny so many times, Sam - both of you. You forget that death is the inevitable result of life.”
“Cas,” Sam choked in shock.
“You’ve thwarted death, too,” Dean growled, moving in front of Sam. “We’ve saved your ass more times than I can count.”
“And I’ve saved yours,” Cas shot back. “I’ve defied the forces of heaven and hell for you. I’ve allowed the entire world to fall into a state of chaos because you didn’t want to believe in the destiny my father had chosen for you. And now I’m trying to clean it all up, and at every turn you fight me.”
“Oh, god,” Sam breathed, “Cas, please, please, don’t talk about destiny right now. We just - Cas, can you help us save Bobby or not? Can you heal him?”
“I know a way, mates.”
The three of them turned around to see Crowley standing a few feet away. Under ordinary circumstances, Dean might have said something like, What are you playing, Follow the Leader? But this was not the time.
“Crowley, what are you doing here?” Cas demanded.
“Same thing you are, I believe. Only I’m actually going to tell them the truth.”
“The truth about what?” Dean asked.
“That baby soul,” Crowley said, sparing a gesture at Sam’s abdomen.
“We’re not giving it to you in exchange for Bobby,” Sam interrupted.
Crowley arched an eyebrow at him. “Well, good to know where your priorities stand, but I was going to remind you that souls are little Duracells. You plug them into a body, and it animates. That was what you were planning to do with Brian, weren’t you?” He pivoted and started walking toward the elevator bank.
Sam trotted after him, grabbing his elbow. “Hey, how? How do we do it?”
“You’ll lose the soul,” Crowley warned with a glance at his elbow. Sam removed his hand.
“Don’t listen to him,” Cas insisted. “You can’t trust him.”
“And we’re supposed to trust you?” Dean laughed.
“You’re the ones who called me.”
“Cas -”
“Bobby’s wife is in his heaven.”
It was equal parts tempting and creepy to know that. “The real one, or some heaven simu-date version?”
“Do you have any idea what heaven is doing with souls right now?” Crowley said, voice in full volume. Angels and demons didn’t often have regard for things like freaking the fuck out of ordinary people who happened to overhear their conversations.
“No, actually,” Dean said. “Not a freaking clue. And right now I don’t care. Can you help us put that soul into Bobby or not?”
“Dean, no,” Sam insisted. “It deserves its own chance, and Bobby’ll hate waking up, knowing that’s what happened.”
If Bobby woke up at all, Dean wouldn’t care if they never spoke again. He’d still call it a win.
“How?” he demanded of Crowley.
Crowley waved an index finger, causing Death to materialize right next to him. “You have him finish the job. Only instead of the lovely Brian - by the way, marvelous selection, Sam, definitely embodies the Winchester je ne sais quoi - you have the soul go into Bobby.”
“What’ll happen to them?” Sam asked.
Death and Crowley looked at each other as if to decide who was going to field the question. “The soul is working to reinforce that wall in your mind, isn’t it, Sam?” Death asked. He didn’t need to wait for answer. “It will do the same thing to Bobby’s body and to his mind.”
“And then?” Dean prompted.
“And then they will fuse.”
“How do we know we can trust you?”
Crowley actually smiled. “You can’t. You shouldn’t. But you can trust him.” At the mention Death held up his hands, showing that they were bound together by glimmering shackles.
“This isn’t over,” Cas threatened pointlessly, like he was the one with the affinity for comic books.
Dean looked at the four of them - Crowley, Cas, Death, and the only one who really mattered, Sam. He didn’t understand what had gone wrong with Cas, and Crowley wasn’t trustworthy, since he’d lied to them before. But his first duty was to Sam and the soul.
He rolled up his sleeve and hit the sigil that was still carved on his forearm. There was a blast of light as Cas vanished.
“I’m very tired of being your pawn,” Death said to Crowley with a frown that was pretty impressive for someone in handcuffs.
“I know, but it comes with the job. King of hell, you know. But don’t worry. Once you heal up Bobby, I’ll untie you. Right after I put you back in the ground where you should be.”
“You’re not going to make me march across the land like Lucifer did?”
Crowley grinned. “I think I prefer to save you for a rainy day. Maybe after these two are long dead.”
Death looked appraisingly at Sam and Dean. “They do tend to get in the way of things, don’t they?” He frowned at his shackles. “You know, going to such extreme measures only demonstrates how afraid of me you really are.”
“Eh, well, can you blame me?”
Dean couldn’t help shaking his head because, nope, couldn’t blame anyone for being afraid of Death.
Sam tugged his jacket sleeve. “Are we really going to do this? I mean, what about Brian? What about giving the soul its own chance at life?”
“I know,” Dean said gently, sparing a glance in the direction of Crowley and Death. Sam steered him down the hall so they could talk more privately. “I don’t - but it’s Bobby, Sam.”
“You know how much I wanted to give this soul a chance. It’s been in me for months.”
“I know, I know, it’s your body. It’s your choice.”
“No, not that. Just -” Sam sighed. “It’s your soul, too, okay? We both equally made it. We have to make this decision together. I just mean - I care about it, Dean. I know it sounds stupid, but I do. More than anything.”
He wanted to say that he did, too, and that it scared him. He’d never expected himself to be able to care so much about someone outside his inner circle. He felt humbled and guilty at how much more he cared about that soul than real people in his life.
“Me, too,” he managed.
“But maybe this is the reason why it was made,” Sam said quietly.
“I wish - I wish we had a way to ask it what it wanted. As stupid as it sounds.”
“It’s not stupid. I think it should get a vote, too, you know, but it’s not really able to speak…Wait, maybe it can.” Sam strode over to Death. “Can you touch it and tell me how it feels?”
Death obligingly held his palm over Sam’s chest for a moment. “You’ve managed to impart a sense of loyalty and duty to it. It can’t exactly articulate its desires, but I don’t think you’re foolish to believe it’s best used to help Bobby.”
“Does that mean Bobby’s not on the list for today?” Dean asked.
Death cocked his head. “Dean, if you’d learned anything from our time together, I would hope it’s that the list is not something I can reveal.”
He wondered if Atropos’s notebook was still lying on the floor of that warehouse.
“Will this actually help?” Dean asked. “Can you promise that Bobby will be okay? I don’t want to lose both of them.”
“Apparently you didn’t learn anything about the nature of souls either.”
“What’d he tell you?” Sam asked. “What’d he tell you?”
“That they’re powerful,” Dean remembered. “Resilient.”
“I would do it, boys,” Death said, “but, unfortunately, that soul has not yet fully matured.”
It was as if the air went out of the room. Sam looked hopeless. Dean remembered how that felt - when you thought every option had been exercised, and there was nothing you could do but just let things happen.
“The duck book.”
“What?”
“Fetuses - a baby at twenty-four weeks has a fifty percent chance of survival. Twenty-nine is fifty.” The three others looked at him like he was some kind of idiot savant. “You’re at twenty-nine.”
Sam blinked a few times. “A soul is not -”
“A baby,” Dean finished. “I know. But think about it. Cas and Balthazar both said a soul takes about the same time to mature. Are premature babies born without souls? I’m telling you, if a baby can survive at twenty-nine weeks, so can a soul. Just trust me.” He and Sam locked eyes for a minute, and Sam nodded.
“Do it,” he instructed Death. “He’s right. Do it.” Then to Crowley, “Make him put it in Bobby.”
They ran into Bobby’s room, nearly tumbling against the bed. The look Death gave them said he clearly thought he’d agreed to play tea party with a group of unruly preschoolers. Nonetheless, bound by Crowley and under instructions from Sam that both he and the soul wanted the transfer, Death pulled a small ball of light out of Sam’s chest. Sam screamed so hard his face turned red and veins popped out of his neck. Then Death leaned down to Bobby and pushed the ball of light into him. They waited anxiously.
After a moment Bobby coughed, gasped, and opened his eyes.
“Bobby?” Dean asked.
“That’s our cue,” Crowley said. “Exit stage Crowley.” And then he and Death were gone.
Bobby clawed in the direction of his oxygen mask. Dean took it off for him. “Don’t try to talk,” he warned.
But Bobby just gave him a small smile. “Why not?” he said, his voice totally clear. “I’m fine.”
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