Skies Grown Darker, 4/6 (SPN, Gen)
Title: Skies Grown Darker (Part 4 of 6)
Rating: R
Pairing: Gen
Beta: Thank you to my beloved zooey_glass04, who continues to rock my world. She did an absolutely amazing job beta-reading this, as ever. <3 Thanks for everything, darling! *loves upon*
Notes: Spoilers up to 2.04 only. I disclaim everything.
Summary: Set following 2.04 - Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things. Dean and Sam try to find a way to move on, but some things can't be outrun. Gen.
Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three
Chapter Four
"Okay," Sam said, pushing back from Bobby's old PC and turning to look at his brother. "So let's recap: what do we know?"
Dean's bed had been empty when Sam had woken up that morning. He had found his brother downstairs, poring over the newspaper clippings Bobby had given them, taking notes and sipping absently from a mug of black coffee. Sam considered that rather a worrying sign. It wasn't that Dean was bad at research, but it definitely wasn't his favourite part of their job, so either Dean was really preoccupied with this case or he was trying to distract himself from the aftermath of their last one, and Sam had his suspicions as to which.
He wondered how much sleep Dean had actually gotten last night.
"Right," Dean said, leaning back in his chair. "So. Seventeen of these death notices are for six-month-old kids. They didn't all die at exactly six months, but within a couple of weeks of it, which is the pattern that made Bobby suspicious and made him think of us. For the first six or seven deaths, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is given as the official cause, which is of course medical shorthand for not having a fucking clue. In the later cases, they don't even try to pass that off as the cause of death, I guess because even the doctors couldn't convince themselves it was all a big coincidence at that point. There are a few concerned articles about some kind of possible epidemic, they've run a crib death awareness campaign just to be on the safe side, but the bottom line is they're clueless."
"Six months old. Huh," Sam said, trying not to jump to conclusions based on that alone. After all, it was the kids that were dying, not their mothers. There was no need to get paranoid.
"Seventeen of 'em, yeah," Dean agreed. "But there are six or seven clippings here for slightly older kids, too. Up to about three or four years old. They couldn't put those deaths down to crib death, but they couldn't come up with any alternative, either. The kids were just... dead. And these are just the ones Bobby's run across, dude. Christ knows how many more there've been."
"That's a lot of kids," Sam said quietly.
"Yeah." Dean took another sip of his coffee. "So, what have you turned up?"
"I've been trying to look at death-rate statistics," Sam said. "Of course, they're not available for this year yet, but I managed to find the statistics for last year and I've been comparing them to the reported deaths in the area for this year so far. And they're way up. The infant death rate is through the roof. But it's not just infants. All age groups are up, as far as I can tell, though the biggest spike is for infants and young children. Unexpected, unexplained deaths, no obvious cause. For the adults it's mostly just ascribed to sudden heart failure, even though these were previously healthy people."
"So, not just kids," Dean muttered, setting down his pen. "OK, so what do we know that could be causing something like this? Because it sure as hell ain't something natural, Bobby's right about that."
Sam bit his lip, thinking. "Well, I had been wondering if it might be another shtriga..." He tailed off, wincing slightly as Dean went rigid, but his brother seemed to recover fairly quickly from whatever memories that reference had dragged up.
"Nope, doesn't fit. Shtrigas only go after kids. And the kids slide into comas first, like we saw in Fitchburg, remember? They don't just drop dead. No, it's not a shtriga."
"Then what?" Sam wondered aloud.
Dean groaned and rested his head on the table. "Just go ahead and say it, Sam."
"...Say what?" Sam asked cautiously.
"Just say it!" Dean said. "Oh, come on, man, don't force me to be the one to say it."
"Dean, what the hell are you talking about?" Sam was genuinely bewildered.
"Fine," Dean grumbled, sounding very put upon. "You want me to say it? I'll fucking say it. Sam, I think we need to do some more research."
Sam stared at his brother for a long moment and then burst out laughing.
~*~
They wound up driving across the state line to go to a library in Missouri, since the majority of the deaths had occurred there. Dean had headed straight for the driver's side of the car, and Sam had hesitated for a moment, but in the end said nothing. Dean still looked tired, and Sam had his suspicions about how much sleep his brother had got the previous night, but in general Dean seemed more aware of the world around him at the moment. And there was nothing to be gained by pissing Dean off with unnecessary fussing.
Sam straightened up at the computer he'd been working at, staring at the screen, and then looked across to where his brother was bent over a map. Dean looked up almost immediately and caught his eye, then abandoned his notes and came over when Sam beckoned. "What you found, Sam?"
"Another death," Sam said, shifting to the side to let Dean look at the screen. "Last night."
Dean scanned the article on the local newspaper's website. "Thomas Harker... twenty-four years old... dead on arrival at hospital... unknown cause of death... suspected heart failure. Yeah, looks like he fits our pattern, all right."
"He worked at a warehouse near here," Sam said, highlighting a couple of lines with the mouse. "That's where he collapsed."
"Sounds like it's worth checking out," Dean agreed, already heading back to grab his notes. "Let's go."
The warehouse wasn't too difficult to find. They passed themselves off as friends of the deceased's, although they almost gave themselves away when Dean referred to the guy as "Tommy" and it turned out he'd refused to let anyone call him that. But with a lot of charm and fast-talking, they managed to snatch a few minutes alone in the storeroom where Harker had collapsed.
"Oh yeah," Dean muttered as the EMF meter's lights flared. "Something definitely happened here."
Sam was inspecting the room for any clues. "But what would do this? And why Harker?"
"Why any of them?" Dean answered. "There've been too many deaths for whatever's causing it to be all that specialised in its choice of victims. What have any of them got in common?"
Sam heaved a frustrated sigh and moved away from the wall he'd been studying. "There's nothing to find here, man. Maybe we should go talk to the doctors at the hospital?"
"You honestly think they're gonna know any more than we do?" Dean asked. "Hell, I'd say we're at least a couple of steps ahead of them already."
"No, of course I don't think they're going to know what's really going on," Sam said. "But they might be able to give us a bit more information about the deaths."
Dean slipped the EMF meter back into his pocket. "Yeah, fine, I guess we might as well. And after that we should probably carry on looking into the other victims. There's got to be something we're not seeing."
They left the storeroom and Sam thanked the manager they'd spoken to earlier, who seemed willing to set aside his suspicions about them now that they were leaving.
"Or we could check out the college first," Dean suggested, as they wound their way among the stacks of crates towards the exit. "The manager said he was studying just down the road from here, closer than the hos-"
He broke off suddenly, and Sam turned to see why -
- and was caught completely off-guard by the sight of a heavy metal crate overbalancing, about to crash straight into his brother.
Sam didn't even have time to think, let alone curse: he simply ploughed into Dean, sending them both to the floor, rolling them away from the crate, which hit the ground with a sickening crash.
Breathing hard as the adrenaline burned through him, Sam raised his head and looked across at the crate. God, if that had hit Dean's head, he'd have been killed.
"Jesus, Dean," he whispered, gazing down at his brother.
Dean had ended up beneath him as they'd rolled, but was now pushing Sam off him abruptly, sitting up and staring not at the crate on the floor, but the top of the pile it had fallen from.
"Dean?" Sam asked, getting to his knees, looking from his brother to the place Dean was staring at.
Around them, people were shouting and running in their direction.
Dean was still staring at the pile of crates.
"Dean," Sam said, more urgently, starting to get worried now.
His brother's head snapped around as if he'd only just realised Sam was speaking.
"Dude, you okay?" Sam asked.
"Yeah," Dean said, though he still sounded distracted.
Then the manager and the workers were on them, pulling them to their feet and anxiously enquiring whether they were all right.
"I don't understand it!" the manager was saying, shaking his head. "We have strict safety precautions - that crate shouldn't have been able to topple over like that. Are either of you hurt?"
"We're fine," Dean said, not quite politely. "Thanks again for taking the time to answer our questions, but we really have to be going."
He was off and moving almost before he'd finished speaking, leaving Sam to accept the manager's apologies and smooth things over before he hastened after him.
Dean had reached the street before Sam managed to catch up, and was walking quickly towards the Impala.
"Dean?" Sam asked again. "Dean, what happened?"
"You were there, Sam, you saw it as well as I did. Probably better, actually." Dean didn't seem inclined to slow his pace or look at him.
"Better?" Sam frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Dean reached the car and gave an aggravated sigh as he dug in his pockets for the keys. "Nothing, forget about it."
"Oh no, no way," Sam said, keeping a tight grip on his temper. "Talk to me, Dean. What -"
"Look," Dean said flatly. "If you must know, I think the memories... distorted things for me for a moment again. That's all. Like I said, you probably got a clearer view of what was going on than me."
Sam bit his lower lip, watching his brother closely, but snapped out of it when Dean took the keys out of his pocket. "Pass them here."
For a moment, Sam thought Dean was about to argue, despite what he'd just admitted, but evidently Dean thought the better of it, because he just rolled his eyes and tossed the keys to Sam.
"So," Sam said in a conversational tone as he climbed behind the wheel, even though his mind was racing, "you feel like telling me now how much sleep you got last night?"
Dean groaned. "You're just not going to let this go, are you, Sam?"
"The memories are still overwhelming you too much," Sam said, keeping his tone as reasonable as possible. "That crate would have killed you if it had landed on you, Dean, and you weren't exactly jumping out of the way."
"Look, I was distracted for a moment," Dean said angrily. "Just one goddamn moment, Sam. Drop it, okay?"
Sam shook his head. "I think we should call it a day, Dean, head back to Bobby's, let you get some sleep."
Dean turned to stare at him, his face incredulous. "You have got to be fucking kidding me, Sam." When Sam met his gaze evenly, Dean exploded. "Sam, there are people dying out here! If you think we're heading back to Bobby's so I can take a fucking nap instead of finding out what the hell is going on, you're crazy."
"Dean, if you're too tired to -"
"I'm not!" Dean interrupted. "Jesus Christ, I've been feeling fine up until now. Look, Sam, we've got a job to do, here. Let's at least check out the college, okay? I don't think we'd get much from talking to the doctors anyway, so we can skip the hospital if you feel that strongly about it, but the guy's dorm is right here in the neighbourhood. There's no point in heading back to Bobby's without at least checking it out."
Sam threw up his hands in surrender and started the car. "Fine, Dean, we'll play it your way. But after the college, we're grabbing some dinner and heading back to Bobby's, and then you are going to get some sleep."
He could see his brother grit his teeth to keep from exploding again at his tone, but Sam had had just about enough of all this.
The short drive took place in icy silence.
~*~
Thomas Harker's college dorm was like just about every other one Dean had ever visited. They managed to talk to Harker's roommate with only a few minor difficulties, but he'd been unable to offer any useful information. Harker hadn't suffered from any diseases or heart conditions as far as his roommate knew; in fact, he'd been very healthy and a member of the college track team. Sam had distracted the roommate with sympathetic questions while Dean took a closer look around the apartment, but he'd found nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that explained why this guy might have become a target for...
Stop jumping to conclusions, Dean. It was just the memories getting the better of you again.
Of course it was. But still, for just a moment, he could have sworn he'd seen...
"Well, thank you for your time," Sam was saying, and Dean snapped back to the here and now, because his brother was acting like enough of a royal pain in the ass without Dean giving him something to go on by spacing out again.
They extricated themselves smoothly, and headed back down the stairs and into the street without looking at each other.
"Nothing?" Sam asked finally, breaking the awkward silence.
"Nothing," Dean confirmed. "I don't know, Sam." He started out onto the road, heading towards the Impala; Sam lagged behind, turning back for one last look at the apartment building. "I'm starting to think -"
He never even saw the car racing around the corner before it hit him.
~*~
For a seemingly unending moment Dean felt as though he was hanging in the air while the world flashed past him, twisted and confused, but then he crashed into the ground with a smash that he felt right through to his bones.
Then the pain hit, and the world went grey and hazy as he struggled to breathe.
The first thing he was aware of, when the world started coming back into some kind of focus again, was Sam's voice. For a long moment he couldn't make out words, only the tone, but the tone said enough: fear, fury, determination, with panic threaded underneath. Dean knew the tone well, knew it from every time he'd thought he was losing Sam, every time he'd ordered and yelled and begged him to hold on, Sammy, don't you dare die on me.
That was probably a sign that he was in trouble.
"- Dean, do you hear me? Hold on, it's going to be okay... oh God." The words started to make sense, taking shape out of the buzzing in Dean's head, and he heard himself moan.
"Oh, Jesus. Dean. Dean, can you hear me?"
Dean blinked and slowly Sam's face swam into focus. Sam looked horribly pale, his eyes bright with tears, and Christ, but Dean hated seeing Sam hurting that much.
"Sammy," he murmured, and forced another shaky breath as hope sparked in his brother's eyes.
Then Dean shifted his gaze slightly, trying to take in their surroundings and figure out exactly what had happened, and saw her.
She was standing a few metres behind Sam, dark hair as immaculate as when he'd last seen her, her face as uncannily placid as he remembered.
"Tessa," Dean whispered.
She smiled almost imperceptibly. "Hi, Dean."
"...Tessa?" Sam asked, and Dean could almost hear the click as his brother figured it out. "The Reaper? She's here? She's - no! No, you stay the hell away from him!"
"I don't think your brother likes me," Tessa observed serenely, walking slowly forward, skirting around Sam, who was looking around wildly as if hoping to see her and find a target.
"Well, you are... trying to... kill me," Dean managed to force out, his voice still barely above a whisper.
"I thought 'Don't Fear the Reaper' was part of your philosophy," Tessa said, kneeling beside him, reaching out to touch one hand gently to his face.
"If this is where you... ask me to take your hand... you can think again... Hate flying," Dean gasped out.
She smiled at him properly. "Cute."
It was strange, but the touch of her hand against his cheek was slowly bringing the world into sharper focus. The pain was fading and it was getting easier to breathe. Dean couldn't figure out if that was a good sign or a really, really bad one.
Sam tried to punch her, having apparently pinpointed her location from where Dean was looking, but his fist passed right through her as if she weren't there. "Damn you, leave him alone! You can't have him!"
"Tell him to stop, Dean," Tessa said, unruffled. "Hitting girls is never nice. Especially when I'm trying to help. You were dying too fast, and we need to talk."
"Dying too fast?!" Dean repeated, and was caught off-guard by how much stronger his voice was. "Not to seem ungrateful, but it's your fault I'm dying at all, isn't it? I thought I was seeing things when I saw you standing on top of all those crates."
"That was her? With the crates at the warehouse?" Sam asked. "Oh god, she's after you again? Like in the hospital?"
"Yeah, I'm thinking she wasn't entirely on board with the deal Dad made," Dean said through gritted teeth.
Tessa took her hand away from his face, and Dean braced himself for the pain to rush back in, but it was muted now, bearable.
"I didn't approve," Tessa agreed. "Or wouldn't have, if I'd had any input. But the exchange was made, the scales were balanced. Trying to undo it now would cause far more damage. I'm not here to kill you, Dean."
"No?" Dean asked sarcastically. "Because I appreciate you killing the pain, but from where I'm lying, it still looks like you're trying to kill me too."
"I'm starting to think you don't want to talk to me, you know. That could really hurt a girl's feelings." She carried on before Dean could point out that she wasn't really a girl. "I've been trying to reach out to you in your dreams, but your subconscious kept getting in the way, and you never remembered them when you woke up. So once you came back within my reach, I had to take more direct measures. You can only see me when you're dying. But as I said, I've slowed the process down, so we have a few minutes."
Dean swore, remembering the dreams he had written off as his subconscious trying to remind him of his father's deal. Goddamn, if he'd only paid a bit more attention to them when the ritual had brought his memories back...
"Dean?" Sam asked immediately, his voice alarmed.
"It's okay, Sammy," Dean reassured him automatically. "Apparently she just wants to talk to me." He was careful to omit the dying part, because he was pretty sure that Sam was on the verge of flying apart as it was. "So what d'you want, Tessa? Because honestly, it's Sammy here who's the big talker, not me."
Tessa stared at him intently. "I need your help, Dean."
"My help? You're a -"
"It's still in me."
Dean's mouth snapped shut and he stared at her, noticing for the first time the hint of fear in her eyes. "It's still... All this time." Then, in sudden comprehension, "That's what's been killing all these people."
Tessa actually flinched. "I can fight it off, overcome it, for short periods of time, but I can't cast the demon out. I can't get free. I need your help, Dean."
"That son of a bitch," Dean breathed, staring at her, feeling his heart start to pound at the thought. "Why? Why is it doing this?"
"Demons tend not to believe in making sacrifices," Tessa said, mouth twisting bitterly. "And no Reaper would make a deal with them even if they did. So it's taking what it wants by force."
"Damn it, stop this!" Sam yelled, taking another swing that went right through Tessa. "Enough of the goddamn talking or whatever, if you think I'm just going to sit here and watch my brother die - I mean it, get the hell away from him, right now!"
Dean was about to try to reassure Sam again, but found himself suddenly struggling to draw enough breath to do so. And his heart was pounding even harder, as if he'd been sprinting uphill.
"Time's up, for both of us," Tessa said, her serene composure almost entirely intact again. "I can't keep it locked away for much longer. But I'll find you again, Dean."
She reached forward and slid her hand through his hair and down to cradle his jaw, and Dean cried out as the world around him turned strange and slid back out of focus for several dizzying moments.
When his head cleared and he managed to open his eyes, he barely had time to marvel at how good it felt to draw a normal breath before Sam seized him and pulled him into a suffocatingly tight hug. Dean gasped for air again, then clapped his brother reassuringly on the back, deciding to save the teasing until later. After all, he conceded, he'd been known to have a girly moment or two himself when Sam came that close to...
He shook off that thought and pulled back from his brother's embrace. "I'm all right, Sammy."
"Jesus, Dean." Sam's voice was hoarse and his cheeks were tearstained. "You... Fuck. Is she gone? Let's get you to the hospital."
"I think she's gone," Dean said, glancing around. In truth, he couldn't be certain: now that he was no longer dying, he wouldn't be able to see her even if she was still right there. But given what she'd said about the demon, he suspected she would probably head as far away from them as she could before she lost control of it.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He took another blessedly deep breath and forced down panic. They would figure out what to do. In the meantime, he had better calm Sammy down before he had a heart attack. "I don't need to go to the hospital, Sam. She healed me. I'm fine. Come on, let's just go back to Bobby's." Because Christ, the hospital was the very last place he wanted to visit right then.
"Damn it, Dean, you were dying!" Sam's voice cracked on the word, and he swiped at his cheeks with the back of one hand. "And you want to just -"
"Sam," Dean cut in. "I'm fine now. I swear to god. But I do think we should get the hell out of here. Come on." He began to get to his feet, and Sam scrambled to help him. "Gimme the keys."
Sam stared at him for a moment, apparently stricken speechless, then wordlessly helped Dean across the road and forced him into the passenger seat. Dean thought about protesting, but the expression on Sam's face convinced him to stay silent.
Sam started the car and pulled away from the kerb.
Dean tried hard not to look at the bloodstain at the side of the road as they drove past.
~*~
Dean cradled his cup of coffee with both hands and stared down at it rather than watch Sam pacing back and forth across Bobby's tiny guest bedroom.
Sam had driven all the way back, white knuckles clenched on the steering wheel, without saying a single word. Dean hadn't known whether to be grateful for the chance to get his shit together before they plunged into Talking About It, or wish that Sam would just start yelling or throwing punches and get it out of his system.
Dean had showered and changed his clothes while Sam had made coffee; neither of them had eaten, but neither had any appetite left after the evening's events. Eventually there had been no putting it off any longer, and Dean had, reluctantly, filled Sam in on what Tessa had told him. Now Dean was staring into his coffee and bracing himself for the explosion.
"The yellow-eyed demon," Sam said finally. "The demon. Is possessing her. And has been killing all these people."
Dean just nodded.
Sam paused in his pacing and swung round to face his brother. "And she decided to just kill you so she could tell you all of this."
"You know as well as I do, Sam, you can only see a Reaper if it's coming at you," Dean said wearily. "Other than dreams, out-of-body experiences, that sort of thing. The dreams didn't get through to me, so she had to try something else."
"She almost killed you," Sam said heatedly, clearly still stuck on that point. "Dean, you almost died."
"But she healed me," Dean pointed out. "She was never going to let me actually die, Sam." Probably.
Sam shook his head, almost despairing. "There had to have been a better way to handle the situation than to try to kill you, Dean!"
"Well, she is a Reaper," Dean said dryly, starting to tire of Sam's hysteria. "Death's kind of their thing, you know."
"It's not funny, Dean," Sam said flatly, jaw clenched in a way that was far too familiar. "And why go after you? Why not... hell, I don't know. Bobby, I guess? What would she have done if we hadn't come back here?"
"She wasn't going after me, Sam, she was asking for our help," Dean said, trying to keep a tight leash on his temper. "Why the hell would you think she should go to Bobby? It's not like he knows her or who she is -"
"What she is," Sam muttered.
Dean ignored him. "- and it's not like he knows what happened at the hospital. Would he have even believed her? It makes sense that she'd come to me." He pushed off the bed; he was exhausted, but this conversation was rapidly veering towards territory he couldn't handle while sitting still. "Damnit, it's because of me that this is happening to her, that all of this is happening." It's because of me that all these people are dying.
"What?" Sam turned sharply in Dean's direction, but Dean was already at the other side of the room, staring unseeing out of the window. "Dean, this - this isn't your fault. This -"
"It possessed her to bring me back," Dean said, making damn sure his voice was stripped of all emotion. "I'm the reason this is happening, Sam, no matter how you try to sugarcoat it."
"Dean," Sam said. He sounded appalled. "Dean, it's not your fault! You didn't -"
"Don't, Sam," Dean said wearily. Christ, he was tired. "Look, let's stay focused, here. People are dying. What's the bastard trying to do? Why's it possessing her to kill people? Because, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here, but it's seemed pretty damn capable of doing that all by itself, right? So what the hell is it up to?"
He turned back to face Sam; the expression on his brother's face let him know that his attempt to shift the discussion had not gone unnoticed, and that although Sam was going to go along with it for the moment - because Dean was right, and they both knew it: people were dying - he would undoubtedly bring it up again as soon as Dean let his guard down an inch.
"I don't know," Sam admitted. "You're right, it doesn't make much sense. What exactly did she say?"
"She said that demons don't tend to believe in making sacrifices," Dean said, remembering. "And that no Reaper would make a deal with them even if they did. So it's taking what it wants by force." He frowned. Something about that was ringing a bell...
Sam was frowning too and biting his lower lip in uncertainty. Dean watched him hesitate for a moment, and was suddenly, coldly angry at the realisation that Sam was trying to figure out a way to say something while sparing his feelings.
"Just spit it out, Sam," he said, a little sharper than he'd intended.
Concern flickered in Sam's eyes. "No, I was just... I mean, she said that she wasn't after you, right? Earlier, you said she told you the scales were balanced or something. Right?"
"Yeah," Dean agreed warily.
Sam heaved a sigh of relief, sinking down to sit on one of the beds. "Good. I just... never mind. That's good."
"What?" Dean demanded. "Damnit, Sam, just tell me."
"No, no, it's just..." Sam waved one hand. "It just occurred to me that this... the deaths... they could have been part of the... well, the price." Catching sight of Dean's expression, he went on hurriedly, "But it was just a thought, and judging by what she said, it's not possible. Forget I mentioned it, okay? I just wanted to be sure."
Dean turned away abruptly to face the window again, feeling sick. Either way, this was his fault, but that idea...
"He wouldn't have agreed to that," he said after a moment, his voice rough. "He would never have agreed to sacrifice those people. That's not it."
He preferred not to be able to see Sam's expression at that moment, because no matter how Sam reacted, it would be painful. Instead, he forced himself to change the topic again. "So. What the hell does it want? Because we've already established that it doesn't need to possess Tessa to kill people."
"Well," Sam said in the tone Dean thought of as 'Sam's lightbulb voice', "Reapers give and take life, right? That's what they do. So if the demon isn't possessing her in order to kill..."
"It has to be wanting to... give life," Dean finished, frowning and turning to meet his brother's gaze. "It's logical, except... not. It's a demon, Sam."
"Yeah, not exactly renowned for their warm and fuzzy family feelings and chick-flick moments, I know," Sam agreed, looking equally baffled. "But I don't know, Dean, I got nothing else. It can't be doing this in order to kill, so it has to be trying to give life, as little sense as it makes."
"Family feelings," Dean whispered slowly, his mind whirling. "That's it. Jesus, I don't believe it."
"Wait, what?" Sam demanded. "What are you talking about?"
"You remember the cabin?" Dean asked, speaking rapidly now, the words tumbling over each other as they tried to keep pace with how quickly his mind was working. "You remember what the demon said when it was in my face? It said I killed its children. Meg - the demon in Meg - and the guy in the alley, the one I shot with the Colt - it said they were its children."
"Holy shit," Sam said. "It's trying to resurrect them. That's it. There has to be a sacrifice -"
"- And demons aren't into sacrificing themselves," Dean continued. "So it's killing others instead, to balance the scales -"
"- To serve as the sacrifice, to provide the life needed to resurrect its children," Sam agreed. "And that's why it's been killing so many people, too. Its children aren't just dying, they're actually dead, that's got to make them much harder to bring back, right?"
"And the guy in the alley, I killed him with the Colt," Dean said, feeling slightly dazed by the realisation. "I'm guessing it's got to take a hell of a lot of power to overcome that."
"Plus, demons, not humans," Sam added. "That probably makes a difference, too."
"Jesus," Dean said, pacing across the room now. "Okay, so it's already killed fuck knows how many people. And we don't know exactly how many it needs to kill to 'balance the scales' or whatever. It's gotta be close by now. And Tessa can't stop it."
"We have to stop it," Sam said, a touch wildly. "We need to find a way to stop it from killing more people."
"And get it out of her," Dean added.
"And kill it," Sam finished.
Dean exhaled slowly and came to sit down on one of the beds, facing Sam. "Well, fuck."
~*~
Dean had wanted to start looking for a way to deal with everything immediately, but Sam had put his foot down very firmly. Dean might be determined to just ignore the whole thing and pretend it had never happened, but Sam couldn't forget how close his brother had come to dying that evening. He kept seeing it in his mind, playing on a permanent loop: the car slamming into Dean, his brother flying through the air and crashing to the ground, the horrible rasp as he fought for breath, the blood spreading across the road...
And no matter how good a front Dean put up, Sam knew he was exhausted. He'd been tired even before the whole near-death experience, and Sam was fairly certain that had taken its toll too, despite the fact that the Reaper had healed him. Nonetheless, persuading Dean to get some sleep had been a trial, and Sam had been forced to agree to them grabbing just a few hours and then getting up early to start researching.
It wasn't that Sam wasn't desperate to get started too - he wanted to find a way to kill the demon so badly that he could almost taste it - but watching Dean slipping away from him that evening had terrified him, had dragged up the memories of the hospital, when he'd thought he was losing his brother forever.
It had taken Sam a long time to fall asleep, and the images haunted his dreams.
They'd got up before five o'clock and huddled downstairs with cups of coffee while discussing the options.
"The first thing we'll need is some way to bind the Reaper and the demon," Sam said thoughtfully.
Dean jerked his head meaningfully towards the ceiling. "The Key of Solomon worked pretty well on its kid. Think it'd hold Daddy Demon too?"
Sam pursed his lips. "It might, I guess. We could ask Bobby. It's a very old and powerful symbol, so... We'd have to take other precautions too, but it could be part of the solution. That still leaves us with the question of how to bind a Reaper, though."
"Do we need to bind her?" Dean asked. "I mean, it's the demon we want to trap, not her. There's no way we can just bind it?"
Sam exhaled sharply. "It's possessing her, Dean. It's inside her and it's using her. We need to bind them both until we can get it out of her, or there's too high a risk that we'll lose it."
Dean nodded in acceptance, although the way he rubbed his cheek told Sam that he wasn't entirely happy with the idea.
Despite the fact that she'd tried to kill him the previous evening.
"Wait," Dean said suddenly. "Hey, d'you remember Sue Ann LeGrange?"
"Of course I -" Sam stopped short. "Dean. No."
"There was a binding spell for a Reaper in that book," Dean said doggedly. "And we know it worked."
"Dean, that was dark magic! Evil!" Sam was feeling slightly sick just at the memory of the dark altar in Sue Ann's basement; the skull, the blood... "It involved murder, Dean. There's no way we could do anything like that. Besides, we burned the book."
"The book isn't an issue," Dean said dismissively. "I'm not saying I want us to go around killing people for the altar, but -"
"Of course the book would be an issue," Sam argued. "We wouldn't have a clue what we were getting ourselves into or what to do otherwise. But it's irrelevant, because -"
"Sam, trust me, we wouldn't need the book," Dean said with an irritated sigh. "Dude, right now I can quote from newspaper articles I glanced over when I was, like, ten, okay? I looked over the ritual at the time, I can write the whole thing down, word for word, if need be."
Sam stared at him. "I thought you said the memories were getting better."
"They are," Dean said nonchalantly. "They're not quite as... overwhelming, now. Doesn't mean they're gone, though. I can still remember things really vividly when I think of them. We should seriously have gone to Vegas, man, I reckon I could make a fortune at -"
"Dean, don't," Sam said, almost desperately. "This isn't funny."
Dean's expression hardened. "You see me laughing, Sammy? Look, don't freak over it, okay? It is much better, I promise. I've just... got a super-charged memory at the moment. And if that means we can use that binding spell, then we can consider ourselves lucky."
"You didn't see the altar, Dean," Sam said, focusing on the aspect of the conversation where he thought he stood a chance of making some headway. "There was some seriously dark magic involved. And I only glanced over the spell, but it definitely involved a murder. There's no way we can mess with something like that."
"Might be a way to fudge that part," Dean said stubbornly. "Let's at least keep it in mind, okay? So, bind the demon, bind Tessa. Then, what, exorcise it?"
Sam grimaced. "Holy water didn't do a damn thing to it back at the cabin. I mean, we could try; say, use that exorcism we worked on that demon on the plane, force it out of her and try to banish it back to hell."
"But holy water worked on that demon," Dean pointed out. "I gotta say it, Sam, I don't think that'll be good enough for this bastard. And I'd kinda like something a bit surer than a wing and a prayer if we try to take it out, personally."
"What we really need is the Colt," Sam muttered. Then a thought struck him. "Hey. You think there's a chance we could find it?"
Dean looked startled for a moment before his face took on the guarded expression that Sam hated. "Sam, I'm pretty sure Dad..."
"No, I get that," Sam said hurriedly, not wanting Dean to have to say the words. He could still remember all too well Dean finally breaking down, the way he'd felt about that exchange. What's dead should stay dead. Sam never wanted to see that look on his brother's face again. "But if the demon's still here, still possessing the Reaper - maybe the Colt is still here too?"
"What, you think it's just lying around at the hospital somewhere?"
Sam shrugged. "Well, it might be?"
Somewhat to Sam's surprise, Dean didn't shoot down the idea out of hand. "Maybe. I think you're right, the demon hasn't left here since, so it's not impossible. But it's a demon, Sam. It could have found some way to destroy it. And even if the Colt is there, it's a pretty safe bet it's well hidden and well protected."
"You got any better ideas?" Sam asked bluntly. "It's the only thing we know of that will kill this thing, Dean. I'm not saying finding it will be easy, but we've got to try."
Dean nodded, though he still didn't look entirely convinced. "Let's try to figure out the rest of it first, okay? We can start going through the journal and Bobby's books, look online too. How about you concentrate on ways to bind the demon and drive it out of her, and I'll work on how we're going to bind her."
"Sounds like a plan," Sam said.
He started off with one stack of Bobby's books, while Dean settled down across the room with another stack. Demons were one of the things Bobby had specialised in over the years, and he had a lot of amazing information in his books. Sam was half-hoping that they would be able to spend an extra day there, once this was all over, so he could go through some of them and take some notes.
But then he stumbled across some sigils that looked as though they could be powerful enough to be useful, and forgot everything else as he snapped into research mode.
When he glanced up an hour later to check on Dean's progress, he couldn't help but roll his eyes and smile at the sight of his brother sound asleep, his head pillowed on his arms resting on the table. And while normally Sam would have smacked Dean upside the head and told him to get back to work, his brother could definitely use the rest. So, shaking his head slightly, Sam turned back to his research.
~*~
"Dean."
He crossed the room to sit down beside her on the hospital bed. "Tessa."
She smiled at him, but her usual unnatural serenity seemed marred. "I think your subconscious might let me through more, now that you know this is real. And your memory is overactive enough at the moment to remember your dreams when you wake."
"Well, that's good," Dean said, without paying much attention. "We think we figured out what it's trying to do. It's trying to bring back its children, isn't it? The ones I killed?"
"Yes," Tessa said softly. "It's taking lives that shouldn't be taken, ending them before they are due to end. It's stealing lives without balancing the scales. It's almost killed enough to allow it to tip the balance and bring back one of its children, now... You might want to avoid watching the news when you wake up, Dean. It knew I'd spoken to you, although I was able to prevent it from overhearing what we said. It's not holding back now."
"Son of a bitch," Dean muttered, getting back up off the bed and pacing across the hospital room. "So we gotta move fast."
"Very fast," Tessa agreed. "It's getting stronger and I'm... growing weaker. I won't be able to restrain it at all, soon."
Something in her voice made him turn. "It's hurting you." Dean wondered why that had never even occurred to him until now: he supposed he'd somehow assumed Reapers did not feel pain.
Tessa met his gaze, appearing almost calm despite the topic. "We thrive on the balance. When that is disrupted, we feel pain, yes."
Dean gritted his teeth and stepped closer to her. "Sam and I, we're looking into ways to trap the bastard and force it out of you. We're going to help you."
She smiled at him. "No, Dean. We're going to help each other."
He stared at her. "Okay, call me paranoid, but since you almost killed me last night, you mind telling me exactly what 'helping' means here?"
Tessa chuckled softly at his discomfort, before her smile turned dangerous. "Can you and your brother free me from the demon?"
"Well, we're still working on the details," Dean admitted, "but we've a few ideas on how to maybe do it, yeah. Why?"
"Because if you can," Tessa said, her normally gentle voice now steely, "I can kill the demon."
~*~
Chapter Five
Rating: R
Pairing: Gen
Beta: Thank you to my beloved zooey_glass04, who continues to rock my world. She did an absolutely amazing job beta-reading this, as ever. <3 Thanks for everything, darling! *loves upon*
Notes: Spoilers up to 2.04 only. I disclaim everything.
Summary: Set following 2.04 - Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things. Dean and Sam try to find a way to move on, but some things can't be outrun. Gen.
Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three
Chapter Four
"Okay," Sam said, pushing back from Bobby's old PC and turning to look at his brother. "So let's recap: what do we know?"
Dean's bed had been empty when Sam had woken up that morning. He had found his brother downstairs, poring over the newspaper clippings Bobby had given them, taking notes and sipping absently from a mug of black coffee. Sam considered that rather a worrying sign. It wasn't that Dean was bad at research, but it definitely wasn't his favourite part of their job, so either Dean was really preoccupied with this case or he was trying to distract himself from the aftermath of their last one, and Sam had his suspicions as to which.
He wondered how much sleep Dean had actually gotten last night.
"Right," Dean said, leaning back in his chair. "So. Seventeen of these death notices are for six-month-old kids. They didn't all die at exactly six months, but within a couple of weeks of it, which is the pattern that made Bobby suspicious and made him think of us. For the first six or seven deaths, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is given as the official cause, which is of course medical shorthand for not having a fucking clue. In the later cases, they don't even try to pass that off as the cause of death, I guess because even the doctors couldn't convince themselves it was all a big coincidence at that point. There are a few concerned articles about some kind of possible epidemic, they've run a crib death awareness campaign just to be on the safe side, but the bottom line is they're clueless."
"Six months old. Huh," Sam said, trying not to jump to conclusions based on that alone. After all, it was the kids that were dying, not their mothers. There was no need to get paranoid.
"Seventeen of 'em, yeah," Dean agreed. "But there are six or seven clippings here for slightly older kids, too. Up to about three or four years old. They couldn't put those deaths down to crib death, but they couldn't come up with any alternative, either. The kids were just... dead. And these are just the ones Bobby's run across, dude. Christ knows how many more there've been."
"That's a lot of kids," Sam said quietly.
"Yeah." Dean took another sip of his coffee. "So, what have you turned up?"
"I've been trying to look at death-rate statistics," Sam said. "Of course, they're not available for this year yet, but I managed to find the statistics for last year and I've been comparing them to the reported deaths in the area for this year so far. And they're way up. The infant death rate is through the roof. But it's not just infants. All age groups are up, as far as I can tell, though the biggest spike is for infants and young children. Unexpected, unexplained deaths, no obvious cause. For the adults it's mostly just ascribed to sudden heart failure, even though these were previously healthy people."
"So, not just kids," Dean muttered, setting down his pen. "OK, so what do we know that could be causing something like this? Because it sure as hell ain't something natural, Bobby's right about that."
Sam bit his lip, thinking. "Well, I had been wondering if it might be another shtriga..." He tailed off, wincing slightly as Dean went rigid, but his brother seemed to recover fairly quickly from whatever memories that reference had dragged up.
"Nope, doesn't fit. Shtrigas only go after kids. And the kids slide into comas first, like we saw in Fitchburg, remember? They don't just drop dead. No, it's not a shtriga."
"Then what?" Sam wondered aloud.
Dean groaned and rested his head on the table. "Just go ahead and say it, Sam."
"...Say what?" Sam asked cautiously.
"Just say it!" Dean said. "Oh, come on, man, don't force me to be the one to say it."
"Dean, what the hell are you talking about?" Sam was genuinely bewildered.
"Fine," Dean grumbled, sounding very put upon. "You want me to say it? I'll fucking say it. Sam, I think we need to do some more research."
Sam stared at his brother for a long moment and then burst out laughing.
~*~
They wound up driving across the state line to go to a library in Missouri, since the majority of the deaths had occurred there. Dean had headed straight for the driver's side of the car, and Sam had hesitated for a moment, but in the end said nothing. Dean still looked tired, and Sam had his suspicions about how much sleep his brother had got the previous night, but in general Dean seemed more aware of the world around him at the moment. And there was nothing to be gained by pissing Dean off with unnecessary fussing.
Sam straightened up at the computer he'd been working at, staring at the screen, and then looked across to where his brother was bent over a map. Dean looked up almost immediately and caught his eye, then abandoned his notes and came over when Sam beckoned. "What you found, Sam?"
"Another death," Sam said, shifting to the side to let Dean look at the screen. "Last night."
Dean scanned the article on the local newspaper's website. "Thomas Harker... twenty-four years old... dead on arrival at hospital... unknown cause of death... suspected heart failure. Yeah, looks like he fits our pattern, all right."
"He worked at a warehouse near here," Sam said, highlighting a couple of lines with the mouse. "That's where he collapsed."
"Sounds like it's worth checking out," Dean agreed, already heading back to grab his notes. "Let's go."
The warehouse wasn't too difficult to find. They passed themselves off as friends of the deceased's, although they almost gave themselves away when Dean referred to the guy as "Tommy" and it turned out he'd refused to let anyone call him that. But with a lot of charm and fast-talking, they managed to snatch a few minutes alone in the storeroom where Harker had collapsed.
"Oh yeah," Dean muttered as the EMF meter's lights flared. "Something definitely happened here."
Sam was inspecting the room for any clues. "But what would do this? And why Harker?"
"Why any of them?" Dean answered. "There've been too many deaths for whatever's causing it to be all that specialised in its choice of victims. What have any of them got in common?"
Sam heaved a frustrated sigh and moved away from the wall he'd been studying. "There's nothing to find here, man. Maybe we should go talk to the doctors at the hospital?"
"You honestly think they're gonna know any more than we do?" Dean asked. "Hell, I'd say we're at least a couple of steps ahead of them already."
"No, of course I don't think they're going to know what's really going on," Sam said. "But they might be able to give us a bit more information about the deaths."
Dean slipped the EMF meter back into his pocket. "Yeah, fine, I guess we might as well. And after that we should probably carry on looking into the other victims. There's got to be something we're not seeing."
They left the storeroom and Sam thanked the manager they'd spoken to earlier, who seemed willing to set aside his suspicions about them now that they were leaving.
"Or we could check out the college first," Dean suggested, as they wound their way among the stacks of crates towards the exit. "The manager said he was studying just down the road from here, closer than the hos-"
He broke off suddenly, and Sam turned to see why -
- and was caught completely off-guard by the sight of a heavy metal crate overbalancing, about to crash straight into his brother.
Sam didn't even have time to think, let alone curse: he simply ploughed into Dean, sending them both to the floor, rolling them away from the crate, which hit the ground with a sickening crash.
Breathing hard as the adrenaline burned through him, Sam raised his head and looked across at the crate. God, if that had hit Dean's head, he'd have been killed.
"Jesus, Dean," he whispered, gazing down at his brother.
Dean had ended up beneath him as they'd rolled, but was now pushing Sam off him abruptly, sitting up and staring not at the crate on the floor, but the top of the pile it had fallen from.
"Dean?" Sam asked, getting to his knees, looking from his brother to the place Dean was staring at.
Around them, people were shouting and running in their direction.
Dean was still staring at the pile of crates.
"Dean," Sam said, more urgently, starting to get worried now.
His brother's head snapped around as if he'd only just realised Sam was speaking.
"Dude, you okay?" Sam asked.
"Yeah," Dean said, though he still sounded distracted.
Then the manager and the workers were on them, pulling them to their feet and anxiously enquiring whether they were all right.
"I don't understand it!" the manager was saying, shaking his head. "We have strict safety precautions - that crate shouldn't have been able to topple over like that. Are either of you hurt?"
"We're fine," Dean said, not quite politely. "Thanks again for taking the time to answer our questions, but we really have to be going."
He was off and moving almost before he'd finished speaking, leaving Sam to accept the manager's apologies and smooth things over before he hastened after him.
Dean had reached the street before Sam managed to catch up, and was walking quickly towards the Impala.
"Dean?" Sam asked again. "Dean, what happened?"
"You were there, Sam, you saw it as well as I did. Probably better, actually." Dean didn't seem inclined to slow his pace or look at him.
"Better?" Sam frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Dean reached the car and gave an aggravated sigh as he dug in his pockets for the keys. "Nothing, forget about it."
"Oh no, no way," Sam said, keeping a tight grip on his temper. "Talk to me, Dean. What -"
"Look," Dean said flatly. "If you must know, I think the memories... distorted things for me for a moment again. That's all. Like I said, you probably got a clearer view of what was going on than me."
Sam bit his lower lip, watching his brother closely, but snapped out of it when Dean took the keys out of his pocket. "Pass them here."
For a moment, Sam thought Dean was about to argue, despite what he'd just admitted, but evidently Dean thought the better of it, because he just rolled his eyes and tossed the keys to Sam.
"So," Sam said in a conversational tone as he climbed behind the wheel, even though his mind was racing, "you feel like telling me now how much sleep you got last night?"
Dean groaned. "You're just not going to let this go, are you, Sam?"
"The memories are still overwhelming you too much," Sam said, keeping his tone as reasonable as possible. "That crate would have killed you if it had landed on you, Dean, and you weren't exactly jumping out of the way."
"Look, I was distracted for a moment," Dean said angrily. "Just one goddamn moment, Sam. Drop it, okay?"
Sam shook his head. "I think we should call it a day, Dean, head back to Bobby's, let you get some sleep."
Dean turned to stare at him, his face incredulous. "You have got to be fucking kidding me, Sam." When Sam met his gaze evenly, Dean exploded. "Sam, there are people dying out here! If you think we're heading back to Bobby's so I can take a fucking nap instead of finding out what the hell is going on, you're crazy."
"Dean, if you're too tired to -"
"I'm not!" Dean interrupted. "Jesus Christ, I've been feeling fine up until now. Look, Sam, we've got a job to do, here. Let's at least check out the college, okay? I don't think we'd get much from talking to the doctors anyway, so we can skip the hospital if you feel that strongly about it, but the guy's dorm is right here in the neighbourhood. There's no point in heading back to Bobby's without at least checking it out."
Sam threw up his hands in surrender and started the car. "Fine, Dean, we'll play it your way. But after the college, we're grabbing some dinner and heading back to Bobby's, and then you are going to get some sleep."
He could see his brother grit his teeth to keep from exploding again at his tone, but Sam had had just about enough of all this.
The short drive took place in icy silence.
~*~
Thomas Harker's college dorm was like just about every other one Dean had ever visited. They managed to talk to Harker's roommate with only a few minor difficulties, but he'd been unable to offer any useful information. Harker hadn't suffered from any diseases or heart conditions as far as his roommate knew; in fact, he'd been very healthy and a member of the college track team. Sam had distracted the roommate with sympathetic questions while Dean took a closer look around the apartment, but he'd found nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that explained why this guy might have become a target for...
Stop jumping to conclusions, Dean. It was just the memories getting the better of you again.
Of course it was. But still, for just a moment, he could have sworn he'd seen...
"Well, thank you for your time," Sam was saying, and Dean snapped back to the here and now, because his brother was acting like enough of a royal pain in the ass without Dean giving him something to go on by spacing out again.
They extricated themselves smoothly, and headed back down the stairs and into the street without looking at each other.
"Nothing?" Sam asked finally, breaking the awkward silence.
"Nothing," Dean confirmed. "I don't know, Sam." He started out onto the road, heading towards the Impala; Sam lagged behind, turning back for one last look at the apartment building. "I'm starting to think -"
He never even saw the car racing around the corner before it hit him.
~*~
For a seemingly unending moment Dean felt as though he was hanging in the air while the world flashed past him, twisted and confused, but then he crashed into the ground with a smash that he felt right through to his bones.
Then the pain hit, and the world went grey and hazy as he struggled to breathe.
The first thing he was aware of, when the world started coming back into some kind of focus again, was Sam's voice. For a long moment he couldn't make out words, only the tone, but the tone said enough: fear, fury, determination, with panic threaded underneath. Dean knew the tone well, knew it from every time he'd thought he was losing Sam, every time he'd ordered and yelled and begged him to hold on, Sammy, don't you dare die on me.
That was probably a sign that he was in trouble.
"- Dean, do you hear me? Hold on, it's going to be okay... oh God." The words started to make sense, taking shape out of the buzzing in Dean's head, and he heard himself moan.
"Oh, Jesus. Dean. Dean, can you hear me?"
Dean blinked and slowly Sam's face swam into focus. Sam looked horribly pale, his eyes bright with tears, and Christ, but Dean hated seeing Sam hurting that much.
"Sammy," he murmured, and forced another shaky breath as hope sparked in his brother's eyes.
Then Dean shifted his gaze slightly, trying to take in their surroundings and figure out exactly what had happened, and saw her.
She was standing a few metres behind Sam, dark hair as immaculate as when he'd last seen her, her face as uncannily placid as he remembered.
"Tessa," Dean whispered.
She smiled almost imperceptibly. "Hi, Dean."
"...Tessa?" Sam asked, and Dean could almost hear the click as his brother figured it out. "The Reaper? She's here? She's - no! No, you stay the hell away from him!"
"I don't think your brother likes me," Tessa observed serenely, walking slowly forward, skirting around Sam, who was looking around wildly as if hoping to see her and find a target.
"Well, you are... trying to... kill me," Dean managed to force out, his voice still barely above a whisper.
"I thought 'Don't Fear the Reaper' was part of your philosophy," Tessa said, kneeling beside him, reaching out to touch one hand gently to his face.
"If this is where you... ask me to take your hand... you can think again... Hate flying," Dean gasped out.
She smiled at him properly. "Cute."
It was strange, but the touch of her hand against his cheek was slowly bringing the world into sharper focus. The pain was fading and it was getting easier to breathe. Dean couldn't figure out if that was a good sign or a really, really bad one.
Sam tried to punch her, having apparently pinpointed her location from where Dean was looking, but his fist passed right through her as if she weren't there. "Damn you, leave him alone! You can't have him!"
"Tell him to stop, Dean," Tessa said, unruffled. "Hitting girls is never nice. Especially when I'm trying to help. You were dying too fast, and we need to talk."
"Dying too fast?!" Dean repeated, and was caught off-guard by how much stronger his voice was. "Not to seem ungrateful, but it's your fault I'm dying at all, isn't it? I thought I was seeing things when I saw you standing on top of all those crates."
"That was her? With the crates at the warehouse?" Sam asked. "Oh god, she's after you again? Like in the hospital?"
"Yeah, I'm thinking she wasn't entirely on board with the deal Dad made," Dean said through gritted teeth.
Tessa took her hand away from his face, and Dean braced himself for the pain to rush back in, but it was muted now, bearable.
"I didn't approve," Tessa agreed. "Or wouldn't have, if I'd had any input. But the exchange was made, the scales were balanced. Trying to undo it now would cause far more damage. I'm not here to kill you, Dean."
"No?" Dean asked sarcastically. "Because I appreciate you killing the pain, but from where I'm lying, it still looks like you're trying to kill me too."
"I'm starting to think you don't want to talk to me, you know. That could really hurt a girl's feelings." She carried on before Dean could point out that she wasn't really a girl. "I've been trying to reach out to you in your dreams, but your subconscious kept getting in the way, and you never remembered them when you woke up. So once you came back within my reach, I had to take more direct measures. You can only see me when you're dying. But as I said, I've slowed the process down, so we have a few minutes."
Dean swore, remembering the dreams he had written off as his subconscious trying to remind him of his father's deal. Goddamn, if he'd only paid a bit more attention to them when the ritual had brought his memories back...
"Dean?" Sam asked immediately, his voice alarmed.
"It's okay, Sammy," Dean reassured him automatically. "Apparently she just wants to talk to me." He was careful to omit the dying part, because he was pretty sure that Sam was on the verge of flying apart as it was. "So what d'you want, Tessa? Because honestly, it's Sammy here who's the big talker, not me."
Tessa stared at him intently. "I need your help, Dean."
"My help? You're a -"
"It's still in me."
Dean's mouth snapped shut and he stared at her, noticing for the first time the hint of fear in her eyes. "It's still... All this time." Then, in sudden comprehension, "That's what's been killing all these people."
Tessa actually flinched. "I can fight it off, overcome it, for short periods of time, but I can't cast the demon out. I can't get free. I need your help, Dean."
"That son of a bitch," Dean breathed, staring at her, feeling his heart start to pound at the thought. "Why? Why is it doing this?"
"Demons tend not to believe in making sacrifices," Tessa said, mouth twisting bitterly. "And no Reaper would make a deal with them even if they did. So it's taking what it wants by force."
"Damn it, stop this!" Sam yelled, taking another swing that went right through Tessa. "Enough of the goddamn talking or whatever, if you think I'm just going to sit here and watch my brother die - I mean it, get the hell away from him, right now!"
Dean was about to try to reassure Sam again, but found himself suddenly struggling to draw enough breath to do so. And his heart was pounding even harder, as if he'd been sprinting uphill.
"Time's up, for both of us," Tessa said, her serene composure almost entirely intact again. "I can't keep it locked away for much longer. But I'll find you again, Dean."
She reached forward and slid her hand through his hair and down to cradle his jaw, and Dean cried out as the world around him turned strange and slid back out of focus for several dizzying moments.
When his head cleared and he managed to open his eyes, he barely had time to marvel at how good it felt to draw a normal breath before Sam seized him and pulled him into a suffocatingly tight hug. Dean gasped for air again, then clapped his brother reassuringly on the back, deciding to save the teasing until later. After all, he conceded, he'd been known to have a girly moment or two himself when Sam came that close to...
He shook off that thought and pulled back from his brother's embrace. "I'm all right, Sammy."
"Jesus, Dean." Sam's voice was hoarse and his cheeks were tearstained. "You... Fuck. Is she gone? Let's get you to the hospital."
"I think she's gone," Dean said, glancing around. In truth, he couldn't be certain: now that he was no longer dying, he wouldn't be able to see her even if she was still right there. But given what she'd said about the demon, he suspected she would probably head as far away from them as she could before she lost control of it.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He took another blessedly deep breath and forced down panic. They would figure out what to do. In the meantime, he had better calm Sammy down before he had a heart attack. "I don't need to go to the hospital, Sam. She healed me. I'm fine. Come on, let's just go back to Bobby's." Because Christ, the hospital was the very last place he wanted to visit right then.
"Damn it, Dean, you were dying!" Sam's voice cracked on the word, and he swiped at his cheeks with the back of one hand. "And you want to just -"
"Sam," Dean cut in. "I'm fine now. I swear to god. But I do think we should get the hell out of here. Come on." He began to get to his feet, and Sam scrambled to help him. "Gimme the keys."
Sam stared at him for a moment, apparently stricken speechless, then wordlessly helped Dean across the road and forced him into the passenger seat. Dean thought about protesting, but the expression on Sam's face convinced him to stay silent.
Sam started the car and pulled away from the kerb.
Dean tried hard not to look at the bloodstain at the side of the road as they drove past.
~*~
Dean cradled his cup of coffee with both hands and stared down at it rather than watch Sam pacing back and forth across Bobby's tiny guest bedroom.
Sam had driven all the way back, white knuckles clenched on the steering wheel, without saying a single word. Dean hadn't known whether to be grateful for the chance to get his shit together before they plunged into Talking About It, or wish that Sam would just start yelling or throwing punches and get it out of his system.
Dean had showered and changed his clothes while Sam had made coffee; neither of them had eaten, but neither had any appetite left after the evening's events. Eventually there had been no putting it off any longer, and Dean had, reluctantly, filled Sam in on what Tessa had told him. Now Dean was staring into his coffee and bracing himself for the explosion.
"The yellow-eyed demon," Sam said finally. "The demon. Is possessing her. And has been killing all these people."
Dean just nodded.
Sam paused in his pacing and swung round to face his brother. "And she decided to just kill you so she could tell you all of this."
"You know as well as I do, Sam, you can only see a Reaper if it's coming at you," Dean said wearily. "Other than dreams, out-of-body experiences, that sort of thing. The dreams didn't get through to me, so she had to try something else."
"She almost killed you," Sam said heatedly, clearly still stuck on that point. "Dean, you almost died."
"But she healed me," Dean pointed out. "She was never going to let me actually die, Sam." Probably.
Sam shook his head, almost despairing. "There had to have been a better way to handle the situation than to try to kill you, Dean!"
"Well, she is a Reaper," Dean said dryly, starting to tire of Sam's hysteria. "Death's kind of their thing, you know."
"It's not funny, Dean," Sam said flatly, jaw clenched in a way that was far too familiar. "And why go after you? Why not... hell, I don't know. Bobby, I guess? What would she have done if we hadn't come back here?"
"She wasn't going after me, Sam, she was asking for our help," Dean said, trying to keep a tight leash on his temper. "Why the hell would you think she should go to Bobby? It's not like he knows her or who she is -"
"What she is," Sam muttered.
Dean ignored him. "- and it's not like he knows what happened at the hospital. Would he have even believed her? It makes sense that she'd come to me." He pushed off the bed; he was exhausted, but this conversation was rapidly veering towards territory he couldn't handle while sitting still. "Damnit, it's because of me that this is happening to her, that all of this is happening." It's because of me that all these people are dying.
"What?" Sam turned sharply in Dean's direction, but Dean was already at the other side of the room, staring unseeing out of the window. "Dean, this - this isn't your fault. This -"
"It possessed her to bring me back," Dean said, making damn sure his voice was stripped of all emotion. "I'm the reason this is happening, Sam, no matter how you try to sugarcoat it."
"Dean," Sam said. He sounded appalled. "Dean, it's not your fault! You didn't -"
"Don't, Sam," Dean said wearily. Christ, he was tired. "Look, let's stay focused, here. People are dying. What's the bastard trying to do? Why's it possessing her to kill people? Because, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here, but it's seemed pretty damn capable of doing that all by itself, right? So what the hell is it up to?"
He turned back to face Sam; the expression on his brother's face let him know that his attempt to shift the discussion had not gone unnoticed, and that although Sam was going to go along with it for the moment - because Dean was right, and they both knew it: people were dying - he would undoubtedly bring it up again as soon as Dean let his guard down an inch.
"I don't know," Sam admitted. "You're right, it doesn't make much sense. What exactly did she say?"
"She said that demons don't tend to believe in making sacrifices," Dean said, remembering. "And that no Reaper would make a deal with them even if they did. So it's taking what it wants by force." He frowned. Something about that was ringing a bell...
Sam was frowning too and biting his lower lip in uncertainty. Dean watched him hesitate for a moment, and was suddenly, coldly angry at the realisation that Sam was trying to figure out a way to say something while sparing his feelings.
"Just spit it out, Sam," he said, a little sharper than he'd intended.
Concern flickered in Sam's eyes. "No, I was just... I mean, she said that she wasn't after you, right? Earlier, you said she told you the scales were balanced or something. Right?"
"Yeah," Dean agreed warily.
Sam heaved a sigh of relief, sinking down to sit on one of the beds. "Good. I just... never mind. That's good."
"What?" Dean demanded. "Damnit, Sam, just tell me."
"No, no, it's just..." Sam waved one hand. "It just occurred to me that this... the deaths... they could have been part of the... well, the price." Catching sight of Dean's expression, he went on hurriedly, "But it was just a thought, and judging by what she said, it's not possible. Forget I mentioned it, okay? I just wanted to be sure."
Dean turned away abruptly to face the window again, feeling sick. Either way, this was his fault, but that idea...
"He wouldn't have agreed to that," he said after a moment, his voice rough. "He would never have agreed to sacrifice those people. That's not it."
He preferred not to be able to see Sam's expression at that moment, because no matter how Sam reacted, it would be painful. Instead, he forced himself to change the topic again. "So. What the hell does it want? Because we've already established that it doesn't need to possess Tessa to kill people."
"Well," Sam said in the tone Dean thought of as 'Sam's lightbulb voice', "Reapers give and take life, right? That's what they do. So if the demon isn't possessing her in order to kill..."
"It has to be wanting to... give life," Dean finished, frowning and turning to meet his brother's gaze. "It's logical, except... not. It's a demon, Sam."
"Yeah, not exactly renowned for their warm and fuzzy family feelings and chick-flick moments, I know," Sam agreed, looking equally baffled. "But I don't know, Dean, I got nothing else. It can't be doing this in order to kill, so it has to be trying to give life, as little sense as it makes."
"Family feelings," Dean whispered slowly, his mind whirling. "That's it. Jesus, I don't believe it."
"Wait, what?" Sam demanded. "What are you talking about?"
"You remember the cabin?" Dean asked, speaking rapidly now, the words tumbling over each other as they tried to keep pace with how quickly his mind was working. "You remember what the demon said when it was in my face? It said I killed its children. Meg - the demon in Meg - and the guy in the alley, the one I shot with the Colt - it said they were its children."
"Holy shit," Sam said. "It's trying to resurrect them. That's it. There has to be a sacrifice -"
"- And demons aren't into sacrificing themselves," Dean continued. "So it's killing others instead, to balance the scales -"
"- To serve as the sacrifice, to provide the life needed to resurrect its children," Sam agreed. "And that's why it's been killing so many people, too. Its children aren't just dying, they're actually dead, that's got to make them much harder to bring back, right?"
"And the guy in the alley, I killed him with the Colt," Dean said, feeling slightly dazed by the realisation. "I'm guessing it's got to take a hell of a lot of power to overcome that."
"Plus, demons, not humans," Sam added. "That probably makes a difference, too."
"Jesus," Dean said, pacing across the room now. "Okay, so it's already killed fuck knows how many people. And we don't know exactly how many it needs to kill to 'balance the scales' or whatever. It's gotta be close by now. And Tessa can't stop it."
"We have to stop it," Sam said, a touch wildly. "We need to find a way to stop it from killing more people."
"And get it out of her," Dean added.
"And kill it," Sam finished.
Dean exhaled slowly and came to sit down on one of the beds, facing Sam. "Well, fuck."
~*~
Dean had wanted to start looking for a way to deal with everything immediately, but Sam had put his foot down very firmly. Dean might be determined to just ignore the whole thing and pretend it had never happened, but Sam couldn't forget how close his brother had come to dying that evening. He kept seeing it in his mind, playing on a permanent loop: the car slamming into Dean, his brother flying through the air and crashing to the ground, the horrible rasp as he fought for breath, the blood spreading across the road...
And no matter how good a front Dean put up, Sam knew he was exhausted. He'd been tired even before the whole near-death experience, and Sam was fairly certain that had taken its toll too, despite the fact that the Reaper had healed him. Nonetheless, persuading Dean to get some sleep had been a trial, and Sam had been forced to agree to them grabbing just a few hours and then getting up early to start researching.
It wasn't that Sam wasn't desperate to get started too - he wanted to find a way to kill the demon so badly that he could almost taste it - but watching Dean slipping away from him that evening had terrified him, had dragged up the memories of the hospital, when he'd thought he was losing his brother forever.
It had taken Sam a long time to fall asleep, and the images haunted his dreams.
They'd got up before five o'clock and huddled downstairs with cups of coffee while discussing the options.
"The first thing we'll need is some way to bind the Reaper and the demon," Sam said thoughtfully.
Dean jerked his head meaningfully towards the ceiling. "The Key of Solomon worked pretty well on its kid. Think it'd hold Daddy Demon too?"
Sam pursed his lips. "It might, I guess. We could ask Bobby. It's a very old and powerful symbol, so... We'd have to take other precautions too, but it could be part of the solution. That still leaves us with the question of how to bind a Reaper, though."
"Do we need to bind her?" Dean asked. "I mean, it's the demon we want to trap, not her. There's no way we can just bind it?"
Sam exhaled sharply. "It's possessing her, Dean. It's inside her and it's using her. We need to bind them both until we can get it out of her, or there's too high a risk that we'll lose it."
Dean nodded in acceptance, although the way he rubbed his cheek told Sam that he wasn't entirely happy with the idea.
Despite the fact that she'd tried to kill him the previous evening.
"Wait," Dean said suddenly. "Hey, d'you remember Sue Ann LeGrange?"
"Of course I -" Sam stopped short. "Dean. No."
"There was a binding spell for a Reaper in that book," Dean said doggedly. "And we know it worked."
"Dean, that was dark magic! Evil!" Sam was feeling slightly sick just at the memory of the dark altar in Sue Ann's basement; the skull, the blood... "It involved murder, Dean. There's no way we could do anything like that. Besides, we burned the book."
"The book isn't an issue," Dean said dismissively. "I'm not saying I want us to go around killing people for the altar, but -"
"Of course the book would be an issue," Sam argued. "We wouldn't have a clue what we were getting ourselves into or what to do otherwise. But it's irrelevant, because -"
"Sam, trust me, we wouldn't need the book," Dean said with an irritated sigh. "Dude, right now I can quote from newspaper articles I glanced over when I was, like, ten, okay? I looked over the ritual at the time, I can write the whole thing down, word for word, if need be."
Sam stared at him. "I thought you said the memories were getting better."
"They are," Dean said nonchalantly. "They're not quite as... overwhelming, now. Doesn't mean they're gone, though. I can still remember things really vividly when I think of them. We should seriously have gone to Vegas, man, I reckon I could make a fortune at -"
"Dean, don't," Sam said, almost desperately. "This isn't funny."
Dean's expression hardened. "You see me laughing, Sammy? Look, don't freak over it, okay? It is much better, I promise. I've just... got a super-charged memory at the moment. And if that means we can use that binding spell, then we can consider ourselves lucky."
"You didn't see the altar, Dean," Sam said, focusing on the aspect of the conversation where he thought he stood a chance of making some headway. "There was some seriously dark magic involved. And I only glanced over the spell, but it definitely involved a murder. There's no way we can mess with something like that."
"Might be a way to fudge that part," Dean said stubbornly. "Let's at least keep it in mind, okay? So, bind the demon, bind Tessa. Then, what, exorcise it?"
Sam grimaced. "Holy water didn't do a damn thing to it back at the cabin. I mean, we could try; say, use that exorcism we worked on that demon on the plane, force it out of her and try to banish it back to hell."
"But holy water worked on that demon," Dean pointed out. "I gotta say it, Sam, I don't think that'll be good enough for this bastard. And I'd kinda like something a bit surer than a wing and a prayer if we try to take it out, personally."
"What we really need is the Colt," Sam muttered. Then a thought struck him. "Hey. You think there's a chance we could find it?"
Dean looked startled for a moment before his face took on the guarded expression that Sam hated. "Sam, I'm pretty sure Dad..."
"No, I get that," Sam said hurriedly, not wanting Dean to have to say the words. He could still remember all too well Dean finally breaking down, the way he'd felt about that exchange. What's dead should stay dead. Sam never wanted to see that look on his brother's face again. "But if the demon's still here, still possessing the Reaper - maybe the Colt is still here too?"
"What, you think it's just lying around at the hospital somewhere?"
Sam shrugged. "Well, it might be?"
Somewhat to Sam's surprise, Dean didn't shoot down the idea out of hand. "Maybe. I think you're right, the demon hasn't left here since, so it's not impossible. But it's a demon, Sam. It could have found some way to destroy it. And even if the Colt is there, it's a pretty safe bet it's well hidden and well protected."
"You got any better ideas?" Sam asked bluntly. "It's the only thing we know of that will kill this thing, Dean. I'm not saying finding it will be easy, but we've got to try."
Dean nodded, though he still didn't look entirely convinced. "Let's try to figure out the rest of it first, okay? We can start going through the journal and Bobby's books, look online too. How about you concentrate on ways to bind the demon and drive it out of her, and I'll work on how we're going to bind her."
"Sounds like a plan," Sam said.
He started off with one stack of Bobby's books, while Dean settled down across the room with another stack. Demons were one of the things Bobby had specialised in over the years, and he had a lot of amazing information in his books. Sam was half-hoping that they would be able to spend an extra day there, once this was all over, so he could go through some of them and take some notes.
But then he stumbled across some sigils that looked as though they could be powerful enough to be useful, and forgot everything else as he snapped into research mode.
When he glanced up an hour later to check on Dean's progress, he couldn't help but roll his eyes and smile at the sight of his brother sound asleep, his head pillowed on his arms resting on the table. And while normally Sam would have smacked Dean upside the head and told him to get back to work, his brother could definitely use the rest. So, shaking his head slightly, Sam turned back to his research.
~*~
"Dean."
He crossed the room to sit down beside her on the hospital bed. "Tessa."
She smiled at him, but her usual unnatural serenity seemed marred. "I think your subconscious might let me through more, now that you know this is real. And your memory is overactive enough at the moment to remember your dreams when you wake."
"Well, that's good," Dean said, without paying much attention. "We think we figured out what it's trying to do. It's trying to bring back its children, isn't it? The ones I killed?"
"Yes," Tessa said softly. "It's taking lives that shouldn't be taken, ending them before they are due to end. It's stealing lives without balancing the scales. It's almost killed enough to allow it to tip the balance and bring back one of its children, now... You might want to avoid watching the news when you wake up, Dean. It knew I'd spoken to you, although I was able to prevent it from overhearing what we said. It's not holding back now."
"Son of a bitch," Dean muttered, getting back up off the bed and pacing across the hospital room. "So we gotta move fast."
"Very fast," Tessa agreed. "It's getting stronger and I'm... growing weaker. I won't be able to restrain it at all, soon."
Something in her voice made him turn. "It's hurting you." Dean wondered why that had never even occurred to him until now: he supposed he'd somehow assumed Reapers did not feel pain.
Tessa met his gaze, appearing almost calm despite the topic. "We thrive on the balance. When that is disrupted, we feel pain, yes."
Dean gritted his teeth and stepped closer to her. "Sam and I, we're looking into ways to trap the bastard and force it out of you. We're going to help you."
She smiled at him. "No, Dean. We're going to help each other."
He stared at her. "Okay, call me paranoid, but since you almost killed me last night, you mind telling me exactly what 'helping' means here?"
Tessa chuckled softly at his discomfort, before her smile turned dangerous. "Can you and your brother free me from the demon?"
"Well, we're still working on the details," Dean admitted, "but we've a few ideas on how to maybe do it, yeah. Why?"
"Because if you can," Tessa said, her normally gentle voice now steely, "I can kill the demon."
~*~
Chapter Five