Persistence of Vision (2 of 2)
Persistence of Vision
A Story in Six Sections of Unequal Length
..iv..
..bargaining..
Sam wakes up first, like normal, and manages to leave for a run without, he thinks, waking up his brother. Marquette’s hilly, it reminds him a little of ‘Frisco in that but not much else. The town is small, close-knit, and quaint; it seems like everyone knows everyone else, everyone’s friendly, and from the students he sees shopping along Third Street, there is no big separation between the college kids and the townies, like this is a true college town, one of those places that wouldn’t exist without the university.
He stops at a bagel place and gets breakfast, not trusting whatever their motel’s peddling as the continental option, and coffee as well, straight and black for Dean, a chai-esque latte for himself, and when he gets back, Dean’s still sleeping, laying on his stomach and drooling a little on the pillow. Sam snorts at the sight, takes a sip of his coffee and then sits on his bed, legs crossed, and closes his eyes.
Sam’s breathing evens out as he goes about checking the barriers around his power. Missouri told him that it would eventually come naturally, without needing to think about it so closely, and Jeannie told him, all smiles and promises, that someday he won’t need to keep it so tight behind walls, that he’ll be able to let it go, but until then, that he needs to bind it to himself, to blood, breath, and bone. It’s easiest now to anchor this fire to his bones and leave it sit there, humming, almost easier and more familiar than it should be after less than a month of practice, but he won’t argue the good luck. Later, when he can do this without thinking about it, he’ll try the next step, either letting the fire flood through his blood or inhabit his breath, but every time he thinks about the former, he thinks of boiling to death, and every time he thinks about the latter, he wonders if maybe he’ll be like a dragon, one burp and he’s breathing fire.
The walls around his power look good enough, tall and strong and thick, so Sam opens his eyes and sees Dean sitting up in the other bed, watching him with an expression Sam can’t decipher. “You good?” Dean asks, and Sam nods as he unfolds himself, knees popping. “Last night,” Dean says carefully, watching Sam the way one hunter might watch another they’ve never met before, “you moved the salt shaker.” Sam says, “I didn’t think you saw that,” an implicit admission, and Dean laughs and yawns as Sam reddens a bit because, yeah, he should’ve known Dean saw that, no matter how much attention his brother was paying Vicky. “It won’t happen again,” Sam says, and Dean does this half-assed, one-shoulder shrug and asks, “You want the shower first? You should’ve woken me up when you left; I would’ve gone with you.” Sam grins, shakes his head. “You’d only slow me down, shorty. Besides, it was worth it to see you drooling all over your pillow. Bagels and coffee on the table,” Sam says, then goes into the bathroom and takes a lukewarm shower.
--
They head out to Harlow Lake, pleased that they don’t see any other cars on the curvy road, and Dean nearly drives past the narrow lane that will take them to the lake. The long path is dirt, of course, and looks as if it was carved right out of the forest they’ve been in since the bridge; the road is big enough for the Impala and that’s it, trees and bushes and weeds beginning right at the edges of the dirt and canopying over them. “Good thing we don’t have allergies,” Dean mutters as he parks in a turn-off, and Sam grins as they get out and grab the EMF and two rock-salt-loaded shotguns. A short walk over a rickety bridge and they’re standing on large rocks overlooking the lake. It’s pretty and quiet, the water calm and placid, only the sound of a few late-season insects around them, and Sam looks down at the EMF Dean’s holding. “Nothing?” he asks, and Dean shakes his head, says, “Maybe she only comes out after lunch. You picking up anything?” Sam swallows, steps down to a lower rock and crouches at the edge, looking into the water. “Don’t fucking touch it,” Dean calls out, and so Sam doesn’t, remembering Lucas even though this looks shallow.
Very carefully, Sam opens that part of his mind that can sense these things, sends out a web over the lake. It’s calm, like the water, but then he feels a sunburst of pain in one section and is already stumbling backwards and saying “Dean” before he can close off his mind. “I see her,” Dean says, voice tight, and Sam picks up his shotgun, looks out over the water, and laughs in disbelief, says, “Fuck.” There’s a woman walking across the lake, like it’s solid, and even though Sam’s grown up hunting, there are some things he will never get used to. He points the shotgun at her, sees Dean do the same, and has enough time to try and decide whether this woman looks more like Constance Welch or Sarah before she’s suddenly a hell of a lot closer.
Dean fires an instant before Sam and the salt from Dean’s gun goes right through her and falls in the lake, making the water steam and bubble. Sam’s shot connects, though, and the woman looks at him and through real-life stop-motion photography or whatever, she’s standing not ten feet in front of him, the ragged ends of her nightgown disappearing into the water. She’s making Sam’s teeth buzz, on edge, and he’s inwardly relieved when Dean scrambles down and stands next to him. “Why did yours work, and fuck if she isn’t creeping me out,” Dean murmurs, and then freezes as the woman’s eyes slide, soft and easy, to focus on Dean.
Sam’s feeling a steady pounding in his head and the EMF in Dean’s pocket is making noise, and he can see an unwavering rise of power around the woman as the lake turns darker. “Shit,” he says, and shoots at the ghost again after muttering a quick and dirty blessing over the shotgun and rock-salt bullet. This one hits her as well, blows her head to smithereens, and she disappears. Dean turns to him, but Sam says, “She’s not gone, not for good,” and it’s not just the rhythm in his head telling him this; even if the EMF’s gone silent, the water keeps getting darker and darker.
“Let’s go,” he says, sure that they don’t want to be here when the water actually turns black, and Dean looks as if he’s about to argue before he shrugs and says, “All right. You can do some research.” It’s not until they get back in the car and on the road that Sam asks, “What’re you gonna be doing?” and Dean flashes a grin, says, “Interviews. Now tell me why your salt worked and mine didn’t.” Sam frowns, asks if Dean’s gun and ammo were blessed, and of course they were. “Might be a side-effect of,” Sam says, finishing his sentence by gesturing at his head, and Dean looks as convinced as Sam feels by that argument.
--
Dean drops Sam and a backpack full of notebooks and the laptop off at the public library, one of the swankier ones he’s seen in a town this size, but it’s not like there’s another city twenty minutes away and there are eight thousand undergrads here. He spends two hours with books and microfiche and comes up with nothing, so he asks the reference librarians and they tell him that the university’s library’s better suited to this sort of research, did he try that already, and what class is this all for? “Creative writing,” Sam says immediately, turning on his puppy-dog eyes, and then leaves, walking up Third Street towards campus.
No one questions him as he walks in, heading unerringly for the old microfilm records-it’s almost funny, a country apart but all university libraries are really the same, even if this campus apparently only has one library, when Stanford has over fifteen. It takes him half an hour to find the old newspaper clippings, an anniversary article celebrating Marquette’s haunted history, and it makes Sam shake his head that anyone would be proud of living somewhere haunted. He makes copies, takes notes, cross-checks the references in two books upstairs, and then goes outside and calls Dean. “Paydirt,” he says when Dean answers and Dean says, “Yeah, me too. You still at the library?” Sam grins, says, “A different one. I’m hungry.”
--
“That’s one thing about Michigan,” Dean says when they get back to the motel. At Sam’s raised eyebrow, Dean pats his stomach and says, “Family restaurants,” as if that explains everything, and it almost does. “How many times did you and dad,” Sam trails off, and Dean lays on his bed, staring at the ceiling, as he answers, “Enough to know that the best and cheapest place to eat in any town is a family place, and they’re in every town in this state. All a Michigan town needs is a bar, a church, and a family restaurant. Maybe a pharmacy,” Dean adds; “I can’t believe how many of those there are now.” Sam snorts, kicks off his shoes and sits at the table, pulling out the laptop, his notes, and the copies. “What’d you find out?” he asks, ready to see where Dean’s pieces fit with his, and Dean sits up, scoots back until he’s propped up against the wall, one wrist resting on a pulled-up knee.
“It’s all like what Vicky said,” Dean says, meeting Sam’s gaze. “The five kids, they’re the ticket, I think. We find out why she went after them, we find the key.” Sam interjects here, says, “Etienne. The woman who died, her name was Etienne.” He leans forward, passes Dean the copy of the news article. Dean glances over it, and nods. “Yeah. Like I said, find out why she went all nutso after the kids, we’ll know why she’s back. Best I got on the other two’s just local gossip. One of the fishermen’s cheating on his wife and the two kids, the couple? Only dating for a few months, but she’s pregnant. Or was, anyway; she lost the kid when she went into shock.”
--
They catch a few hours of sleep and then call Vicky when the news is ending and the late-night talk-shows are starting. Dean’s talking to her, Sam made his brother call, and all he’s said since the initial, “Tell me about the first group,” has been noncommittal, things like, “Yeah,” “Really?” and “Mm-hmm.” Sam’s curious to know what she’s telling Dean, but instead of just listening in without pretence, he’s trying to find some more information about Etienne on-line. There’s not much besides what they already know, and there’s not a thing on reverse women-in-white, so Sam’s pretty much decided that this is just a haunting, a ghost, maybe, if he stretches things, her spirit bonded to the lake, but nothing else. Still, if they’re going to stop her, it’d be nice to know how she chooses her victims and what her weaknesses are, because it’s not like they can dig her bones up.
When Dean gets off of the phone, he has an odd look on his face, like he’s eaten something sour, and so Sam gets worried, asks what Vicky said. “The four kids, that went out there with pentagram-chick? They swing,” and Sam doesn’t get it right away. Dean rolls his eyes when Sam finally does, and Sam says, “So what connects them? What do they have in common?” and Dean looks at Sam as if he’s lost his mind. “Think about it, Sammy,” Dean says, and Sam doesn’t bother correcting him, “swingers, adulterers, and fornicators.” Sam thinks, eventually hazards the guess, “Forbidden love? Since she couldn’t have her's, no one else can? That’s petty,” and then, “So Vicky’s friend, Etienne didn’t go after her because she’s not doing anything forbidden? But I thought the pentagram,” and then he stops, and looks at Dean everything clicking.
“The pentagram had power because it wasn’t negated by something forbidden, like my rock-salt hit her because I’m not doing anything forbidden? Why didn’t yours work?” and then he raises an eyebrow, says, “When did you have time to,” and stops when Dean glares at him. Sam grins, then smirks, then laughs, and says, “No, really, when, dude?” Dean’s glare gets worse and he finally snaps, “It isn’t funny, Sam. And for your information, I haven’t done anything. She must be able to pick up on thoughts or something,” and Sam doesn’t, can’t stop laughing, because Dean’s finally seeing the negative side of being such a ladies’ man.
Sam stops laughing after a long while, and asks, “D’you want me to do this one myself?” and Dean shakes his head, picks up their dad’s journal from the night-table between the beds, thumbs to a page, and hands it to Sam. “A purification ritual,” Sam says, looking from the journal to Dean, who’s serious, and any smile Sam might’ve been feeling drops away. “Really?” Dean nods, shifts, says, “I don’t want you doing it by yourself. Something might go wrong, or your power might flip out, or something. We’ll do this tomorrow and then take a crack at Etienne.” Sam’s inclined to argue, because a purification ritual is too much trouble to go through just to banish a water-bound ghost, but Dean’s looking mulish and if Dean wants to do it, “Fine. Tomorrow, if we can get everything we need up here.”
..v..
..depression..
They drive along the lake, out of Marquette and towards the greenhouse in Harvey that Vicky goes to. The flowers are a bit thin, but the selection of herbs and seeds is top-notch, and they leave with everything the ritual requires. It’s a water ritual, the one in their dad’s journal, and Sam thinks it’s strangely appropriate, a cleansing baptism to purify Dean so he can banish a water-bound spirit, appropriate and ironic as hell. Dean guides the Impala to a little, out-of-the-way stretch of sand along the lake, a cove Vicky told them about when they called her that morning, and it’s quiet, save the sound of water and birds in the trees. Dean makes a circle out of cactus spines in the damp sand and strips from the waist up, shivering slightly in the cold air, while Sam fills three shallow terra-cotta bowls with lake water and places them inside of the still-open circle, along with the pouches of herbs and seeds they’d bought at Meister’s. With Dean looking on, Sam takes the one flower they bought, a white lily, and plucks the petals, scattering them over the surface of the water in the bowls.
That done, he steps away from the circle and looks at Dean, standing across the outline of cactus spines, says, “You’re sure?” Dean nods, lets Sam see his cocky grin before it slides off, replaced by a solemn expression as Dean steps into the circle, facing the lake, and closes it behind him before dropping to his knees. Sam follows along in the journal as Dean blends herbs and seeds in the bowls of water, chanting a Latin prayer every time he pours and mixes and scoops. Dean doesn’t miss a beat, and Sam wonders if that’s due to practice, seeing their dad do the same ritual, or the discussion they’d had last night over every aspect of the ritual, what was intrinsic and what could be changed, the order of things, the Latinate declensions.
After ten minutes of preparation, during which Sam’s left eyelid starts twitching because of the amount of power Dean’s calling up for this, Dean stops chanting and takes a deep breath before picking up the bowl on the left and scooping out damp clumps of bay leaves, thyme, and cloves. “Libera me, ab omnibus iniquitatis meis et universis malis,” Dean says, then slathers the goop on his chest, and Sam steps back as his head starts to pound. Dean built the circle to contain the power, and if Sam’s only feeling a trickle of it now, he’s glad Dean’s the one inside, picking up the right-most bowl and painting his face with ferns and rosemary and sage. Sam sees Dean’s hand shake when he sets the bowl down, hears a slight breathlessness in his brother’s voice as Dean follows up his plea for deliverance with the prayers of confession and penitence, and then picks up the middle bowl, holding nothing but blessed and power-ridden lake water.
“Concede mihi, benignissime Iesu, gratiam tuam, ut mecum sit et mecum laboret mecumque in finem usque perseveret. In manus tua, Domine, commendo spiritum meum,” Dean murmurs, almost too faint for Sam to hear over the staccato drumbeat in his ears, and then Dean lifts the bowl, holds it above him and pours the water over his head. Sam’s knees give out at the rush of power as the water falls, tracing out rivulets in the drying flora on his brother’s body, and when it’s gone, he has to remember how to breathe again.
Dean kneels a minute longer, then turns to Sam and asks, “Did it work?” Sam blinks, trying to see beyond the protection of purification marking Dean, making Dean glow, using the fire in his bones to help clear his sight. When it works, Dean’s staring at him, worried, so Sam says, “Yeah, it worked.” The glow notwithstanding, the water Dean poured over himself cleared away the herb-and-seed paste in specific patterns and the remainder looks damp, looks like it should. Once it dries and cracks off, Dean won’t be covered by the ritual and Etienne might be able to come after him again, but it looks good now, looks like it’ll last long enough to get the job done, so Sam nods, says again, “Yeah, it looks good. How do you feel?” Dean gets this pouty look as he stands up and breaks the circle, picking up the bowls and heading for the Impala, and Sam laughs when he hears Dean mutter, “This shit itches.”
They’re in the Impala, halfway to Harlow Lake, by the time Dean finally asks, “What happened to you back there?” and Sam looks out of the corner of his eyes to see Dean concentrating too intently on the road. He’s about to say that nothing happened, nothing was wrong, but Dean says, “And don’t tell me ‘nothing.’ I know you didn’t start out on your knees.” Sam sighs, reminds himself that Dean deserves honesty and truth and no half-lies and, really, this confession isn’t as bad as saying he’s hearing things, so. “I could sense the power,” he says, searching for words as the Impala slows, going around a bend, and doesn’t speed up again on the other side. “Almost as soon as you closed the circle,” he goes on, “and when you finished, it was like my head exploded and I couldn’t see anything.”
Sam watches as Dean takes that in, and when Dean asks, “And now?” Sam rubs a temple absently. “If I don’t shield, you still glow. I’m guessing that the glow will dissipate as the spell does. And,” he says, steeling himself, “I can feel you, the spell on you. Faint, but I could find you if we got separated.” Dean doesn’t say anything, and they’re getting closer to the turn-off, because Sam recognises these hills, these half-circle turns and trees. “Dean,” he says, and Dean’s jaw clenches along with his hands on the steering wheel, and Sam doesn’t say anything more.
“I don’t like it,” Dean eventually says, and Sam’s heart is breaking as Dean goes on, “I don’t like going after a ghost without knowing you can throw up a circle and an exorcism if you need to,” which sounds to Sam more like a logistical problem than an acceptance issue, so he waits, breath held. “Once we’re done,” Dean says, looking at Sam briefly, “we’ll have to figure out what your limits on shielding are and whether it’s just old-school Christian rituals or everything that fries your power,” and Sam wants to smile but he can’t, not now, so he nods and says, “Yeah, okay. But no way in hell am I smearing goop all over myself.” Dean laughs, raises an eyebrow, and stays quiet.
--
They’re lucky again, two days in a row, that no other car is parked by the lake, and Sam wonders if that’s really luck or the ghost’s design, if the only people drawn here are her potential victims. That might make sense, as Dean looks honest-to-fuck excited about this while Sam just feels sick to his stomach, foreboding completely unrelated to his power, which is thrumming from having Dean and Etienne both in near proximity. He thinks that, then looks up suddenly, so suddenly that Dean notices, asks, “What? What is it?” Sam shakes his head, fingers tightening around the cross he’s holding, and says, “She’s here. Not here, but in the lake. She knows we’re here, and she’s waiting,” he adds, quietly, trying to get used to the sensation of her mind brushing against the limits of his power, and Dean closes the trunk, salt in one fist, shotgun held loosely in the other hand, nods. “Let’s not keep her waiting too long,” he says, and takes off for the rocks.
Sam follows, still shaking his head every so often, hair flopping over his eyes, trying to shake off the sensation of eyes inside of his skull, and stops next to Dean. His brother’s on the rock, staring at the ghost and still, immobile. “Dean?” Sam whispers, but Dean doesn’t react, not for a long minute, and his voice is distant when he finally says, “Stick to the plan, Sammy.” Sam’s about to respond, ask if everything’s all right, but then Dean says, “Sam,” just like their dad, expecting obedience, so Sam goes down to the low rock and tosses a handful of salt and sage into the water.
The ghost’s power flares and it hits Sam like a punch, hurts, and he’s kneeling on the rock and can see the water turning black. Sam looks up, out over the water, and he can see Etienne’s lips moving, but he can’t hear anything, so he looks at Dean, and feels despair. “Dean!” he yells, but Dean’s not listening or doesn’t hear, and Sam rocks back on his heels for a split-second before holding the crucifix over the water and beginning the prayer of blessing. He’s only a repetition in when there are feet in his vision, blue, thin ankles, the torn and frayed ends of a waterlogged nightgown dipping and dragging under the lake’s surface. He doesn’t look up, keeps praying, hurrying now, and then yells when he feels hands, tiny, bird-bone-brittle, curling in his hair and yanking his head up. He looks up, doesn’t really have a choice, and he watches her lips stop moving.
Two things happen at once: Sam hears Dean swear and start clambering down to where he’s being held by the spirit, getting the shotgun ready as Sam lifts the crucifix and presses it hard against Etienne’s stomach. He holds it there, listens as it burns away the nightgown and sizzles and smokes against her skin, for as long as it takes her to release her hold on him and Dean to reach him. Dean’s not as loud an itch in the back of Sam’s mind, and when he looks, Sam sees that half of the purification rite has worn off. “I heard her sing,” Dean says, holding the gun steady, pointing it at the ghost, who’s backed away from the brothers. “She sang the purity off; I could feel it. Any of your legends say anything about her voice?” Sam shakes his head, readjusts his hold on the cross, says, “No, but if only her potential victims could hear it,” before trailing off and asking, “Did any of your interviews?” Dean says no and fires at the spirit, who’s begun walking back towards them, looking even more pissed off. Half of the rock-salt goes through her, but half doesn’t, and she opens her mouth to sing again just as Sam kneels and continues the cycle of prayers.
He gets to the fifth repetition before Etienne is right there, lifting the gun out of Dean’s entranced hands, running two fingers down the curve of Dean’s jaw. “Bitch,” Sam hisses, and stands up, brandishing the crucifix at her. She bares her teeth but backs far enough away and quick enough that Sam can reach into Dean’s pockets for an extra salt bullet, crumble it up, and lay a circle around his brother. He almost falls into the water when the circle goes up, skin buzzing at the sensation of power, but then Dean blinks and shakes himself awake, and says, “Holy fuck.” Sam’s angry now, angrier than he can remember being in a long time, maybe since Dr. Ellicott, and he’s boiling up, over, steaming just like the damn lake, so he says, “Should’ve fucking come by myself,” and ignores Dean’s, “PMS much?”
Sam keeps muttering to himself as he takes the knife out of his jeans, tucked under his shirt and hoodie in the small of his back, curve of the blade echoing the curve of roads, shorelines, and the edges of this lake, keeps muttering as he holds the knife in one hand and the crucifix in another, and kneels for a third time on the edge of the rock. He starts the prayers again, not taking his eyes off of the cross, watching her reflection in his peripheral vision on the edge of the knife, and this time makes it through all seven repetitions.
When he’s done, he slices his palm over with the knife, coats the crucifix in blood, and drops it in the lake with a murmured “In nomine, Iesu.” The water around the cross immediately turns blue, clear and calm, and Sam can watch as the blessing takes back the lake from the curse. Within seconds, the only area of the lake that’s black is right where Etienne’s feet and nightgown meet the water, and Sam can feel pressure build up in his head and feet and sinuses, the triune power of the prayer, the cross, and the blood of a believer against Etienne, and Sam screams, spine bending, when it breaks. He has one moment of lucid thought, This is going to hurt, before he loses consciousness, head banging against hard stone.
--
He’s not out for long, he knows that in the instant after he wakes up, gasping, because Dean is only just now kicking away at the salt circle and the pain in Sam’s head hasn’t settled in yet. He reaches up, touches the back of his head and feels a thick, sticky patch of blood still rising to the surface, feels blood oozing out of his palm. “That’ll do,” he says, and now Dean’s kneeling next to him and hears that, says, “What’ll do for what?” Sam’s eyes are burning, he’s not sure whether from the pain or the fire, and he looks at Dean, savage smile playing about his lips. “I have to make sure she’s gone,” he says, in a tone that says Dean should have known that, but, instead, Dean looks worried, so Sam adds, “It won’t take long, and then I’ll be back.” Sam brings the fingers with the blood from his head-wound up to his face and smears a line down the centre of his forehead before licking the remainder off of his palm. His eyes go wide as Dean leans forward and says, hands tracking over Sam’s face, hair, head, “Sammy? What’d you do? Sammy!” and then his eyes close and his mind is transported away by burning wings of flame.
..vi..
..acceptance..
He opens his eyes and feels the fire curling around his feet and ankles, halfway up his legs. It’s purring and rubbing against his skin, cat-like, as tiny offshoots writhe upwards, sparking in the abyss. He smiles down at the fire, then looks up and around where he’s standing, a flicker of light in a black, empty plane. He’s at once relieved and scared, proud of himself for making it to the astral plane and scared he won’t be able to find his way back, but then he remembers why he’s there and the fire around his feet dances upwards with his rising anger. Only the stronger dead are in this level of the plane, only those strong enough and powerful enough, and that should scare him when he sees orbs heading formlessly in his direction, but Missouri taught him and Jeannie trained him and that bitch wanted his brother.
As the dead approach, Sam calls fire and it floods upwards and outwards, settling on his skin and making him glow, keeping him warm. It soothes the humming in his bones, like ice put on a bruise, and so by the time a few of the dead are near him, his anger’s cooled a little, been burnt to ashes and vengeance in the middle of his fire and the plane. “Why are you here?” one of the dead asks, and Sam tells them about Etienne, asks if she’s hiding here. “She is one of us,” the dead say, collectively, their words echoing off of the black expanse of space around them, around Sam, and he replies, trusting the feel of the words even if he doesn’t know where they come from, “I have to cleanse her here, like I did there.” The dead orb around him, shifting sinuously in and out of one another, spinning around him, faster and faster until they stop and leave a space open for him to walk through. He sees her and moves.
Etienne is one of the stronger dead now, no longer a spirit trapped on earth but a soul trapped in the astral, wandering without a body. The torn edges of her nightgown flutter in an invisible breeze and the water dropping off of her hair falls and never hits ground. “He killed me,” she says, and Sam feels pity now, sympathy, studying the cross-shaped hole in her nightgown, the frail bones of her wrists. “I died because I loved something I couldn’t have, and I couldn’t take it anymore when the others…They flaunted it and I loved him and I just couldn’t stand it,” she says, and starts to cry. Sam feels sorrow pluck at his heart and pulls her close, holds her in a hug, and she sobs for all that she lost as the fire dries her out and then burns her. He holds his arms across his chest, as if she is still between them, for hours after nothing of her is left.
When he finally looks up, he closes his eyes on the dark, barren landscape of the deeper astral plane and opens them closer to his body but not yet back within it. He thinks for a moment, trying to recall his lessons, and fire claws up his back as he realises that this is the psychic plane. Here, he has a body and not just the idea of one, a body that registers pain when he’s smacked on the head. Sam turns, fire flaring like a cobra’s hood around his head and then drops, sheepish, when he sees Missouri. You didn’t even call up a circle, Sam Winchester! she chides, and Sam replies, like a five-year-old caught with his hand in the cookie-jar, Dean’s there. Missouri sighs, tells him, Sam, it don’t matter if your brother’s there or not; he wouldn’t know a formless spirit ‘til it possessed you, and maybe not even then.
Sam doesn’t like it when other people lecture him, especially doesn’t like it when they insult Dean even obliquely, and Missouri’s a psychic, she picks up on this and says, weary, Why are you here? like he’s shown up on her doorstep at two in the morning. Sam says I’m coming down from the astral like it happens everyday, but Missouri gives him a sharp-eyed look and says, I don’t want to know, do I, and it’s not a question so Sam doesn’t answer. How’d you do it? she asks, and Sam’s grin lights up the plane, sends his fire leaping above his head, echoing his answer. We blessed the water and let the connection between her and the lake banish her. My idea, he adds quickly, and Missouri laughs, a full belly-laugh like he’s never heard from her before. Can you find your way back? she asks and Sam sinks into himself, feels a patch of dry, peeling blood on his forehead, feels the dull throbbing of a slice in his palm, feels the ache of falling to his knees on the rocks one too many times. Yeah, he says, and leans down to kiss her cheek. Thanks, Missouri, he says, and she smiles and replies, Next time you’re in Kansas, stop by and see me. Sam agrees, closes his eyes, and breathes.
--
He doesn’t need to open his eyes to know he’s back in his body; his head is throbbing and the sun’s shining right through his eyelids. The ground under him is hard and his hand’s been wrapped, so he doesn’t think Dean moved him, just laid him out like a burnt offering which, considering the fire tickling the marrow of his bones, might not be that far off. “She’s gone,” he says, jumping a little at the rasp, and he coughs to clear his throat. “Need to puke?” he hears, Dean’s smug voice, but there’s worry and concern under the attitude, so Sam says, “No, I’m fine. Just stiff. Dunno, though-maybe I would if I’d woken up in the car.” He feels, rather than sees, Dean’s glare, and sits up, the change in altitude making his head spin.
Sam cracks his eyelids and it takes a moment for his pupils to shrink enough to see anything more than bright, but then he’s looking out over the lake, watching sunlight dance upon the waves, thinking of Jess sitting next to him, cradled under his arm and pressed against him, watching the sun rise over the Bay. His soul aches at the loss and he blinks, chasing away San Francisco and Jess, and in the next moment he feels delicate, hollow fingers resting on his shoulder, feels I loved him, feels heart-wrenching sorrow that drives beyond mind and soul, attaching itself to the sun and the trees and the laughing water, and then Dean is there, sitting next to him and whole, and everything wrong in the world is gone, banished like Etienne’s spirit, in the face of everything that is right.
“She’s gone?” Dean asks, and Sam wonders if Etienne truly is, Etienne and Jess both, or if he’ll always carry a part of them in himself, the part that has loved and lost, whether by the hands of an enraged madman or the cunning of a demon. He says, “Yeah,” the word like a sacrifice to the blessed water, and stands up. “She won’t be haunting anyone or anything again,” and Dean looks up at him, stands, and helps Sam to the car. “I’m craving M&M’s,” is what Dean says as they’re pulling on to the road. “Since you finished off my last ones, you can buy me more. We’ll stop at that party store up the road.” Sam laughs, leans his head back carefully, and texts Vicky.
--
They meet her that night at Vango’s, a local pizza place and bar or another family restaurant, Sam’s not sure which, after they’ve cleaned up, bandaged Sam’s knees, palm, and head, and changed into clothes that don’t smell so much of blood and herbs and salt and lake-water. This time, they don’t need to wait for her to guide them; they see her as soon as they walk in the door, sitting in a booth over by the bar. Sam slides into the booth across from Vicky, not meeting her eyes, and Dean sits next to him, knees bumping as they find the right distance. He sees Vicky shift slightly once he and Dean have settled, watches as she moves over so that she’s facing Dean more than Sam, and he knows that Dean sees it as he feels his brother tense. Sam prays to every deity he knows of, then to the Roman’s Unknown God, that Dean won’t say anything about it, and the waitress, a co-ed that vaguely reminds him of Becky, comes over so Sam thinks that maybe his prayer’s been answered, until he sees that Dean’s not flirting, just asks for a beer for both of them.
The waitress pouts as she leaves and either Vicky’s oblivious to how angry Dean is right now or she’s trying to distract him because she says, “So, Sam said you’d gotten rid of the ghost?” and now Sam’s a little upset too, because what they did to Etienne, what he did, wasn’t so much ‘getting rid of’ as ‘completely obliterating from every plane of existence.’ The only problem with this is that Dean’s anger just makes Dean sit up straighter and start reaching for a gun, foot tapping on the floor, eyes languid and lazy, predator waiting to pounce, but Sam’s anger tinges Sam’s vision red and makes Vicky’s glass of water start to bubble.
Her eyes flick to the glass, then Dean, and she licks her lips and looks away, murmurs something under her breath. Dean leans forward, says, “Care to repeat that?” all low and demanding, and Sam shakes his head and consciously stamps down on his power. “Yes, we banished her,” he says, smooth emphasis on the verb, and Dean glances at him, snorts, and looks over Vicky’s shoulder as their waitress brings the beer. “Pizzas’ll be up in a minute,” she says, and leaves with a smile when Dean says, “Hey, thanks, darlin’.”
“Did you get everything you needed at Meister’s?” Vicky asks, then, curious, “Just what were you doing with all that, anyway?” and Sam thinks that something is going on here, because Vicky should know. He looks at Dean, who’s drinking his beer, fingers gliding over slick-cold condensation and leaving Sam to answer the question, and this is one of those moments when Sam wishes he could speak mind-to-mind because there are a billion things he wants to say to Dean right now. “We did,” Sam eventually says after a swallow of his beer and power. “And we used everything in a ritual of protection before we went to the lake.” He’s stretching the truth, but not outright lying, and he thinks he sees something in Vicky’s eyes before her whole face lights up and her eyes flick from her glass to a space near Sam’s shoulder. “You’ve never participated in a ritual before,” he guesses and she laughs, says, “Is it that obvious?” Dean’s still not talking, to either of them, and Sam asks, brow furrowing because he’s honestly curious, “Why not?”
Vicky shrugs, says something about being as good as a mundane in any sort of organised ritual, goes on and on about how awful that makes her feel, how useless and pointless her gift is, until even he’s ready to throttle her, so it doesn’t surprise him when Dean slams his beer back, then the bottle down, and walks out of the restaurant without looking at anyone or anything. She looks startled for a moment, but as soon as Dean walks out of the door, her features shift and he’s reading calm victory in her expression and asks, “Why’d you chase my brother out?”
She laughs and shakes her head, and the waitress comes back with three pizza boxes, leaves them on the table and winks at Sam as she sashays away. “I wanted to tell you, lanmò-mennen,” she begins, serious and sombre and still not looking at him and the use of that Creole phrase makes him sit up straighter, narrow his eyes, “that you just can’t go traipsing about the astral every time you hunt. That, and there’s construction in Toledo. Now go and find your brother,” she says, pushing two of the boxes at Sam, “and thank you.”
--
Sam walks outside and almost trips over Dean, who’s leaning against the railing, obviously waiting. “What’s that?” Dean asks, when Sam stands next to him, balancing the boxes on hands that feel like trembling but haven’t gotten there yet. “Dinner. Pizza, I think. Dean,” he says, but Dean shakes his head, pushes away from the railing, hands curled into loose fists, and says, “Don’t, Sam.” Sam shuts his mouth, follows Dean to the Impala and stays in the car while his brother goes into a party store and comes out with two six-packs, stays still while Dean guns the car up the road and follows the sweep of the lake like a prowling tiger. They stop and park somewhere inconspicuous, walk right to the line dividing dry sand from wet, and sit, eat, get drunk in dark silence, water lapping at their toes.
“I loved him,” Sam says, once he’s eaten and studied the silence for hours, stars that might be spirits glowing high above them. Dean looks over, says, “What?” and Sam says, “What Etienne said when I found her. I loved him. She said,” and Dean cuts in, says, “You don’t have to do this, Sammy.” Sam looks out over the water, cold and black and giggling, thinks of ghosts, Etienne and Jess, says, “Yeah, I do.” He waits for the words to come and doesn’t stop them when they bubble out of his throat, gives them voice and substance. “She just wanted to be happy. Y’know?” and it’s a long time in the quiet before Dean says, “Yeah. I do.”
--
They leave Marquette the next morning and don’t look back, bound for Cincinnati. Sam says, “There’s construction on 75 in Toledo,” and Dean rolls his eyes, but when they approach the Ohio border, Dean turns off and finds state highways the rest of the way, Zeppelin loud in a comfortable silence.