A mari usque ad mare - Part 10 (11/14)
A mari usque ad mare - Part 10 (11/14)
3,449/28,777 of R rated Gen (with an edge of subtext) crack!fic in which Dean revisits his past in unexpected ways. (Sam uses really big words; Dean says ‘What?' a lot; and unfortunately Bobby says nothing at all)
Prologue | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Epilogue
Part 10
Triple point
Dean cut to the chase. ‘Do we need to find ourselves an undamaged holy well to undo this, because I have to tell you - Kansas? Probably not a good source.’
‘I have an idea.’
‘Better make it a good one, Sammy.’
♒
Dean was doing what every guard dog did best. He was custodian, defender, sentinel, watching Sam do research, and cleaning their weapons. They had a lot more now, courtesy of one of Dean’s stops on the way back to Lawrence. If you plan your route carefully you can always be sure of finding a good gun dealer right next to a nicely appointed ladies’ restroom. It wasn’t likely that they were going to need any of them, but Dean believed in being prepared for anything (some would say over-prepared.) His brother was the same about the research side of hunting.
Sam’s pile of notes seemed to have grown exponentially. With that thought Dean realised that too much of Sam’s yammering on about those damned numbers had sunk in. He definitely needed to get out of the house. But there was no way either of them were letting the other out of their sight. If they’d led a conjoined existence back in their own time, that was a pale reflection of their behaviour now. Needy didn’t even begin to cover their feelings. If one of them had to go into another room, the other automatically followed, their invisible shortened tether tugged them hither. Dean was sure Sam didn’t even realise what was happening, he was just reacting to the fact that they were all alone here. The dislocation from their own time had only strengthened the bonds between them.
Solitude was something Dean was all too used to. After Sam had left for college he’d tried to fill the void by throwing himself even deeper into every hunt. The gaps between became a frenzied dive into as many bars, fights and warm bodies as he could handle. The further he fell, the more isolated he became. He’d only just got Sam back in time.
Sam appeared to be the family loner, but he was the one who formed real connections everywhere he went. Dean wished it was that easy. Dean’s engagement with the world was all on the surface; for him, family was the only thing that truly mattered. Hunting was a commitment, compulsion, and distraction, and he would give it up in a second to protect the people he loved.
Warding Sam, Dean needed to be doing more to help.
‘Rhizofiltration,’ Sam said, as if there was no need to say more.
‘What?’ Dean asked, grabbing onto the verbal bone, more with desperation than hunger.
‘It’s the process of using flora to remediate contaminated water supplies. Some plants are better than others at storing the toxins without any detrimental effect. Scientists have done tests transplanting various species into affected areas, and sunflowers are apparently one of the hardiest plants to use.’
‘Whoa,’ Dean said finally, when it seemed like Sam was waiting for a response. He was glad Sam was excited, but what did plants have to do with anything?
‘Sunflowers,’ Sam repeated with deliberate emphasis.
Dean racked his brain for another positive comment. It took a while. ‘Sunflowers are the state flower of Kansas!’ Dean said suddenly. He had no idea where he knew that from, but he was glad he had something to offer in return. ‘And ... they do that turny thing.’
Sam beamed at him. ‘Heliotropism.’
‘What?’ Dean asked again helplessly. He was getting the distinct feeling he was trapped in a Twilight Zone version of a spelling bee. Don’t get him wrong, he was as competitive as all get out, but Sam could have this trophy, as long as Dean got the chocolate cake. Or maybe beetroot and chocolate, or asparagus and peanut butter. Mmmmn.
‘They track the sun as buds. And sunflower florets are arranged in a spiral.’
‘Um. Cool?’ There was no getting around it; Sam was going to be a geek for life.
‘Yes, it is. Sunflowers have interconnecting spirals. That’s about as cool as a DNA double helix.’
Dean was prepared to take Sam’s word for it, but only because he was his brother. And also because he didn’t want Sam to sit him down and offer exhaustive proof of all of nature’s wonders before dinner. Speaking of food, he was awfully ...
‘The numbers of the left and right spirals are successive Fibonacci numbers, Dean.’
The name sounded familiar so Dean just went with it. ‘That’s good, is it?’
‘It’s better than good. Graham was using sunflowers, as well as a Fibonacci sequence in his spell, maybe to counterbalance the moon. I think we need to tip that balance completely.’
‘With flowers?’ Dean said doubtfully. Herbs yeah, he knew they worked for people like Missouri who were into that stuff, and intellectually he knew they were nothing more than dried leaves and flowers. But a freaking giant yellow daisy, for heaven’s sake?
‘And the sun!’ Sam was positively effervescing with enthusiasm.
‘Oh.’ When it came down to it, Dean wasn’t actually as dumb as he made out. It was just that he had a very narrow range of specialities. Despite the fact that their father abhorred having anything to do with witchcraft, he’d actually trained them well in more than the basics, and this, like so many powerful things, was just about the most basic thing there was. ‘The summer solstice.’ And the timing was right. Maybe, just maybe, they were in with a chance after all. He could get Sammy out of this mess, and fix everything, for good this time.
‘21st June, 11:13am, give or take a minute,’ Sam said brightly. ‘It’s a Wednesday.’
‘I’ve always been fond of Wednesdays,’ Dean said, only half sarcastically. If they got out of this, Wednesday was going straight onto his list of the good things in life, immediately below Sam, the Impala, and food. Damn, still hungry. Dean looked at Sam hopefully, but there was no way Sam was stopping now, he was positively rocking a research high.
‘Twenty-one is also a Fibonacci number, and Wednesday is ruled by Mercury, so ...’
‘Ah.’ Now that, they could work with.
Right after Dean found himself a snack to keep him going. He was eating for two after all.
♒
‘Dean? What happened to the packet I left on the table?’ Sam was wandering around the living room, upending sofa cushions on some mad quest.
Um. ‘What packet?’ Dean mumbled indistinctly from the open doorway. He threw the last few seeds as hard as he could at the bird sitting up on the tree branch that was brushing the upstairs window. Donald, or his twin, (sadly crows really all did look alike to Dean) squawked derisively and took off into the sunset.
‘The packet of sunflower seeds I left here an hour ago.’
Uh. ‘Why? What did you need it for?’
‘I bought them for the spell, Dean.’
Oops.
‘Dean?’
‘It was Donald’s fault!’ Dean could feel Sam’s look even with his back to him, so there was no point turning around was there?
‘Dean if you ate them, just say so, there’s no need to blame it on some mythical bird.’
‘All right, I ate most of them, okay?’ God damned bird. Dean wondered if crow tasted like chicken.
♒
‘I’m the chick, but you’re the one turning into the Wicca Witch of the West,’ Dean mocked as he sat on the kitchen table, legs stretched out into space, idly admiring his toenail polish, and watching Sam work on compounding the few ingredients they had been able to obtain locally.
‘Gee, Dean. Very funny. Did you stay up all night thinking that one up?’
Huh! It had only taken three hours, and it wasn’t like he could get any sleep with Sam curled up snuffling into a pillow next to him. The whole bed dilemma was a nightmare. The first night after the twin shocks of who was who, they had tried sleeping in separate rooms. Dean seeing Dad, and Sam seeing Mom, had done more than freak them out. Sam had muttered he was going to need therapy forever after this. Dean had tried to lessen the tension with a smart “only if I can watch” but that hadn’t gone down well. They lasted two hours before mutual worry forced them to crack simultaneously and they ending up meeting each other in the doorway each clutching a pillow. Bookending the living room couches hadn’t lasted more than a few minutes. John was shorter than Sam, but not by enough inches to make that work comfortably. The next step was a coin toss for the double bed, Dean lost. The floor was fine; they’d both slept rough too often to let that bother them. It seemed to upset Sam now though. He stood it for eight minutes (Dean had timed it to take his mind off everything) before he got up and virtually tossed Dean into the centre of the bed and took his place on the floor. Dean lasted thirteen minutes, spending the last five of those hanging over the edge of the bed repeating, ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ until Sam threatened to smother him with a pillow. After that, they both gave in, and that should have been the end of it. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t spent years sharing a bed. This was different, that being the understatement of this other century. Different was lying there, staring at your youthful, dead, parent, and wanting so badly to reach out and touch, and be held, and told it was all a bad dream. Different was lying there seeing your brother in another’s eyes. Different was how everything felt and how simply it changed. Different in the end meant absolutely nothing at all. Dean finally bridged that chasm by reaching out to Sam, saying as he’d done so often through their childhood, ‘I’ve got you. Everything will be all right.’ Sammy curled in, falling asleep to the sound of that constant reassurance while Dean held vigil.
So he’d had a long time to think up a positively wicked dig at Sam, because, whatever else was going on in whichever world they were in, it was his sacred duty as a big brother to make sure that Sam knew that one truth remained the same; Sam and Dean, Bitch and Jerk; brothers.
Dean didn’t bother responding to Sam’s snark, instead contenting himself with adding the final touches to his own magical concoction. That should do it, there was only one thing left he could do. Oh, my God!
‘Dean?’
?
‘Dean!’
‘m … huh?’ That hadn’t come out as clearly as Dean had planned, but who could blame him?
‘You’re making that noise.’
‘wha’ noi …?’
‘You know the one.’
Oh.
‘Do I even want to know what you’re eating, Dean?’
Dean swallowed quickly and tried not to sound so … uh … fulfilled.
‘Vanilla ice cream.’
‘Really? Isn’t that a bit boring for you, Dean? I thought you liked living on the edge? Vanilla? That’s just sad. I’ll never be able to hold my head up around the other hunters again once that secret gets out.’ Sam wiped an imaginary tear from his eye.
Dean made him eat his comments with a good dollop of the ice cream; he was nothing if not a generous brother.
‘That’s disgusting!’ Sammy spat out along with the remainder of the spoonful Dean had shoved in his mouth. ‘What was that?’
‘Vanilla,’ Dean said, waggling his eyebrows.
‘What else besides vanilla?’ Sam asked warily, obviously trying hard not to gag.
Dean smiled as he listed his winning combination off, one finger at a time. ‘Cherries, peanut butter, Milo, and pickles.’
♒
‘Why weren’t there more hippies in Kansas?’
Sometimes Dean had no idea where Sam was coming from. ‘You want to become a hippie? Well, you’ve always had the hair for it, and Dad’s does seem to be growing awfully fast now. Do you need me to braid it for you? I could even add some sunflowers if you like.’
Sam’s reaction was worth the fear Dean had had that Sam would take him up on his offer. Sam had a history of saying yes to the most outrageous dares just to see Dean squirm.
‘We’d have been fine if we’d been born in San Francisco.’
Okay, they’d both definitely been stuck in history much too long. Sam’s mind was jumping from point to point so fast that Dean had no hope of joining the dots. There was only one solution to that problem. ‘What?’
‘I need more ingredients, Dean. There are a hell of a lot of the more obscure substances that we can’t get locally. We don’t have any contacts here. San Francisco would definitely have most of the stuff, all those flower children settled in and living their alternative lifestyles. It’s a Mecca for herbalists. It’s either that or we need to go south and find us a hoodoo worker. We’ve only got a few days left before the solstice. I don’t think we can do this on our own. We need help, and we need it fast.’
Dean hadn’t realised that this was what he’d been waiting for. Two more of the puzzle pieces clicked together in his head. ‘I have an idea.’
Sam sounded dubious when he asked, ‘Is it a good one?’
‘Trust me, it’ll be worth the long, fast, drive. And I promise, no more stops, at least no more than I absolutely have to.’
♒
‘You didn’t tell me you were going to break into Bobby’s house, Dean!’
Dean sighed because he would have thought that all those ‘Dakota’ signs on the highway would have given it away. He handed the tools over to his brother. ‘Correction, Sherlock, you’re breaking in.’
‘But, Bobby! If he catches us, he’ll kill us.’
Dean decided that an eye roll was certainly appropriate. ‘He took off half an hour ago. We’ve got plenty of time. Besides, Bobby likes us, Sam.’
‘Uh, Dean.’ Sam put down the electrical pliers for a moment and gestured - vaguely obscenely, Dean thought - at themselves, their bodies. ‘Bobby doesn’t know this us, Dean.’
Dean hadn’t forgotten who they were for a moment. He hadn’t. No, really. ‘But he likes Dad.’ Um. Okay, wrong choice of words there too. ‘He knows Dad. Has for years, and he’s always been there for us, all of us, whatever arguments they’ve had over the years.’
Sam finished bypassing the alarm system. ‘How do we know that he knows Dad now? In 1978?’
Oh.
‘Can you remember when we first met Bobby?’
Well, duh. He was the oldest after all. Of course, he remembered that. ‘It was that … first year. You were …’ He didn’t want to say it, he never did, but especially not here and now, it would be like paying something to jinx you. ‘You were too little to remember. You spent most of your time gumming away on a goddamn dictionary. Knew I should have given you something different to play with.’
Sam kicked him, hard. Just like he wanted him to.
‘But can you remember if that was the first time Dad met Bobby?’ Sam was deliberately not acknowledging what they were both steadfastly ignoring, again.
Dean thought about it. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I’m not sure. We spent most of our time playing outside with Schlesinger. He never dropped you once, well after the first time anyway, when I gave you riding lessons on him.’ He snickered.
‘I’m just glad Bobby never had a motorbike back then. Dad would have killed you.’
Dean grinned, ‘He almost did. After that he always kept a close eye on us. Took me a few years to learn how to shake him and get us some real fun.’
Sammy thrust the tools in his jacket pocket and stepped back to allow his brother the final honours of the door lock. ‘Okay, Mom, show us what you learned.’
Dean tucked his dress out of the way as he bent over the lock. ‘Can’t believe Dad never had any lock picks in his tool kit. Do you know how much I had to pay for these at the pool hall?’
‘Not as much as it cost me to not drown all those guys who were coming on to you in their own drinks,’ Sam retorted grimly.
Dean just smirked. Didn’t matter what body he was in, he still had it. Although … maybe it was genetic, because while their father could turn on the charm to devastating effect when he needed to con someone, it seemed that all their mother needed was just one glance for them to fall under her spell. Yup, that was it. Both sides of the family were cool. Pity Sammy never got any of it. But, then again, it would have been wasted on a geek. At least the gods had some sense. And Sam seemed to be getting some too, because this time he’d been on board with the plan, and had managed to play his part without any emotions getting in the way. Almost.
♒
The only place any of the Winchesters ever called home was Kansas, even Sam. But of all the places their father had ever taken them while they were growing up, Pastor Jim’s and Bobby’s were the two that came closest to filling that space in their hearts. There was almost nothing they didn’t know about Bobby’s home, including the best way to drug his current watchdog. Sam had done that, quickly and efficiently, and if he sniffled a little after it was done, neither of them mentioned it.
To Dean, Bobby’s yard was an automotive amusement park built just for he and his brother. Sam on the other hand, was more of the opinion that the inside of Bobby’s house was where the real treasures were kept. Sam was the only one besides Bobby who had even a chance of finding what they wanted in the tiny window of time they had left before the days shortened and they lost their best chance of escape.
Inside it didn’t look any different. There was stuff everywhere, but underneath those ever present trucker caps dwelt the soul of a bibliophile. Every bay of shelving and freestanding stack of books was carefully subdivided across the whole range of esoteric disciplines that Bobby specialised in. You just had to know how Bobby’s labyrinthine mind worked, and understand the reasoning behind his filing idiosyncrasies.
Even with all he knew, it still took Sam over an hour to find and copy down the necessary sigils, and binding and release spells. Dean was stuck almost as long in one of Bobby’s storerooms carefully working his way through Sam’s shopping list. He really hated taking on the woman’s role, but even he had to admit that Sam was in command of this part of the mission.
What neither of them had factored into their tight schedule was that leaving would be so hard.
They had everything Sam thought they needed, which was a problem in itself because he was, as he’d said so worriedly the entire drive to Bobby’s, making it all up as they went along. None of this was even supposed to be possible, and he was desperately cobbling a ritual together from a sea of different spells and prayers.
As Sam checked Dean’s collection against the master list for the third time, they both knew they were deliberately putting off the moment of departure.
‘I wish we could just ask Bobby,’ Sam said. ‘We can trust him with our lives, we know that.’
‘Yes, but you know Bobby, he’d be suspicious of God. Just think how long it would take us to prove we weren’t evil, before we even got onto the subject of time travel, or the body-swapping. Not to mention the fact that we doped his dog. Bobby’s killed people for less than that.’
Sam winced because they’d both been there on that memorable occasion.
There was no way that Bobby Singer was ever going to react well to a visitation from some strange people calling themselves Winchesters like it should mean something.
They didn’t have the time it would take to tell the truth, so a little break-and-enter, and burglary would have to do instead.
What they did take the time for was the even harder act of leaving two items behind them; in essence a gift, message, and hope for a future that neither of them might have.
Remember.
♒
Part 11
3,449/28,777 of R rated Gen (with an edge of subtext) crack!fic in which Dean revisits his past in unexpected ways. (Sam uses really big words; Dean says ‘What?' a lot; and unfortunately Bobby says nothing at all)
Prologue | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Epilogue
Part 10
Triple point
Dean cut to the chase. ‘Do we need to find ourselves an undamaged holy well to undo this, because I have to tell you - Kansas? Probably not a good source.’
‘I have an idea.’
‘Better make it a good one, Sammy.’
♒
Dean was doing what every guard dog did best. He was custodian, defender, sentinel, watching Sam do research, and cleaning their weapons. They had a lot more now, courtesy of one of Dean’s stops on the way back to Lawrence. If you plan your route carefully you can always be sure of finding a good gun dealer right next to a nicely appointed ladies’ restroom. It wasn’t likely that they were going to need any of them, but Dean believed in being prepared for anything (some would say over-prepared.) His brother was the same about the research side of hunting.
Sam’s pile of notes seemed to have grown exponentially. With that thought Dean realised that too much of Sam’s yammering on about those damned numbers had sunk in. He definitely needed to get out of the house. But there was no way either of them were letting the other out of their sight. If they’d led a conjoined existence back in their own time, that was a pale reflection of their behaviour now. Needy didn’t even begin to cover their feelings. If one of them had to go into another room, the other automatically followed, their invisible shortened tether tugged them hither. Dean was sure Sam didn’t even realise what was happening, he was just reacting to the fact that they were all alone here. The dislocation from their own time had only strengthened the bonds between them.
Solitude was something Dean was all too used to. After Sam had left for college he’d tried to fill the void by throwing himself even deeper into every hunt. The gaps between became a frenzied dive into as many bars, fights and warm bodies as he could handle. The further he fell, the more isolated he became. He’d only just got Sam back in time.
Sam appeared to be the family loner, but he was the one who formed real connections everywhere he went. Dean wished it was that easy. Dean’s engagement with the world was all on the surface; for him, family was the only thing that truly mattered. Hunting was a commitment, compulsion, and distraction, and he would give it up in a second to protect the people he loved.
Warding Sam, Dean needed to be doing more to help.
‘Rhizofiltration,’ Sam said, as if there was no need to say more.
‘What?’ Dean asked, grabbing onto the verbal bone, more with desperation than hunger.
‘It’s the process of using flora to remediate contaminated water supplies. Some plants are better than others at storing the toxins without any detrimental effect. Scientists have done tests transplanting various species into affected areas, and sunflowers are apparently one of the hardiest plants to use.’
‘Whoa,’ Dean said finally, when it seemed like Sam was waiting for a response. He was glad Sam was excited, but what did plants have to do with anything?
‘Sunflowers,’ Sam repeated with deliberate emphasis.
Dean racked his brain for another positive comment. It took a while. ‘Sunflowers are the state flower of Kansas!’ Dean said suddenly. He had no idea where he knew that from, but he was glad he had something to offer in return. ‘And ... they do that turny thing.’
Sam beamed at him. ‘Heliotropism.’
‘What?’ Dean asked again helplessly. He was getting the distinct feeling he was trapped in a Twilight Zone version of a spelling bee. Don’t get him wrong, he was as competitive as all get out, but Sam could have this trophy, as long as Dean got the chocolate cake. Or maybe beetroot and chocolate, or asparagus and peanut butter. Mmmmn.
‘They track the sun as buds. And sunflower florets are arranged in a spiral.’
‘Um. Cool?’ There was no getting around it; Sam was going to be a geek for life.
‘Yes, it is. Sunflowers have interconnecting spirals. That’s about as cool as a DNA double helix.’
Dean was prepared to take Sam’s word for it, but only because he was his brother. And also because he didn’t want Sam to sit him down and offer exhaustive proof of all of nature’s wonders before dinner. Speaking of food, he was awfully ...
‘The numbers of the left and right spirals are successive Fibonacci numbers, Dean.’
The name sounded familiar so Dean just went with it. ‘That’s good, is it?’
‘It’s better than good. Graham was using sunflowers, as well as a Fibonacci sequence in his spell, maybe to counterbalance the moon. I think we need to tip that balance completely.’
‘With flowers?’ Dean said doubtfully. Herbs yeah, he knew they worked for people like Missouri who were into that stuff, and intellectually he knew they were nothing more than dried leaves and flowers. But a freaking giant yellow daisy, for heaven’s sake?
‘And the sun!’ Sam was positively effervescing with enthusiasm.
‘Oh.’ When it came down to it, Dean wasn’t actually as dumb as he made out. It was just that he had a very narrow range of specialities. Despite the fact that their father abhorred having anything to do with witchcraft, he’d actually trained them well in more than the basics, and this, like so many powerful things, was just about the most basic thing there was. ‘The summer solstice.’ And the timing was right. Maybe, just maybe, they were in with a chance after all. He could get Sammy out of this mess, and fix everything, for good this time.
‘21st June, 11:13am, give or take a minute,’ Sam said brightly. ‘It’s a Wednesday.’
‘I’ve always been fond of Wednesdays,’ Dean said, only half sarcastically. If they got out of this, Wednesday was going straight onto his list of the good things in life, immediately below Sam, the Impala, and food. Damn, still hungry. Dean looked at Sam hopefully, but there was no way Sam was stopping now, he was positively rocking a research high.
‘Twenty-one is also a Fibonacci number, and Wednesday is ruled by Mercury, so ...’
‘Ah.’ Now that, they could work with.
Right after Dean found himself a snack to keep him going. He was eating for two after all.
♒
‘Dean? What happened to the packet I left on the table?’ Sam was wandering around the living room, upending sofa cushions on some mad quest.
Um. ‘What packet?’ Dean mumbled indistinctly from the open doorway. He threw the last few seeds as hard as he could at the bird sitting up on the tree branch that was brushing the upstairs window. Donald, or his twin, (sadly crows really all did look alike to Dean) squawked derisively and took off into the sunset.
‘The packet of sunflower seeds I left here an hour ago.’
Uh. ‘Why? What did you need it for?’
‘I bought them for the spell, Dean.’
Oops.
‘Dean?’
‘It was Donald’s fault!’ Dean could feel Sam’s look even with his back to him, so there was no point turning around was there?
‘Dean if you ate them, just say so, there’s no need to blame it on some mythical bird.’
‘All right, I ate most of them, okay?’ God damned bird. Dean wondered if crow tasted like chicken.
♒
‘I’m the chick, but you’re the one turning into the Wicca Witch of the West,’ Dean mocked as he sat on the kitchen table, legs stretched out into space, idly admiring his toenail polish, and watching Sam work on compounding the few ingredients they had been able to obtain locally.
‘Gee, Dean. Very funny. Did you stay up all night thinking that one up?’
Huh! It had only taken three hours, and it wasn’t like he could get any sleep with Sam curled up snuffling into a pillow next to him. The whole bed dilemma was a nightmare. The first night after the twin shocks of who was who, they had tried sleeping in separate rooms. Dean seeing Dad, and Sam seeing Mom, had done more than freak them out. Sam had muttered he was going to need therapy forever after this. Dean had tried to lessen the tension with a smart “only if I can watch” but that hadn’t gone down well. They lasted two hours before mutual worry forced them to crack simultaneously and they ending up meeting each other in the doorway each clutching a pillow. Bookending the living room couches hadn’t lasted more than a few minutes. John was shorter than Sam, but not by enough inches to make that work comfortably. The next step was a coin toss for the double bed, Dean lost. The floor was fine; they’d both slept rough too often to let that bother them. It seemed to upset Sam now though. He stood it for eight minutes (Dean had timed it to take his mind off everything) before he got up and virtually tossed Dean into the centre of the bed and took his place on the floor. Dean lasted thirteen minutes, spending the last five of those hanging over the edge of the bed repeating, ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ until Sam threatened to smother him with a pillow. After that, they both gave in, and that should have been the end of it. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t spent years sharing a bed. This was different, that being the understatement of this other century. Different was lying there, staring at your youthful, dead, parent, and wanting so badly to reach out and touch, and be held, and told it was all a bad dream. Different was lying there seeing your brother in another’s eyes. Different was how everything felt and how simply it changed. Different in the end meant absolutely nothing at all. Dean finally bridged that chasm by reaching out to Sam, saying as he’d done so often through their childhood, ‘I’ve got you. Everything will be all right.’ Sammy curled in, falling asleep to the sound of that constant reassurance while Dean held vigil.
So he’d had a long time to think up a positively wicked dig at Sam, because, whatever else was going on in whichever world they were in, it was his sacred duty as a big brother to make sure that Sam knew that one truth remained the same; Sam and Dean, Bitch and Jerk; brothers.
Dean didn’t bother responding to Sam’s snark, instead contenting himself with adding the final touches to his own magical concoction. That should do it, there was only one thing left he could do. Oh, my God!
‘Dean?’
?
‘Dean!’
‘m … huh?’ That hadn’t come out as clearly as Dean had planned, but who could blame him?
‘You’re making that noise.’
‘wha’ noi …?’
‘You know the one.’
Oh.
‘Do I even want to know what you’re eating, Dean?’
Dean swallowed quickly and tried not to sound so … uh … fulfilled.
‘Vanilla ice cream.’
‘Really? Isn’t that a bit boring for you, Dean? I thought you liked living on the edge? Vanilla? That’s just sad. I’ll never be able to hold my head up around the other hunters again once that secret gets out.’ Sam wiped an imaginary tear from his eye.
Dean made him eat his comments with a good dollop of the ice cream; he was nothing if not a generous brother.
‘That’s disgusting!’ Sammy spat out along with the remainder of the spoonful Dean had shoved in his mouth. ‘What was that?’
‘Vanilla,’ Dean said, waggling his eyebrows.
‘What else besides vanilla?’ Sam asked warily, obviously trying hard not to gag.
Dean smiled as he listed his winning combination off, one finger at a time. ‘Cherries, peanut butter, Milo, and pickles.’
♒
‘Why weren’t there more hippies in Kansas?’
Sometimes Dean had no idea where Sam was coming from. ‘You want to become a hippie? Well, you’ve always had the hair for it, and Dad’s does seem to be growing awfully fast now. Do you need me to braid it for you? I could even add some sunflowers if you like.’
Sam’s reaction was worth the fear Dean had had that Sam would take him up on his offer. Sam had a history of saying yes to the most outrageous dares just to see Dean squirm.
‘We’d have been fine if we’d been born in San Francisco.’
Okay, they’d both definitely been stuck in history much too long. Sam’s mind was jumping from point to point so fast that Dean had no hope of joining the dots. There was only one solution to that problem. ‘What?’
‘I need more ingredients, Dean. There are a hell of a lot of the more obscure substances that we can’t get locally. We don’t have any contacts here. San Francisco would definitely have most of the stuff, all those flower children settled in and living their alternative lifestyles. It’s a Mecca for herbalists. It’s either that or we need to go south and find us a hoodoo worker. We’ve only got a few days left before the solstice. I don’t think we can do this on our own. We need help, and we need it fast.’
Dean hadn’t realised that this was what he’d been waiting for. Two more of the puzzle pieces clicked together in his head. ‘I have an idea.’
Sam sounded dubious when he asked, ‘Is it a good one?’
‘Trust me, it’ll be worth the long, fast, drive. And I promise, no more stops, at least no more than I absolutely have to.’
♒
‘You didn’t tell me you were going to break into Bobby’s house, Dean!’
Dean sighed because he would have thought that all those ‘Dakota’ signs on the highway would have given it away. He handed the tools over to his brother. ‘Correction, Sherlock, you’re breaking in.’
‘But, Bobby! If he catches us, he’ll kill us.’
Dean decided that an eye roll was certainly appropriate. ‘He took off half an hour ago. We’ve got plenty of time. Besides, Bobby likes us, Sam.’
‘Uh, Dean.’ Sam put down the electrical pliers for a moment and gestured - vaguely obscenely, Dean thought - at themselves, their bodies. ‘Bobby doesn’t know this us, Dean.’
Dean hadn’t forgotten who they were for a moment. He hadn’t. No, really. ‘But he likes Dad.’ Um. Okay, wrong choice of words there too. ‘He knows Dad. Has for years, and he’s always been there for us, all of us, whatever arguments they’ve had over the years.’
Sam finished bypassing the alarm system. ‘How do we know that he knows Dad now? In 1978?’
Oh.
‘Can you remember when we first met Bobby?’
Well, duh. He was the oldest after all. Of course, he remembered that. ‘It was that … first year. You were …’ He didn’t want to say it, he never did, but especially not here and now, it would be like paying something to jinx you. ‘You were too little to remember. You spent most of your time gumming away on a goddamn dictionary. Knew I should have given you something different to play with.’
Sam kicked him, hard. Just like he wanted him to.
‘But can you remember if that was the first time Dad met Bobby?’ Sam was deliberately not acknowledging what they were both steadfastly ignoring, again.
Dean thought about it. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I’m not sure. We spent most of our time playing outside with Schlesinger. He never dropped you once, well after the first time anyway, when I gave you riding lessons on him.’ He snickered.
‘I’m just glad Bobby never had a motorbike back then. Dad would have killed you.’
Dean grinned, ‘He almost did. After that he always kept a close eye on us. Took me a few years to learn how to shake him and get us some real fun.’
Sammy thrust the tools in his jacket pocket and stepped back to allow his brother the final honours of the door lock. ‘Okay, Mom, show us what you learned.’
Dean tucked his dress out of the way as he bent over the lock. ‘Can’t believe Dad never had any lock picks in his tool kit. Do you know how much I had to pay for these at the pool hall?’
‘Not as much as it cost me to not drown all those guys who were coming on to you in their own drinks,’ Sam retorted grimly.
Dean just smirked. Didn’t matter what body he was in, he still had it. Although … maybe it was genetic, because while their father could turn on the charm to devastating effect when he needed to con someone, it seemed that all their mother needed was just one glance for them to fall under her spell. Yup, that was it. Both sides of the family were cool. Pity Sammy never got any of it. But, then again, it would have been wasted on a geek. At least the gods had some sense. And Sam seemed to be getting some too, because this time he’d been on board with the plan, and had managed to play his part without any emotions getting in the way. Almost.
♒
The only place any of the Winchesters ever called home was Kansas, even Sam. But of all the places their father had ever taken them while they were growing up, Pastor Jim’s and Bobby’s were the two that came closest to filling that space in their hearts. There was almost nothing they didn’t know about Bobby’s home, including the best way to drug his current watchdog. Sam had done that, quickly and efficiently, and if he sniffled a little after it was done, neither of them mentioned it.
To Dean, Bobby’s yard was an automotive amusement park built just for he and his brother. Sam on the other hand, was more of the opinion that the inside of Bobby’s house was where the real treasures were kept. Sam was the only one besides Bobby who had even a chance of finding what they wanted in the tiny window of time they had left before the days shortened and they lost their best chance of escape.
Inside it didn’t look any different. There was stuff everywhere, but underneath those ever present trucker caps dwelt the soul of a bibliophile. Every bay of shelving and freestanding stack of books was carefully subdivided across the whole range of esoteric disciplines that Bobby specialised in. You just had to know how Bobby’s labyrinthine mind worked, and understand the reasoning behind his filing idiosyncrasies.
Even with all he knew, it still took Sam over an hour to find and copy down the necessary sigils, and binding and release spells. Dean was stuck almost as long in one of Bobby’s storerooms carefully working his way through Sam’s shopping list. He really hated taking on the woman’s role, but even he had to admit that Sam was in command of this part of the mission.
What neither of them had factored into their tight schedule was that leaving would be so hard.
They had everything Sam thought they needed, which was a problem in itself because he was, as he’d said so worriedly the entire drive to Bobby’s, making it all up as they went along. None of this was even supposed to be possible, and he was desperately cobbling a ritual together from a sea of different spells and prayers.
As Sam checked Dean’s collection against the master list for the third time, they both knew they were deliberately putting off the moment of departure.
‘I wish we could just ask Bobby,’ Sam said. ‘We can trust him with our lives, we know that.’
‘Yes, but you know Bobby, he’d be suspicious of God. Just think how long it would take us to prove we weren’t evil, before we even got onto the subject of time travel, or the body-swapping. Not to mention the fact that we doped his dog. Bobby’s killed people for less than that.’
Sam winced because they’d both been there on that memorable occasion.
There was no way that Bobby Singer was ever going to react well to a visitation from some strange people calling themselves Winchesters like it should mean something.
They didn’t have the time it would take to tell the truth, so a little break-and-enter, and burglary would have to do instead.
What they did take the time for was the even harder act of leaving two items behind them; in essence a gift, message, and hope for a future that neither of them might have.
Remember.
♒
Part 11