Part II: Beneath the Red Hills
Part II
The Men of Letters bunker is the only permanent home Sam’s ever known; now he can barely stand to look at it. Upstairs, his room is as he left it five years ago. There are clothes in the closest and a pile of unread books by the foot of the bed. He hasn’t been able to bring himself to glance into Dean’s, but he suspects Dean hasn’t changed anything, either. Lingering optimism, Sam supposes. Like they might be able to make it a home again, if they just leave it as is.
The library is daunting in its size, but Castiel manages to pull the books written in Welsh within ten minutes. It’s slow work. Sam can only flip through pictures; he has to trust that Castiel knows what he’s doing, but he’s never been good at turning Dean’s fate to someone else.
It takes an hour, but Sam finds the sketch again in what he guesses is an encyclopedia of sorts. It’s the same wild fur, same bloody muzzle, same eerie orange eyes. The caption is identical - Cadw teulu ger - and underneath is a brief entry.
“The Barghest abducts its prey by a form of hypnosis,” Castiel translates from the heavy tome. “It has the power to call up memories of fear and loss in the victim, thereby paralyzing him. It then transports him to a feeding ground where it sustains itself off feelings of despair and loneliness. Victims are trapped in a loop of destructive memories until they are rescued, the Barghest is slain, or the victim dies of hunger, thirst, or exposure. Hunters, avoid eye contact with this beast for there is no defense against its persuasive powers. The Barghest can also move stone, and will use loose rocks as weapons.”
Castiel looks up, and Sam manages a shaky smile. “This is good. It needs the victims alive. That means he’s not dead. We still have time.”
“He may not be dead, but he’s been reliving his worst memories for nearly two days straight.”
“It’s…it’s okay. Dean’s…” Lived at least three lifetimes worth of horror? Prone to death wishes on his best day? “Dean’s been through worse. We’ll make it in time.”
Castiel doesn’t look convinced, and Sam drops his gaze. “What else?”
“This creature hunts orphans for a reason. The only way to kill it is to catch it in a weakened state - that’s in direct sunlight - and to speak a ritual that involves mingling the blood of two family members. You and Dean will need to do it together.”
“Blood,” Sam repeats. It slips out, like a memory, and Castiel looks at him.
“It’s not surprising. Blood magic is some of the strongest magic there is.”
Maybe there’s a reason Dad drilled it into them, Sam thinks. Something more than obsession. Maybe it was self-preservation.
He clears his throat. “It says rescue. We can’t kill it if Dean is trapped in there - how do I get him out?”
“There’s a second ritual to free a victim from the loop of memories. It also requires a blood relation.”
Sam thinks of Colin Murphy, a boy without a single family member left in his life. If he can’t save Dean, he’ll be failing Colin as well.
“Okay, so…let’s find it and kill it.”
Castiel is shaking his head. “Sam, I looked everywhere for Dean. This creature has either taken Dean far out of range, or it has some way of warding against angels and demons. If we’re going to find Dean, we’ll have to use other means.”
“Ruby taught me a spell once…”
Castiel gives him a dark look that Sam patently ignores. “If Enochian rituals have failed to find Dean, then demon tricks will be useless as well. We need to find another way.”
*
5 Years Ago
Lebanon, Kansas
The Men of Letters headquarters rings emptily after the third trial. Sam drifts from room to room, and every time he stumbles on Dean, his brother has a drink in his hand. It takes Sam two weeks before he can stay awake for more than twelve hours straight, over a month before he gains enough weight back to fit into his old clothes. Dean is moody and withdrawn, and if Sam weren’t so tired, he’d be furious.
Dean practices for hours in the shooting range. He could already hit a werewolf dead in the heart at fifty paces, so Sam’s not sure what improvements he’s trying to make. Sam hears the bang bang bang of Dean’s shotgun as he’s studying the text in front of him, and it lulls him into sleep.
When he wakes, Dean’s shoulder is under his arm, holding him upright as he leads them both up to the bedrooms. Dean smells like whiskey and gunpowder, and he’s furnace-hot and marble-hard. Stoic and silent and long-suffering, and Sam hates him a little for it.
Sam hazily tries to push away, and Dean’s grip tightens. “You’ll fall,” Dean warns grimly, and Sam thinks he’s probably right.
Dean dumps him on his bed, and Sam rolls over, not wanting to see his brother’s face. It’s humiliating to be helped up the stairs like an invalid; it confirms every insult Dean’s ever hurled at him, and Sam can’t bear the resigned look Dean wears all the time now.
“Breakfast in the morning?” Dean asks, shifting his weight in the doorway.
“Let me sleep,” Sam mumbles into his pillow, and he registers Dean’s shoulders slumping.
“Yeah,” Dean says. “Okay, Sammy.”
Dean doesn’t leave. He hovers instead, and Sam feels a little sick at the thought that Dean might touch him. It’s been a month since the third trial, and they can barely look at each other. Kevin is gone, and Castiel is being staunchly evasive. Sam thinks there might be angels after them again, to punish them for their failure, but he can’t be sure. Dean has kept every detail from him except the ones Sam can remember in painful, bloody clarity.
Sam’s figured most of it out anyway.
There have been seventeen demonic possessions in the last month, as far as his laptop can tell. At least five deaths. Sam thinks about Meg, about Ruby, about Azazel and Lilith and the rancid things they’d done to their hosts. Sam’s not sure who thought giving the Winchesters power over life and death was a good idea. Whoever it was, they’re regretting it now.
Dean finally moves, stepping back. Sam watches his shadow drift away from the crack under the door.
*
Sam wakes in his bed and reaches for Dean. He comes up empty, and the last five years wash over him.
He’s been back to Lebanon since he left Dean, but he’s never slept the night. He’s tried, but he’s always cleared out before morning, driven away by memories of his and Dean’s brief domesticity. It’s the only time Sam can remember that he was both hunting and happy, settled and content and not yearning for elusive safety.
In his dreams, Dean was buried underground, and Sam couldn’t dig him out, no matter how deep he went. Even after he knew Dean had suffocated, he kept digging, looking for something he’d already lost.
Lebanon makes him maudlin; Sam swings his feet onto the floor and shakes his head, wishing he could shake off the depression as easily.
Castiel is in the library, staring at the bookshelves as though he can read them straight through their covers. For all Sam knows, he can.
“Earthquakes,” Castiel says, and Sam blinks.
“What?”
“The Barghest can move rocks, according to the entry we found yesterday. If that’s true, then the disappearances must be connected to the earthquakes that preceded them.”
“Coffee,” Sam says.
It’s still the middle of the night; he slept for less than four hours. The lack of rest is catching up with him. He and Dean used to go for days, keeping each other awake with energy drinks and shoves and bad jokes. It’s been more difficult on his own, worse and worse the older he gets. He wonders if Dean has faced the same thing.
He spent the grief-fueled weeks after Jess’s death chasing an invisible demon on nothing but anger and adrenaline. He can hardly remember that feeling. Instead, he remembers the slow, piecemeal way Dean pulled him out of it - replacing nightmares with memories of grateful victims they’d saved, dragging him out in public when he’d rather research, putting him to sleep with sex and pizza.
The kitchen hasn’t been touched, except for one detail; Dean’s favorite coffee cup is in the sink. The mug proclaims “I <3 Zombies” with blood dripping from the chipped black letters. He’d seen it in the cupboard and immediately claimed it, cackling with glee.
Dean probably left it without washing it the last time he was here. Dean’s gross like that. Sam gets the coffee going, cleans the cup, and waits.
Castiel materializes in the middle of the room, and Sam jumps.
“This is important,” he says bluntly. “More important than caffeine. Sam, I can sense geological patterns.”
“And?”
“And even if I can’t see where Dean is, I can tell you where the center of the most recent earthquake is located. If this creature is connected to it, that’s where we should look. We need to go back to North Carolina.”
Sam’s stomach turns over. He tries not to let himself get too excited, but…. Close. They’re so close. “Okay,” he says shakily. “One minute. Let me just - ”
“Now,” Castiel says, and touches two fingers to his forehead.
The room shifts around him, and Sam lands on the worn motel carpeting, coffee mug still in hand.
“Dammit,” he exclaims. “If the coffee maker burns the library down, you owe us some new books.”
Castiel waves his hand. “I read all the books anyway - I can easily recreate them. Get what you need while I locate the epicenter. Then we’ll go.”
Two days is nothing, Sam tells himself as he sorts through the assorted knives and shotguns. They’ve gone practically that long on a stakeout, nothing but coffee and talk radio keeping them awake. He picks carefully through the Impala’s trunk, taking Dean’s ivory-handled Colt, a recently-sharpened machete, and a vial of holy water just in case.
He pushes his way back into the motel room, and that’s when he sees the light on Dean’s cell. It’s blinking green - fully charged. Sam carefully picks it up and looks at the screen.
1 missed call, it tells him. One missed call labeled with Sam’s name, which means Dean has taken the time to punch Sam’s old number into a cell phone he’ll only be holding onto for a few months at most. Just like Sam has entered Dean’s number in every burn phone he’s had over the last five years. Just in case.
It’s just a hang-up - Sam’s call from two days ago - but Sam leaves it anyway.
He’s ready when Castiel returns.
“Okay,” Sam says. “Let’s go.”
*
5 Years Ago
I-77, West Virginia
Sam answers the seventeenth time the phone rings.
“Goddammit, Sam,” Dean is saying on the other line. “I swear to god….”
“I’m not hurt. I’m not dead. No one abducted me,” Sam snarls. “So don’t follow me.”
“Sam - ”
Sam hangs up.
The bus takes him to New Orleans, and he hitches to Texas from there. It’s twenty hours before he stops to rest, over a thousand miles before there’s enough distance between him and Dean. He heads from Texas to South Dakota before he realizes that the husk of Bobby’s house is probably the first place Dean will look. He takes Greyhound back toward Illinois instead and holes up in an abandoned building in the middle of Chicago. Dean hates the city.
It isn’t until he’s been squatting for two days that he realizes he isn’t being pursued. There have been no more calls, no rumors Sam has picked up in the hunter bars and roadhouses. Dean isn’t chasing him, and Sam stops to breathe.
Two months go by, and Dean doesn’t chase him.
The symptoms from the trials fade away. He stops coughing blood; he stops feeling sluggish and sick all the time. The cuts on his skin heal to faint scars, and his body sets itself back to right. He’s not messing with apocalyptic forces anymore, and the damage done to him fades away with the sense of urgency.
The acrid taste of failure remains.
He doesn’t stop hunting. Try as he might, he can’t get back to the bubble of safety and peace he felt when Dean was in Purgatory. He keeps expecting to walk into a hotel room and see Dean there, to look up from his dinner to see Dean sliding into the booth across from him.
It doesn’t happen, and his anger starts to congeal and grow cold.
'It's good,' he tells himself. It's better without Dean's disappointment, Dean's failed expectations. Maybe this is the whole point. Independence. Strength. Dean stayed through Lucifer and Ruby, death and despair, hallucinations and betrayal and apocalypse. Maybe he should have left Sam a long time ago, though. Nevermind that he's alone now, like every other hunter on the fucking planet. Nevermind that he doesn't have anyone to walk through fire for anymore, and no one to go to walk through fire for him.
Five years go by, and then Castiel is in a graveyard, asking for his help.
*
Castiel lands them on the western face of the mountain’s peak. It’s windy, and Sam stumbles a little on the loose granite. He’s never had particularly good balance. Even the scraggly trees are coated in russet rock dust, fine and glittering. The sun is just starting to rise, and Sam has a sudden, fierce wish for Dean at his side. The stakes haven’t been this high in a long time.
“There’s one story of a Barghest successfully being killed within the last two centuries,” Castiel is calmly saying. His voice is expressionless, but it sounds like a warning all the same. “Two brothers in England managed to successfully complete the ritual. Other than that, every hunter has failed. There are no accounts of a successful rescue.”
“Great,” Sam says. The earliest accounts of the Barghest he managed to find date back to the medieval era. A creature that’s been around for thousands of years with so few legends can mean one of two things. The first choice is that it’s not a danger. Given the body count this one has racked up in the last few weeks, Sam doubts that’s the case.
The second option is that there are few survivors to tell their story.
Castiel moves three steps to his left, then reaches out and touches the abrupt granite rise. “It’s here. There have been no significant geological changes to this mountain for the last hundred years, except for this spot. This is where we should start.”
The crack is almost hidden. The angle of the light turns it into a shadowy discoloration; Sam would have walked right by it if not for Castiel.
The space is narrow, and Sam has to turn sideways to fit his shoulders through. The inside is damp and pitch black, and Sam clicks on his pocket flashlight. It illuminates a bare, twisting path ahead of them, made of jagged walls and uneven ground.
“Rocks,” Sam says softly. “It cleared itself a cave. We’re on the right track.”
The stone walls keep in the chill, and Sam shivers as they make their way cautiously forward.
“I can feel it,” Castiel says in wonder. “This place is cloaked, somehow. I’d never have been able to find it, and neither would a demon or ghost. It takes human vision, human eyes.”
“That’s why there’s so little lore about this thing,” Sam replies in a hushed voice. “It takes people no one bothers to find, to a place totally off the map. Who knows how many other places it’s attacked?”
The cold intensifies as they head further into the heart of the earth. At first Sam thinks it’s just the absence of sun, but soon he begins to shiver. It’s hell-cold, evil-cold, unnatural and heavy.
The narrow path opens into a low-hung cave that forces Sam to stoop over. The smell of death and sickness hits him like a brick wall, and he retches into his shirt collar. Even Castiel looks troubled. Sam swings the flashlight around the circular interior of the cave and comes to a stop.
There are bodies lining the wall, a live timeline of the abductions. The first victim is directly in front of Sam, the next to his left, and so-on. Every one is linked to the wall by a thin gold chain, right hand limply raised in a ghastly wave. There are older victims in various stages of rot and decay, including at least one skeleton crumbling to nothing. There are no flies in the damp cave, but Sam can see maggots writhing, glowing white in the darkness.
He pushes back his nausea and finishes the sweep of the cave. Off to his right, next to Rachel Johnson’s slack face and Colin’s Murphy’s slumped red head, is Dean.
Sam’s feet move without his permission, eyes trained on Dean. He forces down the urge to call out and crouches down instead. Dean is thinner than Sam remembers, whittled and lean. His skin is waxy, the jut of his cheekbones startling. His eyes are closed, and he’s not moving. The sides of his neck are dotted with purple bruises. Teeth marks.
Sam puts a hand on his face, patting. There’s panic riding him, but he forces it back under his skin.
“Dean,” he says thickly. “Come on, wake up.”
He slides two fingers along the side of Dean’s neck until he finds it: Dean’s pulse thumping sluggish and faint. He’s not sure if he wants to cry or be sick.
“It’s okay,” he manages, more to himself than to Castiel. “He’s alive. He’s gonna be fine.”
He feels Castiel looming behind him. “Is he… Can you tell what he’s seeing? I mean, what he’s reliving?”
Castiel lays a hand against Dean’s forehead, brows pulled together. After a moment he drops his hand.
“Hell,” he says quietly. “Your death. Your parents’.”
“The greatest hits,” Sam says shakily. “Let’s get him out of here.”
The chain gleams unnaturally bright in the dark cavern. Sam tugs on it, but it doesn’t budge. There was nothing in any of the books about a chain. It’s warm to the touch - more living thing than soulless metal. He runs light fingers around the circumference, but there’s no keyhole to insert a lock pick.
“I can’t break it,” he says desperately.
Castiel closes a fist around the chain and yanks. Sam has seen Castiel crumble entire buildings with the flick of his head; the flimsy-looking chain doesn’t even bend.
Sam feels his lip curl into a snarl without his permission. He shoulders Castiel out of the way and pulls harder, both hands around the chain and one foot pressed against the damp wall for leverage. The skin on his palms begins to scrape away, and his shoulder joints pulse with pain.
Dean’s whole body jostles loosely, quiet and limp and too close to dead for Sam’s mental stability.
“Fuck,” he swears, no longer keeping his voice down. He slams his foot against the links angrily, like that might work where Castiel’s celestial strength failed.
“Sam,” Castiel says, alarm in his hushed voice.
“I know,” Sam says, breathing hard.
“No.” Castiel touches his shoulder, and Sam looks.
In the shadows, two eyes blink slowly open. They glow orange, both alike and radically more terrifying than the illustrations in the books. They pull his gaze in, hypnotic and silent. Under his feet, he can feel the ground vibrating. The dog is growling.
“You have to do it now,” Castiel says urgently. “If it gets you, too, there won’t be anything I can do to help.”
Sam feels himself swaying a little, paralyzed by the unblinking eyes following him. A black shape seems to detach itself from the wall. In the deep darkness, he can make out the points of its hackles, bristling silently. Dogs. It’s always dogs, he thinks distantly. In his mind, he can see Dean’s skin tearing under the pressure of hellhound fangs, the useless way he’d put his hands up to stop the attack.
It will happen again, Sam knows. If he moves, they’ll both be ripped to shreds, he’s sure of it. He shifts minutely in front of Dean, and one massive paw slides forward. Sam watches it. His mind is tumbling backwards in time - Dean’s chest split like a piñata, the blood fountaining, the way Sam’s wrists had pressed heavily against the wall, the raw ache of his throat from the screams…
“Sam!” Castiel catches him as his knees start to bend. Sam gets a bone-rattling shake, and he tears his eyes away from the creature in the corner.
“Dean,” Castiel says. “The ritual. Do it now. I’ll shield you.”
Shit. Sam shakes his head, sharp points of fear still rattling him like nails in a jar. “There’s not enough time. We have to get him away, or…”
“We no longer have a choice,” Castiel says, voice very low, “Do it now, or neither of you is leaving this mountain.”
Sam swallows. The shock of fear is still thrumming through him. He turns his face away with effort and sinks down again in front of Dean. He feels Castiel at his back, carefully placed between him and the Barghest. The rumbling growl starts to build in volume.
He uses his pocket knife to slice cleanly across his forearm. Blood blooms red in the glow of the chain. He makes an identical incision across Dean’s bound arm. The cut is too slow to well up, too dark. It makes him think of the blood crawling sluggishly through Dean’s veins, the labored pump of his heart. He shudders and presses the cuts together. Slowly and clearly, he speaks the ritual.
It takes a minute for it to work. Dean doesn’t so much as twitch, and Sam feels his heart stutter to a halt. He fucked it up, he said it wrong, or Dean is already too far gone…
Their arms slam together like magnets, and Dean makes a sound like a grunt, short and pained. Sam’s whole arm is tingling numbly, and he links his fingers through Dean’s to ground him.
“Hey.” Sam touches Dean’s face with his free hand. “Wake up. Come on, you’re okay.”
Dean is shifting now, and Sam feels the power of the spell rushing through him as well. Blood magic is some of the strongest magic there is, Castiel had said, and Sam feels it now. It’s so stupid, and so simple, what a little blood can do.
It’s working, and the rest of the words come with amazing ease. “It’s okay,” he says. “I’ve got you, you’re fine. Come back to me, man.”
Dean’s throat rolls in a swallow, and the chain around Dean’s wrist falls to dust. They’re left pressing skin to skin, nothing in between them. Dean opens his eyes.
“Sam,” he says. It’s not a question. His voice is ruined and cracked, but Sam can understand him just fine.
“Yeah,” Sam says. He smiles. He can’t help it. “Hey.”
Dean’s eyes close again. “About fucking time,” he mumbles.
Sam presses his forehead against Dean’s for a shaky moment. Dean’s probably too out-of-it to remember, and even if he does - Sam will take the mocking if that’s the price.
“Sam,” Castiel says, measured and wary.
“It’s okay. It worked.”
“Then we need to go.”
Sam casts a look over at Rachel and Colin, still and helpless against the wall. He looks at Castiel, and Castiel shakes his head minutely. “You can’t save them. Not now.”
Sam hefts Dean up with an arm around his back. Around the outline of Castiel’s coat, he can see the Barghest, head lowered and hackles raised. The cave wavers with its power.
Castiel’s hand lands on his shoulder, and the darkness disappears around them.
*
5 Years Ago
Lebanon, Kansas
“I don’t like this,” Dean says.
“You’ve mentioned.”
He finishes the sigil, painstakingly filling in the gaps with wax crayon. Sit in the middle and confess his sins. Easy. If he can even remember all his sins. It’s a pretty long list.
“We don’t know what’s gonna happen,” Dean tries again. “At least with other two we knew the risk. We could prepare, we could strategize….”
“That’s the point,” Sam says. “God, angels, faith, ringing any bells?”
“What the fuck has faith ever gotten us?” Dean asks, frowning.
Everything, Sam thinks privately. But there’s no arguing with Dean when he’s like this. He’s standing outside the sigil, feet planted belligerently. His eyes are scared, though, and Sam knows that if he shows any hesitation at all, Dean will take them both out of here, find some excuse to postpone or avoid or call the whole thing off.
“Look,” Sam says. “Whatever happens, you can’t step foot inside this circle. You get that, right?”
“Says who?”
“It’s…implied. This is a solo mission, dude. I know you want to help, but you’ve got to trust me. I’ll be okay.”
“You’re not okay!” Dean explodes. “You look like death warmed over, you barely eat, you can’t fight, and I can hear you coughing two floors up.”
“This will make it better,” Sam says. He wishes he felt as sure as he sounded. “This is what it’s all been for. Think - no demons. No hellhounds. No Crowley. Kevin can go home. Krissy can stop hunting. We can throw the demon-killing knife away and never use it again. Can you imagine writing that in Dad’s journal? We have to try this, or…”
Everything else is pointless, Sam thinks. What good are they, if they can’t put themselves on the line for this?
“Promise me,” he says. “Whatever happens, you stay outside that circle.”
“Sam - ”
“If you’ve ever promised me anything, Dean. You’ve got to believe me. I can do this.”
Dean drops his hands to his sides and closes his eyes. “I promise.”
Part III | Masterpost