Episode 16: Mad World (Part I)
Title: Mad World (Part I)
Masterpost: Supernatural: Redemption Road (for full series info, warnings, and disclaimer)
Author: nyoka
Characters/Pairing: Dean/Castiel, Sam/OFC, OC and canon characters
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~21,000 for Part I
Warnings: language, mild violence, explicit sexuality
Beta: zatnikatel
Notes: Due to size this episode is being split into two parts, the first airing here tonight and the second airing this coming week.
Author's Note: This was a pinch-hit that I actually didn't think I'd have time to write, but I want to give special thanks to zatnikatel for her patience in letting me pick this up and encouraging me to keep working on it and to finish it for you all this week; and thanks Zat for contributing a couple of scenes to this chapter. I also want to thank the wonderful smallworld-inc for surprising me with a sketch of the OFC, Mira. And to the fantastic Pickles for coming in at the last minute and pinch-hitting such lovely art for this chapter! ♥
Art: Chapter banner by smilla02; digital drawings by Pickles, which you can also find here, and the OFC digital sketch by smallworld-inc, which you can also find here (art contains spoilers for Part I and Part II).
Summary: The thought that they could lose any of this - whatever peace and friendship and love they've found - scares Sam more than anything else. The fragility of it is almost too much to bear.
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
―Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
"The probability of separate worlds meeting is very small. The lure of it is immense.
We send starships. We fall in love."
-Jeanette Winterson, Gut Symmetries
- - -
A quarter past midnight, and the heat's unbearable. Tara twists around in her bed, her short legs tangling in the thin sheets. Her bedroom windows are cracked wide, allowing the moonlight to seep in across the scarred pine floorboards of her room. There's the barest hint of a soft breeze coming in. It's not enough, though.
It's early April, but it feels like the dead of summer. Tara's skin is damp with sweat, her cotton nightgown sticking to her plump thighs as she climbs out of her bed and walks over to the open window.
Mama spent all day in the garden, and where the moonlight spills across the yard Tara can see the rows of newly-planted vegetables and herbs. The rest of the yard is cast in thick shadows, and the long limbs of the oaks circle around the house like protective arms.
She's been sixteen for all of fifteen minutes, and already she's feeling the need to leave, to find some semblance of a life outside of the small confines of La Grange, Florida. She thinks of her Mama sleeping just down the hall and of her Papa, toiling away on some big oil rig deep out in the Gulf. Small towns like La Grange that sit at the doorway to the Everglades mostly deal in fishing and tourism, but Tara wants something different: she wants to sing, to go somewhere with a stage big enough to hold the big sounds she can belt out from deep in her chest.
As an only child, Tara feels guilty at the thought of leaving. A part of her doesn't want to leave her parents alone. She really doesn't. But then there's Ellie, with her big green eyes and her bigger dreams of running off to New York City and performing on Broadway, free of her troubled family and bad memories. And Tara had promised she'd follow her best friend, anywhere, everywhere. To Hell and back if she had to.
Right now though, Tara only has to follow Ellie to their favorite spot. She pauses in front of the window, hesitating for only a moment before turning around and reaching for her discarded clothes. She changes out of her cotton gown, and pulls on her denim cut-offs first, followed by her t-shirt and ratty sneakers.
From her nightstand, Tara picks up her cellphone and flashlight, before digging through her backpack to make sure she's packed enough snacks for the night. She hopes tonight she can coax Ellie out of her dark funk. The other girl's been feeling listless and moody lately, suffering from bad dreams and restless thoughts. Whenever they go camping though, things seem to get a hundred times better for both of them. Deep in their swamp hideaway, they can huddle together in their sleeping bags, making up stories until all they know is laughter and treasured secrets.
Tara's heart thumps loudly in anticipation, and she's smiling as she stuffs pillows under her comforter on her bed, a precautionary act in case Mama decides to peek her head through the door to check on her in the early twilight hours.
She climbs out of the window without a backwards thought, sliding her legs over the sill and hopping down onto the spongy grass of the yard. The air is heavy, and there's a mugginess to it that she's known only in the August rainy season. Tara sucks in a lungful, breathing in the cloying, sweet smells of jasmine and the blossoming marsh flowers.
Leaving the familiarity of her yard, Tara makes her way slowly through the surrounding wilderness, fingers trailing over the thick trunks of the cypress that dot the hiking trail and lead toward the inner marshlands. The moon is bright and full, and with its light Tara is able to move quickly, her flashlight beam dancing across the soft ground. After a minute she stops to look back, and the house has already faded into the moonlit distance.
Nights in the swamp are full of sounds; so alive. There's a river nearby, and Tara can hear the water gurgling, the rhythm mixing with the high chorus of peepers and cicadas. The path to the marsh is one she knows by heart. Even in the midnight cover of dark, she can make her way through the murky population of cypress and tupelo. Damp moss hangs down from the trees like curtains, the strings tangling in her curly hair as she passes beneath the treetop canopy. Tulips, magnolias, azalea, and long-stemmed wild flowers dot the saw-grass paths before her, their perfume thick on the breeze. She doesn't worry about the wildlife - alligators have never troubled them this far north, preferring to sun themselves along the river banks following the swampy Senoni Trail that lead further into the Everglades.
After twenty minutes of tramping through the muddy grass, Tara makes her way to the open field hidden at the end of the hiking trail. It's her place; her and Ellie's place, a grassy mound of earth that's more island than anything else, nestled as it is by a small, dark pond bordered by tall, skinny cattails. It's the closest thing she's ever had to a secret hideaway, and it's here that she and Ellie spend summers playing make-believe, browning themselves in the Southern sun and getting high off the damp swamp air.
In the center of the clearing is the tiny tumble-down shack they've made their home away from home. Tara pauses when she's only a few feet away, letting her flashlight beam bounce across the cracked doorway. The shack is blackened by heat and water, its thatched straw roof held together with spit and a prayer.
"Ellie!" she calls, her nerves sparking bright. "I'm here!"
Ellie is always the first to arrive, wanting to spend as much time away from her troubled family as possible. When Tara sees no movement from the shack, she frowns, straining her hearing against the distant sound of flowing water and the racket of insects.
"Ellie!"
Another few moments, but nothing in response. Worry settles in Tara's chest, her breath rushing out in a panting exhale. Did Ellie get caught sneaking out at home? She walks up to the shack and pushes in the door, expecting to find the place empty. Instead she finds nothing of the sort: there are candles lit in a circular pattern in the middle of the wooden floor, splashing amber light across the tiny room. In the center of the circle sits Ellie. The teenager's long legs are curled under her body, her eyes closed as she rocks back and forth.
"Ellie, what in the world…what are you doing?" Tara whispers, voice catching in her throat. The breeze whistles between the cracks in the shack, bringing with it a sad, mournful sound. She shivers, folding her arms across her chest. Something like fear settles in her heart; this all feels wrong.
"Ellie?" Tara asks again. Ellie doesn't answer, instead she begins to hum, her rocking motion quickening.
"Ellie, what are you doing? You're scaring me!" Tara says again, her voice growing louder. This isn't like Ellie at all. Tara raises her flashlight and directs the beam into the shadows of the shack's one room, looking for some reason behind her friend's odd behavior. That's when she sees it: the writing, literally, on the walls. Tara's eyes widen as they pan across the old wooden panels, which are all covered from floor to ceiling in large blocky text, written in ink dark as the night. Blood
Tara can't work enough moisture into her mouth to say a word about the blood. And she can't understand the scrawled words at all. It's not a language she's even seen or heard spoken. It's nonsense, a gibberish graffiti tainting her secret place.
"What is this?!" Tara shouts it this time, wanting, needing, to understand what's going on. Fear traps her, and something else.
Ellie stops then. Sudden and sharp. Her entire body stills, but her eyes never open. A long, tenuous moment passes before the other girl begins to speak, but the sounds are foreign to Tara's ears. Ellie is chanting, strange sounds tumbling over themselves. The mish-mash of words are sing-song-like; a prayer maybe, a call. Tara can't decipher them.
Tara wonders for a moment if this is a chant she should recognize at all. She remembers sitting on her grandma's lap as a young child, hearing the history of the Miccosukee her mother's side of her family descended from. But this is nothing like the tribal songs she grew up hearing. This is something dark, something that sends the hair on her arms standing to attention. This is something wrong. She can feel it down to her bones, intuition and instinct both.
"Ellie?" Tara whispers her friend's name into the gloom of the old shack. The chanting doesn't pause, but Ellie's eyes do open. Yet, there's nothing of recognition in her gaze, nothing of true sight.
Tara hesitantly steps closer, but Ellie continues to look through her as if she isn't there. Her best friend's eyes are glazed over and distant, and Tara does the only thing she can think to do. She touches her. She places her hand on her friend's shoulder and shakes her. The chanting and rocking both stop, but in that moment Tara realizes her mistake. Ellie seizes up as if having a fit, her entire body gone stock still beneath Tara's hand.
The screaming begins then. Ellie's cries shoot out like bullets, loud enough to pierce through the night and to shock it silent. Tara is frozen in place. She has never seen anything like it: her friend's mouth opens so wide, and her strangled howls fill the entirety of the shack.
When the screaming stops, everything is suddenly too quiet. No rushing river water, no sound of crickets and owls and birdsong. Just a dense silence, thicker than the muddy waters of the surrounding lagoons. It's so cold now too, and the chill leaves gooseflesh up and down Tara's arms.
Ellie drops to the ground with a loud thud, like the strings have been cut from a marionette doll.
"Ellie! Ellie, oh my God!" Tara yells, falling to her knees and pulling her friend up from the floor, drawing her limp body closer. "What's wrong? Tell me!" Tara feels hot tears falling down her cheeks, spilling onto Ellie shoulders. She doesn't care.
Ellie looks at Tara then, her pale face clenched in pain. "Tara?" she whispers, recognition finally settling in.
"It's me. I'm here," Tara says. "What's happening to you?"
Ellie clutches at her stomach suddenly, as blood begins spilling from her mouth. She gurgles around her moaned words. "You have…you have to run."
"No, no, no," Tara says, swiping at her friend's mouth with trembling hands.
There's a plea in Ellie's gaze as she turns her scared, dark eyes on Tara. "Please."
Tara's sobbing now, desperate and fear-laced. "I don't know what to do," she croaks, hands patting at her friend's still too-taut body. Tara knows that right now she sounds like a child. Not the sixteen-year old woman she was meant to be celebrated as tonight. She sounds broken, raw, needy. She needs Ellie to snap out of it. She reaches a hand out to tangle in her friends t-shirt, the cotton gone dark with blood.
"It's too late," Ellie whispers, voice rougher than gravel as she struggles to find words. She raises a hand to Tara's cheek and presses her palm there gently. A caress. "He's coming. He's awake."
Tara's catches Ellie's wrist, and she can feel the bones under her skin, the pull of her muscles. The slowing of her pulse beat. "Who? Who's coming?"
"The dreamer has stopped sleeping," Ellie whispers, nothing more than breath and sound.
"Is this about your dreams?" Tara says, frantic, grasping for any explanation. The dreams. Nightmares really; visions of horror so immense they had Ellie sneaking into Tara's room to share her bed for the past five weeks. Tara had only held her friend close, never asking questions, never pushing for explanations, but now regret takes hold, regret that she never asked for more information, never delved deeper into her friend's troubled mind.
"It'll be okay," Ellie says, and she manages to smile at Tara. Tara's throat burns and she swallows. Ellie's smiling like there's nothing wrong, like she doesn't know the craziness surrounding them. In that moment Ellie's smile reminds Tara of warm summer nights, the way the moonlight glints off the pond. Their shared laughter and stolen kisses.
"Ellie," Tara says again, voice cracking around the name.
"Hush," Ellie's words are soft, distant, like they've gone off and gotten lost in the night. "They've come for me and all the others who truly see. We herald his coming."
"You're confused again," Tara whispers, stroking fingers across Ellie's feverish brow. "They're just nightmares, nothing real. No one's coming."
"He is real," Ellie says, her voice rough and deep and strange. "And they've come to bring me to him."
Tara frowns, but before she can ask who 'they' are, she feels it: the sudden change in the air of the room, the way sound rushes back in like the popping of a bubble. Terror rushes through her body, sharp and fierce enough to send her to feet. Tara hears footsteps circling around her, can feel the devil's breath on her back. She shivers, but before she can spin around to face the new arrivals, before she can even react to them, something hits her from behind. Pain flares sudden and bright; it sends needle pricks from her head to the soles of her feet. She tastes blood in her mouth, liquid copper across her tongue.
Some part of her is still waiting to wake up, thinking this is all a bad dream, a madness she caught from Ellie's own night terrors. But the feel of the blood dripping down from the back of her head, the feel of the sharp pain winding throughout her body: it's all too real, too much. Something solid crushes against her back, and the pain intensifies. Air rushes out of her lungs as she falls hard to the ground. She's sobbing into the muddy floor of the shack, whispering and crying. She's a child calling on her best friend to help her. "Ellie, oh God, please," she sobs, but her friend is chanting again. There are more people chanting now, and it's almost beautiful, reverential. Their voices fill the cabin, fill the night, drowning out all the life in the swamp and everything living in the world.
- - -
Something wakes him from a dream of being sliced open. That something has a rhythm, a cadence. It has words, albeit ones he doesn't recognize. The sound of whispered chanting moves him from sleep to sudden consciousness. Dean grunts, wiping at his eyes, trying to get his bearings in the dark motel room, to shake off the memories of his dream, of Alastair's touch. He always expects to feel blood on his hands when he wakes up, for his naked body to be smeared with it. But it's only sweat on his chilled skin now, and this time the screams he hears are not his own.
Cas.
Dean stumbles to his feet, and instinct has him reaching for the knife under his pillow and the Glock on his nightstand even before his eyes are fully open. His legs are sleep-wobbly as he struggles to right himself, before he casts his eyes over the shadows of the room. It's early, the sun just barely spreading itself across the horizon. The light reaching the room is watery, a soft gray that tints more than illuminates.
The muffled chanting continues, and Dean follows the sound, knowing what he will find, fearing it. He sets his gun and knife on the desk he passes before moving quickly to the bathroom and throwing the door open wide.
Even in the darkness he recognizes the figure hunched against the bathtub. Dean steps into the room, and the tile is cool and hard under his feet. He doesn't say anything, only presses a hand against Castiel's bare shoulder. The angel shudders, and Dean sees the motion travel down the sculpted muscles of his friend's back. They are both naked, having slept that way. Dean feels raw and vulnerable with nothing on to protect him, but he knows Castiel must feel much the same way.
Dean squeezes Castiel's shoulder again, and the confused chanting stops, leaving the room in silence. The angel comes around slowly, blinking up at Dean with wide, owlish eyes. "Dean?"
"I'm here, Cas," Dean whispers with a smile. Castiel turns his body fully toward the sound of his voice, eyes trailing over Dean. Light from the bathroom window falls over the both of them, adding a soft milky shine to their naked skin.
"Oh," Castiel says suddenly, and Dean can see the understanding dawning in his eyes. "Sleep walking again?"
"Sleep walking, sleep screaming, and sleep chanting," Dean says on a soft sigh. "You alright now?"
"I don't remember what I was dreaming about," Castiel says, words almost toneless. It's the same refrain he's been reciting for months after every nightmare sends him out of his bed. Castiel groans, the frustration evident in the tightening of his body.
Dean clears his throat, kneeling down to be at eye level with the angel. He settles his back against the cool porcelain of the toilet and places a hand on Castiel's knee. "Remember what we talked about? Reaching out to Missouri? Seeing if she can get a better picture of these dreams of yours. Figure out what's going on with you."
"It's too dangerous," Castiel says, shaking his head. "Mortals with sight shouldn't play around in an angel's head like that. You know what happened to the last psychic who tried to see too much."
"You burned her eyes out," Dean mutters, his own frustration crowding out his fear.
"Not on purpose," Castiel says, reaching out a hand to capture Dean's own. He laces their fingers together and adds, "I would not mean to cause Missouri harm either, but something could happen. I don't wish to cause her injury. I quite like her."
Dean smiles, curling their finger tighter together. "She quite likes you too. Wants us to come by soon so she can fatten you up with her biscuits."
"I would like that," Castiel says on a soft laugh.
Dean squirms a bit, the coldness of the bathroom tile sinking into his skin. Castiel seems to notice, because his hold on Dean becomes tighter, and he uses his superior strength to pull Dean to his feet and to lever himself off the floor. "Let's go back to bed, get warm again," he says when Dean shoots him a scolding look.
Dean grunts, but doesn't fight the manhandling as Castiel leads them back to their bed in the dawn-lit motel room. They landed a king-size this time, and Dean's been spending as much time in it as possible over the course of the weekend. They haven't had much time to just laze around since leaving Bobby's. They've been on the road steadily for the past two weeks, and no one's been getting much sleep or downtime with the number of cases they've run across.
The world's gone to shit. Again.
And Dean can't shake the feeling it has something to do with them. Dean rubs a hand over his face. Sighs. "You sure you're okay, man?"
Castiel looks up at him from where he's currently tugging the sheets and blankets back onto the bed. Dean's a kicker when he's sleeping, and more often than not their blankets end up on the floor so that he and Cas have to curl together for warmth during the night. Cas often jokes that the habit's just Dean's subconscious desire for them to 'cuddle', but that's just the sort of chick-flick nonsense Dean is sure Sammy's been filling the angel's head with.
Castiel is silent for a moment, watching the bedspread like it holds all the answers. He's pale in the cool light of the coming dawn, his blue eyes cloudy with thought. But the dark lines around his eyes are deep enough to stand out even in the shadows of the room. "Bad dreams are nothing for us to fear."
Dean thinks about his own dreams and grimaces. "Yeah, right."
"Let's sleep, Dean," Castiel says quietly, and Dean knows that Castiel is tired, bone tired like he is himself. That taking Dean to bed is Castiel's way of asking Dean not to dwell on something they can't solve right now.
Dean sighs, wanting, needing to dwell on it. Just once. "Cas, we can't keep ignoring the elephant in the room. This shit is getting serious. It's getting-"
Castiel drops the blanket he was folding and arches his head up stubbornly, the white of his eyes luminous as he locks gazes with Dean across the distance of the bed between them. He turns to face Dean, shoulders straight, fists clenched as if readying for a fight. Dean can see something smoldering and angry moving behind his friend's eyes. When Castiel speaks again, his voice is hard, tight. "Dean, I'm asking you to leave it be."
Dean shakes his head, not ready to let his friend win this time. "Dammit, Cas," he mutters. "Why?"
Castiel clenches up, his jaw working silently as he looks away from Dean. The hard lines of his naked body are taut, bristling with pent-up energy. He's angry, Dean can tell. But Dean's not sure if Castiel is angry at Dean or at himself.
There's a long, tension-filled hush before Castiel breaks it. "Maybe this is my penance," he whispers. "My punishment for all my sins. Remember what Claire said? About living with this…thinking about everything I did."
Dean closes his eyes, the tightness in his chest squeezing until it's hard to breathe. "Look at me, Castiel." He says the angel's full name, needing to feel its perfect weight on his tongue.
Castiel meets his eyes again, and Dean doesn't hesitate when he says, "We've suffered enough. We've been punished enough. If you think your father's not done seeing us suffer for our sins, then I hate to say this man, but he's a sadistic sonofabitch as well as an absentee asshole."
Castiel doesn't flinch, doesn't react at all. Only says, "My father is dead, and there is nothing holy about me anymore. I am not just fallen, I am damned."
Castiel's face is a smooth mask of indifference at the admission, but Dean can see beneath the layers to the truth underneath. The fear and the anger, the jagged, knife-edge of darkness they've both spent their entire lives navigating. Dean shakes his head, feeling some of his own rage at their fates threatening to boil over. He says, voice hard and shameless: "Then God damn us both."
Castiel leaps across the bed at that, taking Dean down with him onto the mattress, pushing his body against Dean until they're wrestling for control more than anything else. Castiel presses his face against Dean's neck and whispers, breath panting again his ear, "Don't speak like that."
"Maybe you should try taking your own damn advice," Dean grunts, pushing Castiel onto his back and sliding their naked bodies together. They've both been testy with each other lately, crawling out of their skin as the miles pass beneath them. They're sleepless and edgy, needing this locked-away time together as a way to not only blow off steam, but to feel the base physicality of their bond ignite, burn and flare until they're both just smoke and embers left in the wake of each other's fire.
Dean can feel that fire filling him now, roaring wild as Castiel slides his cock over Dean's balls. Castiel growls when Dean thrusts their hips together, shoving the angel down into the mattress and holding him there. Dean feels Castiel's dick swell and throb against his own, feels the pulses of wet heat as the angel comes undone beneath him.
Castiel licks and kisses words into Dean's mouth, and these are words Dean actually recognizes, snatches of Enochian and Hebrew, Latin and Sumerian. It doesn't take long for Castiel to come back to himself, and before Dean has the time to contemplate all the places he wants to lick across his friend's taut body, Castiel grabs Dean by the shoulders and flips him over onto his back. He fits their hips back together again and grinds home against Dean, their cocks sliding in the mess of Castiel's come. The angel is already hardening again, and Dean is moaning, Jesus Christ Cas, more, as Castiel's hands dig into his hips, urging them faster, pushing them harder. Dean's whispering back in broken English, dropping hot, heavy kisses down Castiel's neck while Castiel holds Dean still underneath him, rocking and rutting until they’re both swearing, shouting into each other's mouths, leaving finger bruises along each other's hips.
Dean shudders and twists, crying out a sharp shout as he shoots, spilling hot and thick all over Castiel's belly. He comes so hard he's momentarily blinded, moaning helplessly as he mouths at the tattoo on Castiel's collarbone, as he slides his hands down Castiel's sweat-slick back, squeezing at his asscheeks to pull the angel tighter against himself. They continue to rock into each other, spent cocks moving slow and lazy together in the mess they've made.
They kiss again, after, because it's too hard to talk, and this is okay, this is good. This is Cas, and this is Dean, and sometimes this is how they are when they're together. Fire and heat, and pent-up aggression, and the slow, calm cool-down. The weighty silence left in the aftermath is always louder than any words.
- - -
Dean takes a long shower, and he has it so hot it leaves him pink, wrinkled, and raw. When he steps out of the stall, drying his hair with the rough motel towel, he sucks in the foggy steam left behind. The motel is silent around him, Castiel gone with Sam to pick up dinner from the food court in the nearby mall.
Dean wraps his towel around his waist and exits the bathroom, sitting on the unmade bed. He stretches out his legs, running his fingers over his right knee. He fractured his kneecap pretty badly on a solo hunt when he was twenty-five. Even though it took almost two months to recover fully, it was never quite the same after. In the years following, it sometimes would lock up with the weather or a wrong twist running down an alley. He never told his dad about it, or Sam even. It was just something Dean lived with, learned to manage; it was just another painful war-injury that reminded him what happened when he got dumb, got careless, or got distracted. But in his post-hell resurrection, his old knee injury was healed. All his old scars were healed by Castiel.
Sometimes Dean misses the ache. The memory of how the bones had never set quite right, the shitty self-medicating he did to get through the pain when he was alone in his motel room, Sammy gone to Stanford, Dad gone to God knows where. The way it would seize up in the months after, how it would throb with an arthritic ache in anticipation of a nasty cold front.
The pain was something that made sense to him; maybe that's why he misses it. It took Dean a long time to get used to his new, post-Hell body. This new skin. Years of being bruised, beaten, and broken on the hunt, followed by years of being taken apart, piece by piece, by Alastair's skillful hands, and Dean never knew what it was to feel truly whole, to feel put together in the right way. But Castiel had restored him. Castiel had healed him. Castiel had tried to fit him back together.
Some days it feels like the angel, fallen and damned as he claims to be, is still trying to stitch Dean back together. He's not using his grace to do it these days, just his all-too-human hands. Just his words, and his presence, and his stubborn stoicism.
If Dean could return the favor, he would. Heal Cas like Cas healed him. Take away the shitty dreams and the unforgivable mistakes. Take away the past and start over. Start fresh, with clean slates all around. It's something he once asked of Sam and Bobby after Rufus passed: Life is short, and ours are shorter than most. We gonna spend it wringing our hands? Something's going to get us, eventually. And when my guts get ripped out, just so you two know, we're good. Blanket apology for all the crap that anybody's done, all the way around. But maybe that's not possible for them after all. Maybe they're too broken. Maybe if they were different people…if they were even people to begin with. Instead of fallen angels and fallen men, token pieces in a chess game played by dicks with bigger agendas.
Maybe they've seen too much to go back. They've all seen each other at their worse after all. Broken, wrecked and devastated, torn to pieces. They've seen each other at their best too: laughing and drinking and giddy, and feeling loved. It's family; that's what this is. This is family. Sammy, who's been Dean's brother, his kid, and his partner in crime his entire life. Cas, the angel on their shoulders, this badass unexpected force of nature that knocks Dean on his ass time and time again. Castiel, the irresistible force to Dean's immovable object. The missing piece to their entire story.
Dean presses his head into his palms, breathing in deep and smiling, feeling hot with the knowledge that they've made it this far. He's jolted from his thoughts by the ringing motel phone. He hurries to answer, grunting a "hello" into the receiver.
"Turn the TV to Channel 4 news," Sam says through the staticky connection.
Dean frowns. "Everything okay? You and Cas okay?"
"Yeah, yeah," Sam rushes out. "We're fine. We're still in the mall, and we saw the news playing on one of the TVs in the electronics store. Thought you needed to see it. Let us know what you make of it. We'll be home in a few."
Dean says his goodbyes and sets the receiver down. He crosses to the bed and slumps onto it before grabbing the remote. He could have grilled Sam about the news, but he's still pretty exhausted from last night. The vent above his head is sending down a cooling mist of air, and his agitation lessens as he flips on the TV and finds the right channel. It's almost six-thirty, and the evening news is still on.
It's a breaking news story: a shot of a cordoned-off stretch of swamp and a news anchorwoman with too much eye makeup speaking into the camera, blond hair bouncing as she turns to motion toward the tree-lined backdrop.
It takes Dean a moment to realize why he's not hearing anything. The TV's muted, and when he finds the button to restore the sound, he only catches the end of the reporter's sentence. But it's enough.
"…more than a dozen missing," she's saying, and Dean sighs, noticing the searchlights shining down over the trees and the sound of a helicopter in the background.
Dean reads the news bar scrolling across the screen, his mind calculating how long it would take to get there. The Everglades, he muses. He hasn't been that way since he was a kid.
Dean presses the volume again, listening closely to the newscast, trying to see if these disappearances are anything like what they've been seeing. The reporter is interviewing family members now, and Dean watches numbly as she parades around a grief-stricken mother, a worried boyfriend, and a crying friend.
He closes his eyes, listening to the urgency in their voices. Something bad is happening out there, Dean knows. Something bad is happening everywhere. The newscasters transition to talking about the spate of strange crimes rocking the state, and Dean has to hit the mute button again, has to drown out the evidence that something's going on that could destroy everything he's been trying so hard to build.
- - -
They've been crisscrossing the Florida coast for just over two weeks now, tracking odd weather patterns and dark omens, news report after news report detailing strange electrical storms, sudden mysterious fogs, meteor showers, and swaths of inexplicable animal mutilations. In Delance, Florida, on the night of the spring equinox, every child under the age of ten was found wandering around at two in the morning without any memory of where they'd been. Two weeks later in Shelton, the entire population of the town - all two-hundred and thirty-six people - simply vanished without a trace.
The local authorities are saying it's the work of some cult, a global network of fringe dwellers claiming it's the end of the world, celebrating through ritualistic kidnappings and mass suicides. The federal government, on the other hand, argues that it's some new terrorist network; in fact it's every national security threat come to life. Sam would laugh it if were funny. But watching the authorities and world leaders run around with their heads up their asses isn't the least bit funny. It's scary as fuck, especially since neither he nor Dean have any idea what's at the root of the shit-storm.
Sam lets out a deep exhale, turning the dial on the radio, tired of listening to the talking heads on NPR report the wild guesses being thrown around by the Department of Homeland Security.
"A sleeper cell, my ass," Sam mutters, choosing a top forty station instead. Kanye's rapping about touching the sky as Sam's eyes return to the spread of grassy hillside he's been winding the Impala around for the last half-hour. The driver's-side window is rolled down, and the sharp smell of sand and salt fills the car.
He's driving through the Saldan Valley, toward the Everglades, and here the road follows the Atlantic in a way that is all-too familiar. The last time Sam came through this part of Florida was his sophomore year at Stanford. He went camping in the hilly seaside valley over spring break, and he remembers impressing his friends with his wilderness skills, years of sleeping rough in the wilds of America finally coming in handy. But Stanford seems a lifetime ago now, and something sour weighs down the memory of it, a lasting bitterness he feels every time he thinks about that time in his life, when he thought he could run away from everything, somehow outrun the family curse. Escape. When he thought he could have a life that didn't involve blood and pain and constant loss. Jess.
The sea breeze whips at Sam's hair and tugs at the collar of his shirt. Sam glances in the rearview mirror, feeling a soft smile creep along his face as he sees his brother and Cas sleeping soundly, wrapped around each other in the backseat, covered by Sam's old, tattered wool blanket. The thought that they could lose any of this - whatever peace and friendship and love they've found - scares Sam more than anything else. The fragility of it is almost too much to bear.
Pilled high on the passenger-seat next to Sam is a stack of yellowing newspapers from towns across Florida, their weather reports and crime blotters circled with bleeding red marker. Cas has been tracking the patterns, trying to make sense out of something that is wholly nonsensical. All Sam knows is that there are yet more towns to check out, more events to explain. He swallows hard and turns back to the road. Yesterday, they passed through a small seaside hamlet called Port Beyers. Three days ago, five whales washed up on its shores, their massive bodies mutilated and gutted, splayed almost ritualistically across the beach. In the days prior to that event, a spate of tremors had rocked the surrounding coastal towns, shocking for a region not known for earthquakes. Ragged gashes erupted in the ground, with deep chasms that opened down into the darkness of the earth, like the crevice Castiel and Claire Novak tumbled into in California.
The events are crazy and inexplicable, but they found nothing in those towns but scared people and mass confusion, the same things they've found in almost every town they've stopped at since leaving Bobby's. They're heading now toward Toklan, a small fishing village on the eastern edge of the Everglades. They stayed there once years ago, and Sam's excited to be heading back this way. The weather here is better at least, a nice change up from the constant rain and darkness that followed them down the East coast the last time they were out this way. Sam shivers at the memory of the ghost town where they found Kali; the horrors they saw there have haunted his dreams every night since.
Sam glances up at the sky, which arches around them wide and endless, blue and cloudless. The winding, narrow state highway is surrounded on one side by the never-ending expanse of the sea, and on the other by wildflower-covered hilltops. Looking now at the tranquility of the landscape, Sam can almost forget about the things that hide in the darkness, about the things they're chasing. And the things chasing them.
Sam sees the sign for Toklan and smiles, pushing down on the gas. He had to fight Dean for the keys to the Impala that morning, but he's glad he did. His brother needed the sleep, and the steadiness of the drive has calmed Sam, helped him to garner more control over his mind and his memories. It's been two weeks since his last flashback. The road Sam took here allowed him to trace the curve of the Atlantic, and there's something about the steady presence of the ocean that centers him. The memory of crashing through the surface of the water in Texas, breathing in that first breath of life-giving air, still makes his skin sing with strength and excitement. He's alive. He's freaking alive.
Sam's shaken from the thought by the sound of his ringtone, muffled low because it's buried inside his backpack, which is tossed haphazardly on the passenger-seat floor. He slows the Impala down and pulls it over to the slim shoulder. He sighs as he turns off the car, silencing the low, comforting grumble of the engine.
They're still thirty miles from town, too many miles from anywhere really. Sam checks to make sure Dean and Cas are still sleeping before he picks up his backpack and climbs out of the Impala. He stretches by the side of the road, his body cramped up from a long-day's drive. He sucks in a deep breath and stands for a long moment with one hand braced on the Impala's warm hood for balance and the other holding his cell as he scrolls through the missed call log.
Bobby had promised to put them in touch with a few local hunters, and Sam's been waiting for the call. Bobby answers on the first ring, and Sam's grip tightens on the cool metal cover of the cell as he presses the phone to his ear. "Bobby?" Sam says.
"'Bout time you called," the old hunter answers gruffly, before Sam hears him turn away from the receiver to yell something at Cheney, who's barking in the background.
"He okay?" Sam asks, settling back against the Impala as he eyes the tree-thick valley spreading out in front of him.
Bobby sighs heavily into the phone on the other end. "That pup ain't been right in the head since Feathers left. Damn fool angel spoiled him rotten."
Sam smirks, remembering how Cas used to put the dog to sleep by rubbing behind his floppy ears and cooing at him in Enochian. "Cas has a way with animals."
"Would explain his way with that brother of yours," Bobby chuckles.
Sam huffs out a soft laugh, nodding. "Tell me about it," he says, smiling a little as he peeks at the sleeping duo in the backseat of the car.
A beat passes before Bobby continues with, "How're you boys doing?"
"Fine," Sam lies, speaking softer into the phone. Bobby snorts because he knows they're far from fine.
"Well, as fine as we can be considering the entire world's decided to go looney tunes," Sam mutters, glancing to the backseat again as he hears his brother stirring awake. Dean rubs at his eyes with his knuckles; he's rumpled with wild bed-hair, but Cas is still curled up against his side, head pressed along Dean's shoulder, sleeping soundly. Sam wants to crack a joke, wants to tease, but he knows Dean would only send him the stink-eye and sulk for the rest of the ride into town. Dean's still a little sensitive about the Dean-and-Cas situation.
"I got news," Bobby says, interrupting Sam's flow of thoughts. Sam turns away from watching his brother, deciding to tease Dean later about his cuddling with Cas.
"Tell me it's good news," Sam says, shoving off the car and digging his boot heel into a grassy patch of earth lining the shoulder.
"Better than yesterday's news," Bobby says gruffly. "Tamara's already in the area investigating the tremors, and she wants to meet up, share resources."
"That would be great," Sam says, digging through his bag for a pen and pad to take down the address and information on Tamara and the other contacts Bobby dug up for them in the region.
When he's done, he slips his cell back into his bag and turns around to find Dean looking at him grumpily. "Why didn't you wake me up?" he asks, voice sleep-rough and slurred.
"Because I was too busy posting pictures of you and Cas cuddling to my Facebook," Sam snickers, tossing Dean the keys to the Impala.
"What's a Facebook?" Dean asks, frowning.
"I live in the 21st century, Dean. You really need to visit it sometime," Sam bemoans, before sliding down into the shotgun seat.
"Whatever," Dean mumbles, shooting Sam a stern look as he adds, "And dude, me and Cas were not cuddling."
Sam laughs because they were so definitely cuddling. He really did take pictures. "You guys are cute. Even Bobby says so."
Dean glares and turns on the radio.
Sam smiles and settles his head back against the seat to rest.
They drive.
- - -
Memories are not often fluid, or changeable; sometimes they are the only things that stay as they are, that haunt even when all the other ghosts have been salted and burned. The house is still where it was nineteen years ago, nestled between saw-grass prairies and the Grey Lake, and the vast, thick moss-draped cypress forests that circle them in the distance. Dean sits up straighter in the driver's seat as he turns the Impala up the steep driveway, tires squealing against the muddy rocks. Dean knows his baby wasn't made for these kinds of roads, these untamable marshland terrains, and she growls irritably as she takes the final turn, rumbling around them before he cuts the engine off.
Returning here is like stepping back into the past. From the outside, the house looks the same: shabby and unkempt, run-down and weather-worn. But one can tell it was built with strong hands and by someone with a mind for understanding the ways the weather conditioned the land here. Dean smiles, remembering the summer he and John spent working to repair the place - the long, hot hours spent in the sun, pounding away at lumber, cutting and shaping the sheetrock. Dean had been covered in freckles and peeling sunburn that entire summer, but he loved every minute of it. He'd never felt closer to his dad than that time, when what they were doing wasn't just about another hunt. It was about working with their hands to build something lasting, spending time together because they could. Sam used to sit in the shade under the orange tree across the way, reading from his book of the week - Dean thinks it was the Lord of the Rings books that summer, and he remembers how excited Sam had been to finish the entire series. During breaks he and Sam use to munch on the oranges and discuss which of Tolkien's characters were their favorites. Dean was always fond of Aragorn, and Sam would sing the praises of Gandalf the Grey. It felt like they were in one of Tolkien's worlds out here, surrounded as they were by rivers of long grass and marshland.
The house is like something from the deeper south, with a wide, wrap-around porch. It's a summer house first loaned to John by a family they'd saved from a cursed object back in the spring of '94. The Winchesters were allowed to use the house for as long as they needed it, and John had gladly accepted the offer, knowing the boys needed some rest. The place needed repairs back then, but it was sturdy, having been built by the family out of hearty hardwood gathered from the surrounding forest. There's a dilapidated barn out back where they used to keep their hunting equipment, and a coop where they used to keep a few chickens. He and Sam would sometimes chase the wild turkeys and marsh rabbits that came through the yard as well. Between that and fishing, they were able to supplement much of the food John would bring home from the county market each week.
Dean was fifteen that summer, and it was the first time he remembers staying anywhere long enough for it to feel like maybe, just maybe, this could be home. Sam took to the lifestyle quickly as well. He'd get up with the rising sun and gather fresh eggs from the hens, smiling wide when he stomped his small, dew-covered boots into the kitchen every morning to show them to Dean. "Awesome, Sammy," Dean would say, before ruffling his hair and turning out a breakfast that sent all their mouths watering, making the eggs the way Sam loved - sunny-side up - and French toast for his dad, while frying up patties of smoky sausage for himself.
"Dean?"
Dean blinks, stomach growling. He shakes his head free of the old memories and turns to look at Sam, who's grinning at him in a knowing way. "Huh?" Dean says, trying to remember if Sam had been speaking to him.
"I was just remembering that year we spent here," Sam says, running his hand over the dashboard. "Seems not so long ago. But I had to be what? Ten? Eleven?"
"Eleven," Dean nods, smiling again. "Short and chubby. Old Lady Millie used to love pinching those rosy cheeks of yours."
"Yeah, yeah," Sam laughs, shaking his head. "That's cool that the family remembered us after all these years and was willing to let us stay here again."
"Free a family from an ancient curse, and they are forever in your debt," Dean quips, turning to glance at the sleeping angel in the backseat.
"Should we head in?" Sam asks.
"I kinda don't want to wake Cas. He's been having a rough few nights," Dean says, biting his lip as he watches the rise and fall of Castiel's chest.
"The dreams again?" Sam asks, sounding concerned.
Dean turns to Sam, sucks in a deep breath and nods. The car goes still and quiet. "Always."
- - -
The sun is starting to set by the time Dean finishes unpacking. Sam's sitting at the kitchen table poring over a series of documents Tamara forwarded them, and Castiel is snoring softly from the narrow bed in the room across the way, the thick paperback book he was reading resting on his chest. The house is still warm and musty from being shut up for so long. An old circulating fan rattles and whirs in the living room, catching the pages of their loose documents so that Sam's placed coffee mugs on top of everything. Dean smiles and shakes his head, grabs a beer from the fridge, and heads out to the porch, the hinges of the old screen door groaning behind him as it opens and slams shut.
He leans against the porch railing as he stares out across the overgrown clearing to the mass of oaks and beeches beyond it. The sunset dresses the trees in gold-orange fire, and Dean can just barely see the lightning bugs flashing throughout the tall grass. The sound of crickets, cicadas, and frogs is louder than the NPR station Sam has the radio tuned into inside the house.
If there's time between this hunt and the next, Dean wants to work on the old place. In some spots on the porch, the wood's warped and cracked, and much of the old white paint is peeling, faded to a dull gray. Dean figures the last time the house was painted was during the summer they lived here, almost twenty years ago now. There's a rocking chair in a corner of the porch where Dean remembers falling asleep in the evenings sometimes. The old wooden planks creak and whine with each boot step as Dean moves to settle on the rocker. The evening's hot, and his sweat-damp t-shirt clings to his chest uncomfortably.
He sips on his beer and tunes out the racket of nature, feeling desperate for just a hint of an evening breeze. There's something out in these woods; something disappearing people. He thinks of all the people living like this on the edges of these small swamp towns, sitting ducks for any monster, and he knows they need to find out what's happening here before anyone else goes missing.
Dean drains the rest of his beer, watching the way the dying sun falls across the Impala, lights her up like the glorious animal she is. He remembers being fifteen and sitting here, doing this exact same thing. The picture hasn't changed much. The yard has grown over, tangled in reedy trees, vines, and weeds. The house has fallen into neglect. But the sounds are the same, the sky is the same, and there's something comforting in that.
Alone like this, Dean thinks about things. His life before the fire. His life after. Losing Sam, then John, then Sam again. Alastair and the Pit, and everything he became. Afterwards, not being enough to save Sam from a fate worse than anything. And now there's this thing with Cas, and how it makes Dean shake sometimes because he's so damn worried he's going to lose it too, like he's lost everything else. Dean closes his eyes. The humid air is so heavy here, and it feels like a leaden force weighing him down.
He pushes down the doubts and listens to the noises around him: the frogs croak and peep, and a howl hoots from the cover of a tree. There are so many sounds out in the swamp, and if he listens hard enough, Dean can hear something wailing in the distance. Monster or animal, he doesn't know.
- - -
Gordo's, the tiny little fish shack in the main stretch of downtown Toklan, is nestled near Grey Lake, between the open-air fishmarket and an array of antique shops. A hand-painted sign declaring World's Greatest Seafood hangs crookedly from the window. According to the locals, Gordo's has the best crab cakes this side of the Everglades, and by his third helping Sam doesn't have any reason to disagree.
It's lunchtime, and the place is bustling with a mix of locals and tourists. They decided on an outside table, wanting to drink in as much daylight as possible. The sun is still high in the sky, drenching the outdoor deck in light and heat. The wicker furniture is weather-beaten and old, but the fish and chips they ordered are greasy and delicious, and the ice tea is cold and sweet.
Dean is smiling and licking his fingers clean as he watches Cas eat, and Sam's trying his best not to call Dean out on just how completely owned he is. Sam's feeling good right now, and watching his brother smile is enough to celebrate. The fresh air is good for them too, especially after the weeks of crazy weather they've been experiencing in hot spots around the country. Even Cas seems a little more at ease in the sun, shoulders less stiff, legs sprawled and tangled with Dean's under the table, his smile lazy and content as he watches Dean watch him.
Sam can't help grinning at how freaking obvious they are. Most days he doesn't know what to do with them. "Guys," Sam says, glancing at the shimmer-shine of the lakefront splayed out before them. "I think we should go swimming later."
"Dude," Dean says, and Sam turns to see his brother pointing a wobbly, ketchup-laden fry at him. "Aren't you sick of the water by now? Plus, something took a bite out of Shamu and his brothers just last week."
"That was three towns away, by the ocean," Sam says, shrugging. "I just think we should enjoy the good weather and downtime while we can."
"You mean before whatever's going on gets worse," Dean mutters, chewing on another fry.
"I don't know man," Sam says after a time, taking a slow pull of his ice tea. He bites at his bottom lip, turning to watch Dean make frowny faces at Castiel's conch chowder. "I don't know what we should be doing."
Cas glances up at Sam, eyes solemn. "I fear we've yet to see the full extent of this."
"Understatement of the year," Dean retorts, sitting back in his chair and turning to glance at the restaurant's crowded interior. He's been throwing glances at the front door every few minutes, keeping an eye out for their contacts.
In the uneasy silence that follows, the waitress refills Sam's iced tea and Castiel's water. Sam finds himself watching the lakefront, the way the sun reflects off the still surface which glitters silver.
It's only another few minutes before Dean kicks his feet under the table.
"What?" Sam yelps, looking up at Dean.
"At your three o'clock," Dean says, nodding towards the restaurant's front door.
Sam looks up. A familiar figure captures his attention from across the restaurant, and he smiles. "Right on time," he says.
Dean nods, eyes locked on the doorway. "Who's the chick with her?"
Sam shakes his head, watching as two women part the crowd, easing between the bustling tables. "Bobby did mention Tamara wasn't traveling alone," he says, raising his hand to point out their location to the new arrivals.
A moment later Tamara is standing in front of them, a soft, crooked smile carving deep dimples into her cheek. "Sam and Dean Winchester," she declares, her British accent shaping her words. "Didn't think I'd ever be seeing you again." Her smile widens, and Sam notices that Tamara looks much the same as the last time they saw her, except now her hair is twisted in long dark braids, and she has a couple more scars to indicate that the years have been long and hard. There's also a sadness to her eyes that probably speaks to the fact that Isaac is no longer at her side.
"It's good to see you in one piece, Tamara," Dean is saying fondly, motioning for Tamara and her friend to take the two empty seats at the table. "This is Cas, by the way," he adds, pointing to the angel, who's watching the proceedings curiously.
"Hello," Castiel says, offering his hand.
"It's good to meet you Cas," Tamara smiles, shaking his hand before she takes her seat. "Since we're making introductions, I want you all to meet my best friend Mira Kovic. We've been working these cases together since I got into the States." She nods towards the tall, dark-haired woman taking the seat next to her.
"Hi Mira," Sam says, and he extends his hand, which the woman shakes without pause.
"I've heard a lot about you," she says, her voice calm like the surface of the waveless Grey Lake. There's a slight accent there, one that Sam's trying hard to place. There's also a sharp guardedness to her pale blue eyes as her gaze flicks over Sam, measuring him.
"I hope all of it was good," Sam says, curious as to what she's actually heard. He knows the Winchesters have a mixed reputation in the hunter network.
"Mostly," Mira says, lips curving into a sly smile. "It's good to meet you, Sam. And you too, Dean and Castiel." She reaches across to shake his brother's and the angel's hands before pulling off her black leather jacket and sitting back in her seat. Free of her jacket, Sam sees flashes of the protective tattoos that cover her upper arms like shirt sleeves: the intertwined shapes of devil's traps, runes, and old languages. She's wearing a tank top, but her long, dark hair falls down her back, covering the rest of the tattoos. A few strands of her hair fall across her ears, which are studded with a long row of silver earrings. She also has a silver labret piercing that Sam finds his eyes drawn back to again and again.
Mira's eyes meet his across the table, and Sam turns away, embarrassed to be caught looking.
Once everyone's seated and made their orders to the waitress, they get down to business fairly quickly. Tamara explains the series of events that brought her back to the United States, and how she and Mira met up while on the same hunt in Seattle.
"Wait, you're the hunter Bobby sent to check that out?" Sam asks, interrupting Mira's description of the disappearances in the Hoh rainforest in the Olympic National Park in Washington.
"Yeah, Bobby told me he'd been tracking similar cases around the country," she nods, playing with the straw in her ice tea, her eyes bright and curious as they meet Sam's across the table. "I went because he said he needed my help. Why do you ask?"
Sam takes a swallow of his drink and sits back as he looks at Mira. Her eyes are old and haunted, fanned by the dark brush of her eyelashes. "He spoke very highly of the hunter he sent to Seattle. It's just good to put a name and face to the description."
Mira smiles then, soft and slow, all the while shaking her head. "That old man is something else. He's a good man, though. He has been like a mentor to me. A crazy, paranoid bastard of a mentor, but a good one nonetheless."
Sam nods, huffing out a laugh. "I know what you mean." He turns to see Dean, Castiel, and Tamara quietly poring over a map together, and when he turns back to look at Mira, he notices that she's still watching him, eyes curious.
Sam clears his throat, plays with the napkin by his now-empty plate. He raises his gaze to Mira's again. "Your accent…Eastern European?
"Good ear," Mira says, lips quirking. "I spent most of my life in the U.S. so I've lost it a bit."
"Where were you born?" Sam asks.
Mira looks at him as if she's trying to figure him out before answering. "I migrated here with my family from Bosnia when I was just a child."
Sam nods, understanding dawning. "After the war?"
Her eyes flit away, her expression troubled as she murmurs, "Yes."
"I'm sorry to bring up the war," Sam says, shifting his body awkwardly.
"We're hunters, Sam," Mira says, and she smiles sadly when she looks at him. "Our whole life is war."
Sam doesn't know what to say that, and he doesn't have a chance to formulate an adequate response anyway, because the waitress arrives delivering their desserts, apple pies a la mode all around.
They eat in relative silence for a while, making small talk about the region and the strange weather patterns they've been tracking these past few weeks.
"What next?" Sam asks, once they've paid their checks and cleared the table of the articles and maps Tamara had brought with her. She has a bag full of research on the floor, and Sam's eager to dig into it.
Dean shrugs, chugging down the remainder of his beer before setting it back down on the table, the sweat off the empty bottle forming a little ring along the wood.
"We figure out whatever is happening here," Tamara says, rubbing a hand over her own face, pinching at her brow. She seems stressed out by the very idea, and Sam can relate.
"And hope for a new lead," Mira huffs out, lifting her eyes from her own empty beer bottle to settle on Sam. "We're hoping we can work closely together with you on this."
Mira's gaze is calculating, and Sam has to turn his head away and clear his throat. Something weird is lodged in his windpipe; maybe a piece of that mackerel from earlier.
Dean kicks him under the table, and Sam lets out a little grunt before turning to stare daggers at his brother. Dean throws a shit-eating grin Sam's way, waggling his brows suggestively.
"Sharing resources seems the best idea," Castiel says, picking up the conversation now that Sam and Dean have reverted to kicking each other under the table. Sam gives Dean one last knock with his boot before turning back to Tamara and Mira, who are both looking at them all expectantly.
"We should definitely work together," Sam agrees, cheeks heating up when he catches Mira's eye again.
"That's settled then," Tamara says, rubbing her hands together. "We can only stay on a week, though. There's this hunter gathering in Colorado at the end of the month. We're discussing what's happening around the globe. After the last few years…well, we've learned that when the world starts going to shit, we need to organize. Be ready."
Sam swallows, understanding. "You're thinking it's another Apocalypse?"
Tamara raises a brow. "Don't you?"
Sam nods and says quietly, "All the signs point to it."
"Look," Tamara sighs, leaning back in her chair and running a finger along the edge of the table. She's quiet for a moment before continuing. "No one on the hunter underground really knows the full story of what went down with you boys and the whole end-of-the-world shebang. I only know pieces of it, snatches I got from Bobby and my own investigating. But I know there's a big unknown story to what happened and to what didn't happen. Especially considering both Winchester boys are supposed to be long dead. I respect your right to not tell me about your role in any of it. But right now, if we're working together, joining forces, we need to lay all our cards on the table. So…if you know what's happening now, at this very moment, with the crazy shit going on in the world, I'd appreciate if you could share."
Sam shakes his head, feels the weight of the last few years sit heavy on his chest. "Tamara, if we knew, we'd tell you. But we're just as lost as the rest of you."
Tamara sits back, rubbing at her neck. She seems to accept that as truth. "Okay. Then let's go find our Everglades boogie man."
Episode 16: Mad World (Part 1 Continued)
Masterpost: Supernatural: Redemption Road (for full series info, warnings, and disclaimer)
Author: nyoka
Characters/Pairing: Dean/Castiel, Sam/OFC, OC and canon characters
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~21,000 for Part I
Warnings: language, mild violence, explicit sexuality
Beta: zatnikatel
Notes: Due to size this episode is being split into two parts, the first airing here tonight and the second airing this coming week.
Author's Note: This was a pinch-hit that I actually didn't think I'd have time to write, but I want to give special thanks to zatnikatel for her patience in letting me pick this up and encouraging me to keep working on it and to finish it for you all this week; and thanks Zat for contributing a couple of scenes to this chapter. I also want to thank the wonderful smallworld-inc for surprising me with a sketch of the OFC, Mira. And to the fantastic Pickles for coming in at the last minute and pinch-hitting such lovely art for this chapter! ♥
Art: Chapter banner by smilla02; digital drawings by Pickles, which you can also find here, and the OFC digital sketch by smallworld-inc, which you can also find here (art contains spoilers for Part I and Part II).
Summary: The thought that they could lose any of this - whatever peace and friendship and love they've found - scares Sam more than anything else. The fragility of it is almost too much to bear.
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
―Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
"The probability of separate worlds meeting is very small. The lure of it is immense.
We send starships. We fall in love."
-Jeanette Winterson, Gut Symmetries
- - -
A quarter past midnight, and the heat's unbearable. Tara twists around in her bed, her short legs tangling in the thin sheets. Her bedroom windows are cracked wide, allowing the moonlight to seep in across the scarred pine floorboards of her room. There's the barest hint of a soft breeze coming in. It's not enough, though.
It's early April, but it feels like the dead of summer. Tara's skin is damp with sweat, her cotton nightgown sticking to her plump thighs as she climbs out of her bed and walks over to the open window.
Mama spent all day in the garden, and where the moonlight spills across the yard Tara can see the rows of newly-planted vegetables and herbs. The rest of the yard is cast in thick shadows, and the long limbs of the oaks circle around the house like protective arms.
She's been sixteen for all of fifteen minutes, and already she's feeling the need to leave, to find some semblance of a life outside of the small confines of La Grange, Florida. She thinks of her Mama sleeping just down the hall and of her Papa, toiling away on some big oil rig deep out in the Gulf. Small towns like La Grange that sit at the doorway to the Everglades mostly deal in fishing and tourism, but Tara wants something different: she wants to sing, to go somewhere with a stage big enough to hold the big sounds she can belt out from deep in her chest.
As an only child, Tara feels guilty at the thought of leaving. A part of her doesn't want to leave her parents alone. She really doesn't. But then there's Ellie, with her big green eyes and her bigger dreams of running off to New York City and performing on Broadway, free of her troubled family and bad memories. And Tara had promised she'd follow her best friend, anywhere, everywhere. To Hell and back if she had to.
Right now though, Tara only has to follow Ellie to their favorite spot. She pauses in front of the window, hesitating for only a moment before turning around and reaching for her discarded clothes. She changes out of her cotton gown, and pulls on her denim cut-offs first, followed by her t-shirt and ratty sneakers.
From her nightstand, Tara picks up her cellphone and flashlight, before digging through her backpack to make sure she's packed enough snacks for the night. She hopes tonight she can coax Ellie out of her dark funk. The other girl's been feeling listless and moody lately, suffering from bad dreams and restless thoughts. Whenever they go camping though, things seem to get a hundred times better for both of them. Deep in their swamp hideaway, they can huddle together in their sleeping bags, making up stories until all they know is laughter and treasured secrets.
Tara's heart thumps loudly in anticipation, and she's smiling as she stuffs pillows under her comforter on her bed, a precautionary act in case Mama decides to peek her head through the door to check on her in the early twilight hours.
She climbs out of the window without a backwards thought, sliding her legs over the sill and hopping down onto the spongy grass of the yard. The air is heavy, and there's a mugginess to it that she's known only in the August rainy season. Tara sucks in a lungful, breathing in the cloying, sweet smells of jasmine and the blossoming marsh flowers.
Leaving the familiarity of her yard, Tara makes her way slowly through the surrounding wilderness, fingers trailing over the thick trunks of the cypress that dot the hiking trail and lead toward the inner marshlands. The moon is bright and full, and with its light Tara is able to move quickly, her flashlight beam dancing across the soft ground. After a minute she stops to look back, and the house has already faded into the moonlit distance.
Nights in the swamp are full of sounds; so alive. There's a river nearby, and Tara can hear the water gurgling, the rhythm mixing with the high chorus of peepers and cicadas. The path to the marsh is one she knows by heart. Even in the midnight cover of dark, she can make her way through the murky population of cypress and tupelo. Damp moss hangs down from the trees like curtains, the strings tangling in her curly hair as she passes beneath the treetop canopy. Tulips, magnolias, azalea, and long-stemmed wild flowers dot the saw-grass paths before her, their perfume thick on the breeze. She doesn't worry about the wildlife - alligators have never troubled them this far north, preferring to sun themselves along the river banks following the swampy Senoni Trail that lead further into the Everglades.
After twenty minutes of tramping through the muddy grass, Tara makes her way to the open field hidden at the end of the hiking trail. It's her place; her and Ellie's place, a grassy mound of earth that's more island than anything else, nestled as it is by a small, dark pond bordered by tall, skinny cattails. It's the closest thing she's ever had to a secret hideaway, and it's here that she and Ellie spend summers playing make-believe, browning themselves in the Southern sun and getting high off the damp swamp air.
In the center of the clearing is the tiny tumble-down shack they've made their home away from home. Tara pauses when she's only a few feet away, letting her flashlight beam bounce across the cracked doorway. The shack is blackened by heat and water, its thatched straw roof held together with spit and a prayer.
"Ellie!" she calls, her nerves sparking bright. "I'm here!"
Ellie is always the first to arrive, wanting to spend as much time away from her troubled family as possible. When Tara sees no movement from the shack, she frowns, straining her hearing against the distant sound of flowing water and the racket of insects.
"Ellie!"
Another few moments, but nothing in response. Worry settles in Tara's chest, her breath rushing out in a panting exhale. Did Ellie get caught sneaking out at home? She walks up to the shack and pushes in the door, expecting to find the place empty. Instead she finds nothing of the sort: there are candles lit in a circular pattern in the middle of the wooden floor, splashing amber light across the tiny room. In the center of the circle sits Ellie. The teenager's long legs are curled under her body, her eyes closed as she rocks back and forth.
"Ellie, what in the world…what are you doing?" Tara whispers, voice catching in her throat. The breeze whistles between the cracks in the shack, bringing with it a sad, mournful sound. She shivers, folding her arms across her chest. Something like fear settles in her heart; this all feels wrong.
"Ellie?" Tara asks again. Ellie doesn't answer, instead she begins to hum, her rocking motion quickening.
"Ellie, what are you doing? You're scaring me!" Tara says again, her voice growing louder. This isn't like Ellie at all. Tara raises her flashlight and directs the beam into the shadows of the shack's one room, looking for some reason behind her friend's odd behavior. That's when she sees it: the writing, literally, on the walls. Tara's eyes widen as they pan across the old wooden panels, which are all covered from floor to ceiling in large blocky text, written in ink dark as the night. Blood
Tara can't work enough moisture into her mouth to say a word about the blood. And she can't understand the scrawled words at all. It's not a language she's even seen or heard spoken. It's nonsense, a gibberish graffiti tainting her secret place.
"What is this?!" Tara shouts it this time, wanting, needing, to understand what's going on. Fear traps her, and something else.
Ellie stops then. Sudden and sharp. Her entire body stills, but her eyes never open. A long, tenuous moment passes before the other girl begins to speak, but the sounds are foreign to Tara's ears. Ellie is chanting, strange sounds tumbling over themselves. The mish-mash of words are sing-song-like; a prayer maybe, a call. Tara can't decipher them.
Tara wonders for a moment if this is a chant she should recognize at all. She remembers sitting on her grandma's lap as a young child, hearing the history of the Miccosukee her mother's side of her family descended from. But this is nothing like the tribal songs she grew up hearing. This is something dark, something that sends the hair on her arms standing to attention. This is something wrong. She can feel it down to her bones, intuition and instinct both.
"Ellie?" Tara whispers her friend's name into the gloom of the old shack. The chanting doesn't pause, but Ellie's eyes do open. Yet, there's nothing of recognition in her gaze, nothing of true sight.
Tara hesitantly steps closer, but Ellie continues to look through her as if she isn't there. Her best friend's eyes are glazed over and distant, and Tara does the only thing she can think to do. She touches her. She places her hand on her friend's shoulder and shakes her. The chanting and rocking both stop, but in that moment Tara realizes her mistake. Ellie seizes up as if having a fit, her entire body gone stock still beneath Tara's hand.
The screaming begins then. Ellie's cries shoot out like bullets, loud enough to pierce through the night and to shock it silent. Tara is frozen in place. She has never seen anything like it: her friend's mouth opens so wide, and her strangled howls fill the entirety of the shack.
When the screaming stops, everything is suddenly too quiet. No rushing river water, no sound of crickets and owls and birdsong. Just a dense silence, thicker than the muddy waters of the surrounding lagoons. It's so cold now too, and the chill leaves gooseflesh up and down Tara's arms.
Ellie drops to the ground with a loud thud, like the strings have been cut from a marionette doll.
"Ellie! Ellie, oh my God!" Tara yells, falling to her knees and pulling her friend up from the floor, drawing her limp body closer. "What's wrong? Tell me!" Tara feels hot tears falling down her cheeks, spilling onto Ellie shoulders. She doesn't care.
Ellie looks at Tara then, her pale face clenched in pain. "Tara?" she whispers, recognition finally settling in.
"It's me. I'm here," Tara says. "What's happening to you?"
Ellie clutches at her stomach suddenly, as blood begins spilling from her mouth. She gurgles around her moaned words. "You have…you have to run."
"No, no, no," Tara says, swiping at her friend's mouth with trembling hands.
There's a plea in Ellie's gaze as she turns her scared, dark eyes on Tara. "Please."
Tara's sobbing now, desperate and fear-laced. "I don't know what to do," she croaks, hands patting at her friend's still too-taut body. Tara knows that right now she sounds like a child. Not the sixteen-year old woman she was meant to be celebrated as tonight. She sounds broken, raw, needy. She needs Ellie to snap out of it. She reaches a hand out to tangle in her friends t-shirt, the cotton gone dark with blood.
"It's too late," Ellie whispers, voice rougher than gravel as she struggles to find words. She raises a hand to Tara's cheek and presses her palm there gently. A caress. "He's coming. He's awake."
Tara's catches Ellie's wrist, and she can feel the bones under her skin, the pull of her muscles. The slowing of her pulse beat. "Who? Who's coming?"
"The dreamer has stopped sleeping," Ellie whispers, nothing more than breath and sound.
"Is this about your dreams?" Tara says, frantic, grasping for any explanation. The dreams. Nightmares really; visions of horror so immense they had Ellie sneaking into Tara's room to share her bed for the past five weeks. Tara had only held her friend close, never asking questions, never pushing for explanations, but now regret takes hold, regret that she never asked for more information, never delved deeper into her friend's troubled mind.
"It'll be okay," Ellie says, and she manages to smile at Tara. Tara's throat burns and she swallows. Ellie's smiling like there's nothing wrong, like she doesn't know the craziness surrounding them. In that moment Ellie's smile reminds Tara of warm summer nights, the way the moonlight glints off the pond. Their shared laughter and stolen kisses.
"Ellie," Tara says again, voice cracking around the name.
"Hush," Ellie's words are soft, distant, like they've gone off and gotten lost in the night. "They've come for me and all the others who truly see. We herald his coming."
"You're confused again," Tara whispers, stroking fingers across Ellie's feverish brow. "They're just nightmares, nothing real. No one's coming."
"He is real," Ellie says, her voice rough and deep and strange. "And they've come to bring me to him."
Tara frowns, but before she can ask who 'they' are, she feels it: the sudden change in the air of the room, the way sound rushes back in like the popping of a bubble. Terror rushes through her body, sharp and fierce enough to send her to feet. Tara hears footsteps circling around her, can feel the devil's breath on her back. She shivers, but before she can spin around to face the new arrivals, before she can even react to them, something hits her from behind. Pain flares sudden and bright; it sends needle pricks from her head to the soles of her feet. She tastes blood in her mouth, liquid copper across her tongue.
Some part of her is still waiting to wake up, thinking this is all a bad dream, a madness she caught from Ellie's own night terrors. But the feel of the blood dripping down from the back of her head, the feel of the sharp pain winding throughout her body: it's all too real, too much. Something solid crushes against her back, and the pain intensifies. Air rushes out of her lungs as she falls hard to the ground. She's sobbing into the muddy floor of the shack, whispering and crying. She's a child calling on her best friend to help her. "Ellie, oh God, please," she sobs, but her friend is chanting again. There are more people chanting now, and it's almost beautiful, reverential. Their voices fill the cabin, fill the night, drowning out all the life in the swamp and everything living in the world.
- - -
Something wakes him from a dream of being sliced open. That something has a rhythm, a cadence. It has words, albeit ones he doesn't recognize. The sound of whispered chanting moves him from sleep to sudden consciousness. Dean grunts, wiping at his eyes, trying to get his bearings in the dark motel room, to shake off the memories of his dream, of Alastair's touch. He always expects to feel blood on his hands when he wakes up, for his naked body to be smeared with it. But it's only sweat on his chilled skin now, and this time the screams he hears are not his own.
Cas.
Dean stumbles to his feet, and instinct has him reaching for the knife under his pillow and the Glock on his nightstand even before his eyes are fully open. His legs are sleep-wobbly as he struggles to right himself, before he casts his eyes over the shadows of the room. It's early, the sun just barely spreading itself across the horizon. The light reaching the room is watery, a soft gray that tints more than illuminates.
The muffled chanting continues, and Dean follows the sound, knowing what he will find, fearing it. He sets his gun and knife on the desk he passes before moving quickly to the bathroom and throwing the door open wide.
Even in the darkness he recognizes the figure hunched against the bathtub. Dean steps into the room, and the tile is cool and hard under his feet. He doesn't say anything, only presses a hand against Castiel's bare shoulder. The angel shudders, and Dean sees the motion travel down the sculpted muscles of his friend's back. They are both naked, having slept that way. Dean feels raw and vulnerable with nothing on to protect him, but he knows Castiel must feel much the same way.
Dean squeezes Castiel's shoulder again, and the confused chanting stops, leaving the room in silence. The angel comes around slowly, blinking up at Dean with wide, owlish eyes. "Dean?"
"I'm here, Cas," Dean whispers with a smile. Castiel turns his body fully toward the sound of his voice, eyes trailing over Dean. Light from the bathroom window falls over the both of them, adding a soft milky shine to their naked skin.
"Oh," Castiel says suddenly, and Dean can see the understanding dawning in his eyes. "Sleep walking again?"
"Sleep walking, sleep screaming, and sleep chanting," Dean says on a soft sigh. "You alright now?"
"I don't remember what I was dreaming about," Castiel says, words almost toneless. It's the same refrain he's been reciting for months after every nightmare sends him out of his bed. Castiel groans, the frustration evident in the tightening of his body.
Dean clears his throat, kneeling down to be at eye level with the angel. He settles his back against the cool porcelain of the toilet and places a hand on Castiel's knee. "Remember what we talked about? Reaching out to Missouri? Seeing if she can get a better picture of these dreams of yours. Figure out what's going on with you."
"It's too dangerous," Castiel says, shaking his head. "Mortals with sight shouldn't play around in an angel's head like that. You know what happened to the last psychic who tried to see too much."
"You burned her eyes out," Dean mutters, his own frustration crowding out his fear.
"Not on purpose," Castiel says, reaching out a hand to capture Dean's own. He laces their fingers together and adds, "I would not mean to cause Missouri harm either, but something could happen. I don't wish to cause her injury. I quite like her."
Dean smiles, curling their finger tighter together. "She quite likes you too. Wants us to come by soon so she can fatten you up with her biscuits."
"I would like that," Castiel says on a soft laugh.
Dean squirms a bit, the coldness of the bathroom tile sinking into his skin. Castiel seems to notice, because his hold on Dean becomes tighter, and he uses his superior strength to pull Dean to his feet and to lever himself off the floor. "Let's go back to bed, get warm again," he says when Dean shoots him a scolding look.
Dean grunts, but doesn't fight the manhandling as Castiel leads them back to their bed in the dawn-lit motel room. They landed a king-size this time, and Dean's been spending as much time in it as possible over the course of the weekend. They haven't had much time to just laze around since leaving Bobby's. They've been on the road steadily for the past two weeks, and no one's been getting much sleep or downtime with the number of cases they've run across.
The world's gone to shit. Again.
And Dean can't shake the feeling it has something to do with them. Dean rubs a hand over his face. Sighs. "You sure you're okay, man?"
Castiel looks up at him from where he's currently tugging the sheets and blankets back onto the bed. Dean's a kicker when he's sleeping, and more often than not their blankets end up on the floor so that he and Cas have to curl together for warmth during the night. Cas often jokes that the habit's just Dean's subconscious desire for them to 'cuddle', but that's just the sort of chick-flick nonsense Dean is sure Sammy's been filling the angel's head with.
Castiel is silent for a moment, watching the bedspread like it holds all the answers. He's pale in the cool light of the coming dawn, his blue eyes cloudy with thought. But the dark lines around his eyes are deep enough to stand out even in the shadows of the room. "Bad dreams are nothing for us to fear."
Dean thinks about his own dreams and grimaces. "Yeah, right."
"Let's sleep, Dean," Castiel says quietly, and Dean knows that Castiel is tired, bone tired like he is himself. That taking Dean to bed is Castiel's way of asking Dean not to dwell on something they can't solve right now.
Dean sighs, wanting, needing to dwell on it. Just once. "Cas, we can't keep ignoring the elephant in the room. This shit is getting serious. It's getting-"
Castiel drops the blanket he was folding and arches his head up stubbornly, the white of his eyes luminous as he locks gazes with Dean across the distance of the bed between them. He turns to face Dean, shoulders straight, fists clenched as if readying for a fight. Dean can see something smoldering and angry moving behind his friend's eyes. When Castiel speaks again, his voice is hard, tight. "Dean, I'm asking you to leave it be."
Dean shakes his head, not ready to let his friend win this time. "Dammit, Cas," he mutters. "Why?"
Castiel clenches up, his jaw working silently as he looks away from Dean. The hard lines of his naked body are taut, bristling with pent-up energy. He's angry, Dean can tell. But Dean's not sure if Castiel is angry at Dean or at himself.
There's a long, tension-filled hush before Castiel breaks it. "Maybe this is my penance," he whispers. "My punishment for all my sins. Remember what Claire said? About living with this…thinking about everything I did."
Dean closes his eyes, the tightness in his chest squeezing until it's hard to breathe. "Look at me, Castiel." He says the angel's full name, needing to feel its perfect weight on his tongue.
Castiel meets his eyes again, and Dean doesn't hesitate when he says, "We've suffered enough. We've been punished enough. If you think your father's not done seeing us suffer for our sins, then I hate to say this man, but he's a sadistic sonofabitch as well as an absentee asshole."
Castiel doesn't flinch, doesn't react at all. Only says, "My father is dead, and there is nothing holy about me anymore. I am not just fallen, I am damned."
Castiel's face is a smooth mask of indifference at the admission, but Dean can see beneath the layers to the truth underneath. The fear and the anger, the jagged, knife-edge of darkness they've both spent their entire lives navigating. Dean shakes his head, feeling some of his own rage at their fates threatening to boil over. He says, voice hard and shameless: "Then God damn us both."
Castiel leaps across the bed at that, taking Dean down with him onto the mattress, pushing his body against Dean until they're wrestling for control more than anything else. Castiel presses his face against Dean's neck and whispers, breath panting again his ear, "Don't speak like that."
"Maybe you should try taking your own damn advice," Dean grunts, pushing Castiel onto his back and sliding their naked bodies together. They've both been testy with each other lately, crawling out of their skin as the miles pass beneath them. They're sleepless and edgy, needing this locked-away time together as a way to not only blow off steam, but to feel the base physicality of their bond ignite, burn and flare until they're both just smoke and embers left in the wake of each other's fire.
Dean can feel that fire filling him now, roaring wild as Castiel slides his cock over Dean's balls. Castiel growls when Dean thrusts their hips together, shoving the angel down into the mattress and holding him there. Dean feels Castiel's dick swell and throb against his own, feels the pulses of wet heat as the angel comes undone beneath him.
Castiel licks and kisses words into Dean's mouth, and these are words Dean actually recognizes, snatches of Enochian and Hebrew, Latin and Sumerian. It doesn't take long for Castiel to come back to himself, and before Dean has the time to contemplate all the places he wants to lick across his friend's taut body, Castiel grabs Dean by the shoulders and flips him over onto his back. He fits their hips back together again and grinds home against Dean, their cocks sliding in the mess of Castiel's come. The angel is already hardening again, and Dean is moaning, Jesus Christ Cas, more, as Castiel's hands dig into his hips, urging them faster, pushing them harder. Dean's whispering back in broken English, dropping hot, heavy kisses down Castiel's neck while Castiel holds Dean still underneath him, rocking and rutting until they’re both swearing, shouting into each other's mouths, leaving finger bruises along each other's hips.
Dean shudders and twists, crying out a sharp shout as he shoots, spilling hot and thick all over Castiel's belly. He comes so hard he's momentarily blinded, moaning helplessly as he mouths at the tattoo on Castiel's collarbone, as he slides his hands down Castiel's sweat-slick back, squeezing at his asscheeks to pull the angel tighter against himself. They continue to rock into each other, spent cocks moving slow and lazy together in the mess they've made.
They kiss again, after, because it's too hard to talk, and this is okay, this is good. This is Cas, and this is Dean, and sometimes this is how they are when they're together. Fire and heat, and pent-up aggression, and the slow, calm cool-down. The weighty silence left in the aftermath is always louder than any words.
- - -
Dean takes a long shower, and he has it so hot it leaves him pink, wrinkled, and raw. When he steps out of the stall, drying his hair with the rough motel towel, he sucks in the foggy steam left behind. The motel is silent around him, Castiel gone with Sam to pick up dinner from the food court in the nearby mall.
Dean wraps his towel around his waist and exits the bathroom, sitting on the unmade bed. He stretches out his legs, running his fingers over his right knee. He fractured his kneecap pretty badly on a solo hunt when he was twenty-five. Even though it took almost two months to recover fully, it was never quite the same after. In the years following, it sometimes would lock up with the weather or a wrong twist running down an alley. He never told his dad about it, or Sam even. It was just something Dean lived with, learned to manage; it was just another painful war-injury that reminded him what happened when he got dumb, got careless, or got distracted. But in his post-hell resurrection, his old knee injury was healed. All his old scars were healed by Castiel.
Sometimes Dean misses the ache. The memory of how the bones had never set quite right, the shitty self-medicating he did to get through the pain when he was alone in his motel room, Sammy gone to Stanford, Dad gone to God knows where. The way it would seize up in the months after, how it would throb with an arthritic ache in anticipation of a nasty cold front.
The pain was something that made sense to him; maybe that's why he misses it. It took Dean a long time to get used to his new, post-Hell body. This new skin. Years of being bruised, beaten, and broken on the hunt, followed by years of being taken apart, piece by piece, by Alastair's skillful hands, and Dean never knew what it was to feel truly whole, to feel put together in the right way. But Castiel had restored him. Castiel had healed him. Castiel had tried to fit him back together.
Some days it feels like the angel, fallen and damned as he claims to be, is still trying to stitch Dean back together. He's not using his grace to do it these days, just his all-too-human hands. Just his words, and his presence, and his stubborn stoicism.
If Dean could return the favor, he would. Heal Cas like Cas healed him. Take away the shitty dreams and the unforgivable mistakes. Take away the past and start over. Start fresh, with clean slates all around. It's something he once asked of Sam and Bobby after Rufus passed: Life is short, and ours are shorter than most. We gonna spend it wringing our hands? Something's going to get us, eventually. And when my guts get ripped out, just so you two know, we're good. Blanket apology for all the crap that anybody's done, all the way around. But maybe that's not possible for them after all. Maybe they're too broken. Maybe if they were different people…if they were even people to begin with. Instead of fallen angels and fallen men, token pieces in a chess game played by dicks with bigger agendas.
Maybe they've seen too much to go back. They've all seen each other at their worse after all. Broken, wrecked and devastated, torn to pieces. They've seen each other at their best too: laughing and drinking and giddy, and feeling loved. It's family; that's what this is. This is family. Sammy, who's been Dean's brother, his kid, and his partner in crime his entire life. Cas, the angel on their shoulders, this badass unexpected force of nature that knocks Dean on his ass time and time again. Castiel, the irresistible force to Dean's immovable object. The missing piece to their entire story.
Dean presses his head into his palms, breathing in deep and smiling, feeling hot with the knowledge that they've made it this far. He's jolted from his thoughts by the ringing motel phone. He hurries to answer, grunting a "hello" into the receiver.
"Turn the TV to Channel 4 news," Sam says through the staticky connection.
Dean frowns. "Everything okay? You and Cas okay?"
"Yeah, yeah," Sam rushes out. "We're fine. We're still in the mall, and we saw the news playing on one of the TVs in the electronics store. Thought you needed to see it. Let us know what you make of it. We'll be home in a few."
Dean says his goodbyes and sets the receiver down. He crosses to the bed and slumps onto it before grabbing the remote. He could have grilled Sam about the news, but he's still pretty exhausted from last night. The vent above his head is sending down a cooling mist of air, and his agitation lessens as he flips on the TV and finds the right channel. It's almost six-thirty, and the evening news is still on.
It's a breaking news story: a shot of a cordoned-off stretch of swamp and a news anchorwoman with too much eye makeup speaking into the camera, blond hair bouncing as she turns to motion toward the tree-lined backdrop.
It takes Dean a moment to realize why he's not hearing anything. The TV's muted, and when he finds the button to restore the sound, he only catches the end of the reporter's sentence. But it's enough.
"…more than a dozen missing," she's saying, and Dean sighs, noticing the searchlights shining down over the trees and the sound of a helicopter in the background.
Dean reads the news bar scrolling across the screen, his mind calculating how long it would take to get there. The Everglades, he muses. He hasn't been that way since he was a kid.
Dean presses the volume again, listening closely to the newscast, trying to see if these disappearances are anything like what they've been seeing. The reporter is interviewing family members now, and Dean watches numbly as she parades around a grief-stricken mother, a worried boyfriend, and a crying friend.
He closes his eyes, listening to the urgency in their voices. Something bad is happening out there, Dean knows. Something bad is happening everywhere. The newscasters transition to talking about the spate of strange crimes rocking the state, and Dean has to hit the mute button again, has to drown out the evidence that something's going on that could destroy everything he's been trying so hard to build.
- - -
They've been crisscrossing the Florida coast for just over two weeks now, tracking odd weather patterns and dark omens, news report after news report detailing strange electrical storms, sudden mysterious fogs, meteor showers, and swaths of inexplicable animal mutilations. In Delance, Florida, on the night of the spring equinox, every child under the age of ten was found wandering around at two in the morning without any memory of where they'd been. Two weeks later in Shelton, the entire population of the town - all two-hundred and thirty-six people - simply vanished without a trace.
The local authorities are saying it's the work of some cult, a global network of fringe dwellers claiming it's the end of the world, celebrating through ritualistic kidnappings and mass suicides. The federal government, on the other hand, argues that it's some new terrorist network; in fact it's every national security threat come to life. Sam would laugh it if were funny. But watching the authorities and world leaders run around with their heads up their asses isn't the least bit funny. It's scary as fuck, especially since neither he nor Dean have any idea what's at the root of the shit-storm.
Sam lets out a deep exhale, turning the dial on the radio, tired of listening to the talking heads on NPR report the wild guesses being thrown around by the Department of Homeland Security.
"A sleeper cell, my ass," Sam mutters, choosing a top forty station instead. Kanye's rapping about touching the sky as Sam's eyes return to the spread of grassy hillside he's been winding the Impala around for the last half-hour. The driver's-side window is rolled down, and the sharp smell of sand and salt fills the car.
He's driving through the Saldan Valley, toward the Everglades, and here the road follows the Atlantic in a way that is all-too familiar. The last time Sam came through this part of Florida was his sophomore year at Stanford. He went camping in the hilly seaside valley over spring break, and he remembers impressing his friends with his wilderness skills, years of sleeping rough in the wilds of America finally coming in handy. But Stanford seems a lifetime ago now, and something sour weighs down the memory of it, a lasting bitterness he feels every time he thinks about that time in his life, when he thought he could run away from everything, somehow outrun the family curse. Escape. When he thought he could have a life that didn't involve blood and pain and constant loss. Jess.
The sea breeze whips at Sam's hair and tugs at the collar of his shirt. Sam glances in the rearview mirror, feeling a soft smile creep along his face as he sees his brother and Cas sleeping soundly, wrapped around each other in the backseat, covered by Sam's old, tattered wool blanket. The thought that they could lose any of this - whatever peace and friendship and love they've found - scares Sam more than anything else. The fragility of it is almost too much to bear.
Pilled high on the passenger-seat next to Sam is a stack of yellowing newspapers from towns across Florida, their weather reports and crime blotters circled with bleeding red marker. Cas has been tracking the patterns, trying to make sense out of something that is wholly nonsensical. All Sam knows is that there are yet more towns to check out, more events to explain. He swallows hard and turns back to the road. Yesterday, they passed through a small seaside hamlet called Port Beyers. Three days ago, five whales washed up on its shores, their massive bodies mutilated and gutted, splayed almost ritualistically across the beach. In the days prior to that event, a spate of tremors had rocked the surrounding coastal towns, shocking for a region not known for earthquakes. Ragged gashes erupted in the ground, with deep chasms that opened down into the darkness of the earth, like the crevice Castiel and Claire Novak tumbled into in California.
The events are crazy and inexplicable, but they found nothing in those towns but scared people and mass confusion, the same things they've found in almost every town they've stopped at since leaving Bobby's. They're heading now toward Toklan, a small fishing village on the eastern edge of the Everglades. They stayed there once years ago, and Sam's excited to be heading back this way. The weather here is better at least, a nice change up from the constant rain and darkness that followed them down the East coast the last time they were out this way. Sam shivers at the memory of the ghost town where they found Kali; the horrors they saw there have haunted his dreams every night since.
Sam glances up at the sky, which arches around them wide and endless, blue and cloudless. The winding, narrow state highway is surrounded on one side by the never-ending expanse of the sea, and on the other by wildflower-covered hilltops. Looking now at the tranquility of the landscape, Sam can almost forget about the things that hide in the darkness, about the things they're chasing. And the things chasing them.
Sam sees the sign for Toklan and smiles, pushing down on the gas. He had to fight Dean for the keys to the Impala that morning, but he's glad he did. His brother needed the sleep, and the steadiness of the drive has calmed Sam, helped him to garner more control over his mind and his memories. It's been two weeks since his last flashback. The road Sam took here allowed him to trace the curve of the Atlantic, and there's something about the steady presence of the ocean that centers him. The memory of crashing through the surface of the water in Texas, breathing in that first breath of life-giving air, still makes his skin sing with strength and excitement. He's alive. He's freaking alive.
Sam's shaken from the thought by the sound of his ringtone, muffled low because it's buried inside his backpack, which is tossed haphazardly on the passenger-seat floor. He slows the Impala down and pulls it over to the slim shoulder. He sighs as he turns off the car, silencing the low, comforting grumble of the engine.
They're still thirty miles from town, too many miles from anywhere really. Sam checks to make sure Dean and Cas are still sleeping before he picks up his backpack and climbs out of the Impala. He stretches by the side of the road, his body cramped up from a long-day's drive. He sucks in a deep breath and stands for a long moment with one hand braced on the Impala's warm hood for balance and the other holding his cell as he scrolls through the missed call log.
Bobby had promised to put them in touch with a few local hunters, and Sam's been waiting for the call. Bobby answers on the first ring, and Sam's grip tightens on the cool metal cover of the cell as he presses the phone to his ear. "Bobby?" Sam says.
"'Bout time you called," the old hunter answers gruffly, before Sam hears him turn away from the receiver to yell something at Cheney, who's barking in the background.
"He okay?" Sam asks, settling back against the Impala as he eyes the tree-thick valley spreading out in front of him.
Bobby sighs heavily into the phone on the other end. "That pup ain't been right in the head since Feathers left. Damn fool angel spoiled him rotten."
Sam smirks, remembering how Cas used to put the dog to sleep by rubbing behind his floppy ears and cooing at him in Enochian. "Cas has a way with animals."
"Would explain his way with that brother of yours," Bobby chuckles.
Sam huffs out a soft laugh, nodding. "Tell me about it," he says, smiling a little as he peeks at the sleeping duo in the backseat of the car.
A beat passes before Bobby continues with, "How're you boys doing?"
"Fine," Sam lies, speaking softer into the phone. Bobby snorts because he knows they're far from fine.
"Well, as fine as we can be considering the entire world's decided to go looney tunes," Sam mutters, glancing to the backseat again as he hears his brother stirring awake. Dean rubs at his eyes with his knuckles; he's rumpled with wild bed-hair, but Cas is still curled up against his side, head pressed along Dean's shoulder, sleeping soundly. Sam wants to crack a joke, wants to tease, but he knows Dean would only send him the stink-eye and sulk for the rest of the ride into town. Dean's still a little sensitive about the Dean-and-Cas situation.
"I got news," Bobby says, interrupting Sam's flow of thoughts. Sam turns away from watching his brother, deciding to tease Dean later about his cuddling with Cas.
"Tell me it's good news," Sam says, shoving off the car and digging his boot heel into a grassy patch of earth lining the shoulder.
"Better than yesterday's news," Bobby says gruffly. "Tamara's already in the area investigating the tremors, and she wants to meet up, share resources."
"That would be great," Sam says, digging through his bag for a pen and pad to take down the address and information on Tamara and the other contacts Bobby dug up for them in the region.
When he's done, he slips his cell back into his bag and turns around to find Dean looking at him grumpily. "Why didn't you wake me up?" he asks, voice sleep-rough and slurred.
"Because I was too busy posting pictures of you and Cas cuddling to my Facebook," Sam snickers, tossing Dean the keys to the Impala.
"What's a Facebook?" Dean asks, frowning.
"I live in the 21st century, Dean. You really need to visit it sometime," Sam bemoans, before sliding down into the shotgun seat.
"Whatever," Dean mumbles, shooting Sam a stern look as he adds, "And dude, me and Cas were not cuddling."
Sam laughs because they were so definitely cuddling. He really did take pictures. "You guys are cute. Even Bobby says so."
Dean glares and turns on the radio.
Sam smiles and settles his head back against the seat to rest.
They drive.
- - -
Memories are not often fluid, or changeable; sometimes they are the only things that stay as they are, that haunt even when all the other ghosts have been salted and burned. The house is still where it was nineteen years ago, nestled between saw-grass prairies and the Grey Lake, and the vast, thick moss-draped cypress forests that circle them in the distance. Dean sits up straighter in the driver's seat as he turns the Impala up the steep driveway, tires squealing against the muddy rocks. Dean knows his baby wasn't made for these kinds of roads, these untamable marshland terrains, and she growls irritably as she takes the final turn, rumbling around them before he cuts the engine off.
Returning here is like stepping back into the past. From the outside, the house looks the same: shabby and unkempt, run-down and weather-worn. But one can tell it was built with strong hands and by someone with a mind for understanding the ways the weather conditioned the land here. Dean smiles, remembering the summer he and John spent working to repair the place - the long, hot hours spent in the sun, pounding away at lumber, cutting and shaping the sheetrock. Dean had been covered in freckles and peeling sunburn that entire summer, but he loved every minute of it. He'd never felt closer to his dad than that time, when what they were doing wasn't just about another hunt. It was about working with their hands to build something lasting, spending time together because they could. Sam used to sit in the shade under the orange tree across the way, reading from his book of the week - Dean thinks it was the Lord of the Rings books that summer, and he remembers how excited Sam had been to finish the entire series. During breaks he and Sam use to munch on the oranges and discuss which of Tolkien's characters were their favorites. Dean was always fond of Aragorn, and Sam would sing the praises of Gandalf the Grey. It felt like they were in one of Tolkien's worlds out here, surrounded as they were by rivers of long grass and marshland.
The house is like something from the deeper south, with a wide, wrap-around porch. It's a summer house first loaned to John by a family they'd saved from a cursed object back in the spring of '94. The Winchesters were allowed to use the house for as long as they needed it, and John had gladly accepted the offer, knowing the boys needed some rest. The place needed repairs back then, but it was sturdy, having been built by the family out of hearty hardwood gathered from the surrounding forest. There's a dilapidated barn out back where they used to keep their hunting equipment, and a coop where they used to keep a few chickens. He and Sam would sometimes chase the wild turkeys and marsh rabbits that came through the yard as well. Between that and fishing, they were able to supplement much of the food John would bring home from the county market each week.
Dean was fifteen that summer, and it was the first time he remembers staying anywhere long enough for it to feel like maybe, just maybe, this could be home. Sam took to the lifestyle quickly as well. He'd get up with the rising sun and gather fresh eggs from the hens, smiling wide when he stomped his small, dew-covered boots into the kitchen every morning to show them to Dean. "Awesome, Sammy," Dean would say, before ruffling his hair and turning out a breakfast that sent all their mouths watering, making the eggs the way Sam loved - sunny-side up - and French toast for his dad, while frying up patties of smoky sausage for himself.
"Dean?"
Dean blinks, stomach growling. He shakes his head free of the old memories and turns to look at Sam, who's grinning at him in a knowing way. "Huh?" Dean says, trying to remember if Sam had been speaking to him.
"I was just remembering that year we spent here," Sam says, running his hand over the dashboard. "Seems not so long ago. But I had to be what? Ten? Eleven?"
"Eleven," Dean nods, smiling again. "Short and chubby. Old Lady Millie used to love pinching those rosy cheeks of yours."
"Yeah, yeah," Sam laughs, shaking his head. "That's cool that the family remembered us after all these years and was willing to let us stay here again."
"Free a family from an ancient curse, and they are forever in your debt," Dean quips, turning to glance at the sleeping angel in the backseat.
"Should we head in?" Sam asks.
"I kinda don't want to wake Cas. He's been having a rough few nights," Dean says, biting his lip as he watches the rise and fall of Castiel's chest.
"The dreams again?" Sam asks, sounding concerned.
Dean turns to Sam, sucks in a deep breath and nods. The car goes still and quiet. "Always."
- - -
The sun is starting to set by the time Dean finishes unpacking. Sam's sitting at the kitchen table poring over a series of documents Tamara forwarded them, and Castiel is snoring softly from the narrow bed in the room across the way, the thick paperback book he was reading resting on his chest. The house is still warm and musty from being shut up for so long. An old circulating fan rattles and whirs in the living room, catching the pages of their loose documents so that Sam's placed coffee mugs on top of everything. Dean smiles and shakes his head, grabs a beer from the fridge, and heads out to the porch, the hinges of the old screen door groaning behind him as it opens and slams shut.
He leans against the porch railing as he stares out across the overgrown clearing to the mass of oaks and beeches beyond it. The sunset dresses the trees in gold-orange fire, and Dean can just barely see the lightning bugs flashing throughout the tall grass. The sound of crickets, cicadas, and frogs is louder than the NPR station Sam has the radio tuned into inside the house.
If there's time between this hunt and the next, Dean wants to work on the old place. In some spots on the porch, the wood's warped and cracked, and much of the old white paint is peeling, faded to a dull gray. Dean figures the last time the house was painted was during the summer they lived here, almost twenty years ago now. There's a rocking chair in a corner of the porch where Dean remembers falling asleep in the evenings sometimes. The old wooden planks creak and whine with each boot step as Dean moves to settle on the rocker. The evening's hot, and his sweat-damp t-shirt clings to his chest uncomfortably.
He sips on his beer and tunes out the racket of nature, feeling desperate for just a hint of an evening breeze. There's something out in these woods; something disappearing people. He thinks of all the people living like this on the edges of these small swamp towns, sitting ducks for any monster, and he knows they need to find out what's happening here before anyone else goes missing.
Dean drains the rest of his beer, watching the way the dying sun falls across the Impala, lights her up like the glorious animal she is. He remembers being fifteen and sitting here, doing this exact same thing. The picture hasn't changed much. The yard has grown over, tangled in reedy trees, vines, and weeds. The house has fallen into neglect. But the sounds are the same, the sky is the same, and there's something comforting in that.
Alone like this, Dean thinks about things. His life before the fire. His life after. Losing Sam, then John, then Sam again. Alastair and the Pit, and everything he became. Afterwards, not being enough to save Sam from a fate worse than anything. And now there's this thing with Cas, and how it makes Dean shake sometimes because he's so damn worried he's going to lose it too, like he's lost everything else. Dean closes his eyes. The humid air is so heavy here, and it feels like a leaden force weighing him down.
He pushes down the doubts and listens to the noises around him: the frogs croak and peep, and a howl hoots from the cover of a tree. There are so many sounds out in the swamp, and if he listens hard enough, Dean can hear something wailing in the distance. Monster or animal, he doesn't know.
- - -
Gordo's, the tiny little fish shack in the main stretch of downtown Toklan, is nestled near Grey Lake, between the open-air fishmarket and an array of antique shops. A hand-painted sign declaring World's Greatest Seafood hangs crookedly from the window. According to the locals, Gordo's has the best crab cakes this side of the Everglades, and by his third helping Sam doesn't have any reason to disagree.
It's lunchtime, and the place is bustling with a mix of locals and tourists. They decided on an outside table, wanting to drink in as much daylight as possible. The sun is still high in the sky, drenching the outdoor deck in light and heat. The wicker furniture is weather-beaten and old, but the fish and chips they ordered are greasy and delicious, and the ice tea is cold and sweet.
Dean is smiling and licking his fingers clean as he watches Cas eat, and Sam's trying his best not to call Dean out on just how completely owned he is. Sam's feeling good right now, and watching his brother smile is enough to celebrate. The fresh air is good for them too, especially after the weeks of crazy weather they've been experiencing in hot spots around the country. Even Cas seems a little more at ease in the sun, shoulders less stiff, legs sprawled and tangled with Dean's under the table, his smile lazy and content as he watches Dean watch him.
Sam can't help grinning at how freaking obvious they are. Most days he doesn't know what to do with them. "Guys," Sam says, glancing at the shimmer-shine of the lakefront splayed out before them. "I think we should go swimming later."
"Dude," Dean says, and Sam turns to see his brother pointing a wobbly, ketchup-laden fry at him. "Aren't you sick of the water by now? Plus, something took a bite out of Shamu and his brothers just last week."
"That was three towns away, by the ocean," Sam says, shrugging. "I just think we should enjoy the good weather and downtime while we can."
"You mean before whatever's going on gets worse," Dean mutters, chewing on another fry.
"I don't know man," Sam says after a time, taking a slow pull of his ice tea. He bites at his bottom lip, turning to watch Dean make frowny faces at Castiel's conch chowder. "I don't know what we should be doing."
Cas glances up at Sam, eyes solemn. "I fear we've yet to see the full extent of this."
"Understatement of the year," Dean retorts, sitting back in his chair and turning to glance at the restaurant's crowded interior. He's been throwing glances at the front door every few minutes, keeping an eye out for their contacts.
In the uneasy silence that follows, the waitress refills Sam's iced tea and Castiel's water. Sam finds himself watching the lakefront, the way the sun reflects off the still surface which glitters silver.
It's only another few minutes before Dean kicks his feet under the table.
"What?" Sam yelps, looking up at Dean.
"At your three o'clock," Dean says, nodding towards the restaurant's front door.
Sam looks up. A familiar figure captures his attention from across the restaurant, and he smiles. "Right on time," he says.
Dean nods, eyes locked on the doorway. "Who's the chick with her?"
Sam shakes his head, watching as two women part the crowd, easing between the bustling tables. "Bobby did mention Tamara wasn't traveling alone," he says, raising his hand to point out their location to the new arrivals.
A moment later Tamara is standing in front of them, a soft, crooked smile carving deep dimples into her cheek. "Sam and Dean Winchester," she declares, her British accent shaping her words. "Didn't think I'd ever be seeing you again." Her smile widens, and Sam notices that Tamara looks much the same as the last time they saw her, except now her hair is twisted in long dark braids, and she has a couple more scars to indicate that the years have been long and hard. There's also a sadness to her eyes that probably speaks to the fact that Isaac is no longer at her side.
"It's good to see you in one piece, Tamara," Dean is saying fondly, motioning for Tamara and her friend to take the two empty seats at the table. "This is Cas, by the way," he adds, pointing to the angel, who's watching the proceedings curiously.
"Hello," Castiel says, offering his hand.
"It's good to meet you Cas," Tamara smiles, shaking his hand before she takes her seat. "Since we're making introductions, I want you all to meet my best friend Mira Kovic. We've been working these cases together since I got into the States." She nods towards the tall, dark-haired woman taking the seat next to her.
"Hi Mira," Sam says, and he extends his hand, which the woman shakes without pause.
"I've heard a lot about you," she says, her voice calm like the surface of the waveless Grey Lake. There's a slight accent there, one that Sam's trying hard to place. There's also a sharp guardedness to her pale blue eyes as her gaze flicks over Sam, measuring him.
"I hope all of it was good," Sam says, curious as to what she's actually heard. He knows the Winchesters have a mixed reputation in the hunter network.
"Mostly," Mira says, lips curving into a sly smile. "It's good to meet you, Sam. And you too, Dean and Castiel." She reaches across to shake his brother's and the angel's hands before pulling off her black leather jacket and sitting back in her seat. Free of her jacket, Sam sees flashes of the protective tattoos that cover her upper arms like shirt sleeves: the intertwined shapes of devil's traps, runes, and old languages. She's wearing a tank top, but her long, dark hair falls down her back, covering the rest of the tattoos. A few strands of her hair fall across her ears, which are studded with a long row of silver earrings. She also has a silver labret piercing that Sam finds his eyes drawn back to again and again.
Mira's eyes meet his across the table, and Sam turns away, embarrassed to be caught looking.
Once everyone's seated and made their orders to the waitress, they get down to business fairly quickly. Tamara explains the series of events that brought her back to the United States, and how she and Mira met up while on the same hunt in Seattle.
"Wait, you're the hunter Bobby sent to check that out?" Sam asks, interrupting Mira's description of the disappearances in the Hoh rainforest in the Olympic National Park in Washington.
"Yeah, Bobby told me he'd been tracking similar cases around the country," she nods, playing with the straw in her ice tea, her eyes bright and curious as they meet Sam's across the table. "I went because he said he needed my help. Why do you ask?"
Sam takes a swallow of his drink and sits back as he looks at Mira. Her eyes are old and haunted, fanned by the dark brush of her eyelashes. "He spoke very highly of the hunter he sent to Seattle. It's just good to put a name and face to the description."
Mira smiles then, soft and slow, all the while shaking her head. "That old man is something else. He's a good man, though. He has been like a mentor to me. A crazy, paranoid bastard of a mentor, but a good one nonetheless."
Sam nods, huffing out a laugh. "I know what you mean." He turns to see Dean, Castiel, and Tamara quietly poring over a map together, and when he turns back to look at Mira, he notices that she's still watching him, eyes curious.
Sam clears his throat, plays with the napkin by his now-empty plate. He raises his gaze to Mira's again. "Your accent…Eastern European?
"Good ear," Mira says, lips quirking. "I spent most of my life in the U.S. so I've lost it a bit."
"Where were you born?" Sam asks.
Mira looks at him as if she's trying to figure him out before answering. "I migrated here with my family from Bosnia when I was just a child."
Sam nods, understanding dawning. "After the war?"
Her eyes flit away, her expression troubled as she murmurs, "Yes."
"I'm sorry to bring up the war," Sam says, shifting his body awkwardly.
"We're hunters, Sam," Mira says, and she smiles sadly when she looks at him. "Our whole life is war."
Sam doesn't know what to say that, and he doesn't have a chance to formulate an adequate response anyway, because the waitress arrives delivering their desserts, apple pies a la mode all around.
They eat in relative silence for a while, making small talk about the region and the strange weather patterns they've been tracking these past few weeks.
"What next?" Sam asks, once they've paid their checks and cleared the table of the articles and maps Tamara had brought with her. She has a bag full of research on the floor, and Sam's eager to dig into it.
Dean shrugs, chugging down the remainder of his beer before setting it back down on the table, the sweat off the empty bottle forming a little ring along the wood.
"We figure out whatever is happening here," Tamara says, rubbing a hand over her own face, pinching at her brow. She seems stressed out by the very idea, and Sam can relate.
"And hope for a new lead," Mira huffs out, lifting her eyes from her own empty beer bottle to settle on Sam. "We're hoping we can work closely together with you on this."
Mira's gaze is calculating, and Sam has to turn his head away and clear his throat. Something weird is lodged in his windpipe; maybe a piece of that mackerel from earlier.
Dean kicks him under the table, and Sam lets out a little grunt before turning to stare daggers at his brother. Dean throws a shit-eating grin Sam's way, waggling his brows suggestively.
"Sharing resources seems the best idea," Castiel says, picking up the conversation now that Sam and Dean have reverted to kicking each other under the table. Sam gives Dean one last knock with his boot before turning back to Tamara and Mira, who are both looking at them all expectantly.
"We should definitely work together," Sam agrees, cheeks heating up when he catches Mira's eye again.
"That's settled then," Tamara says, rubbing her hands together. "We can only stay on a week, though. There's this hunter gathering in Colorado at the end of the month. We're discussing what's happening around the globe. After the last few years…well, we've learned that when the world starts going to shit, we need to organize. Be ready."
Sam swallows, understanding. "You're thinking it's another Apocalypse?"
Tamara raises a brow. "Don't you?"
Sam nods and says quietly, "All the signs point to it."
"Look," Tamara sighs, leaning back in her chair and running a finger along the edge of the table. She's quiet for a moment before continuing. "No one on the hunter underground really knows the full story of what went down with you boys and the whole end-of-the-world shebang. I only know pieces of it, snatches I got from Bobby and my own investigating. But I know there's a big unknown story to what happened and to what didn't happen. Especially considering both Winchester boys are supposed to be long dead. I respect your right to not tell me about your role in any of it. But right now, if we're working together, joining forces, we need to lay all our cards on the table. So…if you know what's happening now, at this very moment, with the crazy shit going on in the world, I'd appreciate if you could share."
Sam shakes his head, feels the weight of the last few years sit heavy on his chest. "Tamara, if we knew, we'd tell you. But we're just as lost as the rest of you."
Tamara sits back, rubbing at her neck. She seems to accept that as truth. "Okay. Then let's go find our Everglades boogie man."
Episode 16: Mad World (Part 1 Continued)