Fic: Repo Men: The Upside-Down Apocalypse 5/?
This fic is the flashback/followup/presickle/longfic spawn of REPO MEN. READ REPO MEN HERE.
Repo Men: The Upside-Down Apocalypse
Author:
tahirire
Rating: R
Wordcount: 3417 (This chapter)
Beta: monicawoe
Genre: Gen. Angst. H/C.
Spoilers: Goes a/u from 3.16, but there will be spoilers for all episodes through 5.22.
Warnings: My generic major character death fic list. This fic contains dark imagery, excessive gore, language, violence, torture, memories of torture, and gleeful pretzelfication of canon, WIP.
Chapter 1: Hell | Chapter 2: The Book | Chapter 3: Burn the Ships | Chapter 4: War and Peace
Chapter 5: Death and Taxes
After War rises Pestilence.
It’s nine in the morning when Dean hands some cash to the clerk behind a gas station counter in Colorado, trading a few stolen dollars for a red bull and some M&Ms while Sam waits by the car. Five miles after that, Sam tenses, closes his eyes, and tells Dean to turn around. The searching reach of Sam’s power is smothering at close range, but his accuracy is absolute.
“Horseman?” Dean queries.
“Minnesota,” Sam responds.
“How do you know?”
Sam presses his lips together and looks out the window.
“Hey, humor me for once, would you? I’m ridin’ blind, here.”
Sam sighs, a long-suffering sound. “I feel the demons around him. And I see what they see.”
Before nine AM the following day, Dean sees for himself.
Sam mows down the demons surrounding the horseman with a simple wave of his hand, glowing nearly golden in the sunlight. He gives a satisfied nod. “All clear. Sure you don’t want me along?”
Dean spins the hilt of Ruby’s knife around and around in his hand. As much as it’s a part of him, it will always bear her name, her blood legacy. He nods firmly. “I’m sure. Just keep the car running.”
Pestilence is wearing an older man in a lab coat. Underneath, a greenish, purulent ooze rolls through the man’s veins, and he smells of necrosis and disease. The plague of the horseman causes Dean’s nose to bleed and his stomach to turn to acid, but in the end Pestilence falls, just like the rest of them will.
Dean tosses Sam the ring, gets behind the wheel, and demands first shower every night until the world ends.
Sam grins faintly. It seems to Dean that Sam has retreated into himself, much like a bear curls up for hibernation in the winter. The constant presence of his power has become muted, and there are no signs of blackness in his eyes.
“You okay?”
A sigh.
“How many. Sammy.”
Sam rubs his eyes and leans his head back, sliding down into the curve of the passenger door. “Fourty-seven,” he says finally. Then, in a whisper, “fourty-seven demons, eight people.”
Dean’s hands tighten on the wheel. He knows Sam is exhausted. He knows he needs to recharge his batteries, and soon. He knows their lives depend on it. “Get some sleep, Sammy,” he murmers, watching his little brother drift off. Dad used to say Sam fell asleep so fast that the sand man could never catch him. The road is silent except for the steady rise and fall of Sam’s chest.
He pulls them into the first halfway decent motel he sees. He settles a shuffling, mumbling Sam into bed, then he takes his own advice and follows Sam to dream land.
They hunt the sand man together, but they don’t remember it.
~*~
Dean snaps awake to the sound of a shotgun racking over his head, and the first thing he sees is another one pointed straight into his brother’s face.
“Don’t move,” comes a muffled voice. “Just sit up nice and easy.”
Sam’s lips twitch into a fleeting smile and Dean raises his eyebrows, straining over his shoulder to get a better look at his assailant. “Well, boss, which is it?”
The thin twitchy guy watching Dean shifts uncomfortably, looking at the thick steady guy trained on Sam for instructions. They are both wearing muggers’ masks, but there is something familiar about them. A third similarly disguised figure hangs back, clinging to the shadows and clutching a weapon of his own to his chest, not aiming it anywhere in particular.
Thick and Steady rolls his eyes comically through his mask holes. “Sit up,” he commands. “No sudden movements or I’ll shoot.”
Dean slides his legs slowly off the edge of the bed and sits, checking on Sam as he goes. Sam looks a little tired, maybe, but he has hazel eyes and color in his cheeks and there is nothing about him that screams monster any more than there ever was, back when Dean only had Gordon to deal with.
“Geez, Sammy, your guy sounds pissed.”
Sam gestures to Thin and Twitchy. “Your guy’s about to take a piss,” he retorts. Twitchy responds by taking a bold step forward, shoving his barrel right into the curve of Dean’s jawline. The third guy in the shadows flinches noticeably, pulling his shotgun in even closer.
Dean puts up his hands. “Woah, hey, easy pal.”
“We ain’t pals,” Twitchy snaps. “Sit still and shut up.”
Dean complies, trying to stem the uneasy feeling in his gut. Thick and Steady drops the barrel of his shotgun to Sam’s chest. “Think you can flip the switch on the Apocalypse and just walk away, Sam?”
Sam’s eyes narrow and Dean can feel his brother’s muted power simmering in the air, crouching, ready to strike. “I’d point that thing somewhere else if I were you,” Sam says, in a tone that would warn off anyone with half a brain in their skull. Twitchy re-grips his shotgun as if reassuring himself that it’s still there.
Dean closes his eyes, groaning inwardly as the voices click into place. “Walt? Come on man, you know better than this shit.” The sudden silence confirms he’s hit his target. Dean feels the steel against his jawbone ease off a little. He cracks one eye back open, angling his gaze up at Twitchy. “And that would make you Roy. Been a while.” Dean cranes his neck, trying to get a read on the figure in the shadows. “And who’d you be, Mickey? Donald? Dumbo?”
The men Dean has only ever known as Walt and Roy - aliases on a ghost gig up north one winter - both raise their knit masks. “You never mind him,” Walt orders, never taking his eyes off of Sam. He flips off the safety on his piece, and Dean mentally kicks himself for not noticing it was on. “Doesn’t matter,” he mumbles to Roy, “All be over soon.”
Walt’s finger tightens on the trigger and Dean tenses, stopped from diving for the barrel only by the sharp dig of metal into his neck and the sound of Roy flipping his safety off as well. Dean can’t die, but he can’t help Sam if his head ends up on the other side of the room, either. Sam’s presence withdraws, pulling inward as Sam braces for impact. “Don’t,” Dean hears himself croak.
Sam doesn’t turn his head but his gaze leaves Walt and settles on the third man. “It won’t do you any good,” Sam whispers to the shadow. Walt raises the tip of the gun an inch, aiming straight for Sam’s heart.
Sam smiles, and he almost looks sorry.
“Sam!”
The gun kicks in Walt’s hands.
“Don’t move!”
“Sammy!”
Sam’s chest collapses, and the force of the slug drives him into the mattress.
Told him I’d kill myself first. Never took.
“Now Dean. Do it. Roy, pull the trigger!”
Flecks of blood and chunks of meat and bone splash across the sheets, the mirrored wall, the carpet.
“Killin’ Sam was right, but …”
Told him I’d kill myself first. Never took.
“He made us and we just snuffed his brother, you idiot!”
The shadow in the corner flickers in Dean’s periphery, leveling a rifle at Walt.
Dean’s body snaps into action. He ducks backward, clearing the barrel, and pulls the shotgun from Roy’s shaking hands only to reverse trajectory and slam the butt of the gun up into Roy’s face. The snap of bone echoes the sound of gunfire and Roy crumples, dropping like a stone to the motel room floor.
As Dean moves, so does the stranger. A second round fires and Walt pitches forward, the deep red swell of blood blossoming from between his eyes. Dean stands up, ignoring the man who just saved his life long enough to flip his gun around, stick both barrels into Roy’s ruined face, and pull the trigger.
For a long moment, the only sound is the two of them breathing over the sudden silence. The stranger drops the tip of the rifle to rest on the carpet, and Dean circles around to Sam’s bed. He racks the gun and aims at the unguarded man one-handed, taking Sam’s wrist in the other hand and thumbing for a pulse, feeling the raised line where Sam’s horrific scar starts.
Told him I’d kill myself first. Never took.
“Mask off. Now.” Dean snaps the orders out in a low growl, barely trusting himself not to empty his rounds into the man just on principle. Sam is completely still under Dean’s fingers, and the only blood flowing from his brother is moving in small rivulets down Sam’s chest to spill over the edge of the bed, dripping relentlessly into the carpet.
The man seems to deflate a little as he pulls off his mask, and watery eyes over a grizzled beard stare sorrowfully down at Sam.
The firm grip of betrayal grabs Dean’s heart and squeezes, tighter than Alastair ever could. He throws the shotgun away.
“Bobby… you? Why?”
Bobby looks up from what’s left of Sam, blinking back tears even as he aims the rifle at Dean. “I’m sorry, son,” Bobby says, and his voice is a ghost of what Dean remembers, thick with alcohol and regret. “You weren’t supposed to be … we tracked Sam from Ohio. Trail of bodies thick as a highway pointin’ right to him.”
“Bobby …“ Dean starts.
“He’s off the rails, Dean.” The older man looks tired, worn thin. Dean notices that he holds his weight different than he used too, favoring his right knee. “I saw the signs, you know? With Sam. By the time I cottoned on to what he was plannin’, it was too late. Or maybe I just didn’t want to believe …” Bobby shakes his head sorrowfully. “I’m sorry, Dean. I am. I tried to look out for him.”
Dean’s fingers are so tight around Sam’s wrist that he can’t feel them anymore.
“Then killin’ me is the least of your worries,” Dean says as Bobby’s finger tightens on the trigger, “Because the Apocalypse ain’t gonna stop just because some half-cocked yahoo slunk in here and put a bullet in my brother.”
Bobby’s face is pale under the knit cap, and he shakes his head as the tears start spilling over. “I don’t want to kill you, Dean. Just … tell me it was all Sam. Tell me Sam went darkside. Tell me he’s safe from Lucifer. Tell me you’re you - dammit, Dean - just tell me that. Boy, don’t make me beg. ”
The pain in Dean’s heart changes pitch from betrayal to pity. “You won’t kill me, Bobby. It doesn’t matter what I say. You can’t.”
Sam’s pulse flutters against Dean’s thumb.
“No. I can’t see them take you alive.” Bobby shakes his head again. “I’m sorry.”
The rifle kicks in Bobby’s hands.
“Dean!”
Dean feels a tug in the center of his chest, but nothing else. He looks idly down at the hole the bullet left, marveling at the size of it. Bobby’s eyes widen with horror and he raises the rifle higher, repositioning for a second shot.
“Bobby, please,” comes Sam’s voice, and the older man startles, sending the shot wide. Sam sits up slowly, running his free hand over the remnants of his most comfortable shirt, massaging away the last vestiges of pain from a wound that no longer exists.
“Sam?” Bobby’s mouth drops open, and he shakes his head. “No, but I thought -“ If anything, Bobby looks even more hurt and weary than before, and Sam nods like he understands.
“Please,” Sam says again, sadness and longing for home in his voice. “You can’t save me, Bobby. Please just go.”
Bobby’s shoulders slump as he searches Sam’s face. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and he takes a step toward the door, lowering the rifle. When Dean makes no move to pursue him, he steps awkwardly backwards over Roy’s headless corpse, old leather boots tracking bright bloody prints into the carpet.
Dean turns his back on the older man, and the small click of the motel door is the only indication that the other hunter is gone. He pulls Sam up out of the blood, onto his feet. Dean looks slowly into his brother’s face.
Sam is still staring after the man that helped set up his execution with something like regret in his eyes. “He’ll be back, with reinforcements,” he says softly. “Next time might not go so well.” Then he looks down at his bloody shirt, frowning like he’s just realized what happened. All of the color drains from his face. “Oh, no.”
Dean grabs his arm to steady him. “Sammy? You okay?”
Sam shoves Dean’s hand away and lunges for his bag. Faint tendrils of Sam’s power surround Dean, brushing his consciousness aside as Sam throws an appraising look over his shoulder at the hole in Dean’s chest. “We gotta move. You’ll need a new heart. Probably lungs too.”
“I feel fine,” Dean protests, crossing his arms protectively.
“That won’t last.” Sam rummages in his bag and tosses Dean an Ace bandage. “Wrap it in the car, we gotta go.”
Dean catches the bandage one-handed. He eyes the two men lying on the floor. “How much time you think till the cops get here?”
Sam shakes his head. “Least of our problems. How long was I out for?”
“Three minutes?” Dean answers with a shudder, “I don’t know. Long enough.”
Sam shoulders his bag and palms the car keys. “I think an angel saw me,” he explains quickly. “We gotta move, now.”
Sam clears the door one step ahead of Dean, so the last thing Dean sees before hands clamp the wet cloth over his mouth from behind is three men grabbing Sam and pushing him to his knees. He thinks he hears Bobby’s voice say Hey, go easy, and then everything goes black.
~*~
Dean comes to slowly, cataloguing evidence before he is fully awake. From the coolness of the rough concrete floor against his face, the damp smell of mildew, and the dim light surrounding him, he assumes he’s in some kind of basement. His chest is tight where Bobby’s bullet still sits lodged in his heart, and his vision is fading in and out in the dim light. He tries to move to rub his eyes and finds that his hands are cuffed tightly to the floor behind him.
“Well, look who’s awake.”
Dean cranes his neck to see a wavering pair of boots. He struggles to sit up, but a wave of nausea overtakes him. He breathes slowly and spits, trying to clear the chemical taste from his mouth. “Chloroform,” he accuses, and he is rewarded with a slow clap.
“Yahtzee,” his captor beams. “Put you both out like a light. Gotta say, I thought you’d be tougher to bring in.”
“Walt and Roy beg to differ,” Dean retorts, getting his knee under himself just enough to push up into a shaky crouch. The man is tall, middle-aged, and he stands in a beam of light streaming down from the holding room’s only entrance - a trapdoor in the ceiling above them.
Dean’s eyes are adjusting now, and he makes out Sam’s body lying on the opposite side of the room, slumped against the wall, still unconscious. He swallows hard. “Who are you? What do you want?”
The man grins down at Dean, all yellowed teeth and hard eyes. Then he moves to kneel next to Sam, takes Sam’s wrist in his hand, and pulls it up in front of his face. He peers over it at Dean, smiling when Dean starts to pull against his restraints.
“Don’t touch him,” Dean growls. “I’ll rip out your heart.”
The man snorts. “Something will, sooner or later. Thanks to your brother here.” Dean shivers at the fierce hatred in the stranger’s voice. “Just because we can’t kill you don’t mean we can’t keep you out of this war,” he continues. He pulls a knife from his belt sheath and brings the edge to Sam’s wrist, matching the blade up to Sam’s scars. “For starters, I think your brother could do with a little less demon blood, don’t you?” Without preamble, he flicks his wrist and rips Sam’s arm wide open.
Dean’s anger is a sudden, white-hot force that burns the rest of his disorientation away. Everything becomes hyper focused. Sam’s eyelids flutter and he groans, struggling to wake up, fighting against the drugs. “Sammy, no! Leave him alone!”
“You should be thanking us!” the man yells. “Do you know how many hunters are looking for Lucifer’s vessel? How many think that the only way to stop the Devil is to cut your brother into microscopic pieces and scatter him across the earth so that that bastard could never find him?”
He slits Sam’s other wrist viciously, and this time Sam’s eyes open, glazed over and swimming from disorientation and pain. He makes a choked noise and tries feebly to struggle as the man produces a pair of police-issue cuffs, pulls Sam’s ruined arms behind his back and cuffs them tightly to a D-ring bolted into the floor. “Count your blessings, Dean,” the man snarls, “When this is all over, your brother might just be human again.” He looks Dean up and down, then spits in his general direction. “Shame I can’t say the same for you.”
Dean lunges against his own cuffs with all of his strength. “Stay with me, can you hear me? Sammy!”
The man stands. For a moment, he watches Sam’s blood spread across the floor. Then he smiles, tipping his hat to Dean. “You boys have a good evenin’, now.” He climbs the ladder out of the basement and pulls it up behind him, closing the hatch and plunging them into the dark.
“Talk to me Sam,” Dean orders firmly, but the only sound is Sam’s shallow, frantic breathing. “Alright, hold on -“
Dean doesn’t hesitate. He opens his left hand, setting his thumb against the hard ground, and adjusts his shoulder until the angle begins to put pressure on the joint. He takes a deep breath and twists, satisfied with the resulting snap of bone. He pulls his hand free and turns around, feeling for the connection between the chain and the wall. His fingers brush metal; another D-ring. He curses under his breath. “Sammy, you with me?”
There is a slight rattle of chains, and the sound of a boot scuffing against the floor. “Stay down, Sam, okay? Don’t move.”
The darkness gets deeper when Dean closes his eyes, and he can taste sulfur in the air. Sam’s power is fluttering, struggling to surface like a drowning man claws at the waves as his life force spills out onto the floor.
Dean pushes the empty cuff closed and threads it through the D-ring, freeing himself. He feels his way to Sam’s side, shuddering when the palms of his hands splash into his brother’s blood. He follows the bend of Sam’s arm down to the floor.
“Dean,” Sam gasps. The word is drenched in pain and laced with fear, and Dean knows that it isn’t death that his brother is afraid of.
“Easy, easy, I got you,” Dean murmurs, tugging uselessly on Sam’s restraints. “I’ve gotta get your hands free, okay?”
Sam is starting to shiver violently under Dean’s touch. “Wards,” Sam breathes, “they can’t get in. The angels. Can’t ...”
Dean runs his fingers across Sam’s palms and already knows it’s no good. Sam’s hands are too damn big and his wrists are too slender; Dean can’t get Sam loose the same way he freed himself. He shrugs out of his jacket and presses the fabric between Sam’s arms, estimating the position the best he can in the blackness. He wraps his fingers around his brother’s blanketed wrists and squeezes as tight as he can. “Have you got a pin on you, anything?”
Sam struggles to twist toward Dean’s voice, grunting harshly as the motion tears at his wounds. The heated feel of his power is fading fast, leaving Dean cold and emptied out inside. “Dean - Dean, listen, it’s okay.”
“Dammit Sam, no!”
“Trust me,” Sam pleads faintly. “Just ...”
“Oh, no, no. Come on, man, don’t -“ The rapid throb of Sam’s pulse against Dean’s grip flutters and goes still with his last exhalation of breath, leaving Dean alone in the dark.
Chapter 6: Occam's Razor
Repo Men: The Upside-Down Apocalypse
Author:
tahirire
Rating: R
Wordcount: 3417 (This chapter)
Beta: monicawoe
Genre: Gen. Angst. H/C.
Spoilers: Goes a/u from 3.16, but there will be spoilers for all episodes through 5.22.
Warnings: My generic major character death fic list. This fic contains dark imagery, excessive gore, language, violence, torture, memories of torture, and gleeful pretzelfication of canon, WIP.
Chapter 1: Hell | Chapter 2: The Book | Chapter 3: Burn the Ships | Chapter 4: War and Peace
Chapter 5: Death and Taxes
After War rises Pestilence.
It’s nine in the morning when Dean hands some cash to the clerk behind a gas station counter in Colorado, trading a few stolen dollars for a red bull and some M&Ms while Sam waits by the car. Five miles after that, Sam tenses, closes his eyes, and tells Dean to turn around. The searching reach of Sam’s power is smothering at close range, but his accuracy is absolute.
“Horseman?” Dean queries.
“Minnesota,” Sam responds.
“How do you know?”
Sam presses his lips together and looks out the window.
“Hey, humor me for once, would you? I’m ridin’ blind, here.”
Sam sighs, a long-suffering sound. “I feel the demons around him. And I see what they see.”
Before nine AM the following day, Dean sees for himself.
Sam mows down the demons surrounding the horseman with a simple wave of his hand, glowing nearly golden in the sunlight. He gives a satisfied nod. “All clear. Sure you don’t want me along?”
Dean spins the hilt of Ruby’s knife around and around in his hand. As much as it’s a part of him, it will always bear her name, her blood legacy. He nods firmly. “I’m sure. Just keep the car running.”
Pestilence is wearing an older man in a lab coat. Underneath, a greenish, purulent ooze rolls through the man’s veins, and he smells of necrosis and disease. The plague of the horseman causes Dean’s nose to bleed and his stomach to turn to acid, but in the end Pestilence falls, just like the rest of them will.
Dean tosses Sam the ring, gets behind the wheel, and demands first shower every night until the world ends.
Sam grins faintly. It seems to Dean that Sam has retreated into himself, much like a bear curls up for hibernation in the winter. The constant presence of his power has become muted, and there are no signs of blackness in his eyes.
“You okay?”
A sigh.
“How many. Sammy.”
Sam rubs his eyes and leans his head back, sliding down into the curve of the passenger door. “Fourty-seven,” he says finally. Then, in a whisper, “fourty-seven demons, eight people.”
Dean’s hands tighten on the wheel. He knows Sam is exhausted. He knows he needs to recharge his batteries, and soon. He knows their lives depend on it. “Get some sleep, Sammy,” he murmers, watching his little brother drift off. Dad used to say Sam fell asleep so fast that the sand man could never catch him. The road is silent except for the steady rise and fall of Sam’s chest.
He pulls them into the first halfway decent motel he sees. He settles a shuffling, mumbling Sam into bed, then he takes his own advice and follows Sam to dream land.
They hunt the sand man together, but they don’t remember it.
~*~
Dean snaps awake to the sound of a shotgun racking over his head, and the first thing he sees is another one pointed straight into his brother’s face.
“Don’t move,” comes a muffled voice. “Just sit up nice and easy.”
Sam’s lips twitch into a fleeting smile and Dean raises his eyebrows, straining over his shoulder to get a better look at his assailant. “Well, boss, which is it?”
The thin twitchy guy watching Dean shifts uncomfortably, looking at the thick steady guy trained on Sam for instructions. They are both wearing muggers’ masks, but there is something familiar about them. A third similarly disguised figure hangs back, clinging to the shadows and clutching a weapon of his own to his chest, not aiming it anywhere in particular.
Thick and Steady rolls his eyes comically through his mask holes. “Sit up,” he commands. “No sudden movements or I’ll shoot.”
Dean slides his legs slowly off the edge of the bed and sits, checking on Sam as he goes. Sam looks a little tired, maybe, but he has hazel eyes and color in his cheeks and there is nothing about him that screams monster any more than there ever was, back when Dean only had Gordon to deal with.
“Geez, Sammy, your guy sounds pissed.”
Sam gestures to Thin and Twitchy. “Your guy’s about to take a piss,” he retorts. Twitchy responds by taking a bold step forward, shoving his barrel right into the curve of Dean’s jawline. The third guy in the shadows flinches noticeably, pulling his shotgun in even closer.
Dean puts up his hands. “Woah, hey, easy pal.”
“We ain’t pals,” Twitchy snaps. “Sit still and shut up.”
Dean complies, trying to stem the uneasy feeling in his gut. Thick and Steady drops the barrel of his shotgun to Sam’s chest. “Think you can flip the switch on the Apocalypse and just walk away, Sam?”
Sam’s eyes narrow and Dean can feel his brother’s muted power simmering in the air, crouching, ready to strike. “I’d point that thing somewhere else if I were you,” Sam says, in a tone that would warn off anyone with half a brain in their skull. Twitchy re-grips his shotgun as if reassuring himself that it’s still there.
Dean closes his eyes, groaning inwardly as the voices click into place. “Walt? Come on man, you know better than this shit.” The sudden silence confirms he’s hit his target. Dean feels the steel against his jawbone ease off a little. He cracks one eye back open, angling his gaze up at Twitchy. “And that would make you Roy. Been a while.” Dean cranes his neck, trying to get a read on the figure in the shadows. “And who’d you be, Mickey? Donald? Dumbo?”
The men Dean has only ever known as Walt and Roy - aliases on a ghost gig up north one winter - both raise their knit masks. “You never mind him,” Walt orders, never taking his eyes off of Sam. He flips off the safety on his piece, and Dean mentally kicks himself for not noticing it was on. “Doesn’t matter,” he mumbles to Roy, “All be over soon.”
Walt’s finger tightens on the trigger and Dean tenses, stopped from diving for the barrel only by the sharp dig of metal into his neck and the sound of Roy flipping his safety off as well. Dean can’t die, but he can’t help Sam if his head ends up on the other side of the room, either. Sam’s presence withdraws, pulling inward as Sam braces for impact. “Don’t,” Dean hears himself croak.
Sam doesn’t turn his head but his gaze leaves Walt and settles on the third man. “It won’t do you any good,” Sam whispers to the shadow. Walt raises the tip of the gun an inch, aiming straight for Sam’s heart.
Sam smiles, and he almost looks sorry.
“Sam!”
The gun kicks in Walt’s hands.
“Don’t move!”
“Sammy!”
Sam’s chest collapses, and the force of the slug drives him into the mattress.
Told him I’d kill myself first. Never took.
“Now Dean. Do it. Roy, pull the trigger!”
Flecks of blood and chunks of meat and bone splash across the sheets, the mirrored wall, the carpet.
“Killin’ Sam was right, but …”
Told him I’d kill myself first. Never took.
“He made us and we just snuffed his brother, you idiot!”
The shadow in the corner flickers in Dean’s periphery, leveling a rifle at Walt.
Dean’s body snaps into action. He ducks backward, clearing the barrel, and pulls the shotgun from Roy’s shaking hands only to reverse trajectory and slam the butt of the gun up into Roy’s face. The snap of bone echoes the sound of gunfire and Roy crumples, dropping like a stone to the motel room floor.
As Dean moves, so does the stranger. A second round fires and Walt pitches forward, the deep red swell of blood blossoming from between his eyes. Dean stands up, ignoring the man who just saved his life long enough to flip his gun around, stick both barrels into Roy’s ruined face, and pull the trigger.
For a long moment, the only sound is the two of them breathing over the sudden silence. The stranger drops the tip of the rifle to rest on the carpet, and Dean circles around to Sam’s bed. He racks the gun and aims at the unguarded man one-handed, taking Sam’s wrist in the other hand and thumbing for a pulse, feeling the raised line where Sam’s horrific scar starts.
Told him I’d kill myself first. Never took.
“Mask off. Now.” Dean snaps the orders out in a low growl, barely trusting himself not to empty his rounds into the man just on principle. Sam is completely still under Dean’s fingers, and the only blood flowing from his brother is moving in small rivulets down Sam’s chest to spill over the edge of the bed, dripping relentlessly into the carpet.
The man seems to deflate a little as he pulls off his mask, and watery eyes over a grizzled beard stare sorrowfully down at Sam.
The firm grip of betrayal grabs Dean’s heart and squeezes, tighter than Alastair ever could. He throws the shotgun away.
“Bobby… you? Why?”
Bobby looks up from what’s left of Sam, blinking back tears even as he aims the rifle at Dean. “I’m sorry, son,” Bobby says, and his voice is a ghost of what Dean remembers, thick with alcohol and regret. “You weren’t supposed to be … we tracked Sam from Ohio. Trail of bodies thick as a highway pointin’ right to him.”
“Bobby …“ Dean starts.
“He’s off the rails, Dean.” The older man looks tired, worn thin. Dean notices that he holds his weight different than he used too, favoring his right knee. “I saw the signs, you know? With Sam. By the time I cottoned on to what he was plannin’, it was too late. Or maybe I just didn’t want to believe …” Bobby shakes his head sorrowfully. “I’m sorry, Dean. I am. I tried to look out for him.”
Dean’s fingers are so tight around Sam’s wrist that he can’t feel them anymore.
“Then killin’ me is the least of your worries,” Dean says as Bobby’s finger tightens on the trigger, “Because the Apocalypse ain’t gonna stop just because some half-cocked yahoo slunk in here and put a bullet in my brother.”
Bobby’s face is pale under the knit cap, and he shakes his head as the tears start spilling over. “I don’t want to kill you, Dean. Just … tell me it was all Sam. Tell me Sam went darkside. Tell me he’s safe from Lucifer. Tell me you’re you - dammit, Dean - just tell me that. Boy, don’t make me beg. ”
The pain in Dean’s heart changes pitch from betrayal to pity. “You won’t kill me, Bobby. It doesn’t matter what I say. You can’t.”
Sam’s pulse flutters against Dean’s thumb.
“No. I can’t see them take you alive.” Bobby shakes his head again. “I’m sorry.”
The rifle kicks in Bobby’s hands.
“Dean!”
Dean feels a tug in the center of his chest, but nothing else. He looks idly down at the hole the bullet left, marveling at the size of it. Bobby’s eyes widen with horror and he raises the rifle higher, repositioning for a second shot.
“Bobby, please,” comes Sam’s voice, and the older man startles, sending the shot wide. Sam sits up slowly, running his free hand over the remnants of his most comfortable shirt, massaging away the last vestiges of pain from a wound that no longer exists.
“Sam?” Bobby’s mouth drops open, and he shakes his head. “No, but I thought -“ If anything, Bobby looks even more hurt and weary than before, and Sam nods like he understands.
“Please,” Sam says again, sadness and longing for home in his voice. “You can’t save me, Bobby. Please just go.”
Bobby’s shoulders slump as he searches Sam’s face. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and he takes a step toward the door, lowering the rifle. When Dean makes no move to pursue him, he steps awkwardly backwards over Roy’s headless corpse, old leather boots tracking bright bloody prints into the carpet.
Dean turns his back on the older man, and the small click of the motel door is the only indication that the other hunter is gone. He pulls Sam up out of the blood, onto his feet. Dean looks slowly into his brother’s face.
Sam is still staring after the man that helped set up his execution with something like regret in his eyes. “He’ll be back, with reinforcements,” he says softly. “Next time might not go so well.” Then he looks down at his bloody shirt, frowning like he’s just realized what happened. All of the color drains from his face. “Oh, no.”
Dean grabs his arm to steady him. “Sammy? You okay?”
Sam shoves Dean’s hand away and lunges for his bag. Faint tendrils of Sam’s power surround Dean, brushing his consciousness aside as Sam throws an appraising look over his shoulder at the hole in Dean’s chest. “We gotta move. You’ll need a new heart. Probably lungs too.”
“I feel fine,” Dean protests, crossing his arms protectively.
“That won’t last.” Sam rummages in his bag and tosses Dean an Ace bandage. “Wrap it in the car, we gotta go.”
Dean catches the bandage one-handed. He eyes the two men lying on the floor. “How much time you think till the cops get here?”
Sam shakes his head. “Least of our problems. How long was I out for?”
“Three minutes?” Dean answers with a shudder, “I don’t know. Long enough.”
Sam shoulders his bag and palms the car keys. “I think an angel saw me,” he explains quickly. “We gotta move, now.”
Sam clears the door one step ahead of Dean, so the last thing Dean sees before hands clamp the wet cloth over his mouth from behind is three men grabbing Sam and pushing him to his knees. He thinks he hears Bobby’s voice say Hey, go easy, and then everything goes black.
~*~
Dean comes to slowly, cataloguing evidence before he is fully awake. From the coolness of the rough concrete floor against his face, the damp smell of mildew, and the dim light surrounding him, he assumes he’s in some kind of basement. His chest is tight where Bobby’s bullet still sits lodged in his heart, and his vision is fading in and out in the dim light. He tries to move to rub his eyes and finds that his hands are cuffed tightly to the floor behind him.
“Well, look who’s awake.”
Dean cranes his neck to see a wavering pair of boots. He struggles to sit up, but a wave of nausea overtakes him. He breathes slowly and spits, trying to clear the chemical taste from his mouth. “Chloroform,” he accuses, and he is rewarded with a slow clap.
“Yahtzee,” his captor beams. “Put you both out like a light. Gotta say, I thought you’d be tougher to bring in.”
“Walt and Roy beg to differ,” Dean retorts, getting his knee under himself just enough to push up into a shaky crouch. The man is tall, middle-aged, and he stands in a beam of light streaming down from the holding room’s only entrance - a trapdoor in the ceiling above them.
Dean’s eyes are adjusting now, and he makes out Sam’s body lying on the opposite side of the room, slumped against the wall, still unconscious. He swallows hard. “Who are you? What do you want?”
The man grins down at Dean, all yellowed teeth and hard eyes. Then he moves to kneel next to Sam, takes Sam’s wrist in his hand, and pulls it up in front of his face. He peers over it at Dean, smiling when Dean starts to pull against his restraints.
“Don’t touch him,” Dean growls. “I’ll rip out your heart.”
The man snorts. “Something will, sooner or later. Thanks to your brother here.” Dean shivers at the fierce hatred in the stranger’s voice. “Just because we can’t kill you don’t mean we can’t keep you out of this war,” he continues. He pulls a knife from his belt sheath and brings the edge to Sam’s wrist, matching the blade up to Sam’s scars. “For starters, I think your brother could do with a little less demon blood, don’t you?” Without preamble, he flicks his wrist and rips Sam’s arm wide open.
Dean’s anger is a sudden, white-hot force that burns the rest of his disorientation away. Everything becomes hyper focused. Sam’s eyelids flutter and he groans, struggling to wake up, fighting against the drugs. “Sammy, no! Leave him alone!”
“You should be thanking us!” the man yells. “Do you know how many hunters are looking for Lucifer’s vessel? How many think that the only way to stop the Devil is to cut your brother into microscopic pieces and scatter him across the earth so that that bastard could never find him?”
He slits Sam’s other wrist viciously, and this time Sam’s eyes open, glazed over and swimming from disorientation and pain. He makes a choked noise and tries feebly to struggle as the man produces a pair of police-issue cuffs, pulls Sam’s ruined arms behind his back and cuffs them tightly to a D-ring bolted into the floor. “Count your blessings, Dean,” the man snarls, “When this is all over, your brother might just be human again.” He looks Dean up and down, then spits in his general direction. “Shame I can’t say the same for you.”
Dean lunges against his own cuffs with all of his strength. “Stay with me, can you hear me? Sammy!”
The man stands. For a moment, he watches Sam’s blood spread across the floor. Then he smiles, tipping his hat to Dean. “You boys have a good evenin’, now.” He climbs the ladder out of the basement and pulls it up behind him, closing the hatch and plunging them into the dark.
“Talk to me Sam,” Dean orders firmly, but the only sound is Sam’s shallow, frantic breathing. “Alright, hold on -“
Dean doesn’t hesitate. He opens his left hand, setting his thumb against the hard ground, and adjusts his shoulder until the angle begins to put pressure on the joint. He takes a deep breath and twists, satisfied with the resulting snap of bone. He pulls his hand free and turns around, feeling for the connection between the chain and the wall. His fingers brush metal; another D-ring. He curses under his breath. “Sammy, you with me?”
There is a slight rattle of chains, and the sound of a boot scuffing against the floor. “Stay down, Sam, okay? Don’t move.”
The darkness gets deeper when Dean closes his eyes, and he can taste sulfur in the air. Sam’s power is fluttering, struggling to surface like a drowning man claws at the waves as his life force spills out onto the floor.
Dean pushes the empty cuff closed and threads it through the D-ring, freeing himself. He feels his way to Sam’s side, shuddering when the palms of his hands splash into his brother’s blood. He follows the bend of Sam’s arm down to the floor.
“Dean,” Sam gasps. The word is drenched in pain and laced with fear, and Dean knows that it isn’t death that his brother is afraid of.
“Easy, easy, I got you,” Dean murmurs, tugging uselessly on Sam’s restraints. “I’ve gotta get your hands free, okay?”
Sam is starting to shiver violently under Dean’s touch. “Wards,” Sam breathes, “they can’t get in. The angels. Can’t ...”
Dean runs his fingers across Sam’s palms and already knows it’s no good. Sam’s hands are too damn big and his wrists are too slender; Dean can’t get Sam loose the same way he freed himself. He shrugs out of his jacket and presses the fabric between Sam’s arms, estimating the position the best he can in the blackness. He wraps his fingers around his brother’s blanketed wrists and squeezes as tight as he can. “Have you got a pin on you, anything?”
Sam struggles to twist toward Dean’s voice, grunting harshly as the motion tears at his wounds. The heated feel of his power is fading fast, leaving Dean cold and emptied out inside. “Dean - Dean, listen, it’s okay.”
“Dammit Sam, no!”
“Trust me,” Sam pleads faintly. “Just ...”
“Oh, no, no. Come on, man, don’t -“ The rapid throb of Sam’s pulse against Dean’s grip flutters and goes still with his last exhalation of breath, leaving Dean alone in the dark.
Chapter 6: Occam's Razor