Dead Gods: Nine
“Hey,” Dean says, low and raspy, as soon as Sam appears in his doorway.
He is propped up against the headboard, feet crossed at the ankle, the remote in his hand. The TV glazes the room in flickering blue light, and the volume is set to a rumbling murmur. Half a dozen heavy tomes from the library are stacked on the bedside table, and Ben is a comma-shaped lump curled at Dean’s side. A hundred nights come back to Sam, nights curled up in the same position as Ben, sick with the flu or a stomach bug or strep throat, and Dean right there with him, riding it out.
“Hey.” Sam leans in the doorway, hands in the pockets of his jacket. He keeps his voice quiet, doesn’t want to wake Ben. “How’s he doing?”
“Better. Fever’s way down, and he’s not talking in his sleep anymore.”
“The ice bath worked?”
“Seemed to.” Dean’s eyes dart back to the TV. “Hey, did you hear about this? Half of Chicago is burning and there was a tsunami in the Atlantic.”
He gestures at the TV with the remote control, and Sam moves into the room to get a better view. CNN again, and this time the news anchors are grimly describing the destruction in Chicago - a fire raging from suburb to suburb, millions evacuated and firefighters unable to staunch the blaze. Images of fire and smoke and cars caught in motionless gridlock out of the city; a shot of Chicago from above, blanketed by a haze of black smoke.
To think he’d passed just south of Chicago on I-80 that morning; it gives Sam pause.
“It’s like that year when Lucifer was loose,” Dean says. “You think the angels are up to something?”
“No, not this time.” A shot now of firefighters ineffectively fighting the raging blaze; Sam wonders if the thing that caused the tsunami caused this, too. “I think it’s something else.”
Dean pulls his eyes away from the screen. “What?”
“Gods.”
“Sam, gods don’t have this kind of power anymore.”
“Yeah, I know. But I think at least one has figured out a way to get it back.” And it sounds right, hearing himself say it.
“Yeah?” Dean says, a little bit skeptical and a little bit curious. “How’s that?”
Ben shifts in his sleep, murmurs incoherently.
Dean glances at him uneasily. “We probably shouldn’t talk about it in front of him.”
Sam nods.
Dean shifts away from Ben gently and eases off the bed, careful not to disturb him. He flicks off the TV, grabs a book from the top of the stack. They head towards the kitchen in silent, mutual agreement. Sam goes for the coffeemaker, dumps out the thick swill Dean has had on the burner all day, puts in a more humane amount of coffee grounds. Dean settles at the table with the compendium, haggard and bleary-eyed in the bright kitchen lights.
“Took me all day, but I found your Devil’s trap.” He opens the compendium to a page marked with a torn off strip of paper towel. “I think I know why the writing seemed so familiar to you.”
“I hope that was clean when you stuck it in the book.” Sam reaches over Dean’s shoulder and snatches up the paper towel, tosses it in the trash.
“Chill, Samantha. Your book is fine.” Dean holds out a hand. “Let me have the demon killing knife.”
Sam fishes it out of his jacket pocket and hands it over hilt first. Dean holds it next to the page he marked, and before Sam even sees the knife next to the devil’s trap, he makes the connection.
“Same language?” He feels a little stupid for not realizing earlier.
“Same language.” Dean turns the book and slides it towards Sam. “It’s called a Chaldean Sorcerer’s trap. It fell out of use in the mid-fifteenth century because no one could read the language anymore. But according to the lore, if a demon is trapped inside, it can be controlled by whoever drew the trap, and when it’s exorcised-”
“It returns to the trap instead of to Hell.” Sam pushes the spine flat to better see the diagram; and that’s it, the trap drawn out so carefully in the basement of the house in Muncie.
“Yeah.” Sam can feel Dean’s stare boring into the side of his face. When he looks up, Dean is watching him in annoyance.
“Since you’ve already figured it all out, why don’t you share it with the rest of the class?”
“It’s just a theory.” A twelve hour drive had given him plenty of time to ponder his evidence, to add up all the information he had gleaned over the past couple of days and come with only one viable theory. Sam’s about ninety-five percent sure he’s right, but there are still enough unanswered questions that he’s not quite ready to commit fully yet.
“That’s one theory more than I got.”
Sam nods, drags a chair out from the table and sits, bone-weary and a little bit heartsick. “Look, Dean, there’s some stuff I have to tell you, and you aren’t going to like it.”
“When do I ever?” He slumps back in his chair and cross his arms. “Just spit it out, Sam.”
Sam starts talking. He tells Dean about the murders, emanating sloppily out from Indianapolis. He tells Dean about the range of ages and the victims’ proclivities towards music or medicine or, in a few instances, psychic abilities and infallible marksmanship. He tells him about finding the picture of Lisa while the Dixons were arguing, and shows him the one Theresa Dixon gave him, Lisa and the thing that wasn’t Henry Dixon watching at her with such hunger. He tells him about the monthly sacrifices and the impromptu trip to the house in Muncie with Artemis, about the devil’s trap and the stack of books next to the splattered mattress from Ben’s dreams. He tells him about the kind of thing Artemis hinted at, something so powerful a goddess was unsure of her ability to defeat it, something that he was fairly certain was the sorcerer in control of that devil’s trap. Something that had, according to Artemis, already devoured twenty-four divine children and, apparently, Poseidon.
Dean draws his own conclusions as Sam talks, assembling the pieces in the same way Sam had, arriving at the same conclusion.
“What are you saying, Sammy? That all those people were Ben’s brothers and sisters?” He gives Sam this watery smile, the one he usually reserves for when he’s trying to hide just how far at the end of his rope he is. “I mean, I know I’ve been around, but there’s no way -“
Dean’s voice catches, and he falls silent. His eyes are wet, and if there had been anyway in the world for Sam to avoid telling him about all of this, he would have done it in an instant. Dean had just gotten to the point where he was willing to admit to his kid’s paternity, and now this.
“Look-“
“No, Sam. Fuck you. Ben is mine.”
“I’m not saying he isn’t.” Sam keeps his voice even, keeps himself patient. “I’m saying he’s not only yours.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means ...” Sam sighs. “Look, do you remember the shape shifters pretending to be the husband to father the children with their wives?”
“You’re saying Ben’s a shape shifter?”
“No.” He knows Dean is being obtuse on purpose, fighting against the truth the only way he can, but it’s frustrating. “I’m saying it’s the same principle. They needed the DNA of the human father to get in with the wives, right?”
“So, something stole my DNA, and Ben-“
“Is yours.”
“Yeah? You’re telling me some supernatural thing stole my DNA to make Ben, but he’s still mine?”
“Does it actually matter if he’s not?”
“No, of course not. It’s just-“
Dean doesn’t finish the thought. He scrubs his hands over his mouth and gets up, turns his back to Sam. Sam can only see the tightness in his shoulders, the balanced fight or flight stance, but it’s enough for Sam to know this is it, the edge of the abyss. This was the place from where Dean takes great leaps of reckless self-sacrifice: making the deal with the crossroads demon for Sam’s life, making a deal with Death to rescue Sam’s soul, whitewashing Lisa and Ben’s memories of him as if he is a nightmare that needs to be forgotten.
Sam needs to talk him down and fast; no telling what Dean will do in this state.
“Look, Dean. Do you remember the changelings? They only take human children and they took Ben. If Ben hadn’t been human, they wouldn’t have touched him. And if you could actually see the two of you together, you’d see that there’s no way he isn’t your kid.” Sam considers the scene in Georgia - Dean and Ben leaning against the car like identical twins, the similar flicks of their wrists when they sent the bottle caps sailing. “Seriously, man, he’s you at thirteen, just without the shotgun and the surly attitude.”
Dean doesn’t reply right away; silence hangs heavy in the air, only broken by the sound of the coffee pot gurgling and hissing.
“So let’s say that’s true,” Dean says at last, turning. “Let’s say he’s mine, but only because something else took my DNA to make him. What was it? What’s that thing in the picture with Lisa?”
“A god.”
“A god?” Dean rubs his hand over his mouth again. “Okay. I’ll bite. Which one?”
“Apollo.”
Dean gaze goes unfocused. “Right. And the thing that’s killing the kids and causing tsunamis and unstoppable fires is another god.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. Souls provide power in heaven and hell, so maybe that’s what it’s after? Artemis called them divine children, so maybe there’s something in their souls.”
“So it’s eating their souls?”
Sam starts to speak, pauses and reconsiders. “Yeah, I guess it must be.”
Panic flashes across his face. “I, um, I gotta go check on Ben.”
Dean turns abruptly, and walks out of the room. Sam thinks they’re out of the woods where reckless behaviors are concerned, but he wouldn’t bet money on it. He gets up and follows, but nearly plows into Dean when he stops abruptly inside his bedroom. Sam can see what’s caught his brother’s attention over his shoulder.
The bed is empty, and Ben is nowhere to be seen.
Somehow, the picture of Dorian Gray is hanging over the couch in the living room.
The old man is shifting restlessly on the canvas, shoving at the barrier of gilt frame, banging his fists on the glass box encasing him. It’s whining low in its throat like a kicked dog, its peeling oil-paint hair waving surreally as it shifts around and pushes at the boundaries of its prison.
“Come closer, boy. Come and let me out,” it says in a scratchy whisper that echoes in his head. “Just a taste, that’s all I need.”
Ben watches it in disgust. “Do you see this?”
“See what?” Dean says from behind his fingers. He’s been sitting on the couch for a while now, head in his hands. It is starting to worry Ben; he’s not rattling doorknobs or trying to put a putter through the windows anymore, which is nice, but the whole slumped in defeat thing is somehow worse.
“This painting. How did it even get here? Mom isn’t big on decorating, but she would never hang this thing on the wall.”
“You let it in by responding to it.” Dean’s voice is muffled by his hands. “If you had ignored it as I told you to....”
“Dude, it’s on the living room wall!” Ben gestures emphatically at it. A creepy moving painting suddenly hanging over the TV should have had Dean getting all bossy and overprotective, but he doesn’t even look up. “How am I supposed to ignore it?”
“Why won’t you listen to me, boy?” the painting whines, then slams its fists against the glass and screams, “Let me out, you whelp!”
“Oh, shut up!” Ben shouts back. The old man is really starting to piss him off. Dean is, too, for that matter. “Are you going to do something about this or not, Dean?”
Dean sighs; the couch creaks as he stands. “Yes. All right then. I suppose it’s as good a time as any for an object lesson.”
He moves in behind Ben, stands just outside of his peripheral vision. “Incubi like this one are easily killed. Just put something sharp through the heart and eye.”
“What are incubi?” Dean never talks to him about monsters, not really, not like this, like he’s teaching him instead of warning him. Ben’s going to ask questions while he can.
“A creature that feeds on sexual energy, like the girl you met in the woods, though as a female, she was technically a succubus.” Dean pauses a moment like he’s mulling it over. “This one is a little different, though. I don’t know what it’s called, but it feeds on youth instead of sex.”
Ben’s stomach churns at remembering the girl-thing in the woods; the scrapes on his cheek and the split lip had healed already, but he was never going to forget the way she felt, pressed up against him or the hissing clicks of her true voice or the stench when she died.
“I’m sorry I shouted at you, boy,” the painting says, simpering and apologetic. “I can’t help it though. All that supple flesh and that pretty, pretty light shining out of your chest.” It licks its lips hungrily, its flaky-paint tongue wiggling obscenely around its black-hole mouth. “Just a taste! That’s all I want. One tiny little taste.”
“Gross,” Ben says.
“Indeed. As infections on the skin of the world usually are.” Dean’s hand flashes briefly in the corner of his eye as he gestures towards the silver object lying on the nest of packing straw at Ben’s feet. “Go ahead and take the quiver. One of the arrows will do nicely.”
Ben picks it up, pulls the straw from between the silver arrows, unwinds the inlaid strap. Scenes are inscribed in the gleaming silver, intricate and delicate, one scene flowing into the next, so meticulously rendered that he can see the tiniest details: the oily scales on a huge snake wrapped around a tree, a shower of arrows piercing its side; the terror on the faces of seven boys and seven girls lying scattered across a glen, arrows in their throats or back or eyes. He can see the fangs of the screaming gorgons inlaid on the shields of the soldiers lying dead on a beach, arrows piercing their armored chests and plague distorting their features. He can see the precise flight of an arrow into the heel of an armored Greek, the sharp beaks and the beady eyes of vultures feasting on the body of a giant staked to the ground in the Underworld; the shining wings of a crow, fluttering up into the sky with an enraged caw; the cracks and fissures in the stones toppling from the walls of a besieged city; the contorted face of a crying baby snatched from a funeral pyre and the burning flesh of its mother shrinking and curling in the flames.
He had seen these scenes in his visions earlier when he had knocked over the crate and spilled the quiver out of its box, horrific scenes of vengeance and pain and death. But inscribed in the quiver they are somehow beautiful, beautiful and magnificent and utterly horrific all at once.
“Is this yours?” Ben asks.
“It used to be. Now it’s yours.” Dean hesitates. “Do you like it?”
“Yes.” Ben grins. He pulls the strap over his head and drops the canister across his back, the silver arrows rattling within. The strap shortens automatically to better fit him. It isn’t the Impala, but it’s definitely a bad ass consolation prize. “It’s awesome. Thanks.”
“You are welcome.” Dean sounds relieved. “Be sure to take care of it. It will be invaluable when you hunt.”
“But I thought you didn’t want me to be a hunter.” Ben turns to look at Dean, but all he sees is Dean’s back as he disappears into the next room.
“I don’t.” Dean’s voice echoes back at Ben. “But sometimes you will have to be.”
Ben hurries after Dean into the narrow room with all the weird artifacts. The painting of the old man is back on the wall where it’s supposed to be. Its face is twisted in rage, and it’s still pounding on the glass case, shifting back and forth between screaming insults and begging pathetically.
Dean is standing a little ways away from it, giving Ben space to work. “Strike it in the eye, first, Ben. Then the heart.”
“But I don’t have a bow.”
“You don’t need one. Not for this, anyway. It’s just a painting.”
“But the glass case-”
“Is easily broken, even with the protective wards. Just break it.”
Ben looks around for something to break it with, but there’s nothing, just all the artifacts in their cases and little else. “With what?”
Dean sighs in irritation again. “Ben, this is a dream. You can break it anyway you like.”
“A dream?” Ben frowns and looks around. The living room from the house in Cicero is still back the way they came, the wall above the TV empty of the painting, now. That definitely hadn’t been the other room when he and Dean were here before.
“Yes. A dream.”
Ben considers that for a minute. “And I can do anything I want, since it’s a dream, right?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.”
Ben nods, looks over his shoulder again. The living room from Cicero is still there, so yeah, this has to be a dream.
“All right, then,” Ben says, cocks his arm back, and lets his fist fly.
There is pain, sharp and bright, and the old man’s mouth twists into a greedy smile as Ben’s fist goes through the glass, thread-thin fissures radiating out from where his knuckles strike.
Ben pulls his hand back, grinning.
“Show off,” Dean says, and Ben can hear amusement in his voice. And also pride. Ben knows he’s supposed to be mad at him, but he can’t help basking a little.
The thing reaches forward and pushes against the remaining glass with the flat of his palms; it crackles as the pane begins to give.
“Come. Step back,” Dean says, pulling him back by the shoulder. “You already have glass in your hand. You don’t need it in your face, too.”
Ben glances down, and sure enough, there are three sizable slivers of glass buried the back of his hand, and blood is dripping steadily on the floor. It hurts, but only distantly.
There a shattering noise, and when he looks up, the old man has pushed the rest of the glass pane out. He’s crawling out of its frame, hands wrapping around the broken glass to heave itself up and out. Paint is falling off it in a rain of black flakes as its two dimensional body fills out, plumping up as it enters the three dimensional world.
“Oh, good boy,” it says in this obscene purr that makes Ben’s skin crawl. “Good, beautiful, tasty boy...”
Ben takes another step back not in fear, but in disgust. Normally, he’d be too terrified to do anything. The demon, the vampire, the succubus in the woods, the thing in the clinic - he was so afraid, barely functional. But here, in his dream, where he’s armed with silver arrows, and Dean is actually showing him how to use them, how to hunt and fight and protect himself, he feels bold, strong, like power is raging just under the surface of his skin.
He reaches back. The arrow comes into his hands easy and natural, like he’s been doing it his whole life, and the pain in his hand is just white noise in the background of his power rush. He itches to hold a bow. He knows how it would feel in his hand, the tension in the bowstring as he draws it back, the arc of the limbs as they bend; he knows how the arrow would fly, straight and true, knows how it would sound, striking the flesh of his enemy.
But he doesn’t have a bow, only the silver arrow, glinting in his hand. It will have to do.
Ben fists it tight, holding it like a knife, and stabs it through the eye of the incubus as it heaves its shoulders through the glass.
It screams in agony and falls back into the frame, its three dimensional head and shoulders protruding from the canvas. Pungent, black fluid begins to gush from the socket, running down the canvass in thick, goopy rivulets.
Ben pulls another arrow from the quiver and aims for its heart. The arrow goes in easy, and more of that black fluid gushes out. The thing stiffens for half a heartbeat then slumps, death coming instantly, the black goop continuing its downward flow.
“Like the girl in the woods,” Ben says, turning to Dean, triumphant and grinning.
Dean is standing behind him, his grin mirroring Ben’s, but his eyes are the wrong color, not green but shiny gold, gleaming like metal.
“Well done, Ben,” Dean says, full of pride and affection. “As always, your aim is impeccable.”
Ben goes cold and takes a step back.
“You’re not Dean.”
“No, I’m not,” the Not-Dean says, his metal-gold eyes flashing brightly. “I thought you would never notice.”
They search the Bunker up and down - bathrooms, bedrooms, library, infirmary, even the biology lab upstairs they never use, but no Ben.
“Outside, maybe?” Sam says when he meets up with Dean in the library.
Dean shakes his head. “No. I looked. The door is still locked from the inside.”
“Then where? Unless he found a new hallway we haven’t.” They were always finding new hallways, as if the Bunker were slowly revealing itself to them one room at a time. It’s a little more awareness than Sam strictly prefers in his living spaces, but there’s so much magic warding the building that Sam can’t say he’s surprised. There are no new hallways today, though, which doesn’t necessarily mean Ben hadn’t found one, but it does limit where they can look.
“Maybe. Earlier he found-“ Dean stops, eyes wide. “Son of a bitch. I know where he is.”
“Where?” Sam says, but Dean’s already out of the room.
Sam follows, catches up with him as he heads towards the bathrooms. He’s already checked the bathrooms himself, can’t imagine where else Ben could be hiding down this hallway, but then Dean abruptly turns left and disappears through the wall.
Sam draws up short, heart pounding, and stares at Eisenhower on the blank stretch of wall that his brother had literally just run through.
“Dean!”
“It’s a hidden door.” Dean’s voice comes with a distant echo, like he’s in a large room. “Just follow me, Sammy!”
Sam is not super thrilled about this, but he trusts his brother. He takes a deep breath to bolster his courage, tucks his head down and steps through. Magic shivers over his skin, and then he’s swallowed up by dim shadows, so very unlike the brightly lit hallways of the rest of the Bunker, dim shadows and looming dark shelves and the sense of great height above him.
Sam doesn’t have any time to be stop and gape, but he pauses long enough to take in the multitude of curse boxes, the shelves that disappear into shadows above him, the hanging bare bulbs that do little to disperse the darkness.
“Department of Mysteries,” Sam mutters, half amazed.
“Sam!”
Dean’s voice is coming from somewhere to his left. Sam follows the sound down the aisle, takes down the first turn, and finds Dean already on his knees in front of Ben. They are framed by a dark doorway. To the left is a huge hunk of stone with a sword hilt protruding from it, on the right, a tottering stack of crates and one fallen from the top, split open on the floor and spilling out a tangle of packing straw.
Ben’s face is empty, his pupils drawn into tiny pinpricks, face slack with whatever he sees. Blood is dripping from his hand, a lot of blood, and it is pooling on the floor at his feet. A trail of blood splatter disappears into the dark doorway.
Sam shivers. Something is very wrong here.
“Ben?” Dean already has his flannel shirt off and is wrapping it around Ben’s hand. “Come on, Ben. Wake up.”
“The hell, Dean?”
“Don’t know. See if you can find where he cut his hand.” Dean jerks his head towards the dark doorway. “In there. Switch is on the right.”
Sam steps around them and follows the blood trail into the darkness of next room. He finds the light switch right where Dean said, and the light gleams on a couple dozen glass cases filled with what must be mystical objects. Most line a long table, but a few are mounted on the wall. A painting in a gilt frame draws his eye immediately, an old man is slumped over against the frame, a silver arrow, a real world arrow sticking out of its eye and another out of his chest. Black, viscous goop reminiscent of ectoplasm is dripping down the wall like dirty motor oil from an engine block.
It’s a textbook-perfect incubus kill.
Sam rounds the table, broken glass crunching under his boots as he nears it. Some of the shards are smeared with human blood, probably Ben’s.
“Found it!” he calls to Dean.
“What was it?”
“A display case.” Fascinated, Sam grabs the arrow sticking out of the eye and yanks it loose, watches in disgust as more of the goop wells out of the tear in the canvass, sliding down the painting in a thick, miasmic crawl.
“Which one, Sam?”
“The one with the painting of an old man.” Sam leans in closer to make out the title on the oxidized plaque. The Picture of Dorian Gray, it reads. Seriously?
In the other room, Ben begins to respond.
When Ben comes to, he’s in the Department of Mysteries room next to Excalibur, and Dean is on his knees in front of him, wrapping his flannel shirt around his hand. His hand hurts. Badly. Without looking, he knows that there are three slivers of glass embedded in between his knuckles, and one in particular that has cut through a pretty important vein, but he’s not too worried. His body is already working to stop the blood flow, and as soon as someone pulls out the shards, it should heal up pretty quick.
“What are we doing here?”
Dean jerks his head up, eyes wide. The phantom wound on his hairline is tricking blood again.
“What are we - Ben, what are you doing here? I told you not to come back in here.”
“But you brought me here.” Ben pauses, reconsiders. “Right?”
“No,” Dean says.
“Where did you get this?”
Ben starts at the sound of Sam’s voice, looks over his shoulder. Sam is standing next to the painting of the old man, holding a silver arrow. In the painting, the old man sags motionless against the gold frame, his thick, black blood running down the canvass, pooling at the bottom of the broken glass case, and dripping down the wall. The arrow is covered in the same black goop as the painting.
“Out of the quiver.”
“What quiver?” Dean asks.
Ben is just so confused right now. “The one you gave to me.”
“Ben, I didn’t give you a-“ Dean’s eyes cut to the broken crate and packing straw spilled out on the floor. “You mean the silver quiver that fell out of that crate. What did you do with it?”
Ben looks down. The strap is tight across his chest, the quiver a snug weight between his shoulder blades.
Ben jerks his hand away from Dean and takes a step back. “Is this real?”
“Yeah, Ben. It’s real.”
Ben isn’t so sure. He cradles his bundled hand against his chest and looks around; everything looks normal, the living room in Cicero is gone, but Sam’s here instead, and how does he tell?
He studies Dean’s eyes more closely. Green, not gold.
“You look normal,” Ben says dubiously.
Dean runs his hand over his mouth and looks back at Sam. They share one of their sibling looks, and Sam shrugs.
Dean gets to his feet. “Okay, come on. Let’s get your hand fixed up.”
Ben is firmly steered out of the Department of Mysteries and down the hall to the bathrooms, where Dean unwraps his hand and puts it under the water. Ben hisses when the water hits his hand, watches with dazed detachment as the blood thins out and pinks the water as it washes down the drain.
“I’m going to pull these shards out, Ben,” Dean says holding his hand above the sink and turning it back and forth, examining the shards more closely. Blood is welling out of the cuts again; bright red beads drip into the white ceramic sink. “It’s going to hurt. You ready?”
Ben nods, even though he’s not ready, not really. Dean starts to pull on the first shard, and he’s right. It does hurt. A lot. Quick healing has never meant lack of pain. Tears well in Ben’s eyes, and he resists the urge to yank his hand away, but he stands there, tense and still and biting back his whimpers while Dean pulls the two larger slivers of glass from his hand.
The third doesn’t come out so easily.
“Gonna need tweezers for this,” Dean mutters to himself.
He turns off the water, wraps a towel around Ben’s hand and sits him down on a bench with a row of towel hooks hanging over it.
“Don’t move,” Dean says, aiming a stern finger at Ben, then disappears into the hallway, calling for Sam to bring tweezers, too.
A floor to ceiling mirror hangs on the wall opposite Ben, and Ben stares at his reflection across the room, not really understanding what he’s seeing at first. The light is as bright as usual, forcing Ben to squint against it, but he can still see his own personal soul-wounds, little bruises all over his body, some small, some large and multicolored, all the painful, emotional hits he had taken in his life, but none that represent real, physical wounds. Nothing there surprises him, but the light he realizes, that bright, gleaming light he’s had to squint against every time he has looked in the mirror for the past several weeks shouldn’t be there. He shouldn’t have to cover up the light shining out of his chest just so he can see himself.
And also, there shouldn’t be two of them.
His own soul, silvery and bright, is lodged in under his heart, its long, creeping tendrils laced through his body, along his nerve endings and blood vessels, wrapping around his spinal cord and coiling up in the soft tissues in his brain - that’s right where it’s supposed to be. But then there’s the other soul, golden and warm, like the sun on a bitterly cold day, encasing Ben’s soul with its gleaming, sharp barbs, digging in and holding tight.
The world sort of recedes from him. Ben feels lightheaded and floaty and numb, like he’s falling away from his own body. It’s disassociation caused by excessive stress, easy-peasy psychology, that, just his way of coping with something too big for him to handle. But he must have made a noise or something, because Dean is suddenly there, all his wounds lit up like a Christmas tree.
“Ben? Ben, what is it?”
“I didn’t know.” His voice seems far away, like it’s coming at him from another room. “I thought it was a dream. He asked me if I would keep it for him, and I said yes. I didn’t know.”
“Ben?” The panic in Dean’s voice kicks up a notch. “What did you say yes to?”
Everything goes black for a minute, like when the cable goes out during a storm, then he’s blinking up at Dean kneeling over him, one hand tucked under Ben’s head as he shouts for Sam.
Dean has so many wounds, all layered on top of one another, bleeding and seeping and aching. How Dean gets through life that damaged is beyond him, and Ben has the itching urge to touch him and make them heal, but he can’t, not these. They’re deep down in his soul, they take time and constant exposure, and Dean won’t give him that. Dean wouldn’t even give him his memories.
“Why wouldn’t you let us fix those?”
Dean starts, looks down. “What?”
“Could have fixed them, if you’d stayed.”
Sam comes barreling into the room, hair flying, several of his own wounds lit up, with a first aid kit in his hand. “What is it? What happened?”
“He passed out.” Dean helps Ben sit up, lets him lean back against him, still woozy. The quiver is pressed between them, but Dean doesn’t seem to notice. “You okay, Ben?”
“I’m okay. It’s just a dissociative episode. Coping mechanism.”
“Going all House on me wasn’t enough?” Dean’s voice has gone thick and raspy again; he’s trying really hard to keep the tremor out and failing. “Gotta go Dr. Phil, too?”
“Sorry,” Ben mumbles.
Sam crouches next to them on the cold tile floor with the first aid kit, unhooks the latch and flips it open. “Here. Let me see your hand.”
Dean supports Ben as Sam fishes out a pair of tweezers, then pries the last, smallest sliver of glass out of his hand. Ben watches him closely as he smears antibacterial cream all over his hand and wraps it in gauze. Sam isn’t clean of scars and physical wounds like Dean. He’s got all those burn wounds on his soul, and that strange glowing light in his arm, and Ben can’t even begin to understand the little flecks of darkness floating in Sam’s blood, but he can do something about the dozen or so physical scars on his body, especially that horseshoe shaped scar on his palm, the one full of unearthly rage and hate.
The urge is just so strong, and Ben just does it, grabs Sam’s hand, digs his thumb into the scar. Sam flinches, startled.
Dean says, “What the hell, Ben?”
“He doesn’t need this anymore,” Ben replies and squeezes.
Warmth pools in his chest, like steam building up in a pot of boiling water, and then it bursts out of him, erupting outward. There’s a flash of light - that’s a bit of Ben’s soul, that light, coming out of him - and Sam falls back on his ass, eyes wide in surprise. The darkness in his blood is still there, and that glowing white light in his arm and all the other soul-wounds, but the scar on his palm, the little fractures in his ribs and the dozens of other scars and badly healed wounds are gone. His body is good as new.
Ben slumps against Dean, exhausted and ready to go back to sleep again.
“Sammy?” Dean says, and this time the raspy, thick voice is for Sam.
“I’m okay.” Sam turns his hand, stares at his palm. “It’s gone.”
“What’s gone?”
“The scar on my hand.” Sam holds up his hand, palm out. It’s clean and smooth; the only lines on his palm are the ones that should be there according to his DNA.
Dean looks down at Ben. “What did you say yes to?”
“I don’t know,” Ben says, letting his eyes droop closed. “But it was pretty.”
In the dream, he’s thirsty.
His iPod tells him it’s almost two-thirty in the morning. He rolls out of bed, wincing at how cold the floor is. He goes downstairs, skipping the creaky step so Mom won’t wake up, and stops at the thermostat long enough to turn up the heat.
He moves along the hallway, past the laundry room, into the kitchen where he pulls the milk out of the refrigerator and drinks straight from the carton.
When he turns, the man is there.
He’s tall and slender and graying at the temples, his glasses perched askew on the end of his nose. His blue checked shirt and khakis are stained with blood and something else, something that gleams gold in the watery blue light of the microwave clock. He has his hand pressed to his chest like he’s trying to keep something in, and Ben knows he’s hurt even if he’s trying to pretend he isn’t.
“Hello, Ben,” he says, all calm and pleasant, like he isn’t bleeding out all over the kitchen floor.
“Uh, hi.” Ben’s not too worried, because, you know, dream.
“I need your help. Do you think you can help me?”
“Maybe. What kind of help?”
“I need you to keep something for me, Ben. Not for long, just until I can come back for it.”
“What is it?
“Something very powerful and very important.”
His fingers curl over his abdomen, over the wound, and then he’s digging in, fingers like claws, scooping into his flesh, his insides. His blood gushes out black in the dim light, but there’s gold in there, too, thin little rivulets that sparkle and gleam. It splatters on the floor, begins to pool at his feet. He cries out in agony, and Ben echoes it with his own cry of horrified surprise.
“It’s okay, Ben. I’m okay. See?” He holds out his gold-blood covered hand, and in his palm is a ball of light, a golf ball sized scoop of sunlight casting shimmering light over the dark kitchen. It’s beautiful. Seriously beautiful. Prettier than anything he has ever seen. Ben stares, entranced. Whatever it is, he’ll be happy to keep it safe.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll take it.”
The man smiles, but it’s a rictus of pain, a feral grimace. It worries Ben, but still, you know, dream.
“This will hurt, Ben. I’m sorry.”
And then he lunges towards Ben so fast, he doesn’t have a chance to react. He grabs Ben by the back of the neck with one hand, covers Ben’s mouth with the other, and shoves the glowing light down Ben’s throat.
And Ben’s body begins to burn from the inside out.
Next: Dead Gods: Ten
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