fannishliss (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fannishliss) wrote2008-07-02 08:27 pm
fannishliss) wrote2008-07-02 08:27 pm
SUPERNATURAL FIC: "At Usher's Well"
Title: At Usher’s Well
Fandom: Supernatural
Spoilers through Season 3 finale.
Rated R (some het): Sam, Dean, Bobby; Sam/OFC
Warnings: grieving Sam. The dead should stay dead. What if Sammy's grief for Dean is too much?
Disclaimer: The characters and basic premise within are property of the CW network, Eric Kripke, etc. No money is being made off this work of fiction.
Notes: 4135 words. Many thanks to susannaheanes, who gave another fantastic beta with thought-provoking and wise suggestions – any remaining emo is mine and Sammy’s to share!
It was worse after the Hellhounds than it had been with the Trickster. So much worse. Even during those inexorable Tuesdays, as Sam felt his emotions shutting down and his analytical brain and hunter’s instincts kicking in, Sam had still felt alive, he’d still felt a grain of hope that he’d get to the bottom of things, he’d turn the situation around. Every repeated Tuesday morning had ingrained him in a sense of the fluidity of the situation, a cold, burning, murderous fury that he finally was able to unleash when he realized that the Trickster had created the loop. He’d force the Trickster somehow to Bring Dean Back. When Dean had died on a Wednesday, that sense of fluidity became charged with an electric rage that drove him relentlessly along a path that did, in fact, bring Dean back.
But with Dean dead–marks of Hellhound’s teeth and claws gouged horribly into his torso, –Ruby dead, the Colt gone, even Bela dead–there just didn’t seem to be a way to get Dean back. Sam knew Dean’s body was beyond repair, even assuming he could convince a thoracic surgeon to work on a cooling corpse. Even assuming there was a way to call up Dean’s soul, bound as it was by the ironclad Deal, all the terms having been fairly met.
Sam had cradled his brother’s body, unable to move, till Bobby literally dragged the body out of his arms. They needed to get out of the house, burn it, get the civilians to safety. Sam sobbed helplessly as Bobby had helped him haul Dean’s body out of the house. Bobby told him to get into the Impala, get to a pre-arranged location in the woods a ways out of town and just wait there for Bobby to show up.
Sam couldn’t really remember the details of the drive, other than the pathetic care he’d taken in arranging Dean’s body on the back seat. He’d spread one of their wool blankets from the trunk to protect the upholstery from the blood – their blankets were all blood-stained anyway and Dean would be so pissed if Sammy fucked up his car. –Dean looked so peaceful on his side, his arms crossed, his knees pulled in... just like an ancient burial, Sammy’s brain whispered helpfully before he shut it off and just fucking drove.
The next several days were a blur to Sam. There was a horrible pain in his stomach that wouldn’t go away. He couldn’t eat, he could barely sip a little water without vomiting everything up. The guilt, the horror, the longing for Dean to suddenly walk in with a grin and accuse Sam of being a gigantic girl.
Sam lay in Bobby’s house, his face turned towards the wall, even when Bobby tucked the ring into his hand, draped the amulet there too. Sam convulsively gripped the pieces, so much a part of his brother, even as tears poured again down his face. He knew that now, even the shell his brother had been ripped from was gone. His throat was too wracked to say it out loud, but just in his mind, he plaintively repeated his brother’s name: Dean, Dean, Dean.
****
The heat of summer stultified even in South Dakota. The sun baked the little farmhouse on the flatlands. Sam could hear the cursing of the workers in Bobby’s salvage yard, the clanking of machines. From time to time a whiff of Diesel exhaust and the smell of dust drifted in through the open window.
Sam could shift himself just enough to go to the toilet. He ate a piece of toast now and then. He avoided looking in the mirror. The agony he’d see staring back at him just intensified his feeling of failure. He knew every second he spent here in this hell on earth was nothing compared to the hell his brother was being subjected to below, the hell full of so many demons who’d sworn how much fun they’d have when they eventually got their hooks into him.
Sam couldn’t cope. He’d exhausted every lead even before the deal. He remembered his brother’s last exhortations:
Remember what Dad taught you.... what I taught you....
Sam knew there were unholy rituals to call up the spirits of the dead. It was written, for example, how Saul asked a witch to call up the spirit of a prophet to advise and solace the faithless king:
And Samuel said to Saul, “why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? And wherefore then dost thou ask of me, seeing the Lord is departed from thee, and is become thine enemy?” Then Saul fell straightway all along on the earth, and was sore afraid, because of the words of Samuel: and there was no strength in him; for he had eaten no bread all the day, nor all the night.
Sam was weak from the physical pain of his grieving, the nausea, the horror of despair; he was weak for a long time. As summer passed, his mind began to trouble him, disturbing the torpor his body had settled into.
One hot night Sam fell into a restless dream.
He saw the witch, her summoning fire built in the center of a clearing of hard packed earth. Like a ghost in the scene, he could see and hear, but he felt less real than she did – he could see the sweat fly from her body as she danced, but he never felt the droplets hit his skin, and he was bone cold though he stood right next to the fire. He saw the witch dance around the fire, her bare feet slapping the earth. He heard the repeating tones of her invocation through a watery thickness in his ears, a layer of disconnection between him and the reality of the dream... As she circled the fire, she threw in sprigs of herbs that burned with a sickening sweetness, and three times she spewed out a liquid that flared as it caught fire, evanescent in the dancing flames.
The witch danced harder, lifting her knees, raising her arms, spinning as she circled the blaze, her ululations penetrating the thickness in his ears.
There came a change in the fire, so subtle Sam couldn’t detect when it began. The flames rose higher, seemed to burn hotter, until they were grown to the height of a man; the witch’s long curls burnt golden, and her eyes flashed green, and in the flames Sam saw his brother.
Tears rolled relentlessly from Sam’s weary eyes, but his throat seized painfully closed, his parched mouth would not form his brother’s name. Dean, Dean, his brain still repeated.
“Sam! Sammy!” Dean’s mouth screamed, but Sam couldn’t hear him. Horrible hooks pierced his shoulder and his side.
Sam tried to reach into the fire, to touch his brother’s face, but his hands and the flames never met. He was cold, cold as ice, so cold it burned.
He awoke and the burn he felt was from the ring, just now cooling, but so hot it had left a seared pink wound around Sam’s finger. The amulet too had burned into his chest but was cooling now. As Sam grasped it, struggling to clear the dream from his mind, he seemed to hear his brother’s rasping shout:
”Don’t you summon me! Don’t you dare! Remember what I taught you. The dead should stay dead!”
After that dream Sam roused himself from the bed he’d lain in for weeks. He began to work in Bobby’s yard with the other men, just taking apart the junk of wrecked cars, cataloguing what was salvageable. Removing parts for customers and carrying the heavy metal to the waiting beds of pickup trucks, Sam slowly worked back his strength, worked back his appetite, packing car parts in and out of Bobby’s yard like a mule.
At night, as darkness fell around Bobby’s house, and the crickets sang in the late summer heat, Sam would sit on the porch and dull the pain of his muscles and brain with a beer or four. The urge to summon his brother, awakened in him by the dream, festered in him, but he knew better. How could he summon an incorporeal spirit, who was surely bound fast by unholy laws into the torments of hell?
****
Sam was at loose ends one morning with Bobby out on a tow and Scott, Bobby’s regular part-time guy, clanking in the guts of an old Ford pickup on the far side of the yard. Sam was still picking around for something to work on when Bobby, a few hours later, came back to the yard with a totaled late 60s Chevy on the back of his truck.
At least it wasn’t an Impala. Sam remembered with terrible clarity those summer weeks after their father’s death when he and his brother had stayed at Bobby’s. His brother’s wounds, which should have been fatal, had healed unnaturally fast and faded rapidly. Sam remembered the pounding blows of the sledge against the Impala, as Dean wrestled her body back into its rightful sleekness. The confusion Dean had felt at his strange resurrection; the sorrow at the loss of his dad; the rage and confusion and guilt spurred by the fear that their dad had made a deal of some kind, the Colt gone—all this had rung out as he’d worked on his car.
Sam automatically helped Bobby unload this new wreck. With a prying bar and a hammer he began to strip the car of bits too mutilated to be salvaged. He stood in the hot sun, fingering the amulet as he scanned the engine. A lot here could still be used. GM parts were pretty interchangeable for these model years. Sam felt in his tool box, drew out a wrench, began to remove the alternator. This one was rebuilt, marks of retooling were evident, and the Impala could use a swap in.
Sam felt Bobby’s hand on his shoulder.
“Sam, what in the hell are you up to?”
Sam shook himself. He was under the hood of the Impala, and apparently, he’d just finished up with installing the new alternator.
Shaking his head at Bobby, he wiped his hands off on a rag and got behind the wheel. He turned the key and the Impala’s familiar roar filled the air, smooth and throaty and even.
“There you go, baby. How’s that feel?” Sam murmured.
“Since when did you know your way around an engine?” Bobby asked later, over supper.
“I’ve been working here all summer, Bobby, I ought to know at least a thing or too,” Sam grumbled, and Bobby dropped it.
***
Fall had come with its sudden, sullen darkness and ill spirits. Every night Sam fell asleep bone tired, worrying the ring on its brand around his finger. He startled awake in the hours between midnight and dawn with his brother’s name trapped behind his lips, repeating in his mind, Dean, Dean, an anguished invocation, fingers numb from his tight grip on the amulet.
Bobby didn’t press Sam to leave, or press him to stay. Bobby never mentioned a hunt, and if he called hunters back with thick books near the phone, or made a trip to the post office to mail something somewhere, Sam ignored it. Bobby gave him work day by day, fed him skillets of fried potatoes, pots of boiled greens, and thick pieces of meat. He even paid Sam for his work, and Sam would drive in his brother’s car on a Saturday night to a town a few hours away; he found a bar here or there where men and a few women sat around shadowy tables, backs to the wall, drinking and maybe quibbling about whatever sport was showing on the tv set high up the wall. He drank, first beer and then liquor, and the remembered sound of his brother’s laughter threatened to move him to tears again after his tears had finally dried.
“Goddamnit, Sammy, get out and have some fun! You act like a pitbull ate your left nut!”
Sam knew goddamn well that he didn’t have that crazy allure that had reeled in women so easily–his brother’s steady gaze and gentle hands had promised “safe” even as his cocky grin and swagger assured “up to no good.” Even the ones who knew better had fallen for Dean a little.
Sam's own eyes held too much sorrow, desperation. No woman regarded him for long without a concerned look coming on, a moving closer that would soon mean a hand on the arm, or the cheek. The look women gave to motherless men.
Motherless, fatherless, brotherless–girl-free and likely to remain that way. Sam downed a shot and asked for another. He was used to sobering up in the backseat of the Impala before he began the long drive home through a thin Sunday morning.
The girl that signaled she’d have a shot with him took Sam by surprise.
He was too polite to turn her down flat, but he didn’t have so much to say that he thought she’d stick around. His brother would have laughed up a lie or a line so absurd that they both were in on the joke, easy grins smoothing right over into the hookup. Sam choked down a bit of cold longing; the girl ignored his awkwardness, stuck there beside him.
After a while she had him pressed up against the passenger side of the Impala, the coldness of the night air chilling whatever heat she’d brought up in his cheeks. She kissed with intent. She was tall and strong. He was slouched down against the side of the car, more than a little bit drunk, but he moved his hands gently along her back. His hands were a turn-on, big like a promise of the rest of him–girls had said that about him, a long time ago. It was nice in a way; he blurrily hoped he was not too sloppy, that the girl would get something she wanted in return for treating him to shots, treating him like he was alive.
A bit more awake, a bit more asleep, his hands were taking over, his mouth was taking over. He held the girl’s head in his hands, strong and sure; he heard the girl moan as she melted against him. He was hard, a surprise, and he pulled the girl against him. She moaned again, yielding, and clearly, she was happier than she had been a minute ago, when he’d been wrapped up in the rusty chain of the same old thoughts, kept down a little by the alcohol.
Like dancing, the dirty kind, he thrust up against her, and she thrust back, and it felt good. The night air was cool, the girl strong and hot, some passion like a stranger or a best friend moving through his body. Dean’s amulet made a tiny stab as it pressed into his chest. The girl moved his hand inside her clothes to help him help her along, Dean’s silver ring slipping against her flesh–
Sam felt a flood of exultation as he slipped free of the hooks, sinking two fingers into the girl, heart beating loud and strong, freedom! He laughed, spilling over with joy, shouting oh god, the world, SAMMY!
Sam sucked in a breath of shock. His eyes snapped open. The girl was crushed to him, his arm around her back, his hand down her pants—his own were a mess. “Please,” she whispered, so he complied, kissing her neck and bringing her off.
Stone cold sober, he put her back together, walked her to her car, gave her a thanks and a kiss goodnight.
In the back of his head he could feel his brother’s disapproval, going home alone? The night is young!
What in the hell had just happened?
****
Over the next week, Sam was feeling better. His appetite took a decided turn for the ravenous. Bobby was sometimes paid for a tow in chickens or that sort of thing instead of cash; Bobby actually laughed at Sam one suppertime as he shoveled in a mess of green beans that had stewed all day with a hock of ham.
Then Bobby pulled a pie out of the oven. The steam of apples and cinnamon rising up from the warmed over pie made Bobby’s tired little kitchen smell as much like home as Sam could imagine.
“Goddammit, Bobby. I love me some pie!”
The lighthearted words slipped out of his mouth.
Bobby’s eyes narrowed.
Sam went pale.
“Christo,” Bobby said.
Sam’s vision swam, and the light in the room dimmed just a little bit.
Bobby jumped up, his face slackened in shock.
Sam sprang to his feet. “What the hell, Bobby—“
Bobby was backing for the fridge. Sam knew there was holy water in several of the beers.
“Wait, Bobby, you don’t have to... look, I’ll just go to the trap, ok? It’s just me, it’s just Sam. I swear it’s me. Look, the tattoo....”
Sam was jabbering, more words in a string than he’d let out in months. He backed a chair into the middle of Bobby’s living room where Bobby maintained the trap on the ceiling, refreshing the paint and renewing the spoken charms vigilantly.
Sam felt something in him shift as he entered the trap. He sat down in the chair. What about the tattoo? Hadn’t it worked? How could a demon... and why hadn’t he like, murdered, or something? His short bursts of thought kept rapidly interrupting each other.
Sammy, little brother, it’s me.
“Bobby!” Sam roared out, panicked. “Bobby, goddamn it!” He’d soaked his clothes in a sweat, his whole body tingled with the need to flee or fight. His hands were clenching, unclenching, his whole body shaking with adrenaline. He forced himself to just wait in the chair for Bobby to get his act together.
Bobby was digging some book out of a pile in the disused dining room. Bobby’s whole house had devolved into one decrepit repository of occult books and objects, except for the desk where he ran his business and the room he kept for Sam and Dean to crash in.
Looks like I crashed you, Sammy. Not that I’m complaining.
Sam couldn’t take this voice in his head. It sounded, it felt, so much like his brother. Sam's agony was reborn fresh... and suddenly, he burst into tears.
Bobby was on guard, and he was ready with the book, but he wasn’t moving in.
“Sam, your eyes went black,” Bobby’s voice was a wreck between gentle and harsh. “Is he-- is it a demon?”
“Goddammit, Bobby, how should I know? It feels like me, it feels like... like Dean!” Sam wailed as he said his brother’s name, and the thing inside him came into focus.
Again Sam’s vision swam just a bit, the room darkened for a second, then corrected. His body began to shake a little less.
Sam’s mouth opened, and Sam heard, “Bobby, it’s me, it’s Dean.”
Bobby’s face twisted in doubt and confusion. He gestured forward with the book.
“You won’t mind if I completely fail to believe that,” Bobby retorted.
“Well, I don’t know that I one hundred percent believe it myself,” stated the Dean thing, in a Dean-like tone of gruff humor. “I guess you could ask me all the secret questions about Mom’s maiden name and my childhood pet...”
“But a demon would get those things out of Sam’s brain,” Bobby said.
“Sammy’s brain is a dangerous thing, that’s for sure,” the voice agreed.
“Handwriting,” Sam suddenly said.
“What?” Bobby said.
“Let it sign his name. If it’s Dean, it’ll be his handwriting. I never bothered to learn how to forge, since he was so good at it, so a demon couldn’t use that.”
“I’m not so sure,” Bobby began, but the voice interrupted.
“Me neither. But there is one better way to tell I’m no demon.” Sammy, come on, stand up.
Sam felt an urge inside, impelling him to get up off the chair. Bobby backed up a bit. Sam slowly stepped forward. He reached the boundary of the devil’s trap. Slowly he swung his arm forward. His hand met a heaviness in the air, like nothing more than passing through water. Pushing a little, he stepped out of the boundary of the trap.
For a second, the darkness swam up before his eyes again, then he was ok. But he still felt something, something extra riding along with him.
He walked over to Bobby’s desk, found paper and a pen. Dean? He asked the familiar presence, seated somewhere inside him.
Yeah, Sammy. Somehow it’s me.
Are you ok, Dean? I mean, Hell?
You mean like, am I crazy? or like, full of murderous rage? You gotta give me at least as much credit as Ruby – it was no picnic, but she was there like four hundred years.
Leaning heavily on the desk with his left arm, Sam cleared his mind and relaxed his right hand. Sam watched as his own hand, in Dean’s familiar scrawl, wrote out the signature, David Hasselhoff.
Oh my god, Sam thought with a feeling of intense relief. I’m possessed by my own brother, and I brought him back with a girl and pie!
Sammy fell against the desk, edging toward hysteria, his shudders a mixture of laughter and tears. Bobby hovered nearby, tense and confused. He picked up the paper.
“Does this say David Hasselhoff?” Bobby asked.
Sam shrieked some more, laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe. Out of habit he gripped the amulet, fingers rubbing weakly against the brass.
Instantly Dean came into clearer focus in his brain.
Dude, stop laughing before you piss yourself. Dean’s thoughts were gentle behind the words of scorn.
“Bobby, it’s really Dean, I’m sure of it.”
“Well, is he ok? Is he a demon, or what?”
Sam stared at Bobby incredulously.
“Well, Sam, with the black eyes and all, I’d be a fool not to ask,” Bobby retorted.
Sam turned wide eyes to Bobby. “Dean’s no demon, Bobby, I swear to God.” If you were evil, man, I’d feel it. I remember what Meg felt like, inside.
Dean used Sam’s voice to speak out loud. “Maybe I am a little bit demon—no one goes to Hell without some kind of change.”
“Ah, no, Dean–Dad got out okay,” Sam began, but Bobby interrupted.
“You don’t know that, Sam–you don’t know what Hell did to your Dad. And whatever Dean is now, there’s something about him that’s demon. If he’s gonna ride along, you’ll have to make sure what he gets up to when you’re not in charge.”
“Eat a little pie, make a little love, get down tonight,” sang Dean.
“Oh, my god,” Sam said again, and Dean cackled with laughter inside him. You are evil! You want to use my body! Like that!
Hey, Sammy, you liked it the first time! Dean replied in his brain.
Sam covered his face with his hands, and Bobby just clapped him on the shoulder, while Dean laughed on inside his head.
Sam wiped his eyes and tried to sit up. “Dude, I think you’re haunting the amulet.”
“What?” What? Bobby and Dean both asked.
“Well, it’s your final remains, right? Besides the ring and the Impala. I was leaning up against the Impala when the girl, you know, and the amulet and the ring, all at once, and...”
And you really, really missed me, right, bro? Dean asked snidely. How his disembodied voice could carry so much innuendo, Sam couldn’t exactly explain.
Sam felt his humor drain away. Yeah. Yeah, man, I really, really, did. “You remember the Ballad of Usher’s Well?” he said to Bobby.
“The one where the mother brought back her dead sons by grieving for a year and a day,” Bobby said.
Huh, Dean thought, but Sam felt a wave of love and gratitude wash over him.
“I just couldn’t bear that I failed him. I couldn’t bear that he was suffering in Hell, getting turned into a demon or something.” And god, Dean, I missed you so much.
Sam, you gigantic girl, Dean thought, in so many words, but Sam heard, I love you too, Sammy, and I always knew you’d bring me back.
“And the demon blood–like calls to like,” Bobby muttered, a bit darkly.
Sam didn’t care. If Dean got out of Hell, that was all that mattered. Not through tricks, or schemes, or fury, but through the familiarity of his favorite things, and the longing, relentless love of his brother.
Fandom: Supernatural
Spoilers through Season 3 finale.
Rated R (some het): Sam, Dean, Bobby; Sam/OFC
Warnings: grieving Sam. The dead should stay dead. What if Sammy's grief for Dean is too much?
Disclaimer: The characters and basic premise within are property of the CW network, Eric Kripke, etc. No money is being made off this work of fiction.
Notes: 4135 words. Many thanks to susannaheanes, who gave another fantastic beta with thought-provoking and wise suggestions – any remaining emo is mine and Sammy’s to share!
It was worse after the Hellhounds than it had been with the Trickster. So much worse. Even during those inexorable Tuesdays, as Sam felt his emotions shutting down and his analytical brain and hunter’s instincts kicking in, Sam had still felt alive, he’d still felt a grain of hope that he’d get to the bottom of things, he’d turn the situation around. Every repeated Tuesday morning had ingrained him in a sense of the fluidity of the situation, a cold, burning, murderous fury that he finally was able to unleash when he realized that the Trickster had created the loop. He’d force the Trickster somehow to Bring Dean Back. When Dean had died on a Wednesday, that sense of fluidity became charged with an electric rage that drove him relentlessly along a path that did, in fact, bring Dean back.
But with Dean dead–marks of Hellhound’s teeth and claws gouged horribly into his torso, –Ruby dead, the Colt gone, even Bela dead–there just didn’t seem to be a way to get Dean back. Sam knew Dean’s body was beyond repair, even assuming he could convince a thoracic surgeon to work on a cooling corpse. Even assuming there was a way to call up Dean’s soul, bound as it was by the ironclad Deal, all the terms having been fairly met.
Sam had cradled his brother’s body, unable to move, till Bobby literally dragged the body out of his arms. They needed to get out of the house, burn it, get the civilians to safety. Sam sobbed helplessly as Bobby had helped him haul Dean’s body out of the house. Bobby told him to get into the Impala, get to a pre-arranged location in the woods a ways out of town and just wait there for Bobby to show up.
Sam couldn’t really remember the details of the drive, other than the pathetic care he’d taken in arranging Dean’s body on the back seat. He’d spread one of their wool blankets from the trunk to protect the upholstery from the blood – their blankets were all blood-stained anyway and Dean would be so pissed if Sammy fucked up his car. –Dean looked so peaceful on his side, his arms crossed, his knees pulled in... just like an ancient burial, Sammy’s brain whispered helpfully before he shut it off and just fucking drove.
The next several days were a blur to Sam. There was a horrible pain in his stomach that wouldn’t go away. He couldn’t eat, he could barely sip a little water without vomiting everything up. The guilt, the horror, the longing for Dean to suddenly walk in with a grin and accuse Sam of being a gigantic girl.
Sam lay in Bobby’s house, his face turned towards the wall, even when Bobby tucked the ring into his hand, draped the amulet there too. Sam convulsively gripped the pieces, so much a part of his brother, even as tears poured again down his face. He knew that now, even the shell his brother had been ripped from was gone. His throat was too wracked to say it out loud, but just in his mind, he plaintively repeated his brother’s name: Dean, Dean, Dean.
****
The heat of summer stultified even in South Dakota. The sun baked the little farmhouse on the flatlands. Sam could hear the cursing of the workers in Bobby’s salvage yard, the clanking of machines. From time to time a whiff of Diesel exhaust and the smell of dust drifted in through the open window.
Sam could shift himself just enough to go to the toilet. He ate a piece of toast now and then. He avoided looking in the mirror. The agony he’d see staring back at him just intensified his feeling of failure. He knew every second he spent here in this hell on earth was nothing compared to the hell his brother was being subjected to below, the hell full of so many demons who’d sworn how much fun they’d have when they eventually got their hooks into him.
Sam couldn’t cope. He’d exhausted every lead even before the deal. He remembered his brother’s last exhortations:
Remember what Dad taught you.... what I taught you....
Sam knew there were unholy rituals to call up the spirits of the dead. It was written, for example, how Saul asked a witch to call up the spirit of a prophet to advise and solace the faithless king:
And Samuel said to Saul, “why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? And wherefore then dost thou ask of me, seeing the Lord is departed from thee, and is become thine enemy?” Then Saul fell straightway all along on the earth, and was sore afraid, because of the words of Samuel: and there was no strength in him; for he had eaten no bread all the day, nor all the night.
Sam was weak from the physical pain of his grieving, the nausea, the horror of despair; he was weak for a long time. As summer passed, his mind began to trouble him, disturbing the torpor his body had settled into.
One hot night Sam fell into a restless dream.
He saw the witch, her summoning fire built in the center of a clearing of hard packed earth. Like a ghost in the scene, he could see and hear, but he felt less real than she did – he could see the sweat fly from her body as she danced, but he never felt the droplets hit his skin, and he was bone cold though he stood right next to the fire. He saw the witch dance around the fire, her bare feet slapping the earth. He heard the repeating tones of her invocation through a watery thickness in his ears, a layer of disconnection between him and the reality of the dream... As she circled the fire, she threw in sprigs of herbs that burned with a sickening sweetness, and three times she spewed out a liquid that flared as it caught fire, evanescent in the dancing flames.
The witch danced harder, lifting her knees, raising her arms, spinning as she circled the blaze, her ululations penetrating the thickness in his ears.
There came a change in the fire, so subtle Sam couldn’t detect when it began. The flames rose higher, seemed to burn hotter, until they were grown to the height of a man; the witch’s long curls burnt golden, and her eyes flashed green, and in the flames Sam saw his brother.
Tears rolled relentlessly from Sam’s weary eyes, but his throat seized painfully closed, his parched mouth would not form his brother’s name. Dean, Dean, his brain still repeated.
“Sam! Sammy!” Dean’s mouth screamed, but Sam couldn’t hear him. Horrible hooks pierced his shoulder and his side.
Sam tried to reach into the fire, to touch his brother’s face, but his hands and the flames never met. He was cold, cold as ice, so cold it burned.
He awoke and the burn he felt was from the ring, just now cooling, but so hot it had left a seared pink wound around Sam’s finger. The amulet too had burned into his chest but was cooling now. As Sam grasped it, struggling to clear the dream from his mind, he seemed to hear his brother’s rasping shout:
”Don’t you summon me! Don’t you dare! Remember what I taught you. The dead should stay dead!”
After that dream Sam roused himself from the bed he’d lain in for weeks. He began to work in Bobby’s yard with the other men, just taking apart the junk of wrecked cars, cataloguing what was salvageable. Removing parts for customers and carrying the heavy metal to the waiting beds of pickup trucks, Sam slowly worked back his strength, worked back his appetite, packing car parts in and out of Bobby’s yard like a mule.
At night, as darkness fell around Bobby’s house, and the crickets sang in the late summer heat, Sam would sit on the porch and dull the pain of his muscles and brain with a beer or four. The urge to summon his brother, awakened in him by the dream, festered in him, but he knew better. How could he summon an incorporeal spirit, who was surely bound fast by unholy laws into the torments of hell?
****
Sam was at loose ends one morning with Bobby out on a tow and Scott, Bobby’s regular part-time guy, clanking in the guts of an old Ford pickup on the far side of the yard. Sam was still picking around for something to work on when Bobby, a few hours later, came back to the yard with a totaled late 60s Chevy on the back of his truck.
At least it wasn’t an Impala. Sam remembered with terrible clarity those summer weeks after their father’s death when he and his brother had stayed at Bobby’s. His brother’s wounds, which should have been fatal, had healed unnaturally fast and faded rapidly. Sam remembered the pounding blows of the sledge against the Impala, as Dean wrestled her body back into its rightful sleekness. The confusion Dean had felt at his strange resurrection; the sorrow at the loss of his dad; the rage and confusion and guilt spurred by the fear that their dad had made a deal of some kind, the Colt gone—all this had rung out as he’d worked on his car.
Sam automatically helped Bobby unload this new wreck. With a prying bar and a hammer he began to strip the car of bits too mutilated to be salvaged. He stood in the hot sun, fingering the amulet as he scanned the engine. A lot here could still be used. GM parts were pretty interchangeable for these model years. Sam felt in his tool box, drew out a wrench, began to remove the alternator. This one was rebuilt, marks of retooling were evident, and the Impala could use a swap in.
Sam felt Bobby’s hand on his shoulder.
“Sam, what in the hell are you up to?”
Sam shook himself. He was under the hood of the Impala, and apparently, he’d just finished up with installing the new alternator.
Shaking his head at Bobby, he wiped his hands off on a rag and got behind the wheel. He turned the key and the Impala’s familiar roar filled the air, smooth and throaty and even.
“There you go, baby. How’s that feel?” Sam murmured.
“Since when did you know your way around an engine?” Bobby asked later, over supper.
“I’ve been working here all summer, Bobby, I ought to know at least a thing or too,” Sam grumbled, and Bobby dropped it.
***
Fall had come with its sudden, sullen darkness and ill spirits. Every night Sam fell asleep bone tired, worrying the ring on its brand around his finger. He startled awake in the hours between midnight and dawn with his brother’s name trapped behind his lips, repeating in his mind, Dean, Dean, an anguished invocation, fingers numb from his tight grip on the amulet.
Bobby didn’t press Sam to leave, or press him to stay. Bobby never mentioned a hunt, and if he called hunters back with thick books near the phone, or made a trip to the post office to mail something somewhere, Sam ignored it. Bobby gave him work day by day, fed him skillets of fried potatoes, pots of boiled greens, and thick pieces of meat. He even paid Sam for his work, and Sam would drive in his brother’s car on a Saturday night to a town a few hours away; he found a bar here or there where men and a few women sat around shadowy tables, backs to the wall, drinking and maybe quibbling about whatever sport was showing on the tv set high up the wall. He drank, first beer and then liquor, and the remembered sound of his brother’s laughter threatened to move him to tears again after his tears had finally dried.
“Goddamnit, Sammy, get out and have some fun! You act like a pitbull ate your left nut!”
Sam knew goddamn well that he didn’t have that crazy allure that had reeled in women so easily–his brother’s steady gaze and gentle hands had promised “safe” even as his cocky grin and swagger assured “up to no good.” Even the ones who knew better had fallen for Dean a little.
Sam's own eyes held too much sorrow, desperation. No woman regarded him for long without a concerned look coming on, a moving closer that would soon mean a hand on the arm, or the cheek. The look women gave to motherless men.
Motherless, fatherless, brotherless–girl-free and likely to remain that way. Sam downed a shot and asked for another. He was used to sobering up in the backseat of the Impala before he began the long drive home through a thin Sunday morning.
The girl that signaled she’d have a shot with him took Sam by surprise.
He was too polite to turn her down flat, but he didn’t have so much to say that he thought she’d stick around. His brother would have laughed up a lie or a line so absurd that they both were in on the joke, easy grins smoothing right over into the hookup. Sam choked down a bit of cold longing; the girl ignored his awkwardness, stuck there beside him.
After a while she had him pressed up against the passenger side of the Impala, the coldness of the night air chilling whatever heat she’d brought up in his cheeks. She kissed with intent. She was tall and strong. He was slouched down against the side of the car, more than a little bit drunk, but he moved his hands gently along her back. His hands were a turn-on, big like a promise of the rest of him–girls had said that about him, a long time ago. It was nice in a way; he blurrily hoped he was not too sloppy, that the girl would get something she wanted in return for treating him to shots, treating him like he was alive.
A bit more awake, a bit more asleep, his hands were taking over, his mouth was taking over. He held the girl’s head in his hands, strong and sure; he heard the girl moan as she melted against him. He was hard, a surprise, and he pulled the girl against him. She moaned again, yielding, and clearly, she was happier than she had been a minute ago, when he’d been wrapped up in the rusty chain of the same old thoughts, kept down a little by the alcohol.
Like dancing, the dirty kind, he thrust up against her, and she thrust back, and it felt good. The night air was cool, the girl strong and hot, some passion like a stranger or a best friend moving through his body. Dean’s amulet made a tiny stab as it pressed into his chest. The girl moved his hand inside her clothes to help him help her along, Dean’s silver ring slipping against her flesh–
Sam felt a flood of exultation as he slipped free of the hooks, sinking two fingers into the girl, heart beating loud and strong, freedom! He laughed, spilling over with joy, shouting oh god, the world, SAMMY!
Sam sucked in a breath of shock. His eyes snapped open. The girl was crushed to him, his arm around her back, his hand down her pants—his own were a mess. “Please,” she whispered, so he complied, kissing her neck and bringing her off.
Stone cold sober, he put her back together, walked her to her car, gave her a thanks and a kiss goodnight.
In the back of his head he could feel his brother’s disapproval, going home alone? The night is young!
What in the hell had just happened?
****
Over the next week, Sam was feeling better. His appetite took a decided turn for the ravenous. Bobby was sometimes paid for a tow in chickens or that sort of thing instead of cash; Bobby actually laughed at Sam one suppertime as he shoveled in a mess of green beans that had stewed all day with a hock of ham.
Then Bobby pulled a pie out of the oven. The steam of apples and cinnamon rising up from the warmed over pie made Bobby’s tired little kitchen smell as much like home as Sam could imagine.
“Goddammit, Bobby. I love me some pie!”
The lighthearted words slipped out of his mouth.
Bobby’s eyes narrowed.
Sam went pale.
“Christo,” Bobby said.
Sam’s vision swam, and the light in the room dimmed just a little bit.
Bobby jumped up, his face slackened in shock.
Sam sprang to his feet. “What the hell, Bobby—“
Bobby was backing for the fridge. Sam knew there was holy water in several of the beers.
“Wait, Bobby, you don’t have to... look, I’ll just go to the trap, ok? It’s just me, it’s just Sam. I swear it’s me. Look, the tattoo....”
Sam was jabbering, more words in a string than he’d let out in months. He backed a chair into the middle of Bobby’s living room where Bobby maintained the trap on the ceiling, refreshing the paint and renewing the spoken charms vigilantly.
Sam felt something in him shift as he entered the trap. He sat down in the chair. What about the tattoo? Hadn’t it worked? How could a demon... and why hadn’t he like, murdered, or something? His short bursts of thought kept rapidly interrupting each other.
Sammy, little brother, it’s me.
“Bobby!” Sam roared out, panicked. “Bobby, goddamn it!” He’d soaked his clothes in a sweat, his whole body tingled with the need to flee or fight. His hands were clenching, unclenching, his whole body shaking with adrenaline. He forced himself to just wait in the chair for Bobby to get his act together.
Bobby was digging some book out of a pile in the disused dining room. Bobby’s whole house had devolved into one decrepit repository of occult books and objects, except for the desk where he ran his business and the room he kept for Sam and Dean to crash in.
Looks like I crashed you, Sammy. Not that I’m complaining.
Sam couldn’t take this voice in his head. It sounded, it felt, so much like his brother. Sam's agony was reborn fresh... and suddenly, he burst into tears.
Bobby was on guard, and he was ready with the book, but he wasn’t moving in.
“Sam, your eyes went black,” Bobby’s voice was a wreck between gentle and harsh. “Is he-- is it a demon?”
“Goddammit, Bobby, how should I know? It feels like me, it feels like... like Dean!” Sam wailed as he said his brother’s name, and the thing inside him came into focus.
Again Sam’s vision swam just a bit, the room darkened for a second, then corrected. His body began to shake a little less.
Sam’s mouth opened, and Sam heard, “Bobby, it’s me, it’s Dean.”
Bobby’s face twisted in doubt and confusion. He gestured forward with the book.
“You won’t mind if I completely fail to believe that,” Bobby retorted.
“Well, I don’t know that I one hundred percent believe it myself,” stated the Dean thing, in a Dean-like tone of gruff humor. “I guess you could ask me all the secret questions about Mom’s maiden name and my childhood pet...”
“But a demon would get those things out of Sam’s brain,” Bobby said.
“Sammy’s brain is a dangerous thing, that’s for sure,” the voice agreed.
“Handwriting,” Sam suddenly said.
“What?” Bobby said.
“Let it sign his name. If it’s Dean, it’ll be his handwriting. I never bothered to learn how to forge, since he was so good at it, so a demon couldn’t use that.”
“I’m not so sure,” Bobby began, but the voice interrupted.
“Me neither. But there is one better way to tell I’m no demon.” Sammy, come on, stand up.
Sam felt an urge inside, impelling him to get up off the chair. Bobby backed up a bit. Sam slowly stepped forward. He reached the boundary of the devil’s trap. Slowly he swung his arm forward. His hand met a heaviness in the air, like nothing more than passing through water. Pushing a little, he stepped out of the boundary of the trap.
For a second, the darkness swam up before his eyes again, then he was ok. But he still felt something, something extra riding along with him.
He walked over to Bobby’s desk, found paper and a pen. Dean? He asked the familiar presence, seated somewhere inside him.
Yeah, Sammy. Somehow it’s me.
Are you ok, Dean? I mean, Hell?
You mean like, am I crazy? or like, full of murderous rage? You gotta give me at least as much credit as Ruby – it was no picnic, but she was there like four hundred years.
Leaning heavily on the desk with his left arm, Sam cleared his mind and relaxed his right hand. Sam watched as his own hand, in Dean’s familiar scrawl, wrote out the signature, David Hasselhoff.
Oh my god, Sam thought with a feeling of intense relief. I’m possessed by my own brother, and I brought him back with a girl and pie!
Sammy fell against the desk, edging toward hysteria, his shudders a mixture of laughter and tears. Bobby hovered nearby, tense and confused. He picked up the paper.
“Does this say David Hasselhoff?” Bobby asked.
Sam shrieked some more, laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe. Out of habit he gripped the amulet, fingers rubbing weakly against the brass.
Instantly Dean came into clearer focus in his brain.
Dude, stop laughing before you piss yourself. Dean’s thoughts were gentle behind the words of scorn.
“Bobby, it’s really Dean, I’m sure of it.”
“Well, is he ok? Is he a demon, or what?”
Sam stared at Bobby incredulously.
“Well, Sam, with the black eyes and all, I’d be a fool not to ask,” Bobby retorted.
Sam turned wide eyes to Bobby. “Dean’s no demon, Bobby, I swear to God.” If you were evil, man, I’d feel it. I remember what Meg felt like, inside.
Dean used Sam’s voice to speak out loud. “Maybe I am a little bit demon—no one goes to Hell without some kind of change.”
“Ah, no, Dean–Dad got out okay,” Sam began, but Bobby interrupted.
“You don’t know that, Sam–you don’t know what Hell did to your Dad. And whatever Dean is now, there’s something about him that’s demon. If he’s gonna ride along, you’ll have to make sure what he gets up to when you’re not in charge.”
“Eat a little pie, make a little love, get down tonight,” sang Dean.
“Oh, my god,” Sam said again, and Dean cackled with laughter inside him. You are evil! You want to use my body! Like that!
Hey, Sammy, you liked it the first time! Dean replied in his brain.
Sam covered his face with his hands, and Bobby just clapped him on the shoulder, while Dean laughed on inside his head.
Sam wiped his eyes and tried to sit up. “Dude, I think you’re haunting the amulet.”
“What?” What? Bobby and Dean both asked.
“Well, it’s your final remains, right? Besides the ring and the Impala. I was leaning up against the Impala when the girl, you know, and the amulet and the ring, all at once, and...”
And you really, really missed me, right, bro? Dean asked snidely. How his disembodied voice could carry so much innuendo, Sam couldn’t exactly explain.
Sam felt his humor drain away. Yeah. Yeah, man, I really, really, did. “You remember the Ballad of Usher’s Well?” he said to Bobby.
“The one where the mother brought back her dead sons by grieving for a year and a day,” Bobby said.
Huh, Dean thought, but Sam felt a wave of love and gratitude wash over him.
“I just couldn’t bear that I failed him. I couldn’t bear that he was suffering in Hell, getting turned into a demon or something.” And god, Dean, I missed you so much.
Sam, you gigantic girl, Dean thought, in so many words, but Sam heard, I love you too, Sammy, and I always knew you’d bring me back.
“And the demon blood–like calls to like,” Bobby muttered, a bit darkly.
Sam didn’t care. If Dean got out of Hell, that was all that mattered. Not through tricks, or schemes, or fury, but through the familiarity of his favorite things, and the longing, relentless love of his brother.
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I love Bobby in this, and you can hear Dean just as soon as he is present. I WAS NOT FOOLED FOR A MINUTE.
*loves and goes to recc*
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*sniffle*
That's just...yeah. I love that all the fury and focus he put into getting Dean back with the Trickster just had nowhere to go in this fic, just....depression and longing, as you said.
Lovely stuff.
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I just made a shorter, dream-like piece where rage is more of a problem, but in this one, I was just going with the terrible grief and bewilderment that Sam was showing at the end of the finale.
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I just wish I knew as much about cars as Dean! I probably know a tad more than Sam since he's kept himself willfully ignorant!
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“Eat a little pie, make a little love, get down tonight,” sang Dean.
Heee. Dean's lines sound so like... Dean!
Thanks for sharing.
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I'm glad Dean sounded like himself to you.
My favorite Deanism of all time was when Henricksen was like, "I shot the sheriff?" and Dean was all "but you didn't shoot the deputy!!" Dean was waiting his WHOLE LIFE for that setup!!
I have this cracky idea of "Sam Winchester: Haunted Detective" -- I've only gotten as far as the title.
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That was a good one. The man just doesn't know when to shut up (thank God).
"Sam Winchester: Haunted Detective"
*g* Sounds perfect for a crackfic!
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*hugs*