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ihearthings_iiThose who appear smaller from a distance
Purgatorio
Halfway through to Bobby’s Dean found himself lost in the woods, in fucking Enna in fucking Montana, looking for his pain-in-the-ass little brother.
Sam was missing --- had been missing, for six fucking days.
Dean was freaked out, and more than freaked out, he was pissed off. Because Sam, Sam that bastard, he was the one who had wanted to stop in Enna, while Dean had wanted to drive further on, to a larger city, but Sam had been adamant, bitching about his legs cramping up or some shit like that. It had also been Sam’s idea to take the scenic route, something about forests and Zen and bonding with nature. Or, okay, he probably hadn’t really said that, and Dean hadn’t really been listening, actually, but Sam had wanted to go through
There had been three weeks left of Dean’s deal, and Sam, even more so than Dean, was wearing thin with desperation. Stress had made his appetite dwindle and his diet had consisted of coffee and little else, his hollow cheeks and eyes haunting Dean’s sleep. He could still feel Sam’s bones, shifting underneath his skin, scary close to the surface, feeling so remarkably frail and brittle under his hands.
And now the little shit was gone, and Dean knew, just knew that he hadn’t been snatched, not like that time with the Benders, or the shapeshifter or those not-evil vamps, not like any other time.
It had been a kamikaze mission from the start, but there was no doubt in his mind, that given the same choices again, he would make the exact same decision. But. He didn’t want to die. Not now, not for a long while. No; he was going to find his shithead little brother, kicks stubborn his ass good and proper, and then strap it to the passenger seat and drive off into the sunset like they had fucking well deserved. And that was that.
&
Sam had always been good at leaving. Dean remembered the first time he had run away from their temporary home, a cranky six year old with a Thunder cats lunchbox that Dean himself had packed that morning, Sam had run away, all the way away from home to the park next to the school. He had hid inside the jungle Jim, and Dean had found him there later, soaked to the bone with his teeth chattering, but he’d defiantly stayed even as Dean had wheedled and promised him the good side of the bed, an ice cream cone, and that dad would come home that night.
The bed had been saggy and dirty and both sides had been equally bad, they hadn’t actually had money for ice cream, and of course dad hadn’t come home that night, but he’d managed to get Sam back with him, and he would do it this time too.
The empty seat beside him in the car reminded him of when Sam had been away at school. There had been something thrilling about being out on his own, but it had been lonely. Sure, there had been enough girls and a few guys who were willing enough to share his bed, but he had missed dad and Sam and their company.
He had missed dad and Johnny Cash and his easy, quiet company – even at first, had missed those few yearly mornings when he had been hung-over and bristling, or those times he had had to tip-toe around him; he had missed Sam rolling his eyes at Led Zeppelin, and bitching over pimples and grades and not enough time to do his homework, growing pains and twinkies for breakfast, not enough leg room and being cold and hungry all the time; he had missed it so intensely, but had been too stubborn to do anything about it.
Back then he’d picked up the habit of talking to Sam. Talking to him as if he was right there, riding shot gun. Or, actually, not as if he was right there, riding shotgun, cause there was no way in hell Dean would ever say the kinds of things he had talked about back then to his brother’s face. No, no way.
But it had felt good, and it had kept him from going insane. Sometimes he had managed to go days without talking to other people (not counting the people at the drive-throughs), and calling his dad’s cell, even if he knew he’d get the machine (but still get to hear his voice) or talking to the empty passenger seat, yeah. It had helped.
He did it now, too. While he was driving, he would look over out of the corner of his eye and say “Don’t worry Sammy, I’m gonna find you, don’t you worry. I’ll find you. I’ll bring you back home, I promise.”
It didn’t even matter that there was no specific home or that Sam couldn’t actually hear him. If Sam had been there, he would have known what Dean meant, and Dean always kept his promises, and that was all that mattered.
&
They had been checking out
Dean wasn’t cut out for sitting still and being stuck in one place for too long, but when Sam had suggested maybe using Bobby’s place as home base until --- for a little while, he had jumped at the chance. It would be nice to have a place to call home for a little while, and it would be good for Sam to have somewhere, after.
After.
Dean wasn’t stupid. He knew what that frantic, desperate look in Sam’s eyes meant, and it sure as hell wasn’t ‘Relax, I’ve got everything under control’. It meant that Sam and Bobby and whoever else they had on their side (if they had anybody else on their side) still hadn’t found a way to keep him out of hell and Sam alive at the same time; it meant that time was running out.
And he didn’t want to die, he didn’t, and he had finally realized that, and he really didn’t want to go to hell and stay there for all eternity, but. But if the alternative was staying alive, and alone, with Sam stabbed to death by that fucking super strength freak, well, it was door number one for him, all the way.
So he tried to listen to Sam more, tried to not piss him off (as much), tried to let him get his way when it was important to him (… but in a less pussy way than that sounded), while still dragging him to bars and the occasional strip joint because there was no fucking way he was going to spend his last time topside like a nun, or even worse, some whiny little emo kid. No fucking way.
(Except, of course, he sort of had been living like a nun, or monk or whatever, ever since. Since. That.)
But that wasn’t the point. The point was this: They’d been chased out of town, and hadn’t really stopped for anything but piss breaks and gas (Dean never let his baby get too close to so empty that it’d damage her) all day and as the twilight rapidly closed in on them; they found themselves at a small gas-station in the middle of nowhere.
Wide open spaces had always been very calming to him, and sometimes he thought it probably had something to do with his training, about how he’d always be able to see anyone coming from miles away. There wouldn’t be a place for them to hide from his eagle eyes. (He totally had 20/20/awesome vision, despite whatever Sam said about needing glasses. He didn’t.) Also the endless stretches of blacktop where he could give the old girl free reigns, those lonely stretches of highway where he felt like he could drive the road he was on ‘til it ran out, her familiar sounds, his hands curled carefully around the wheel and her calming rumble soothed him like nothing else.
He had filled the tank and taken a piss while Sam dozed in the car, cheek pressed to the window, and Dean remembered being a kid, making faces against the glass at each other until dad made them clean all the windows. He made a note to move Sam’s head so he wasn’t hitting it against the glass with every single bump in the road. (And of course, to make sure the little bitch cleaned the window, later.)
He’d gotten two cups of burnt coffee and some stale sandwiches, chips and jerky, and on a whim bought a chocolate Easter egg wrapped in bright pink foil. Sam had bitched and thrown it at his head, but they’d still shared it, the crumpled pink foil stuck in the grooves in the seat where Sam used to sit.
Where he would sit again, once Dean found him.
&
Dean didn't ask, Sam didn't tell, and once a day, Dean had just reminded Sam that any weaseling would make him drop dead on the spot, and once a day Sam would promise him there was no absolutely no weaseling going on.
It worked for them.
Except of course from the fact that Sam obviously had been lying. And yeah, Dean had sort of been hoping that he had, but this wasn’t exactly what Dean had had in mind.
And now, Sam had found a solution. Or, well. Dean had only gone to hell because he wanted to which was awesome (or. It wasn’t, but it was), but Sam was gone which was not.
He wondered if Sam had known beforehand, that whatever it was he did would mean that Dean would be alive but alone, or if that had been a byproduct. He hoped he hadn't know, because the whole point, the whole fucking thing that started this mess in the first place was dean's refusal to be the last Winchester standing.
And Sam obviously felt the same way, obviously didn't want to be alone either, he had said so a numerous times, and had backed it up too, by continuing his search for a loophole, a deal breaker, the whole time Dean was in denial and just trying to live it up, his last year.
Sam had fought for him, and he had apparently found something, and now Dean was going to repay him, and search for him and find him and rescue him, like James Bond or Indiana Jones, or like Superman. (All scenarios which meant Sam was the damsel in distress. Heh. ) and when he found the stubborn son of a bitch, he was probably going to do something lame, like kiss him or hug him or both, and then he was going to punch his lights out and tie him up in the impala and make sure he never did anything stupid like that ever again.
So there.
He’d called Bobby when he had realized something was wrong.
“Bobby,” he’d said frantically, almost fucking crying into the phone like a big wuss, “Bobby, he’s gone.”
“Son, calm down. Sam? Sam’s gone?” Bobby’s voice had swept over him, familiar and gruffly worried, and Dean had closed his eyes and slumped against steering wheel.
“Bobby, fuck, I don’t know what to do. He’s just gone! I’m, look, I’m losing my mind here!” He could still remembered looking for dad New Orleans, could still remember looking for Sam last time, could still remember Sam’s possession and dad’s---.
“… his cell phone?” Bobby had asked, and Dean had shaken his head.
“Dean?”
“His cell phone was left behind, Bobby,” he’d said tiredly and rubbed his eyes.
“Look, just, come to my place, and we’ll figure something out, alright kid? We’ll find Sam, I promise.” Dean had nodded and hung up, knocked his head against the wheel a few times, before starting the car and leaving Enna in the rear view mirror.
It had been tempting, going to Bobby’s, instead of going at it alone, tempting to be somewhere and with someone familiar.
Twelve miles out of town, he’d turned the car around and checked into a different motel.
He refused to get a single room. It wasn’t like the whole Sam being gone thing was something that would last forever, so he refused to get into the habit of ordering a single.
He still slept on the bed closest to the door, and used the second bed for storage, guns and shirts and research littered the bedspread, which made it look less empty, sometimes. If he squinted. Hard.
When he got coffee in the morning, he got two. One black and one latte, and when Sam was back with him again, he might tell him that he was starting to like the lattes, if only to hear that surprised bark of laughter. At first, the two coffees every morning made him a little jittery, but on the upside, the guns had never been cleaned faster.
Research still sucked, now he just had to do most of it himself. He stared at the computer screen for hours on end it gave him a headache, and he started to agree with Sam. Maybe he did need glasses. (Although contacts probably would be the way to go.)
Of course, without Sam to nag him about it, and because he felt a little like he was required to do it, he bookmarked porn sites and downloaded porn. Loads and loads of porn. Hot porn (busty Asian beauties, threesomes and moresomes, straight porn, girl on girl --- boy on boy, twins), kinky porn (blood-play, breath-play, BDSM, watersports.) disgusting porn (scat, and animals) and the downright weird porn – clowns, firemen furries, midgets – clowns and midgets, and fuck, he couldn’t wait to see Sam’s face when he found that last one.
It’s not like he actually watched the porn, had been too busy with research and crashing hard for about three hours a night. Plus, he hadn’t had a hard-on since Sam had been missing, like he couldn’t get a hard-on without his pissy little brother, and if that wasn’t a scary fucking thought, Dean didn’t know what would be. But yeah, Dean wasn’t watching the porn he just wanted to see Sam’s face when he found it. It was going to be awesome.
But right then and there, he was lost. Lost in the good-old fashioned way, with only a rudimentary idea of north and south, and it was getting to be around the time where he would have liked to return to his car, drive back to the motel and at least try to get some sleep.
Damnit. It was a full day wasted when he didn’t have ten minutes to spare, and he was pissed off, at himself, at Sam, at the world, at the forest and at the fact that he didn’t seem to be one step closer to finding Sam than he had been six days earlier.
Bobby had said something about the forest, about how there had been suspicious activity in the forest, although nothing in recent times. Dean had gone anyway, because even though it was grasping at straws, he had been grasping at straws the entire time.
He was convinced, now more than ever before, that Sam himself had had something to do with his disappearance, because there wasn’t a single clue left for Dean to go by, no trail of breadcrumbs, no nothing, just Sam being there when he went to bed, and then being gone when he woke up. There had been no sulfur traces, no broken lines of salt, Dean’s head and body were still firmly connected, Sam’s bed had been neatly made, his duffle by the foot of the bed, his cell phone and laptop silent on the table, and it was the brand of OCD bordering of scary meticulous that had colored Sam’s every move since Broward County.
Sam still hadn’t told him everything that had happened there; he said he had, but whatever, Dean knew when Sam was lying, and he was lying his ass off whenever Dean had managed to steer the topic back to that. And for all that Sam was the caring and sharing type, if he didn’t want you to know something; you’d just have to wait until he was good and ready to tell you, unless you, like Dean, knew just the right way to piss him off. But no matter what he had done, Sam still hadn’t told him the whole story, hadn’t explained the reason his quirks and anal retentiveness had exploded into full-blown OCD, his slightly creepy serial killer intensity.
Dean had tried to imagine it, a few times. What it would have been like, living the same day over and over again, watching Sam die over and over again, in new and creative ways. He wasn’t sure he would have survived it, honestly, and he wasn’t quite sure how Sam had.
Of course, Sam had been weird, but it were things that, although pretty damn annoying, Dean had been willing to overlook. If all an experience like that did to Sam was make him really anal about stuff, well. Dean was pretty sure he would have gone nuts.
Sam had toned it down after a little while, though. He had probably noticed how freaked out Dean had been when he’d seen the reorganized weapon department in the trunk, how meticulously Sam’s side of the rooms had been kept, the thorough way he had collected and kept research. Some mornings Dean had woken up at the crack of dawn only to be greeted with Sam’s bed made with military corners, their favorite handguns and shotguns cleaned and laid out on the bedspread, Sam on the floor in front of the TV, doing one-armed push-ups on the knuckles, and fuck, it had made Dean exhausted just being around him. He had wondered how long Sam could go at that pace without cracking. He also remembered thinking, several times, that dad probably would have been proud.
After another mile or so, he could see the sun behind the mountains, and he could see the road, twisting below him. Thank god. He slowly made his descent, and kept his eye on the road the entire time.
About an hour later, he saw the gleam of the car in the late afternoon sun, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Another thirty minutes or so, he thought, and he could drive back to the motel, take an indulgently long, hot shower (something he was going to have to stop doing once Sam was back), call Bobby, possibly have a nightcap, and he hoped he could sleep for at least three consecutive hours.
Of course, as he was putting the duffel in the trunk, he heard a giggle behind him, and a high-pitched, pre-teen giggle thirty miles out of town in the middle of a deserted road was never a good thing. He curled his hands around the butt of his favorite shotgun and turned.
She looked innocent enough, a pink bicycle with glittering streamers by her side, pigtails and purple overalls, and she couldn’t have been more than twelve. He almost, almost wanted to ask her if she was lost, if she needed a ride to town and an ice cream cone, but she blinked and her eyes turned an oily, shiny black. He took a step back, felt the bumper on the back of his legs.
“Well, well, well. The great Dean Winchester,” she said, and cocked her head to the side, and he felt like a he was a mouse being inspected by a hungry cat.
“I’m not sure what’s so great about you, honestly. You don’t look anything like I thought you would.” She let the bike fall to the ground and slinked closer, a creepy sensuality in her limbs that was far too mature for her body.
He pointed the shotgun at her and she laughed, a low, derisive sound and the shotgun clattered uselessly to the ground, and he couldn’t feel his toes or fingertips, couldn’t move.
“Oh come on.” She picked the shotgun up, pointed it at him. “Not your first time at the other end of one of these, is it?” she smiled, smug and unconcerned, and pulled the trigger.
He was almost thrown into the trunk with the force, and the salt bit into his skin, stung and burned, and he couldn’t breathe; he could only gasp pathetically as he clawed at his throat. Tears rolled unbidden down his cheeks. It wasn’t the biggest hurt he had ever experienced, but it just might have been the sharpest, it burned bright and vicious and he choked on it.
She laughed and walked over, and he heard her throw the shotgun to the ground.
“Now, isn’t that better? This time it’s an actual demon doing it, and not your precious little Sammy. You know he lied, right? He knew what he was doing. He wanted to do that.” She shook her head patronizingly and sucker punched him. He felt his lip split and groaned.
“Why do you want to find him so bad, huh? He ditched you Dean. Ditched you and made it very clear he doesn’t want to be found, and here you are, like a pathetic, little lapdog, running around, sniffing at every trail to find him. He doesn’t want to be found, Dean, and least of all by you.” She slid a small but determined hand over his chest, rubbed the salt in, and he whimpered.
“That’s a lie,” he forced out, and he believed it, finally. “Why do you want to stop me so bad?” he gasped, because there had to be a reason why he was being approached like this, had to be a reason why some kind of demon fraction somewhere didn’t want him to find Sam.
She raised an eyebrow, quirked her lips. “Oh don’t you worry your pretty little head about that, sweetheart,” she said, but he knew he was on to something there.
“Oh no? What, your little group of demonic preteens think you have it all planned out? What is it this time, huh? Lilith? Sam? Hell on earth? Yeah yeah, I’ve heard it all before, and guess what, you filthy son of a bitch, as long as there’re people like me around, it ain’t gonna happen.” He struggled to get upright and out of the trunk.
The little girl snarled at him, black eyes and a laugh too big and grown-up for her body, and why were little girl demons always so fucking creepy anyway?
“Your brother’s going to rot in hell for all eternity. All because of you.” She smiled wickedly and Dean only had a second to think that she was going to be a knock-out if she ever got to grow up before he felt something snap in his knees and he crumpled to the ground with a groan.
“Although, if you ask me,” she said, fisted his collar and yanked him close, close enough that he could smell the nauseatingly sweet smell of rotting flesh. Not going to grow-up, then.
“if you ask me, I don’t see what the big deal is, Dean. Dean Winchester.” She threw him back down and his head connected dully with the pavement.
“Both daddy-dearest and little Sammy, giving up their eternal souls, and for what? This? You? Pathetic.” She shook her head and clucked her tongue. “You know, you should just let it go. Lilith got him down there, and she won’t--- ” suddenly her head snapped back and she screamed and shrieked as black smoke roared out of her body.
His knees were fucked up, he had taken a hell of a beating from a friggin’ twelve year old girl, and he had no idea how the fuck he was going to get off the road and drive back to the motel.
And sure, Sam was in hell. Sure, his worst fears had been confirmed, and when he got Sam back, he was going to kick the little shit-head’s ass into the next millennia. He didn’t fucking need anybody else to sacrifice anything for him, okay? But he knew where Sam was now. He thought the demon probably had revealed too much, and that was why it was ripped out of the body like that.
He knew where Sam was.
And he was going to get him back.
