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GNM: Chapter 10: PART ONE
1 February 2010 11:18 pmA/N: I never expected this story to take so long to write. I can't tell you guys how much I appreciate your continued interest and support for this story. You've wow'd me. Only two chapters and an epilogue left. Hopefully they won't be long coming. Thanks SO much to my wonderful betas and dear friends, sid and dev. They put up with SO much from me. All mistakes left are mine. This isn't my favorite chapter, but there IS story progression. Woot! Thank you so much again!
“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot…and hold on.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt.
It’s a funny thing; hope.
Like the last life preserver in a storm, it comes and goes on the waves. Few are lucky enough to be in reach, to be given the chance to cling to something solid.
Even fewer let it go once they have it.
Head shaking, fearful eyes imploring, “Sammy,” Dean whispered despairingly, slipping on the nickname. When his brother steadily, bravely held his gaze, Dean looked away again.
The little hand around his wrist squeezed and he knew there’d be no talking him out of it. There’d be no talking him into giving in.
Closing his eyes, Dean squared his jaw. Then slowly he turned back to his ridiculously small brother; whose body, it seems, has always been trying to catch up with the size of his heart. Resignation and trepidation were heavy on Dean’s shoulders…but so was relief. It wasn’t over yet. “You’re a pain in my ass,” he finally said through the sizable lump in his throat. “You know that?”
Dimples showing slightly, eyes closing, “Yeah,” Sam breathed, “but I’m your pain in the ass.”
“Yeah,” Dean rasped, grinning affectionately if not worriedly as watery hazel disappeared, labored breathing immediately slowing and evening out. “I guess you are.”
Watching him sleep, Dean thumbed away the last of his little brother’s tears. He raised one helluva stubborn kid. “What am I gonna do with you?” he thought aloud with a mixture of both fear and pride—something that had been racing through him a lot the last few days.
“We’re gonna turn him back into an overgrown brooding puppy, that’s what we’re gonna do,” Bobby announced, coming to stand in the doorway. He grinned and something they all thought they had lost shone in his eyes. Hope.
~*~*~*~
Sliding out of the wind and into the front seat, Bobby felt awkward—like an intruder behind the wheel, like an eavesdropper on one of the most treasured secrets of all time. But it was where he was needed.
Glancing in the rearview mirror as the backdoor of the Impala opened, he watched as Dean eased in carefully with his sleeping brother and quickly closed the door behind him. The storm that had been moving in on them for what seemed like days now was finally starting to show its ugly face.
Warmly cocooned in his big brother’s jacket, Bobby couldn’t help but grin when he noticed that Sam, like Sammy, was clutching Dean’s necklace as he slept. Even unconscious, he knew just where to reach out to find his other half.
Sam had essentially put his life in Dean’s hand when he gave him that necklace. The epitome of trust—but merely acknowledging that which Dean had already known all of his life. Sam was his.
He watched as Dean gently laid Sam on the backseat and just as gently pried the little hitchhikers from his amulet. Then, thinking no one was looking…or maybe just not caring anymore at this point, brushed Sam’s bangs to the side and adjusted the leather hand-me-down more snuggly around him. It was almost as if he were taking a moment…to hope.
Throat suddenly tight, Bobby looked away. The little shits could melt the hardest of hearts.
“Uh…whenever you’re ready there, Jeeves,” Dean said, finally settling in beside his small charge.
Bobby rolled his eyes. But they were still little shits. “Keys.” He held up his hand. “And we seem to be missing a certain bossy…”
Sliding into the passenger seat just as it started to rain, Missouri set a bag on the floor between her legs and turned to give Bobby a look. “Well, what are you waiting for?” she asked sharply as Dean handed him the keys. “This thing ain’t gonna traipse all the way up here on its own for us to kill it.”
Sighing, Bobby turned the ignition. It was going to be a long drive.
“Sam’s on my side of the caaaaar.”
It was gonna to be a very long drive.
~*~*~*~
/ It was midday. The sun was bright and the air warm as it swirled in from the open windows. “How’s he doin’ back there, Deano?”
The ten-year-old boy looked down and tugged on the ankle his fingers were supportively wrapped around. Curled on his side, Sam kicked him in response. “He’s good.”
John nodded. “Next time he won’t try to out eat his brother in pie.”
Smirking, the freckled-face boy turned back to the passing scenery. “Next time he won’t follow me onto the ‘Tummy Tumbler’ afterwards.” /
Lightly jostling as they went over a bump, one hand over Sam’s little ankle, Dean numbly watched the world come and go from the back of the Impala. So many memories. Some good. Some bad.
And all so long ago.
It had been a long time since he sat in the back of his baby. For awhile, he remembered, he actually refused to sit up front. Sam might need him. And…that was mommy’s seat.
He might not have fully understood what death meant back then, but, he realized achingly…he now understood nothing better.
“All I said was I’m not stoppin’ every twenty minutes for you to use the bathroom,” he heard Bobby snap, coming out of his reverie.
“Did I ask you to stop?” Missouri argued back.
“As a matter of fact, you did,” he griped, “when you opened up that behemoth thermos of coffee. It goes through you like a damn sieve.”
Dean shook his head. He really needed to find out these two’s history. Letting their somewhat comforting bickering wash over him, he looked up at the tree tops swaying gently under the dark sky. There may be a small battle waging in the car, but at least they seemed to be finally moving in the opposite direction of the storm now.
/ “Sammy let Missouri see the creature’s location,” Bobby clarified, tossing him his leather jacket.
Catching it, “What?” Dean exclaimed sitting up and away from his sleeping brother, glancing back to make sure he hadn’t woken him. “What happened to protecting him?” he asked as Missouri walked in the room with Sam’s little shoes.
Handing the shoes to Dean, she regarded the sleeping boy somberly with dark brown eyes before replying softly, “I guess something must have hurt him even more.”
Looking back down at the little fingers still wrapped around his wrist, Dean paled when she added, “Like not being able to save his brother again.” /
Jeezus.
Maybe there was a special hell for tricksters. Though, continuing along with how fudged up their lives were—the bastard had put Sam through hell, hell…and it may just save his life.
It may just save both their lives.
Wiping a hand down his face, Dean forced himself out of his thoughts again. They were making his head spin and his heart constantly scrambling for something to cling to.
“Who you callin’ old?” Bobby all but yelled at something Missouri must have said.
“I’m lookin’ at you, aren’t I?”
“Hey,” Dean finally cut in from the backseat. “Don’t make me turn this car around.”
Clearing his throat self-consciously as they regarded him with equal looks of annoyance, he asked, “So, uh…Bobby, which one of the creatures you narrowed it down to is it?” There hadn’t been much time to discuss details while they all readied for the nineteen hour trip. The trip itself would leave them plenty of time to prepare.
Bobby’s eyes lost their fire in the rearview mirror. “Neither,” he replied gruffly, attention turning back to the road.
Dean’s eyebrows rose. He sat forward, hand still anchored to Sam. “Wow, great deduction skills there, kiddo. Watch out for that squirrel,” he added.
Easily passing the squirrel that was ten feet from the road and up a tree with a big ole’ acorn in its mouth without incident, “It’s neither because we were looking for something with a name, ya idjit. Or at least something that’s been on the radar in the past three thousand years,” the older hunter and current driver of Dean’s second most prized possession replied.
Dean’s eyebrows rose even further. “It doesn’t have a name? What kind of parents don’t name…their…uh,” his brow furrowed. “What is it?”
“That’s just it…” Bobby replied with a tired sigh, “nobody’s heard of it that I can tell. I don’t know if it’s workin’ some sort of memory voodoo, or what, but there’s no lore on it from what I can gather either. According to what Missouri was shown, Sammy referred to it as Vetus of Vetus, Old of Old. Part human, part mystery.”
“Huh,” Dean mused.
“It’s amazing the kid stumbled across it at all,” Bobby added.
“So, what does it do? Why’d Sam kill it? How did he stumble upon it?” Dean pressed.
“We don’t know how he found it, but it collects rare elixirs and spells according to what Sammy let me see,” Missouri answered, “and sells them to desperate people in exchange for their souls.”
Something occurred to Dean and he looked down at his brother. Considering Sam was probably pretty desperate to find the trickster and get Dean back…
“I don’t think your brother made a deal with him, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Well you would know,” Dean grumbled back at the psychic. Then, “So how do we kill it?”
“Considering no one has before except Sam,” Bobby said. “We’re not sure.”
“Sammy didn’t tell you?”
“No, honey. He didn’t.”
“Well, that’s just super.”
“We’re hopin’ he will before we get there,” Bobby admitted grimly.
“Right.” Sitting back, Dean looked up at the burdened sky. “Because everything has been a freakin’ sunny walk in the park so far.”
~*~*~*~
He was wrapped, cocooned in his father’s leather jacket and being carried in his strong, warm embrace. He felt the world float by, but didn’t have the energy to open his eyes or even lift his head from the shoulder it rested on. But he knew the feeling that enveloped him. Safety.
Coughing, hot pain sliced through his skull and he groaned, feebly bringing up his hand. It landed on the chest he was curled into and eyes still closed, brow pinching together, his fingers wrapped around an object more constant to him than his own memories.
He squeezed the amulet as realization hit and the present dissipated the past. Dean.
~*~*~*~
“Here,” Missouri soothed, gently tilting Sam’s chin up and bringing the thermos to his lips. He hadn’t opened his eyes yet, but he drank as much of the herbal mixture he could before his throat caught again. Sputtering and coughing, he turned away and right into Dean’s chest.
“Easy, Sam. I got ya,” Dean soothed, rubbing his brother’s heaving back. He met the psychic’s eyes. “Well, that went well.”
Smoothing Sam’s unruly hair down, “Just you give him a minute,” Missouri reproached. “As the spell progresses it’ll be harder for the herbs to help him.”
Dean didn’t like the sound of that. “But they will keep helping him right?”
Her hand continued to feather through Sam’s hair. Dean was beginning to wonder if she heard him when she said, “For now.”
Apparently deciding there was nothing more to say on the matter, she lowered her hand and grabbing one of the thermoses from her bag made sure she said loud enough for Bobby to hear, “I’ll be inside getting more coffee.”
They were stopped at some back road rest stop five hours into the trip to fill the tank and check out an unsettling noise the Impala had started making about twenty miles back. This was the first time since they started out that Sam had woken up enough to drink anything.
Watching her walk away, Dean felt his brother shift in his arms. “Was she…petting me?”
The corner of his mouth turned up as he looked down. “What can I say, you got that kicked puppy look.” His grin fell. “How you holdin’ up?”
“I’m…” Sam coughed harshly into him, then rasped, “good.”
“Mhmm,” Dean replied sardonically, tilting his head back to see the pale, clammy face. “You look awesome.”
Eyes still closed, Sam grinned. “Jerk.”
“Yeah,” the older man mocked, smiling sweetly, “but I’m your jerk.”
Sam’s laugh turned into another coughing fit. “Yeah, ya are,” he wheezed as soon as he was able. “My big, dopey…”
“Watch it, mini-me.” That earned him an amused huff. Still, a troubled look spread across Dean’s features. He knew Sam had already made up his mind. He wasn’t going to give in, but… “Sam, listen…”
“Dean…” He sounded exasperated and the familiarity of it almost made Dean smile.
“Jus’ hear me out, will ya?” When he received no protests he continued. “I know you’ve decided to fight this thing until the end, but…Sam, if the end comes and it’s either you letting the spell finish or you dying… you let the spell finish.” His tone left little room for argument. “You hear?”
“Dean,” Sam sounded sadder this time as he breathed into his chest.
“It won’t come to that, I know,” Dean said with forced bravado. “But if it does. Sammy,” he again slipped on the nickname, his mask faltering as he looked on towards the horizon. He licked his lips. “Sam, if it does…”
“You boys about done puttin’ your make up on?” Bobby called on his way back to the car, unaware of the weight of their conversation. “We still gotta get under her hood.”
Dean let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding and the small body he held relax minutely. After a moment, Sam coughed weakly into him.
“Just promise me, Sam,” Dean’s voice was rough, pleading now.
Listening to the familiar, thump thump thump, Sam responded with an equally pleading voice. “I can’t.”
Clenching his jaw, Dean nodded, blinking back traitorous tears. It was an answer he expected, but would never be able to accept. Not if it came down to the wire. Not if it meant his brother dying.
Sam squirmed in his hold. “Put me…down,” he said, trying to lift his head. It flopped right back onto Dean. “I can walk,” he insisted, face squished into Dean’s blue jacket.
Still reeling, it took Dean a moment to hear him. Finally blinking down at him, he forced his mask back into place and muttered, “Uh-huh.”
“Courageously…crawl?” Sam mumbled pathetically into him.
“Dude,” heart and throat still constricting, Dean swallowed dryly. “I doubt you could steadily slink at this point.”
Once again the corner of Sam’s mouth turned up and Dean shifted him in his arms, surreptitiously pulling him in closer.
“Where are we?” Sam pivoted his forehead against him, trying to get a look at his surroundings. It was warmer than it had been at Bobby’s and the sun was shining even as it was starting to set.
“Nebraska. We gotta lead.”
“From who?”
From you. Dean wanted to say, but didn’t. He didn’t want to risk Sam trying to remember. He didn’t want to risk Sammy trying to make him forget. “From a reliable source,” he instead replied. Then, “You gotta pee?”
Sam’s head rocked back and forth.
“Alright, well I’m about to burst, so…” He was surprised when a tremor tore through the little body. “Sam?”
“I’ll just…wait here.” But he made no attempt to move from Dean’s arms this time. In fact, he burrowed closer.
At a loss, Dean just stood there…and burrowed back.
~*~*~*~
Hugging her warm and refilled thermos to her, Missouri leaned against the Impala and watched the scene on the hill with an aching heart. Both of Dean’s arms were wrapped wholly, greedily around his brother, his chin on Sam's shoulder. Sam didn't seem to mind. His own face was buried in the crook of Dean’s neck.
It was a candid moment of unguarded need; a rare moment where bravado and pride fell away completely, leaving what was left of a battered and beaten family clinging to each other and whatever else it took to get them through the rest of the day.
She didn’t think she’s ever seen them both so vulnerable before. Not at the same time. Not without one standing guard over the other with a determined, threatening look in his eyes.
A gust of wind cut across the land, rocking the boys. Leaning further into each other, they stood their ground. It was how they had survived every storm they’ve ever weathered. It was how they would survive this one too.
And Missouri was gonna stand guard over the both of them until they were ready to face it again. She had a promise to keep after all.
~*~*~*~
They drove through the night. Sammy seemed to be trying to tuck himself away now, according to Missouri—which made it somewhat less painful for Sam when he was awake. The brief intervals when Sam was awake, however…he was clingy. Not just a hovering ball of nervous energy; clingy as in—pressed into Dean’s side, nearly have a panic attack if separated—clingy.
“It’s Sammy,” Missouri explained as Sam fell back to sleep under Dean’s arm. “Although he’s trying to keep himself in the background, his fears are bubbling to the surface.”
Dean’s brow furrowed. “What fears?”
She looked down at the boy, his inner terror reflecting out from her watering irises. “The fear of dying.” She said it so softly, Dean had to strain to hear her. And then his heart had to strain to comprehend. “He knows that by helping you…he’ll die.”
Bobby glanced at her from the driver’s seat and Dean’s face turned partially confused, partially incredulous as his mind denied what he was hearing. “He’s not gonna die.”
“In a way,” her sober gaze remained on the cuddle bug. “Sammy will.”
At that, something twisted inside Dean. Something painful. Looking down at his brother, he couldn’t imagine a world where Sam lost completely what made him Sammy.
“We’re almost there,” Bobby announced, probably for his own sake as much as it was for theirs.
Dean pulled his brother in closer.
~*~*~*~
Just before dawn, Dean’s eyebrows rose as they pulled alongside a small cottage with wildflowers hugging both sides of a stone path to the door. “Uuh…BobBob? I think you made a wrong turn.”
They turned right on the road after the house and parked along the woods that bordered the property.
It was a straight, short shot that offered them cover of the forest and what remained of the darkness…if they acted fast.
Bobby and Dean immediately started loading an assortment of weapons onto their persons and into a bag. Sammy still hadn’t filled them in on how to kill the thing. They were going in blind. But they were still going in.
“Maybe we can just snake the juice without it noticing and get outta there. Come back and gank it later,” Dean offered.
Bobby’s eyebrows rose as their eyes met. “Think we’ll be that lucky?”
Dean thought for a moment, then gestured at something in the trunk. “Grab me that hand scythe too.”
Missouri came around the back of the car, tugging her shoulder wrap tighter around her. “He’s still sleeping.”
Dean nodded, slapping a clip of consecrated rounds into his 45. “Good. Hopefully we’ll be back before he wakes and makes like the static cling.”
“Remember it’s in the basement and looks like…”
“I know. I know. ‘Night in a bottle’,” Dean shook his head at Sammy’s description. “He was a girl even then.” Lowering the trunk hood, he pushed on it gently until it clicked. “Let’s go.”
As they entered the woods, Missouri called out softly and Dean turned.
“We’ll be waiting,” she said, raising her chin and clasping her hands in front of her. As in, ‘So you get your ass back in one piece, you hear?’
They stood barely twenty feet apart, but within that small distance lay a world of possibilities…that could all go wrong.
And wrong they would go.
Nodding, Dean turned and disappeared into the woods.
~*~*~*~
Getting in proved to be fairly easy. Actually finding the correct elixir among the thousands of glass bottles lining the shelves upon shelves in the basement…not so much.
“I bet it’s a bitch to dust down here,” Dean mused, walking down one of the aisles, looking for ‘night in a bottle’. Bobby quickly took another aisle, the lights from their flashlights bending and warping around the bottles. They had no time to waste. Daylight was breaking—already starting to shine its way through the basement windows and they were losing one of their advantages.
“Missouri didn’t say on what end of the basement it was on? Cause, you know, that would’ve been helpful.” It was surprisingly huge. “Maybe if we…”
Body tensing, Dean stopped in his tracks. Slowly turning around, he brought up his sawed-off. Stance ready for a fight, he scanned the barely lit room with trained eyes. The hair rising on the back of his neck told him there was trouble. Bobby sailing through air along with about a dozen bottles confirmed it. “Son of a…!”
Before Dean could even see something to aim at, he too was flying through the air. Hitting a rack of potions, he fell to the ground, gun sliding across the cement floor.
Whatever the hell this thing was, it was fast. And really, really pissed.
“Not a morning person either, eh?” Dean quipped, struggling to his feet.
There was a flash of darkness in the morning lit room and Dean swung his hand scythe. The creature howled and black tar-like substance sprayed across Dean’s chest, but it wasn’t enough to immobilize it, let alone kill it.
Dean again found himself airborne.
~*~*~*~
He was tired. He was hurting. Bobby hadn’t answered him and he’s tried every damn weapon they brought, but nothing would bring the bastard down. Not a full clip of rounds into the black shrouded mass he assumed was its skull and not a sword straight through its neck. It just seemed to…instantly heal—the gooey substance filling its wounds. It was like trying to gank the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man’s super evil anorexic twin with a butter knife.
What Dean wouldn’t give for a proton pack.
His vision swam as he looked up at the creature after being thrown for a second time into the wall. Wheezing, “You’re…really starting to piss…me off. You know that?”
A low, almost growling chuckle was the first sound the creature made. It slowly walked/floated towards the injured man. Dean tried to push himself up, but his ribs protested. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to be thrown this time. The Vetus was done playing with its food. “Sorry to disappoint you, fugly,” Dean breathed heavily, snarling defiantly, blood dripping from his brow and into his eye. “But my soul is already promised to sizzle on another hot platter.”
Grimacing, Dean pushed himself back as far as he could as a long, oily finger reached for him. “And these guys?” he panted. “I doubt they’re fans of double dipping.” At that he pulled the knife from his boot and thrust it up into the creature’s abdomen. He didn’t expect to incapacitate it…just buy him a second or two.
It wasn’t long enough.
Pain exploded in his chest and he screamed. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe as black boiling agony slithered through his body swallowing him from the inside-out. His world was quickly graying into nothingness, into hopelessness. Sam was his only thought as…
It was faint. So faint. On the edge of consciousness and through the haze of pain he heard something. It seemed forever away, but it was gaining strength and closing distance. And just as abruptly as it had started, the pain stopped. Collapsing back, gasping for breath, Dean opened his eyes in time to see something shatter at the feet of the creature. A child’s voice rose high in the air with a man’s determination in a language Dean recognized, but whose words he couldn’t decipher. The creature howled in anger…then melted like the wicked witch of the freakin’ west right before Dean’s wide eyes.
Looking up from the billowing pile of hissing tar and ancient fabric, Dean’s eyes met Sam’s. Jacketless and showing off his “Princess” shirt; he was heaving, swaying and shaking before him. And then he was collapsing.
Ignoring his screaming body, Dean rushed to his brother’s side, catching him in his arms before his body hit the ground. “Sam?” On his knees, he pulled the tiny frame up against him. “Hey, hey…open your eyes. Come on.”
“What happened?” Bobby groaned next to them, sitting up. Missouri helped him stand, her worried eyes never leaving the boys.
“What the hell, Missouri? You were supposed to watch him!” Dean yelled, then turned back to trying to rouse his bite-sized super hero.
“Don’t you use that tone with me, Winchester,” Missouri advised. “Ain’t nothin’ stopping either of you when the other’s in trouble. Besides…” Her tone and eyes soften. “The boy’s small, but he sure is…”
“I know,” Dean stroked his brother’s hair proudly, voice thick. “I know.”
Bobby was looking between the three. “Is someone gonna tell me what the hell is…”
Large steel doors sliding over their exits with a thundering jolt cut him off. “What the…”
Just as suddenly as they were all locked in, Missouri and Bobby were thrown violently to the floor as the building began to shake. Shielding Sam’s body with his own, Dean crawled to the corner away from the crashing bottles.
“It’s a damn trap!” Bobby yelled above the noise.
“Ya think?!” Dean hollered back, then turning to Missouri, who was stumbling around looking for the elixir they came for, “How the hell do we get out?”
Finding it right where Dean had been before they were attacked, she snatched it up and staggered back towards Bobby. The two made it to the cellar door with each other’s help and searched frantically for a latch or anything that would release them from the deathtrap. They found none.
~*~
Tucked into a far corner on the floor, Dean curled even tighter around Sam when a light fixture crashed merely inches from them. “Now would be a good time to tell us how to get outta here, kiddo.”
Pulling away slightly to look at his brother, he was relieved to find him conscious, but…Dean’s bloody brow creased. “Sam?” He smoothed sweaty bangs aside. “Sammy?”
Studying him with a confused, unsure look in his eyes, “I know you,” the boy whispered slowly.
A stab of fear twisted in Dean’s chest and it took him a moment to find his breath, to center himself in a world where his brother didn’t inherently recognize him. “Yeah,” he replied, his words breaking along with everything inside him that made him…him. “You know me.”
~*~
Glass shattered, sending sharp multi-colored shards in every direction, sparks showered their bodies, wood and stone fell in resonating impacts and Bobby was hollering something…but in that moment the brothers heard nothing… knew of nothing but each other.
Sam blinked. Sluggish, but determined, he slowly looked down at what was digging into his palm, at what he held so tightly. His little fingers uncurled and he knew instantly and said undoubtedly, “You got me.”
A hand immediately wrapped firmly around his and the amulet. Fierce green eyes bright with tears and conviction pierced his. “I got you.”
“Dean!” Bobby’s cries finally punctured their world as a beam from the ceiling crashed next to them.
Sam in his arms, Dean stumbled towards the older man. He was lunging for the now open cellar door…when the ceiling caved in.
Chapter Eleven
