Chapter 10: Sam Finds the Missing Page

When Dean returned from the men’s room yawning and scrubbing a hand over his face, Sam was digging in the crates of books and files in the back seat. He piled a few in his arms, cursed when one slipped out, and stacked a few on the top of the car as he bent to gather up the loose papers strewn in the footwell.

He froze when he found a sketch, the left edge ragged where it had been torn out of a book, and stained with a thin line of rusty brown. D. W. was pencilled in at the bottom.

It was a sketch of Sam. Sam, shirtless, leaning up on one elbow and smiling. Dean had gotten their father’s eye for detail, and it showed in the way he’d carefully rendered the snarls of Sam’s bedhead and the sinuous lines of his muscles. A sheet was draped over Sam’s hips, barely hinted at with light lines, and there was no background, only Sam.

His dream of earlier hit him full force, and more came to him, memory strong enough that it felt like one of his visions.

“What, am I one of your French girls?” Sam asked. His body was tired and sweaty and sweetly sore.

“Shut up and be still,” Dean said, grinning at him.

Just as he had been then, Sam was still. He stood, mouth half open, frozen in place.

"There's construction on the interstate," said Dean, folding a map and stuffing it in the glove compartment, "Faster to take the county roads til we hit Saint Louis. Need a hand back there?"

“No, I’ve got it,” Sam said quickly, slipping all the loose sheets into a book along with the sketch. He climbed into the passenger seat beside Dean, and then they were on their way.

There was something about county roads that Sam loved. The narrow blacktop and the way that the Impala seemed to take up the whole width of the road, as if it had been made for her and only her. The way that the sun flickered through the trees in quick dazzles of light. He watched out the window for a while as they took a heavily tree-lined road, smelling dust and pollen and earth.

Then he turned to his books. The sketch, the dream, they stayed at the back of his mind, but he kept them firmly there, locked away as he pored over pages. He found another mention of the woman, one that brought up a memory of standing on a seaswept outcropping of rock, the sky dark and heavy with unshed rain, Dean a warm and steady presence at his back. His bedrock, always.

Words swam up beneath his tongue. They were beginning to come to him in full passages, as if it were some language in which he’d once been fluent, and was now beginning to pick up again after years of disuse.

Dean turned down the music. “Anything in there that’ll stop a priestess?”

Sam looked up, and Dean continued, “You were talking in your sleep.”

“Oh,” Sam said, and his eyes went unfocused. The priestess. Memories and intuition wove themselves together, and he spoke slowly. “Whatever they did to me at Fort Cloud… I’m the weapon. I’m the one who has to stop her.”

He watched the trees go by for a few seconds, fingers tracing the binding of the book in his lap. “But not alone,” he said. “I need you with me, you’re a part of it. You keep me… balanced. That’s not the right word. Human, maybe. The things I have to do kind of... tear me apart.”

"I ain't going anywhere," said Dean, one side of his mouth lifting into a smile, "Who else would sit in a car with me doing...this?"

He popped in a tape and did a crude impression of Mick Jagger as Honky Tonk Woman pulsed through the speakers, pooching his lips and gyrating his head to the beat. Shouting over the refrain, Dean said, "We stop for a room tonight, I'm gonna load up on ammo. We're lucky we can put on the hurt without you going atomic."

They checked in near the Pennsylvania state line, and Dean sank onto his bed and pulled off his boots and lifted two beers from a brown paper bag. He hadn't had a dirty thought all day, and felt the worst was past.

Sam sat on the bed opposite him, placed a book on the blanket beside him, and accepted a beer. After a swallow, he dangled it between his legs and stared at Dean for a few long seconds, his expression serious.

“Dean,” he said, his voice quiet.

Taking this for battle nerves, Dean asked, "What's on your mind?"

The sketch tucked away in the book seemed to burn beside Sam. He stared at Dean, taking in the easy confidence and sincerity in his face. Always there for Sam.

Sam took a deep breath and decided that now was not the time to open a chapter that perhaps neither of them could handle. He took a swallow of beer.

“I’m starting to feel strange,” Sam said. “Like the magic is coming back, like it’s in me. You know that other language? Well, I caught myself thinking in it earlier, came to me just as easy as English.”

Dean listened, watching beer foam over the lip of Sam's bottle and spill down his hand. Sam needed a haircut. And how old was that flannel shirt he had on?

"Well that's good. That's great even. It means you can control it, right?" said Dean, unsure, "What kind of things do you remember?"

Taking Sam's wrist in his hand, Dean began pulling stray threads from Sam’s sleeve.

Sam watched this idly. “Yeah, I hope it means I can control it.” Dean turned his wrist over, worrying at a long thread. “I remember… a lot of it’s mixed up. I killed a monster the size of a house just by squeezing my hand into a fist. If I tried hard, I could kill a person with one word. Not even said out loud, just in my head. And the way I used to burn hot when I was hopped up on demon blood… it’s different, with this kind of power. I burned cold. I’m already starting to feel the power in me, it’s like this throbbing, tidal thing, and I’m already getting cold all the time.”

He took a drink of his beer, and it was a frozen bullet sliding down his throat. He shivered and placed the bottle on the floor. Dean’s hand was warm on his skin. “I dream a lot about water. Being on the coast, being on the beach. Being pulled under by the priestess. I can’t tell if that happened, or if it’s going to, or what.”

Dean had gone still, thumb running up and down Sam's vein, but he caught himself and placed both hands flat on the bed. "I could run you a bath or...I don't really need the extra blankets, or..." His gut tightened, desperate to keep his hands at his sides. "I could find you a girl."

Sam laughed. “Thanks, but I’ll pass,” he said. “And water doesn’t really sound all that welcoming right now, either. I think I will take you up on an extra blanket tonight, if you don’t need it.” He knew with a guilty pang that Dean would give it to him even if he did need it, would probably insist on giving Sam all his covers, because Dean was Dean and Sam was Sam. And Sam always came first, whether he wanted to or not.

Not wanting to sleep in his jacket, Dean pushed their beds together, all of the blankets on Sam with the spare coverlet shared between them while the TV glowed across the room. Batman punched the Penguin, WHAM, KAPOW, ZOWIE, and Dean sat against the headboard, alternately drinking his beer and experimenting with the worm in the jar.

"Check this out Sammy."

Taking out his walkman, Dean slapped a pair of headphones on either side of the jar and pressed play. The worm gave a little flick, then settled. Dean pressed stop. "Yeah yeah, Steely Dan is an acquired taste."

He tried a second tape, and the worm hunched into a ball. Dean's eyes narrowed. "So you don't like Queen. Huh. How about..."

He popped in a third tape. Pressed play. A high, nearly inaudible hum came from within the jar. The worm appeared to look around for the source of the music, its head swelling, and with a pop painted the inside of the jar in a collage of fine blue viscera. Dean pumped his fist in the air. "HA! I knew it!"

Sam grinned and scooted closer, dragging the blankets with him, to better examine the remains of the worm in the jar. “Too bad the Men of letters didn’t have Walkmans… what’d you play it, anyway?”

Sam's body was very close, but Dean was too eager about his experiment to be alarmed. "Blue Oyster Cult. I was trying to think what could disrupt Mermaid Radio, confuse the signal, ya know? And if any band is gonna sneak cosmic subliminal messaging in their music..." he twisted one of the headphones around and pressed it to Sam's ear, "Dude, guitar solo."

They lay on the pillow, heads touching, finishing the On Your Feet or On Your Knees tour album and then Don't Fear the Reaper and then Dean insisted they listen through the live version of Veteran of the Psychic Wars for the, as he put it, 'sweet ass riffs'. "I'll hook up a loudspeaker system to the car tomorrow. If we can broadcast this riding through Arkham, maybe we won't need so many bullets."

Chapter 11: In Bed Awake

Dean’s thumb tapped to the walkman, wishing he could have Sam’s hand back in his, tracing the lines, the old scars.

“Good idea,” Sam said. “You know… it kind of helps me, too. I mean, I don’t know if that’s a good thing---I think I need to try to remember all I can before we get there---but while it’s playing, the words in my head are kind of… muted.”

But then the music had ended, and the language was back even stronger than before, a constant stream of alien syllables in the back of his mind. He shivered, more cold creeping in, and wished not for the first time that he’d put on an extra pair of socks.

“I think anything that’ll let us kill less innocent people is worth it,” he said. He shivered again, rubbing his feet together under the blankets. “Jesus, it’s cold. I’ll probably get used to it---I mean, in those memories I had, I wasn’t freezing like this---but damn, it sucks right now. Can the heat go any higher?”

On the TV, the Joker slipped on his own banana peel and sailed headlong into a brick wall. It was a Batman marathon that weekend as it turned out. Just like old times, the two of them up all night in their pillow fortress mining the Lucky Charms for marshmallows. Dean pulled back the blankets. "C'mere," he said, patting his chest, "No point in you getting sick."

Sam hesitated for only a second, then he slid over the hard ridge between their mattresses and let Dean pull him in close.

A shocking sense memory hit him then. His palms tingled as he remembered the feel of Dean’s bare, muscular thighs under his hands. He shook with it, wanting Dean badly. This wasn’t a new thing; he’d become used to it over the years, used to pushing it down and burying it, but this time it was with a ferocity that scared him.

He’d had Dean. In that history-that-was, he’d had Dean, they’d been together, and that meant that Dean had allowed it. Might allow it again. Might even… might even want it. Heat pooled inside him just as Dean’s body-heat penetrated his oversized hoodie and sank into his side.

With difficulty, he buried those feelings again, compartmentalized them and locked them away, because Dean was offering him comfort when he needed it, and Sam felt sick that this comforting touch and warmth set off such a wrong, such a twisted reaction.

Taking a deep breath, we’re brothers, he’s my brother, Sam relaxed and settled into Dean’s side, burrowing his cold nose into the crook of Dean’s neck where it instantly warmed. He wrapped an arm around Dean’s waist, greedy for his heat, and he felt some of the chill seep out of his bones.

“Thanks,” he said, barely audible over the TV. “You’re warm.”

Dean smiled at this, taking another sip of his beer. Content to be Sam's teddy bear.

And then something caught his eye. The framed art behind the TV was vibrating, followed by a loud smack on the other side of the wall that nearly made it jump off the nail. Dread coiled in Dean's gut.

"Holy heartbreak, Batman!" yelled Robin in the TV, as another smack sounded, "We're trapped!"

Whoever was in the next room was trying to be discreet, but their headboard was too close to the wall and bounced every time they moved. The noise came faster, harder, the picture frame clapping in time, while Batman searched the corners of the TV screen for a way out. The beer was gone. A flush had crept up Dean's face, and he prayed Sam's knee wouldn't collide with the crime scene in his boxers.

The noise was a familiar one to Sam, having heard it in countless cheap motels since he was a kid, and he tuned it out just like he tuned out the noise from the television. Just background noise, nothing to concern him. He found himself drowsing against Dean, the blankets and Dean’s body finally beginning to warm him. He draped a leg over one of Dean’s, pressing closer.

This is how Dean had gotten him through colds and flus when he was young; he remembered being seven years old and snuggled up next to his brother, leeching the warmth from him to combat the chills from his fever. He felt familiar and safe, half in dream, half in memory, and he sighed against the side of Dean’s neck.

The Joker frowned comically. "Ooo Bats. I go to all this trouble, and you didn't make me laugh once." It cut to a commercial, and, mercifully, the couple next door stopped.

Dean stabbed the air with the remote. The room went black, the street lamp casting a ribbon of light across the bed. "Get some rest Sammy," he whispered, resting his hand on the back of Sam's head, idly twisting a lock of hair until he fell asleep, "You got a big day tomorrow."

Chapter 12: Battle Nerves in a Hotel Bed

It didn't feel like a dream. It was too dark to see the ground, but Dean knew he'd been here before. The church loomed, three stories high with a barbed wire fence and doors with metal spikes on the front. He didn't want to go inside. He didn't want to watch it happen again.

He looked around. A crowd had gathered behind him, pale, large-eyed children whose mouths stretched so wide when they smiled that the tops of their heads fell back as if they had been unzipped. They moved forward, and he had no choice but to enter.

Why did the altar need chains? That was different. The dark-haired woman was sitting on someone's back, her voice a high drone like a wasp circling the room.

The look in Sam's eyes was the worst. His fear. His helplessness as the fish children held a goblet under the edge of the altar and the woman grabbed a handful of Sam's hair and and slid the box cutter across his throat. It was an expert cut. Two dark jets of blood poured into the goblet, while everything else that was Sam---his first day at school, his first hunt, looking over the birthday candles at Dean before making a wish---drained onto the floor.

"Sammy!"

He was back in the hotel. The bed was squeaking, and it took Dean a second to realize why because he had Sam wrapped so tightly in his arms and he was rocking back and forth and sobbing hard toddler tears in Sam's neck.

Sam’s arms were wrapped just as tightly around him, strong arms squeezing him so hard it hurt. They were chest to chest, legs tangled together and cocooned in all the blankets.

“Dean, it’s okay,” Sam said. He felt Dean’s fingertips dig into his back, and he loosened his hold just enough to reach one hand up, to cradle the nape of Dean’s neck, to smooth down the short hair at the back of his head. “It’s okay Dean, you’re awake now, it’s okay,” he repeated.

Dean choked, taking a shaky breath and whispering, "I lost you. She cut you and poured your soul out on the floor and I was never gonna see you again. I was never..."

Dean was breathing fast against Sam's throat now, marshalling his thoughts. Had it been a memory? Or a vision? He pressed his mouth to Sam's forehead, keeping it there, wishing he could stay in the hotel forever and let Arkham self-destruct. His hands found Sam's face, thumbs in the soft flesh beneath his jaw.

"I don't want to go tomorrow," he whispered, mouth ghosting over Sam's closed eye, "She's waiting for you."

Dean’s panic was contagious, and it had Sam’s heart beating hard as Dean pressed their faces together. Sam felt Dean’s lips whisper across his eyelashes when he blinked. He gripped one of Dean’s wrists, pressing Dean’s hand harder against his face, and squeezed gently, strong pulse racing under his thumb.

I don’t want to go either, the small, scared, selfish voice inside of Sam said, I wanna stay here with you and watch Batman and order pizza and forget the world outside and the horrors in my mind, and hold onto you and never ever let go, but couldn’t say aloud. Dean was never this vulnerable, but when it happened, it was Sam’s turn to take care of Dean.

Which meant being strong for both of them.

“We know she’s waiting for me. That’s why we have to go, Dean,” he said, speaking quickly. “But you’ll see me again, she doesn’t want to kill me. Doesn’t want to kill me. She wants me for something else, but she can’t have me. Because---”

Sam stroked his hand up and down Dean’s back, feeling the fine tremor in his brother’s muscles. He turned his face so that their cheeks brushed, stubble stinging his cheekbone and Dean’s lips sliding down his skin. “We’re going to beat her, Dean. I can feel it. I can feel it in me, and I’ve got you, and there’s nothing in this world that we can’t do if we’re together.” Sam swallowed and squeezed Dean tight, ribs crushed together, and spoke against his cheek. “You’re not gonna lose me. I promise.”

Dean turned away and covered his eyes. "Damn I thought this job, that watching out for you, was easy. I mean,” he gave a bitter laugh, “Look at the things you've done! It's like the stuff of myth.”

Dean studied the inside of his hands. “And you know, that gave me hope for a while, because it meant I didn't have to be the hero this time. You're the hero Sammy. I'm just the driver. It was my job to get you where needed to be, and up til now I thought I was taking you to better things," he said, fresh tears sliding down his face, "But instead I'm gonna put you in that car tomorrow and find this awful place where they will butcher you in front of me."

Hot, exasperated anger welled up in Sam, and it was his turn to grip Dean by the face.

“Do you really think that? Do you really think so little of yourself?” Sam tilted Dean’s head toward him, staring into Dean’s streaming eyes. “You’re not my damn chauffeur! Look at what you’ve done. You’ve saved more people than anyone will ever know. You killed Azazel. You got my soul back. You helped stop the Apocalypse that I started. And that’s just the beginning of it! Every time I fuck up, you’re there to pull me out of the fire and fix it.”

Now Sam swiped tenderly at Dean’s cheeks with his thumbs, smearing the trails of his tears into his skin, his voice softening, growing plaintive. “Dean, you were my hero growing up. Not Dad, not Bobby, not Superman or Batman or anybody else, you. And you know what? You still are.”

Hero. Coming from Sam the word sounded thin to Dean, conjuring breakfast tables with little Sammy and his toy soldiers, plastic, neutered, bloodless. His whole life measured by a child's narrow definition of a protector.

"Is that all I am?"

The question hung in the air. Dean held his breath, eyes as hollow as a lovesick dog waiting for the first kick.

"Dean!" Sam said, his voice thick with emotion, trying to rein in his frustration at Dean's self-deprecation. The look of pain in Dean's eyes turned him raw and desperate. He found himself babbling. "Of course not! You're a freaking genius, you're the best man I’ve ever known, you're strong and capable and better than anyone at reading a situation. You are good and selfless and..."

Sam took a deep breath. He closed his eyes and touched their foreheads together, unable to look at Dean's face any longer. "It kills me that you can't see yourself the way I do. I wish you could just... understand, Dean, you're so much better than you think you are."

"Please, Dean." Sam pressed their foreheads together harder, as if he could transfer his own image of Dean directly into Dean's brain. "Please understand. I'm not just your kid brother talking. I've been with you all these years, I've seen you become great. Legendary. You think I'm so good, so strong, but Dean, that’s you. I need you to believe me," he said, with such pained love in his voice that it came out cracked.

Dean sat up and turned on the bedside lamp, shielding his eyes with one hand. "Don't kid yourself Sammy, we're still walking into a meat grinder blind and all the good intentions in the world won't make any difference," he said, pulling aside the blankets and pacing the room, "If I have to bury you tomorrow."

He swatted Sam's book off the table for emphasis, watched it sail across the room and hit the wall and fall open to a loose leaf of paper. Dean's eyes unfocused.

"What's that?"

Sam's internal whiplash was so severe that he was still sitting up when the book hit the wall. Then there was the sketch in plain sight, and his mouth gaped open, trying to form words. Cold panic made his face go numb.

"I found it... I found it in one of the books," he said quietly.

Dean bent to pick it up, noting his initials in the corners, searching his memory for the day attached to it. Nothing. It might as well been drawn by someone else. It might as well been a different Sam in the picture.

How long had Sam known? And even if he'd known years back after the re-start, would Sam have ever acted on it? No, Dean decided, lightning did not strike twice. Not in this lifetime. They had been different people back then. He was lucky to have Sam still alive, and if he was very, very lucky, the day in this picture would be waiting for him after he died. That had to be enough.

He snatched up his jacket. "Be right back."

Dean opened and shut the door, and outside the curtained window Sam heard the unmistakable click of a cigarette lighter.

Sam sat very still, trying to feel nothing at all. Of course Dean would burn it. Of course he’d want to destroy the evidence of what they’d done. He didn’t know why he’d kept it anyway, hadn’t thrown it away at that rest stop, except that he did know.

Their memories were scrambled messes, and they could be certain of nothing. Except for that; that scrap of paper had told him that once, he and Dean had been together, and if they had been then, they could be again. It was hope against desperate hope. And Dean had burned it.

He debated going outside, but he didn’t know what he’d say. There was nothing to say.

So instead he straightened the blankets from the tangle they’d become in slow, precise movements and huddled up in them.

Dean walked back inside, and Sam looked up at him, and all he could say was, “Dean.” The only word in his current vocabulary that wasn’t twisted and warped and slinking through his mind.

He'd forgotten how fast Dean moved. Two hard steps and his weight shifted the bed, a hand shaped to the back of Sam’s head, lifting him until his mouth pressed to Dean's in a slow inhalation of sweat and gunpowder and ashes with Dean's other hand clutching the headboard.

Dean came up for air. He reached over and turned off the lamp and a flame clicked to life in his right hand, casting his body into half-shadow. Locked eyes with Sam.

"Take off your clothes."

Part 7