Chapter Text
Three days ago, it snowed for the first time this year, but it all melted again before the temperatures dropped well below zero yesterday. Mel likes the snow, but she doesn’t like the cold, and she doesn’t like the two guys that enter her diner in a gust of cold air, since they are of the inconsiderate kind that so annoys her in winter. They stand inside the opening and look around as people sometimes do when they aren’t quite sure if this is really the place they want to be, and in the process they let out all the warmth that the tiny heater and a few dozen guests needed all day to accumulate. Without a single thought for the dropping level of cosiness inside they stick their heads together and exchange some quiet comments, the taller one sounding sceptical, though Mel can’t make out what exactly he’s saying. Probably the décor isn’t to her linking, she thinks sourly, or the menu, or whatever else it is they need to have a discussion about in the open door in the middle of November. At least they manage to step in before she has to glare them into submission, but her opinion of them is ruined from the beginning.
Still she forces a smile onto her face when she goes to their table despite the lingering cold that’ll need at least half an hour to disappear, because smiling at the customer is part of the fucking job description. They ask her to come back later because they haven’t decided what to eat yet, which, okay, she didn’t really give them time for, but it still pisses her off. They’re good looking, the two of them, she has to give them that, but being good looking is not an excuse for being assholes simply by existing.
Which is what they are. It’s not like they have done anything to her, as such. They just kind of rub her in the wrong way. The tall one gives her an apologetic smile, though, and looks somewhat embarrassed for no damn reason, so Mel is a little more willing to forgive him for his presence.
What points that smile bought them are lost when the other one calls her over, flashes her a smile that says he’s convinced every girl in the world is straight and into him in particular and tells her that he would like the chicken burger and the fries, but without any salt, please.
“Without salt,” she repeats. “Fries.”
“Yes. I’m allergic.”
“Allergic to salt.”
“He actually is,” the other one confirms. “It’s rare but it happens. Believe me, you don’t want to see what happens when he even touches the stuff. It’s important that there is no salt anywhere on his food. I’ll have the salad, please.”
“He’s allergic to meat,” the short one helpfully provides and gins, even as Mel can tell he’s being kicked under the table. She rolls her eyes as she walks to the kitchen to tell the cook that he needs to make a burger and fries without salt because otherwise their guest will die and he will sue their asses when he’s dead.
She’s pretty sure they made that up just to annoy her.
The cook gives her a confused look at her obvious bad mood but she just shrugs at him. She can’t even explain why she has such a problem with those two guys. One of them seems a little cocky but charming enough, the other is kind of sweet with his obvious embarrassment about his companion, who, judging by their behaviour, can only be his brother, or at least a cousin. But something about them irritates her for no reason she could explain. She wants them gone and can’t even tell why.
It feels like the instinct that sometimes tells her that someone is following her in the dark. And just like that instinct, it’s (probably) bullshit. It’s just, they give her chills, and not just because of the cold air they dragged in.
Regardless, she brings them their food with a smile and they both smile back, one with self-confidence and one still looking uncomfortable and strangely guilty.
They probably murdered someone on their way here and now he feels bad for the police force that will soon shatter the door and scare off the other guests. But then, if they had murdered someone, he probably wouldn’t feel bad about the door.
Still. They are talking all through their meal and they keep their voices down almost to a whisper all the time as if it was top secret and no one could be allowed to hear a word of it. As if anyone would care.
Really, don’t they know that whispering is the best way to make everyone want to listen? Mel finds herself trying despite herself, but the only thing she can make out is the short one (well, shorter than the other one, anyway, which really isn’t hard) complaining about how bland the fries taste without salt.
So much for that.
The taller one seems to be pissed about something. He’s glaring and hissing a lot and looking around all the time for no goddamn reason. It makes her nervous, even though his companion doesn’t seem to be concerned about anything but the food on his plate. Maybe Mel feels so uncomfortable around them because things are tense between the two of them and she picked it up. They certainly seem to be at odds about something, what with all the hissing and glaring. Either way, she’ll be glad when they finally leave.
Except she isn’t. Because she takes care of another table and when she turns around they are gone, empty plate and half-eaten salad bowl sitting before empty chairs. She didn’t notice them go. And of course, they didn’t pay.
At least now she knows what the tall one felt so guilty about, she thinks sourly when she moves to clean up the table.
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Sam died on a Sunday. It was a shitty day, cold and rainy, with wind that made sure the rain got into everything, and there were puddles of freezing water everywhere, just waiting to be stepped on. At least, that was what Dean imagined the day to be. He could imagine anything he wanted because their cell had no window and maybe wasn’t even on Earth. He imagined it was a day like that because he hated days like that, and he decided that it was a Sunday because Sunday was the worst day of the week. For most people it was Monday, but a hunter never had the weekends off and Sundays sucked because all the useful places tended to be closed.
Though in all honesty, Dean couldn’t have cared less what day it was when he took the old, worn hunting knife and stabbed it through his brother’s heart.
There really was no weather and no day of the week that was appropriate for the final act of giving up hope.
There were no words to describe the moment afterwards; after Sam had fallen still for the first time in months or years or forever, when Dean didn’t know if he was relieved or happy or hating himself more than he ever did before. He felt the loss, though, that much needed no interpretation, even though there had been little left to lose.
There was nothing inside him, underlined with empty rage and burning hatred, and finally, clear and defined, determination and defiance when Castiel appeared in the door and their eyes met for just one second before Dean lifted the murder weapon and slit his own throat.
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“Don’t be a bitch, Sammy,” Dean says, his fingers drumming on the wheel of a stolen car in the rhythm of something by Metallica, as if the radio of this old thing was actually working. “It wasn’t even ten dollars.”
“It’s the principle of the matter.”
“Yeah, well, on principle, I’d say the world fucking owes us. It owes us a lot more than a crappy meal in a diner. How often did we save basically everyone? Did we get paid for it? No. The world will hardly profit from her saviours starving, so I’d say it’s only fair.”
“You’re not starving, Dean. I’m not starving.”
“So what? I wanted to eat. You didn’t bitch about it when we took the car, and that’s worth a lot more.”
“Yeah, but the car we need.”
Dean rolls his eyes. “And I needed food, for the happiness of my soul,” he says and starts humming to signal the end of the discussion, since there is no music to turn up. Sam accepts it, but he’s still looking pissed and probably won’t talk to Dean for the rest of the drive. It’s nice to know that some things don’t change.
Or rather, that they are back to the way they are supposed to be.
It begins to snow a couple of minutes later, the weather soon getting so bad that Dean is forced to slow down, even though an accident would be the least of their worries. He is, in fact, not quite sure what their worries are at this point, but he knows that as soon as they reached Bobby’s place, their old friend is going to give them plenty to worry about.
“Maybe we should call ahead,” Sam mutters after an hour or so. Dean glances over and sees the traces of his breath on the window he’s leaning against. It’s almost dark though it’s not that late yet.
“What for? It’s not like he’s going to shoot us if we appear unannounced.”
But that’s exactly what might happen. Getting shot would be even more likely if they warned Bobby, though. Which is exactly what Sam means: They should give the old man a chance to make up his mind on the whole shooting thing.
The tension between them isn’t just caused by Dean’s decision to dodge the bill in the diner. They don’t know what’s going to happen now. They don’t know anything.
Things could go downhill, without warning, very quickly. Things might already be going downhill and they just don’t know it yet.
It feels like a storm is following them, just beyond the horizon where they can’t see it.
“You think Bobby saved my car?” The thought comes over Dean suddenly and it’s kind of funny that it took him so long to think of this. His baby is his one and only and should have been the first thing on his mind when they got back. Feels like he’s fucking betraying her by not being worried sooner, and he’s overcome by horrible visions of her on some salvage yard that is not Bobby’s, waiting to be disassembled because Dean is the only one who loves her enough to go though all the trouble that’s fixing her.
Beside him, Sam shifts, trying to get comfortable on the unfamiliar seat. (Dean’s first thought upon coming back was Sam in his arms, Sam recognizing him, Sam recognizing reality, Sam being all the way with him and smiling and wide eyed and amazed and frightened, looking more alive than in forever and Sam Sam Sam. It’s no competition.) “I’m sure he got her home, if he could.”
And there’s that. That other reason why they did not call Bobby. They don’t know what became of him. Cas took Dean and Sam away to whatever place it was where he let them rot, but Bobby was not with them because Cas did not care about Bobby as much. So either he just left him behind, or he splattered him across the walls like he did Raphael. It’s not a possibility they have been willing to face yet.
Night is falling and the fading light adds to the air of approaching doom Dean hasn’t been able to shake off all day. Perhaps it just comes with their situation, this nervousness. Sam shifts again, looks out of the window, and doesn’t speak. Dean can’t stop glancing at him out of the corner of his eyes, taking in the sight of his little brother sitting in this car and watching the world go by, the way he did from the passenger seat of the Impala all his life. He can’t get enough of that. For far too long he thought he’d never see this again.
He did the right thing. No matter how strong the feeling if impending doom is getting, he will never doubt that he did the right thing. How could it have been wrong if it’s given him this?
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They arrive at the salvage yard a day later, just before sunset, in the bleak twilight of another winter day. The night they spend in a motel, using a stolen credit card. They checked in and then sat on the beds, facing each other without speaking. Neither of them tired, neither of them knowing why they were even there, just going through the motions. They left at dawn.
The ground of the Singer Salvage Yard is damp with half-molten snow, the gravel half-frozen. The Impala is the first thing Dean sees when he stops the stolen car. It’s standing closest to the house, the roof crushed, no work done yet. Waiting for him.
Bobby’s nowhere to be seen and they can’t knock on his door. There’s light in the window, though, so he’s home, alive and home. Probably looking out of the window at the unfamiliar car with a shotgun on standby. Dean smiles at the thought, but Sam frowns and looks tense.
There’s no other way but to show themselves, so they do. They leave the car at the same time and remain standing beside it, in full sight, waiting. Not getting closer to the house they can’t enter.
Bobby needs all of twenty seconds before he opens the door and comes out to them, the old wooden steps creaking beneath his weight. He’s having the “Thank God you’re alive!” expression on his face that Dean and Sam both have seen far too often in their lives and Dean finds himself grinning at him, suddenly happy, as if everything was going to be okay.
But Bobby slows down before he reaches them and something is lost from the expression on his face. He still comes closer, though, because even Sam is smiling at him and no one, not even a seasoned hunter, can keep up doubt when Sam Winchester is smiling.
“I’m damn glad to see you, boys,” Bobby says. This is the right moment for a hug so Dean steps over to wrap his arms around the older man. “Me too,” he assures him, and pretends not to notice Bobby flinching the moment he touches him.
“So, uhm,” Sam begins. He comes over to their side of the car just when Dean and Bobby part, and Bobby moves away a little too quickly and makes no move to hug Sam as well. “How long have we been gone?”
Bobby eyes him strangely. “You don’t know?”
“Time felt strange there,” Dean answers before Sam can say ‘No, I lost track of time because I was insane and every day was a hundred years in Hell and every gentle touch cut me like a knife and everyone was Lucifer about to rape me’. Which he probably wouldn’t have said anyway, but Dean’s not taking the risk of him even thinking about it. “I don’t know where Cas took us, but I don’t think it was here. Heaven, maybe. Though it certainly didn’t feature paradise.”
“When did you get back?”
It’s damn hard to tell. “Couple of days ago?”
“And you didn’t think to watch the news? Listen to the radio? They do say the date every now and then.”
The radio of the car is a piece of shit that’s only spitting white noise and the TV in their motel room was broken. Yeah, how likely is that? Dean doesn’t even try to explain it. “Just give us a date, okay?”
“You’ve been gone for about two months. What, that comes as a surprise to you?” Bobby adds when he sees Dean and Sam exchange a look.
“Like I said, time felt strange. It sure felt a lot longer.”
“Well, you sure don’t look older than you should be.” Bobby’s looking mostly at Sam when he says that. “You’re looking good, boy,” he finally notes. “Much better than the last time I saw you. Cas fix that wall of yours?”
Dean nearly laughs there. But the sound that does escape his throat is something ugly and bitter.
Bobby frowns at him. “I guess not, then.”
“No, but I’m better. I’m fine.” That’s Sam, always trying to put everyone at ease. Dean just hopes he’s right. “I’m dealing, you know. Was rough for a while, but Dean…” He throws a quick glance in Dean’s direction. “Dean found a way to help me.”
Fuck you, Sam. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. (I love you so much.)
“Well, that’s great,” Bobby says and sounds like he actually means it. “Now come in already. I’m freezing my ass off out here.” He turns to get back into his house, and he’s already down the hall when he realises that the brothers are no longer behind him. They remained standing on the porch, before the line of salt. “What’s going on?” he asks, slowly walking back to them, but not all the way, and Dean can hear it in his voice that he suspects the answer even before Sam swallows and says, “This is as far as we can go.”
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It wasn’t the first time Dean had died, far from it. The first time he had nearly died he had the seen the reaper coming for him, and he had seen him turn away and go after someone else. The next time he came close he actually met the reaper and she had tried to teach him something about letting go. The first time he died for real he had only seen hellhounds, and though he knows now that there should be a reaper every time to pick up the soul for its final journey, he hadn’t seen any, then. Not that he remembers. There was pain, and then there was more pain, so much worse pain, and meat hooks and forever and the first dawning understanding of what he had damned himself to, what he was facing. Perhaps reapers didn’t bother with lost souls because there was only one way to go anyway, no option of staying and therefore no reason to waste time on them.
Or he just didn’t remember. He didn’t remember any reaper that other time he died either, when he woke up in Heaven one moment to the next and enjoyed one of the best moments of his youth before all too willingly letting his heart be torn to shreds (because really, it had been so easy to tell himself Sam didn’t love him since that made it so much easier to push him away – but even his self-esteem issues were no excuse for just accepting that apparently none of Sam’s most valued memories included the girl he’d wanted to fucking marry). This time, though, this time everything was as it had been when he had played Death. There was a brief pain, the familiar sensation of dying, and then there was a reaper. Not any reaper either, but Tessa, because apparently even reapers tended to be nostalgic.
She was wearing the face he knew, and she looked at him with such sadness and disappointment in her eyes that Dean felt like falling as she said, “You shouldn’t have done that.”
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Bobby looks heartbroken, but in the end not terribly surprised. He doesn’t shoot them. He breaks the salt line at the entrance and every other door in the house and lets them into his home, these creatures that might destroy him if they wanted, the way he has always let them in. Dean doesn’t know if he trusts them, or if this is a risk he’s willing to take for the sake of getting them back.
“So,” he says, standing in the kitchen while Dean and Sam settle down on the seats they have always chosen, ever since they were kids. Sam at the head of the table and Dean at the side, close enough to reach over to catch him should he fall. (They didn’t sit this close since Sam was five.) “I guess I don’t need to offer you dinner, then.”
“No,” Sam says, and at the same time Dean says, “If you got leftovers, I’ll take them,” making Sam pull a face on him while Bobby frowns. “You know,” Dean explains, “all those ghosts who don’t know they are dead? Who go around as solid as a living being, eating and drinking and sleeping? We’re kinda like that.”
“But you very obviously do know that you are dead,” Bobby observes.
“Yeah. I guess, I don’t know, I guess we just have the advantage of advanced knowledge on everything ghost-y.” Dean shrugs and reaches for a bag of chips on the counter behind him, tears it open and stuffs some into his mouth, to underline his argument. Sam rolls his eyes.
“Right.” The way Bobby stretches the word tells Dean that he’s not impressed with the explanation. “So, how did you end up this way? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see you, but this is not exactly the reunion I was hoping for.”
“I bet,” Dean mutters, and Sam hurries to say, “Cas killed us,” before Dean can explain what really happened. So Dean glares at his brother and Sam glares back and of course Bobby picks up on that because he’s not stupid.
“Did he? Why wait this long?”
“Who knows why he does anything he does? Maybe he just wanted us to bask in his glory.”
“And what kept you here? Something tells me you’re not just waiting to say goodbye.”
“What, you wish we’d rather moved on without ever telling you what happened to us?” Dean tries to keep his tone light. “Because I don’t think Cas would have send you a note.”
Bobby’s expression turns at the same time stern and soft. “You deserve better than this, boys.”
“Well.” Dean shifts uncomfortably. “Apparently, I-”
“We’d’ve gone to Hell,” Sam interrupts him. “Cas is ruling Heaven, do you really think he would have let us in? So since neither of us is all that interested in a repeated performance, we decided to stay here instead.” He looks at Bobby with an open challenge in his eyes, everything about him radiating defensiveness. “Or would you rather have us burn?”
“Of course not,” Bobby snaps. “And as long as you two knuckleheads can keep yourself from going vengeful, you’re welcome to stay here. But I know you, Sam. And the way you’re acting right now tells me there’s something you don’t want me to know.”
Of course he noticed that. It’s Bobby – Bobby knows them. Sam just kind of glares at him, so Bobby looks at Dean for an explanation. And the thing is, Dean wants him to know, wants his guilt to be acknowledged, but he won’t do that right here and now with Sam listening, because Sam doesn’t want Bobby to know and Dean owes him so fucking much.
He makes a vague gesture with his head that he hopes Bobby will interpret correctly as “I’ll tell you when we’re on our own,” even as he realises that the right moment might never come since he doesn’t have any inclination of letting Sam out of his sight anytime soon.
Bobby does give them some food in the end. Dean is the only one who eats, and he happily does so, pretending nothing is wrong. Sam is quiet – he has been quiet ever since, making Dean think that he took this harder than him, or that something is wrong. (He’s almost anxiously sticking to his big brother’s side, though, and Dean can very much live with that.) And Bobby is sitting before his own plate, not touching the food, watching them with an unreadable expression on his face. He’s taking this well, all things considered, but in the end he did just learn that his surrogate sons have died, which is an odd experience to make from the point of view of a surrogate son. Makes it hard for Dean to really appreciate what the old hunter is going through right now.
This is a very strange situation.
Eventually, they retreat to their old room upstairs, the one they used as children. Bobby gives them sheets and blankets and they make their beds but neither of them lies down to sleep, even long after Bobby has gone to bed. Once again they sit on their beds, worn and exhausted but not tired, not sure if they could sleep even if they wanted to.
Not wanting to sleep because they might just drift away.
Eventually, in the silvery moonlight falling in through the window, Dean reaches out for his brother. “Come here,” he whispers and Sam comes willingly, letting his brother take him in his arms as they sink down together, curled up and awake for the rest of the night.
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They were still in the room Dean had died in. The cell he had died in. Bare walls, blankets on the floor for a bed, a high, tiny window with fucking bars in it, and outside it was always dark. Just black, like there was nothing. A parody of a prison cell created for their convenience, or a picture drawn by a child with only a vague idea of what a prison cell looked like and very little imagination.
But the door, usually closed unless it was time for their punishment, was open, frozen the moment Dean had ended it, and it was empty because Cas, for all his power, could not reach them here. The light was different, too. It was no longer the dim, yellow light that filled the cell all the time, all the fucking time, making Dean want to rip his skin off. It had been replaced with the colourless kind of twilight he remembered from his second adventure as a ghost, when he and Sam had stripped their bodies in order to save a reaper. The same reaper who was now looking at him with such hard eyes.
But Dean’s own eyes had something much more important to focus on than Tessa: Behind her, looking lost and confused but so fucking aware was Sam, his eyes wide and looking at Dean as if his big brother had all the answers. And Dean just kind of gravitated toward him just like Sam moved for Dean, both of them equally eager to wrap their arms around the other and just hold on. But before they could touch, Tessa put her hand flat against Dean’s chest, stopping him with the efficiency of a wall. At the same time, a hand took hold of Sam’s shoulder and pulled him back, making Sam flinch and Dean struggle to get there and get it off his brother, but Tessa wouldn’t let him go.
Sam looked at Dean in confusion and growing desperation. There was a guy standing behind him: Tall, middle-aged, bearded, black suit and tie. A reaper if Dean had ever seen one. “What the fuck, Tessa?” he snapped at his own reaper. “Let me get to my brother!”
“You can’t get to your brother!” Tessa didn’t exactly snap, but she did sound somewhat like a disappointed mother. Or a heartbroken mother. “You can’t get to your brother ever again.”
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There’s a ghost in the window of a two-storey building to the left. It’s barely visible even on this plane, wouldn’t have any hope of being seen, let alone passing for a real person, in the realm of the living. It hushes away when Dean notices it, as if afraid. Or plotting something. He’ll tell Bobby about it when they get back, have him take care of it before it hurts anyone. Dean wonders if that makes him a hypocrite.
Maybe it’s just lost and needs help moving on. But Dean and Sam are hardly the go-to guys for getting into Heaven.
“I told Bobby.” These are the first words Dean has spoken in ages; they leave his mouth almost unbidden but this is not one of the secrets that have to be carried in silence. Sam doesn’t even stop, doesn’t say anything. He just turns to look at his brother as they walk down the empty road that has no sound, no smell and no wind. Dean looks back and shrugs. “So you can stop with the lying when it comes up.”
“Why did you do that?” To Dean’s relief, Sam doesn’t sound too pissed. Just a little, and a little confused and a little tired. Dean would tell him to take a nap but they don’t technically need sleep anymore and while they never spoke about it, neither of them is entirely sure they wouldn’t drift somewhere else without their consciousness to root them where they are.
“Why not? It’s not a secret worth keeping. Don’t you think he deserves knowing how we ended up like this?”
“I think this is about you trying to punish yourself again,” Sam bluntly tells him. “You don’t want Bobby to see you as anything better than what you are.”
“So you do think that it was a shitty thing to do.”
“No. But I know you think that. And I bet that you told it exactly like that.”
There’s nothing much Dean can reply to that, since Sam got it exactly right. They just know each other too well. “Well, it was a shitty thing to do. You could be-”
“I’m exactly where I want to be,” Sam interrupts him and Dean almost (but not quite) jumps when his brother gabs his hand without warning and holds it tight. “With you.”
For a moment they stand still, looking at each other. Eventually, Dean clears his throat and pulls back his hand. “Didn’t we have a rule against chick-flick moments? That didn’t die with us.”
“You had a rule against chick-flick moments,” Sam points out. “And you sucked at keeping to it.”
They keep on walking. There’s nowhere in particular they are going; they are merely taking a walk. Sam started walking and Dean came along and as they walk, even now, their hands are just barely touching.
It’s not often that they willingly return to this plane. Both Dean and Sam are fully aware that they no longer have a place in the world of the living; they feel like they are working on borrowed time and maybe by slipping down to the plane that is more appropriate for them they feel like giving up the place they have taken for themselves. Like they won’t be let in once they left for a minute.
How should Dean know? It’s not like they ever talked about it and thinking about stuff like that is something he takes great pains to avoid.
The thing is, it feels good being here. Like there’s a tension in him all the fucking time that he doesn’t even notice and now he’s here, where he belongs, he notices its absence. Like he can relax for the first time in ages. He’s pretty sure Sam feels the same way.
And that scares him shitless.
“We should get back up,” he therefore says. Maybe it’s bad, staying here for too long. Maybe at some point they won’t want to get back.
“Up?” Sam frowns at him. “That’ll go over well. There are actually people in this street, Dean.”
Dean calls it “up” because being here reminds him of being underwater, not because it gets him one step closer to his final destination.
“It’s not like we never materialized on some sidewalk before. If there’s one thing I learned, it’s that people ignore what they can’t explain.”
“Or Cas had some in-build perception-filter whenever he flew us somewhere.”
And, yeah, that is something Dean really likes to get nostalgic about, thanks. “We can get back to Bobby’s and pop up in his living room if that makes you feel better.”
“I found us a hunt.”
So there’s something that makes Dean stop in his tracks. “You what?”
“I read the paper, Dean. I recommend that, in general.”
“Sorry, I thought I heard something about a hunt right there. All this being dead and a friggin’ ghost must be interfering with my hearing. Maybe someone in the real world was just throwing salt through me when you opened your mouth.”
Sam rolls his eyes. “We’re not gonna go ghost hunting if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Right. We’re not gonna go hunting at all. Or did it escape you that we are the things hunters hunt?”
“We’re also hunters,” Sam apparently deems necessary to remind him.
“No, Sam. We’re friggin’ ghosts!”
“We know how to handle a job and we know how to pass for living people. And I’m not saying we go out there and mingle with the rest of the hunting community. I’m saying there’s a hunt, a wendigo, in Michigan. And Bobby saw the same article in the same paper, and he’s going to go take care of it because there aren’t many others left he could send, right? And hunting a wenidgo-”
“…is a two-man-job,” Dean finishes for him, biting his lip. “I hate you.”
“No, you don-” This time Sam stops himself, turning around to stare down the road behind them. Dean turns as well, sees nothing.
“What is it?” he asks, alarmed, but Sam shakes his head, turns back around.
“Nothing. I thought I heard something.”
“There’s no ‘I thought’ in our job! It’s usually something out to gank you!”
“There’s nothing, Dean. My imagination. It happens.” Sam seems unwilling to discuss this, but he’s turned around and is heading back to Bobby’s in order to pop out of thin air in the man’s kitchen, so Dean counts that as a win anyway. He’s quite concerned by the way Sam seems so very willing to write this off as his imagination going wild without even considering the possibility that it’s something else.
And by the way his brother is so tense on the way back, as if it cost him a lot of effort not to look over his shoulder.
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They do hunt the wendigo, and it goes well. It goes awesomely. Dean’s always hated hunting wendigos because they are tough sons of bitches: crafty, quick, strong, and equipped with a little too much human intelligence for his liking. It also doesn’t help that they have centuries of experience in hunting and while you try to trap them, they will try to trap you right back if they know you’re coming. In other words, hunting wendigos is fucking dangerous and not something he’d ever have thought he’d enjoy.
‘Enjoy’, of course, is too strong a word. The hunt still made him nervous and tense and a wendigo would not have been his first choice of a sparring partner when getting back in business, but it wasn’t like it could kill them, and that helped a lot. Also, starting with an easy salt-and-burn was out of the question for obvious reasons, and wendigos have the added advantage of being entirely unimpressed by salt, iron, or any other stuff ghosts, on principle, can’t handle.
This time, for maybe the first time ever when facing one of these monsters, the hunters were having a definite advantage. For one, though they can be solid enough if they want to be, they apparently don’t smell – so they didn’t have to wait for the right wind but could go right in. Actually, all they had to do was wait until the wendigo was in his cave, corner it and finish the job.
Naturally, Sam had to hurt himself doing so, which is quite an accomplishment considering he’s dead and all, but maybe also a consequence of that. They didn’t go in as carefully as they would have while alive. Both of them had flare guns, but when they were about to fire, the wendigo jumped forward in a show of fear Dean wasn’t used to from these things. It managed to knock the gun out of his hands and lunged for Sammy, and Sammy should just have flickered out of existence or maybe just become a little less material, but then he wouldn’t have been able to hold the flare gun and shoot and so the monster’s claws went straight through him.
And not through him the way Dean’s arm used to the first time they played ghosts (but strangely doesn’t anymore) but straight through him the way sharp claws run through flesh and muscle. Sam yelled in pain and Dean yelled in fear for Sam and the wendigo screeched because it was busting into flames the same moment Sam’s blood splattered across the wall of the cave.
Okay, so that was the part that hadn’t been fun at all.
Sam had kind of swayed on his feet afterwards and then sunken to his knees in a way much too similar to Cold Oak (and if it’s not redundant to worry about that now, Dean doesn’t know what is) and Dean had run over to him, held him, his hands all over his brother’s body. But there had been no wound, even as Sam winced. All the blood was already gone. “I guess my body simply remembered that it doesn’t exist anymore,” was the explanation Sam later came up with, when they made their way back to the car.
Afterwards they went for burgers and even Sam ate something without bitching. They tried to report back to Bobby from the first public phone they found, but the reception was terrible, only white noise instead of voices. So they gave up and made their way back, taking their time. Bobby wouldn’t worry. And Dean and Sam had all the time in the world.
+|+|+
“I’m sorry,” Tessa said, for the first time with something like regret. “There’s nothing I can do for you.”
Dean was still looking at Sam, held back by the reaper in his back and looking so helpless. “What are you talking about? We’re both dead, right? And we’re soul mates or some such bullshit. We’re meant to be together!”
“You were,” Tessa confirms. “But that only means you get to share a Heaven if you both end up in Heaven. You and Sam are headed in different directions, Dean. You can’t stay together. You won’t be together ever again.”
There’s understanding in Sam’s eyes now, and naked fear. “No!” Dean shouts, throwing himself forward only to be held back with seemingly no effort at all. “He did his time in Hell! He didn’t even deserve to go there in the first place. He never meant to start the apocalypse, and don’t you dare tell me something about good intention paving the road to Hell! Even so, does his sacrifice count for nothing?” Tessa shook her head, opened her mouth, but Dean interrupted her. “Don’t tell me he damned himself with something he did when he was soulless! How can you damn a soul with something that happened when it wasn’t even present?”
“Calm down, Dean,” Tessa snapped with a glare that softened only seconds later into a look of vague sadness and sympathy. “It’s not Sam who’s going to Hell. It’s you.”
+|+|+
They need two days to get back to South Dakota, because while the hunt was in Michigan, it was up in the utmost north corner of Michigan. Actually, Dean’s half-convinced that they crossed the border to Canada at least twice on their way to the wendigo’s cave. And there are only back roads in the area, curvy and steep. No chance to drive very fast. So they take their time, make a few stops. They are both in good spirits and Sam’s laugh sounds so wonderful Dean wants to kiss him. His smile is so bright it nearly blinds his brother to the dark circles under his eyes.
Dean is so used to seeing them. He only needs to close his eyes to see Sammy’s face, pale and gaunt, his eyes red-rimmed and focused on something Dean can’t see. Never on him. Never closing in sleep. Sam went so long without finding any kind of rest in his final months that Dean is convinced Cas kept him alive with his new God-powers. The human body isn’t meant to survive sleep deprivation of that magnitude.
He’s starting to look like that again, and at some point Dean can no longer ignore that. It confuses him, though. They don’t need sleep anymore. Sam shouldn’t be tired.
But Sam’s also in a good mood, as if the hunt changed something, and Dean doesn’t want to worry. He just wants to enjoy this. They take detours on the way back, to enjoy the scenery. They hit a bar filled with cigarette smoke and a barkeeper who keeps cursing as he hits the small television under the ceiling that refuses to show more than wildly flickering images. Dean hustles pool just for the heck of it, and the guys he plays against kind of despise him despite his charming attitude, so they are extra willing to hand him his ass. They are also extra pissed when they lose but surprisingly enough don’t make a scene but just fuck off. Sam watches from the table, nursing a beer but hardly drinking any of it. After the game, Dean sits with him, kicking him under the table. “You drink like a pussy,” he scolds. “You’re making me look bad just by being associated with you.”
“Dude.” Sam shakes his head when Dean grabs his bottle and empties it to prove a point. “You can’t even get drunk anymore.”
“Wanna bet?”
“Seriously. You don’t have a body.”
“But the beer doesn’t know that. And it’s not exactly dripping through me, is it?” He looks down just to make sure, since that would be embarrassing.
“My point. I mean, what happens to the stuff we consume? Technically, it can’t be staying inside us. We don’t digest anymore, and yet we’re not swelling the more we eat or drink. Also, it’s material and we’re not, technically speaking. And we shouldn’t be able to take it with us when we do the ghost thing and flicker out of existence.”
Sam’s habit of overthinking everything can be so annoying. Especially since it has got Dean thinking as well, and he’s thinking of undigested food and beer splashing to the ground when they give up being material. Kind of disgusting, really.
“We vaporize everything inside us with our awesome ghost-powers!” he decides. “It gets inside us and ceases to exist.”
Sam gives him a look. It’s his patented I May Be Younger Than You But I Have Been Your Mental Superior Since I Was Three look.
“Think about it!” Dean is starting to like the thought. “We could end all risk of atomic wars by eating the missiles.”
“There’s it’s more likely that all our food magically gets transported somewhere else.”
“Like?”
“Like our corpses, for instance.”
Dean winces. That’s not a thought he appreciates. “I’m pretty sure Cas vaporized those.”
“You sure? Maybe he keeps them around. I’ve been thinking, anyway. With his powers he could bring us back to life anytime he wants.”
There goes Dean’s good mood. “Why would he do that?”
“Why does Cas do anything right now? Maybe at some point he’ll get bored and feel like it. Maybe he thinks we haven’t suffered enough yet.”
Yeah, seriously, why is Sam doing that? “If he had wanted to, he would have done it already.”
Dean tries to distract himself, and his brother, by turning his attention to the pretty girl behind the counter of the bar and throwing her a very obvious flirty smile. She smiles back, but it lack’s conviction. Then she looks somewhere else, but Dean keeps catching her glancing over to them every few seconds. She doesn’t look interested, though. She looks unsure and confused.
It’s okay, though. He wasn’t going to get serious here – after all, he’s dead, and that would have been seriously awkward if she ever found out. The thought is followed by the thought of preservation. What if she didn’t take the pill and the condom broke? Was it possible to get impregnated by ghost-sperm? Would she then give birth to a half-alive, half-immaterial baby? Would her womb become haunted? How do you exorcise a haunted womb?
“Dean.” Sam kicks him under the table to get his attention. “You have a seriously creepy expression on your face right now.”
“I’ve been thinking about haunted wombs.”
Sam screws up his face in a disgusted grimace. “I don’t even want to know.”
“Neither do I,” Dean decides. “Let’s get out of here. I made good money tonight. We can get a room and have a boys’ night with bad pizza and bad movies and beer, all without having to worry about Bobby waking up.”
“Sounds good to me,” Sam agrees, proving that they are related after all. As they leave, Dean slaps his brother’s back and proclaims, “And I will show you that ghosts can get drunk after all!”
+|+|+
They leave some of Dean’s hard-earned notes on the table when they go, if only because they don’t want to attract attention and because Sam won’t let Dean flicker into ghost-land and finally test his theory of whether or not they can actually walk through solid walls. Not here, he says – they’re going to spend the night in the area, after all, and the last thing they need is a local hunter coming after their asses.
So they pay, and they get a room in the only motel in town, a slightly run-down but surprisingly comfortable two-storey building. Their room is on the second floor, right beside the vacancy sign. Fortunately, the lower half of the glowing letters, the part right in front of their window, is broken, so the light isn’t too annoying. Dean suspects that they’ve been broken on purpose by someone trying to sleep in here.
Then he remembers that sleep isn’t what they are here for. It’s odd, how they still gravitate towards these places even though they don’t need them anymore.
Sadly, the TV is a piece of shit. So is the reception in the entire area. Dean tries to call Bobby again from the phone at the reception, but there are only weird noises on the line. He says something anyway, hoping maybe Bobby might hear him, and has the reception guy order them their pizza since he keeps insisting that the phone works perfectly fine. Amazingly enough, pizza arrives fifteen minutes later, and for lack of any bad movie to watch, Dean and Sam jump around on their wonderfully bouncy beds and throw pillows at each other.
If there’s anyone next door, they probably think they are having sex in here. The realization makes Dean jump in a sex-rhythm, and as soon as Sam realizes what he’s doing he jumps over to Dean’s bad and tries to smother him with a pillow.
They gabble on the bed, bouncing even more in their fight for dominance, and wow, that doesn’t really help, does it? There are yelled insults and Sam evilly abusing the knowledge he has of Dean’s weak spots by ticking him in the right places to make his limbs turn to jelly as he gasps for air (it’s just this one spot right beneath his rips that has to be touched just like that), yet somehow they end up with Dean lying on top of Sam, pinning him to the mattress. Their laughter dies down and in its wake they are looking into each other’s faces, redundant breathing brushing redundant skin until Dean quietly says, “Go to sleep, little brother. I’ll make sure you won’t fade away.”
It proves how exhausted Sam really is when he just accepts the words. He doesn’t say anything back, he doesn’t nod or shake his head or anything. He just holds Dean’s gaze for another few seconds and then he lets his eyes drift shut, Dean still pinning his wrists beside his head, his weight covering his brother like a blanket.
After all this time, Sam still trusts him this much. Unconditionally. Sometimes, Dean feels suffocated by how much he loves this boy.
+|+|+
Sam doesn’t fade away. It’s much, much worse.
+|+|+
The nightmares start after barely an hour. Dean watches from the other bed as Sam starts to twitch and shift. He waits for him to start flickering, to lose his hold on this world, but that doesn’t happen. Instead, Sam suddenly arches and screams, and his fingers claw at the covers he’s lying on.
Dean’s over with him within seconds. He shakes Sam to no avail, takes his wrists to hold his hands still and that’s when he notices the blood. Sam’s nails are gone. Broken off or torn out, still sticking in the covers of the bed. On three fingers the skin is missing down to the bone and Dean doesn’t understand, doesn’t get what is happening.
Sam screams in terror and pain and blood spreads red under his shirt. Dean doesn’t understand but he knows that he has to wake his brother, has to make this stop. He yells and shakes Sam hard, harder, feels bones break like twigs under his hand and Sam’s screams become gurgling sounds and coughs as he begins to suffocate on the blood in this throat. But the shaking helps, the shaking has the desired effect, because Sam opens his eyes and Dean finds only empty and bloody sockets under his lids.
(Someone next door is banging against the wall, yelling for them to shut up.)
“Shh, Sammy,” Dean whispers, pulling his sobbing, chocking brother close. “Oh God, oh Sammy, shh. You’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.” He presses him against his chest, holds him so close that he doesn’t have to see (only feel the blood soaking through his clothes) and rocks back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
+|+|+
Eventually, Sam falls still. Eventually, Dean stops rocking and Sam pushes away from him with his bloody but unharmed hands, lifts his head so Dean can see the blood on his chin that is no longer followed by new blood. He blinks and looks at his brother through tired eyes.
They’re ghosts. Their physical manifestation is based only on their self-image and belief. Sam dreamt of being taken apart. It makes sense. This was a stupid idea. It makes so much fucking sense.
They don’t try the sleeping thing again.
+|+|+
The next morning, they leave at dawn, both of them eager to get back to Bobby’s place and the sense of security it offers. As they leave the room Sam lingers in the doorway, looking back as if searching for something. He shakes himself and turns away before Dean can ask, closing the door with an audible click and determination.
They don’t speak a single word all the way back to Sioux Falls.
+|+|+
“No.”
Sam’s voice reached Dean as if from a far distance. He looked over at his brother and felt relief because no matter what, Sam was not going to Hell. That was what mattered. The only thing that should matter – more than the fear that washed over Dean at the prospect of going back, and more than the soul-deep terror that came with the knowledge that he wasn’t going to see his brother again.
He wasn’t going to see his brother again. The reapers would take them in different directions and they would never be together again. Never.
Never.
Going to Hell didn’t matter.
“Why?” he heard himself asking. “How does that even make sense? I’ve been to Hell. I know what kind of deeds get you there. And somehow I don’t see how I fit the bill.”
“The rules have changed,” Tessa told him, and the way she said it made clear she wasn’t happy about it. “Heaven is under new management now, and the new management has decided that you can’t get into it.”
“Cas can’t do that!” Dean protested, though he had seen often enough in the final chapter of his life that there were a hell lot of things he had thought that Cas couldn’t do that he could, and did. “There have to be rules to prevent this kind of thing.”
“There are, yes. Under normal circumstance Castiel could not have denied you access to paradise. But these aren’t normal circumstances. You committed fratricide and suicide, Dean. You gave him an excuse.”
“But he did that to help me!” Sam protested. He was fighting against his reaper now and the guy was looking impatient and this was supposed to be the last time Dean ever saw him: being pulled away from him against his will.
“It doesn’t matter,” Tessa said, a lot more gently than when she was talking to Dean. “Castiel is ruling Heaven and he can bend the rules to his liking. You two are special cases because he wants you punished. He will not give you any more than he absolutely has to.”
“But that’s not-” Sam was interrupted by the reaper’s hand on his arm. He turned to stare at the guy and then at Dean with a look of understanding and horror on his face. And Dean knew what that meant, even before Tessa touched his own shoulder and said, “We have to go now.”
“Wait!” Dean didn’t move, but he felt compelled to. Tessa didn’t even touch him anymore and yet she was pulling him along as she walked away. “Don’t we get a choice? We can always stay here!”
“Not you, Dean. You got yourself an express ticket to Hell, and I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry.”
“Then don’t deliver me!”
“I can’t do that. You know that as well as I do.”
Yes, Dean did. But he didn’t care. Sam’s reaper was walking away in the opposite direction and Sam threw his brother a look of such desperation that Dean knew he couldn’t leave him. It was simply out of the question.
He didn’t think. He just knew that he had to reach Sammy, had to be with him. Taking a step in the wrong direction, the one he was not supposed to go was hard, so hard, but he did it, and Sam did the same, came a step closer. It was as if a strong wind was trying to blow them away, but Dean fought, and in the end it stood no chance against his love for his brother. No force in the world did, not even something as inevitable as death.
It got harder with every step and at some point the male reaper said, “You can’t do this!” and Tessa said, “You don’t know what you’re doing. Stop this!” but Dean reached out with arms that felt like lead and his fingers brushed Sam’s, then grabbed them, and then they pulled each other close and held on as the storm blew around them.
Heaven and Hell had tried to separate them before but Dean would not let his brother be taken from him. The storm passed and when they looked up they were alone, standing on an empty street somewhere on earth and had nothing but each other.
It was a long time before they broke their embrace.