Chapter Text
‘If I had not caught a glimpse of the opening words in the second act I should never have finished it, but as I stooped to pick it up, my eyes became riveted to the open page, and with a cry of terror, or perhaps it was of joy so poignant that I suffered in every nerve, I snatched the thing out of the coals and crept shaking to my bedroom, where I read it and reread it, and wept and laughed and trembled with a horror which at times assails me yet.’
-The King In Yellow, Robert W. Chambers (1895)
The bookshelf in Storage Room C is coated in an inch-thick layer of dust, and when Sam trails his fingers over the old oak shelves, they come back grey and fluffy. An old, musty smell lingers around it, tickles and burns the back of his throat, makes his eyes water just a little. It’s evident that nobody has touched it in years - decades, even. And now the onus has fallen onto him to take care of it.
He’s been meaning to make his way through organising the Men of Letters’ extensive archives since the bunker fell into their hands, and now, with seemingly no world-ending threats looming on the horizon for once in their lives, it leaves him with the spare time to buckle down and make some progress. In these last few months, he has already ploughed through two of these storage rooms. Both filled to the brim with antiques and artefacts - some interesting, some less so. Mostly this was done alone, with Dean busy enough doing his own thing and not having the patience to sort through all of this ‘old crap’. Not that Sam minds - he’s far too anal to be jumping at the thought of anyone stepping in and disrupting his system.
He quite enjoys it, truth be told. Sure, it can be a slog at times, and he often finds himself cursing the Men of Letters for their occasionally shoddy filing (most likely in part due to being wiped out before they could finish their work), but there is a great sense of satisfaction to be found in sorting through it all. Restructuring their old classification systems and digitising the collections can be an enjoyable challenge, a good distraction. Makes him feel like he’s doing something worthwhile.
Storage Room C is by far the largest he’s had to tackle yet. Every corner is filled with boxes, shelves, and cabinets, to the point where it’s a job in itself to squeeze through the room. But even with so much to look at, it’s the unassuming, dusty bookshelf tucked away in the back that draws his attention. He wonders, gazing over the array of colourful spines, why this shelf is in here and not the library. There are no notes attached, no locks or wardings. Perhaps it’s just an overspill.
One book in particular sticks out among them. It’s not one of the heavy, clothbound tomes that dominate the shelves, but rather a thin book, less tattered and worn, the spine hardly creased. He gently pulls it from its place, disturbing the dust and sending him into a brief coughing fit, to find that the cover is just as unremarkable as the rest of it. No decoration, no bright colours, not even an author attributed - just the title ‘Ruminations On’ in stark white against black.
It’s not anything he’s ever heard of before. Never stumbled across it during school or seen it mentioned on any forum. It hasn’t been referenced at all in any of the Men of Letters’ catalogues, either. And for such a small book, it carries a lot of weight. Feels heavy. Significant.
This, naturally, is intriguing.
For a moment, he stands there grazing his fingers over the cover, stroking the pages inside with his thumb. Stalling, though he can’t quite say why.
Still, he cracks it open and begins to read.
It’s disturbing, though in a way that’s hard to place. It seems to be a journal of sorts, but more the author’s incoherent and disconnected ramblings than anything of substance. The language is dated, most of it long out of use and difficult to understand. And as he reads, he begins to feel an uneasiness washing over him that makes his hands tremble, the book shake. It starts to feel too personal, too private - like his reading of it is a trespass.
And yet, he’s unable to stop. Though he initially intended to just skim the first few pages, sate his curiosity, he soon finds himself pages deep with no desire to stop. Despite its incoherence, it’s captivating in a way he has never before encountered, and he feels almost desperate to continue even through his mounting discomfort. That being said, he notices as he reads that he can barely recall a thing about it. Like the words wash over him, leaving just vague notions and feelings in their stead.
Only when his phone rings does he get pulled from this trance. The sudden, sharp ringing makes his heart thunder with shock for a moment until he can get his bearings again.
Pushing his unease aside, he answers his phone. Dean’s on the other line, saying he’s cooking tonight if Sam wants a plate, and asking what he’s up to. Apparently, nobody has seen him around in hours.
“Hours?” Sam asks, surprised. It can’t have been that long, surely.
Looking down at the book, still open in his spare hand, he sees the final page stare back. How long, he wonders, must he have been staring at these final words, oblivious to the world? And if not for this call, how long would he have kept staring?
“Yeah,” Dean responds, dragging out the word, clearly picking up on Sam’s confusion. “Everything good?”
“No, yeah, sorry,” he stumbles. “Just lost track of time. Started sorting through the next storage room. Guess I got carried away.”
Dean huffs a laugh. “Course you did, freakin’ nerd. Food’ll be ready in ten if you want any,” he says, before hanging up.
The silence left behind is too loud. He stands there for a long while, feet stuck to their spot and book hanging from his fingers, his mind blank in the strangest way. As he looks around, eyes blurry and sore from the change in focus, he finds that the room now feels more suffocating than simply cluttered, more threatening than intriguing. Darker, too, though the light above hasn't once dimmed or flickered.
Eventually, he nestles the book back in its spot and is rewarded with the slightest sense of relief once it’s out of his hands. He wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans and slowly, cautiously, manoeuvres his way out of the room. The door clicks shut behind him, but the feeling remains. That lingering dread.
It was just the book, he tells himself. How laughable to be frightened by someone’s incoherent ramblings after everything he has faced. God, if Dean knew how shaken up it’s gotten him, he’d never let him hear the end of it.
He decides against dinner and heads to his room instead. The others won’t miss him; he doesn’t eat much these days, anyway. An early night instead will do him good, calm this anxiety, and tomorrow he can start again afresh. Tackle the room with new eyes, not let himself get so distracted.
He locks his bedroom door behind him, changes out of his clothes, and settles into bed. Even sticks on a guided meditation for background noise, hoping it’ll help him settle, ease the tension out of his bones.
Two hours and no sleep later, he jams his chair under the door handle. Just in case.
That night, he dreams of a precipice.
Feet on the edge, rock crumbling slowly beneath. Up ahead is a lake of fire, yellow-orange and glowing like firecrackers. It flickers and sputters, shoots embers up the cliff face, singes the bottoms of his jeans. Every second, it rises, grows closer, reaching towards him with intent to claim. The sky is choked with smoke, dense and thick, almost suffocating.
But somehow, he doesn’t feel the heat. No, the air around him is a familiar cold that sinks its claws in deep, penetrates every cell.
He knows he should turn around, find refuge from the flames, the chill, but all he can do is stand in place. Frozen not from the cold but from something inside. Something heavy, curled up in his chest and weighing him down.
Anyway, even if he could will his body to move, it would be futile. He knows without looking that whatever is behind him is even worse. And it, too, draws closer.
It’s only a matter of time.
Sam wakes cold and damp, a sticky sheen of sweat coating his whole body. His heart beats rapidly, and he feels it in every organ, every limb. The sheets are too close, too constricting, and he kicks with uncoordinated legs to get them off, to give him the room to breathe.
It takes a few minutes for him to come to, for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room and see it for what it is, not what it could be. He takes deep, measured breaths until his breathing finally settles and his heart slows its frenzied rhythm - a well-practised ritual, first learned in college and mastered upon his return from Hell.
He has to drag himself out of bed, body weighed down by the exhaustion of his frightful wakening. He’s still tired. No rest comes from a night like that. But he has done more with less, and forces himself to dress, to get moving. A shower and a coffee, he decides, will fix him up. Maybe a little company, something to keep him distracted.
When he arrives in the kitchen - hair dripping from the shower, cold droplets running down his spine - he finds Dean already in there. He’s sitting at the table, scrolling bored through his phone, a steaming mug of coffee and a tupperware of leftovers in front of him. Strange to see him up so early; Sam’s usually the earlier riser, Dean rousing an hour or two later. Must have been a bad night for him, too.
“Mornin’,” Sam says through a yawn. A big one, the kind that makes his jaw ache from the effort. He stumbles further in and leans himself against the island.
Dean looks up at the greeting, and his eyes narrow at the sight of him. “You look like shit, man.”
He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, back at you.”
“No, I mean, seriously,” he says in that half joking, half genuinely concerned tone of his. “Did you sleep? Like, at all? Tell me you didn’t pull an all-nighter in that storage room.”
“No. Really,” He says, feeling a little self-conscious at his probing. “I’m fine. Just a rough night.”
Mercifully, Dean doesn’t press it. Starts talking about the work he’s been doing on the old cars in the garage instead. His pet project between hunts, which he’s been getting steadily more invested in over the last few months. It’s nice to see him passionate about something so mundane and harmless - something he’s never had much of a chance to experience. Sam wonders how long they have left before something comes along and sweeps it all away.
Half-listening, he goes about getting that coffee. The smell alone, warm and inviting, is enough to take some of the weight off. They only ever buy the cheap shit, but it’s not like either of them are connoisseurs and it all wakes you up the same.
Only, when he gets to the pot - still hot, probably only brewed minutes before he arrived - he hesitates. It smells good, looks good, will probably taste good (or passable, at least). But there’s a gnawing in his stomach, a wrongness pooling deep inside. It doesn’t- there's something not quite right. Not safe.
Maybe he idles there for a little too long, because Dean pauses his monologue to ask, “You good there?”
The real answer is no, not really, but that’s ridiculous. Irrational. So he moves his hand away, flexes his stiffening fingers. “Yeah, fine. Just tired,” he mumbles, and decides to make a cup of tea instead. Better for nerves, he justifies to himself. No other reason.
Tea made, he opts to stand again by the island instead of taking a seat, which he tells himself has nothing to do with the fact that the spare chair would put his back to the door, open and unaware. The drink helps - not to wake him up, the opposite if anything, but to relax him a little, to stave off that residual cold. He and Dean talk a little more: plans for the day (none), word of any hunts to go on (none), lookin’ a little tense there (drop it).
When Jack finally appears in the doorway, face bright and a spring in his step, it comes as a relief.
“Good morning,” he greets them, and when Jack says it, it always sounds like he means it. Like this really, truly is a good morning, every time. His optimism is infectious, and Sam can’t help but smile as he says it back. Dean too.
Straight away, he’s reaching for the cereal kept on the higher shelves in the pantry. The sugary stuff, practically a dessert. Sam’s stomach turns at the thought of it. Pictures of black teeth and plaque-clogged arteries flick through his mind. But he makes no comment, not this time. He’s trying to get better at that, be less fussy and overbearing. Sometimes he manages.
Then, as Jack’s walking towards the table, bowl near overflowing in his hand, he sort of stumbles on the way. Stops in his path and gives Sam this look, like he’s looking less at him and more into him. He’s got his brows furrowed, curious and questioning, intense.
“Jack?” he asks, a little concerned.
“Are you okay?”
This throws him off. Dean being on his back, that’s fine. Normal. But now Jack, too? Does he really look that bad? Is there something wrong with him?
“Uh, yeah, Jack. Fine. Why’re you asking?”
“You have this… thing on you. Like a smudge,” he says, then points towards Sam’s chest. “Right here.”
Any peace he had managed to cultivate vanishes, and that awful sinking feeling floods back in full force. Dean doesn’t seem too happy about this either, rising from his seat to head over and take a look.
“Whoa,” Dean says. “A smudge? What the hell do you mean, a smudge?”
Took the words right out of Sam’s mouth.
Jack purses his lips, tilting his head. “I’m not sure. It’s hard to explain. You just look different to usual - on the inside, I mean. Like there’s a fingerprint, or a scuff mark.”
On the inside. Does he mean his soul? Oh, God, has he always been able to see? The thought makes him nauseous. He’s heard tell of the state of his soul, and it can’t be a pretty sight.
Dean tips his head back, sighs, and mutters a quick curse. “Right,” he says, voice hard. “You two stay here. I’ll go fetch Cas, see if he has any clue.”
“Sorry,” Jack says in Dean’s wake. His forgotten cereal is going soggy, turning to slop in the bowl, and his face has lost that brightness. Sam hates to have spoiled his morning, even if he’s not sure exactly how he did it. “Did I say something wrong? I didn't mean to upset you.”
Sam swallows, tries to find his voice. “No. No, don't worry. Really. Just, uh, took us by surprise, is all.”
Jack nods, though he doesn’t seem so convinced. Guilt runs in the family. He sits at the table, places the bowl in front of him, but doesn’t eat, and Sam doesn’t encourage him to. It’s an awkward ten or so minutes of silence, both of them twiddling their thumbs, before Dean comes back with Cas in tow.
Cas asks Jack what he saw, and he explains in the same weird, vague terms. A smudge, a scuff, a shadow. All just different ways to say there’s something wrong inside of him - newly wrong. When Cas has a look himself, he can’t see anything unusual at all, which should be a relief, but he seems to think this is a case of Jack seeing more than a typical angel.
As Cas explains, most angels can’t see souls. Can only feel them, and even then, it’s only when directly holding it. The exceptions being Archangels and, apparently, Nephilim. News to all of them. When they ask Jack why he’s never mentioned this before, he just shrugs. He’s always been able to see them, so it never occurred to him that it was something unique. To him, the strange glowing blobs in everyone's chests were just as normal as anything else.
“So, what about this smudge then? Is there something wrong with his soul?” Dean asks. Though he tries to hide it, he’s clearly growing more stressed as the situation unfolds. Anything to do with souls is a touchy subject, and for good reason. His soulless days leave a bad taste in both of their mouths, and he sees the way Dean still winces when he hears the words ‘flayed’ or ‘mutilated’.
“I can’t say for sure,” Cas tells him. Nobody is too happy with that answer. “Do you feel alright, Sam? Any different to usual?”
Dean mumbles something about how he’s been asking that all morning, but Sam ignores him.
“Not really, no. I mean, nothing like when, you know... But, uh, I guess I’ve been feeling a bit on edge. Anxious. Had kind of a weird day yesterday, strange dream last night. Could that be it?”
Jack shakes his head. “No, this is different. You get brighter when you’re nervous, not smudged. I’ve never seen this before.”
Too much to unpack there. He tries not to think about it. Fails.
“Maybe Rowena might know something? We could call her here, see if she knows any way to get a better look, find out what’s going on?” Sam suggests. If anyone needs to go prodding around his soul, he’d rather it be her than anyone else.
Nobody has any better ideas, so Sam makes the call.
For all the fuss she made on the phone about how busy she is and what a pain they are, Rowena arrives in only three hours' time - far quicker than any of them expected. It’s a long three hours though, full of anxious waiting and awkward, stilted attempts at conversation. The more time passes, the more his anxiety builds, threatening to swallow him up. Though at least now he knows something is actually amiss, that it’s not all in his head.
“Samuel, dear,” she greets him as she descends the stairs. She looks radiant as ever, not a hair out of place. Smiles big, though it’s all show. He knows she’s still uncomfortable around Jack. That she’s been putting off visiting the bunker since he became a more permanent fixture.
“And others.” She tacks onto the end, solely to tease Dean. Judging by his roll of the eyes, it works.
“Rowena. Hey. How are you?” Sam asks, smiling, though it’s strained with worry, which he hopes she won’t notice.
“Well, better before you dragged me all the way here.”
He huffs a laugh, rubs the back of his neck. It’s too warm, clammy with sweat. “Right. Sorry.”
“No need. You’re the only Winchester I can tolerate; can’t have anything going wrong with you, now can I?”
Jack heads up to her, smiling brightly, and extends a hand. “Rowena. It’s nice to see you again.”
It’s a little heartbreaking to see how badly he longs for her to like him. How much effort he puts into being his best self around her. But he doesn’t know her history, who he is to her. He doesn't get that no matter how hard he tries and how perfect he is, he’ll never win her over completely. Sam wishes she were able to push that aside and just see Jack for Jack, but he understands why she can’t. That’s not something he’s going to push.
“And you too,” she says politely, if a little stiff, and makes no move to shake his hand. Jack tries not to look too put down.
She moves swiftly on, leading Sam towards a chair and pulling from her bag an assortment of candles and the Book of The Damned. Rowena chants, the candles flicker, and he tries his hardest to ignore the sense of violation. She stares long and hard at his chest, eyes squinted in concentration, muttering her foreign words at a rhythmic, almost melodic pace. Her mastery of magic is fascinating to behold, though not so much when on the receiving end.
“Well,” she says, her examination complete. “Nothing wrong with your soul itself, it seems, but you do have a nasty curse clinging to it.”
“Okay,” Dean says, cautiously optimistic, looking between the two of them. “That’s not so bad, right?”
Curses aren’t great, not at all, but a hell of a lot better than what this could have been. Curses they know. They can deal with. Only, Rowena’s face - tight lips, avoidant eyes - is giving Sam the impression that maybe this won’t be so cut and dry.
Rowena winces. “Well, not exactly. See, most curses attach to the body. The heart or the brain, usually. For a curse to attach to a soul, it’s got to be some particularly powerful magic. I know very few capable of such a thing. This one is particularly well done - near undetectable to a less talented witch than I. I’m rather impressed you were able to notice anything at all, Jack.”
Off in the corner, Jack glows at the unexpected praise.
“So, what does this mean, exactly?” Sam asks. “Do you know what it’s doing to me?”
“Unfortunately, the effects of a soul-bound curse tend to be far more intense. And while I can’t say for certain what it’s doing, from what I can gather, this one is designed to make you feel, well… paranoid. Extremely so. I believe it intends to use what it learns from your soul to play off of your fears.”
Shit. While at least it explains this apprehension that’s been plaguing him, nothing about this is good. He knows intimately what it’s like for his mind to turn on him, to succumb to his ravaged soul. And there’s been a whole lot of fresh damage since the last time.
Hopefully, he comes across calmer on the outside than he feels when he asks, “How, um, how long is this meant to last, then? Do you know any way we can break it?”
“It’s meant to last until you can’t handle it anymore. Keel over from some kind of heart attack, or more likely, by your own hand.” That sours the mood even further. Even Cas looks concerned - jaw tight, back straight. Maybe this reminds him of a wall broken by his hands, or of his own brief soirée with shifted insanity. Jack seems to sense this, leans in close to him, presses into his side.
“But,” she continues, tone a touch brighter, more confident. “Lucky for you, if anyone’s going to be able to break it, it’s me. I must ask, though, where on earth you managed to acquire a curse like this?”
“Not sure. I mean, we haven’t gone hunting in a while, and nothing involving witches, so it can’t have been that. Although,” he pauses, thinking back to the storage room. Just the memory of it makes him uneasy. “There was this book. One I found yesterday while I was working. Started feeling off around the time I read it.”
“You didn’t think to mention that?” Dean asks, visibly frustrated.
Sam shrugs sheepishly. “I didn't think it was that big a deal. It was just kind of weird, put me on edge a bit. Thought I was just overreacting.”
Rowena asks him to lead the way, and he does, though his feet begin to drag unconsciously the closer they get to the room. He knows now that these nerves are just the result of the curse, but that doesn’t stop the foreboding feeling as they open the door.
Immediately, Rowena’s eyes are drawn to the bookshelf at the back. "My…” she says, a little breathless, stunned. “Powerful magic indeed.”
The others watch as she heads over towards the shelf, navigating the cluttered room with far more grace than Sam had managed, and seems to locate the particular book instantly. Before daring to touch it, she retrieves a pair of fine leather gloves from her handbag and slips them on. She inspects the front and back, runs her hands over the smooth binding, looking equally impressed and disturbed.
“Terrible aura this thing has. It practically warns you against touching it. Someone really mustn’t have wanted it to be read."
“So, what, is this my punishment for doing it, then?”
“Afraid so. If you can’t stop someone from reading in the first place, just kill them off before they can spread its secrets.” She almost sounds like she’s thinking of stealing the idea. “So what’s in it, then? Must be something juicy to warrant all this protection.”
“Honestly,” he sighs, “I can’t remember much about it. None of it made sense, like the words wouldn’t stick. All I got that lasted was the feeling.”
“How clever,” she says under her breath as she carefully slots the book into her bag before making her way out. “Well, I’d best be off. Times ticking. I’ll see what can be done about this nasty little hex.”
“Right,” Sam says, and he’s not sure if the thought of her leaving makes him more or less nervous. “Great. Thank you. Really.”
“Not a worry, Dear. Just means you’ll owe me another favour.” She says with a wink.
“And in the meantime,” Cas asks, always thinking ahead, “is there anything we can do to slow it down? To keep him calm?”
She laughs, a short, sharp sound. “Pump him full of sedatives and keep the knives locked up.”
Sam laughs along, just a little. Then stops when he realises she’s not kidding.