![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Napoleon Is Always Right
Rating/Warning: PG (language, Sam/Dean implied)
Wordcount: 3,501
Spoilers: None
Fandom: SPN
By:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Summary: The first time Dean hears about the man with no dæmon is when he overhears two hunters discussing the best way to kill him.
Notes: Fusion with His Dark Materials - do not have to be familiar with the books to read. Some liberties have been taken.
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.
--
The first time Dean hears about the man with no dæmon is when he overhears two hunters discussing the best way to kill him.
"I hear he's good with knives," Bart Fellows says before taking a sip of whatever rotgut was his poison of choice.
"You know what happens to guys with knives. They get shot," Shelby Ashton rejoinders, intentionally or more likely unintentionally quoting a Tarantino movie.
Dean's expecting to feel appalled, and he is at the casual manner these two grizzled old guys discuss putting someone down, but he's also intrigued because from all accounts, the man is a hunter himself.
"Just gives me the heebies," Bart continues.
Possession's always a possibility with folk who are still upright and have no dæmons. Poor sods don't have a chance once the hell spawn takes up residence, cleaving themselves between the person and their dæmon so violently that the dæmon never survives. If the hell spawn vacates while the body's still ticking then all that's usually left is a gibbering shell that doesn't survive much longer itself.
Shapeshifters, bogeymen and some harpies could appear as two legs and all would be without dæmons of their own. Werewolves had them but they were so twisted out of true that you just knew something was up looking at them.
None of those were likely to travel the countryside, killing evil things.
**
Dean starts hearing about the man more constantly after that. He's a ghost, a scary story otherwise brave men tell to creep each other out. After a while Dean begins to seek the stories out. It's like most urban legends after a while, all know a guy who knows a guy who saw him, but no one has ever seen him themselves.
Dean's half-convinced that that's all this guy is going to end up being. A scary story, a hunter's bogeyman. He's not exactly expecting to run into him but he'd been half-tracking his progress across the states so it shouldn't have been a surprise that when he's pinned by a Rawhead, a monster that's the very worst combination of dumb, strong and child-eating that Dean can't resist, a stranger emerges from the gloom and saves his ass.
Bebe, currently a house cat with her fur standing on end so she looks like a ball with feet, only calms when Dean gets a hand on her.
"Hey man, thanks. Thought I was a goner," Dean says, watching a tall, shaggy-haired stranger wipe his enormous meat cleaver off on his sleeve. Rawheads went with a jolt of electricity best but beheading would put most things down, at least long enough to kill them they way they needed killing permanently. Bebe's purring loud in his ear and Dean nudges her away so he can sit up.
"Probably not the best thing to go after by yourself," the man admonishes, still sticking enough in the shadows that Dean's only got a real general impression of what he looks like with no specifics.
"You got a partner here then?" Dean asks with a raised eyebrow and the man pauses and looks at him.
"No."
"Well then, how 'bout we save the lectures for later and I buy us both a beer?" Dean offers, then stares hard because Bebe has edged so close to the man that she's almost pressed up against his shoes. "Bebe!" Dean gets out, feeling startled and a little off-balance and she skitters backwards, fur puffing up again and looking about like she didn't even realise what she was doing.
The man hasn't moved but to tuck his cleaver into the back of his jeans.
"Sorry," she gets out, sounding a little breathless. "I don't really know what that was."
Goose flesh breaks out on Dean and something cold slithers up his spine as he finally notices that he hasn't seen the guy's dæmon yet. Doesn't really mean anything, there was a boy in one of Dean's many high schools who had a dæmon that had settled as a brown snake and usually wrapped herself around the kid's arm, under his clothes.
Still creeped everyone out enough that they called the kid Freaky Freddy because he'd walk around looking like he didn't have a dæmon at all.
"Where's your...?" Dean starts to ask and then settles for making a helpless gesture with his hand. He's not sure how to finish the sentence without sounding like a prize idiot if what he's starting to suspect is wrong.
"My what?" the man asks, looking guileless. He's not helping Dean out at all and he must know it because when he steps forward enough that his throat and one cheek are in light, the cheek is raised a little like the guy's smirking.
"Your dæmon?" Bebe cuts in, ducking her head back and forth like maybe she's just missed seeing it.
"Never did get me one of those," the man says with a half-shrug and then he's turned away and gone, nothing but the rapidly decomposing corpse of the Rawhead to mark his passing.
Dean is left staring at the doorway the man's ducked out of with his mouth open right up until he feels little claws in his thigh and looks down at Bebe. She pointedly looks at the stinking mess of bones and rotted flesh and then rolls her golden eyes. "That's just rude, leaving us with the cleanup," she grumbles and Dean, if he ever gets over having a minor stroke, would have to agree.
**
Dean suspects the guy gets around by simply pretending to have a dæmon. Considering some can be as small as a spider or a field mouse it's not all that uncommon to see people moving about without them all that obvious.
Especially if the guy's always on the move and the only interactions he has are fleeting ones with motel clerks and people who are too freaked out to know any better by whatever was trying to kill them at the time.
His dad always said one of his greatest strengths was tracking and when Dean starts making more than a half-assed go of it, it gets easier to trace where the guy's been. He's making a similar loop to Dean of the countryside, sometimes parallelling Dean's own course and sometimes ranging farther out. Dean wonders if the guy uses the same way to find hunts, looking through the obits and the smaller local papers.
He waits for them to cross paths again.
It ends up not taking as long as he's expecting it to, if the person Dean's watching on the side of the road with his thumb out is who he thinks it is. Dean pulls the Impala up alongside him and leans past Bebe, now a mongrel mix dog, to drop the passenger side window.
"We're you headed?" Dean calls. He doesn't make a habit of picking up hitchhikers because it's a little hard to explain a trunk full of weapons and a glove compartment full of fake IDs but for this guy he's willing to make an exception, even if he doesn't fully understand why.
Bebe seems just about as mystified as she cocks him a confused look.
"You followin' me?" the guy asks, stopping long enough to rest an arm on the impala's roof and duck down to look at Dean. Dean's a little surprised because the guy is actually younger than Dean first thought, maybe just gone past twenty.
"Not intentionally," Dean says.
The guy pulls a face, one Dean can't read, but then he's nodding and pulling open the back door on his side, tossing his duffel bag into the car and himself after it.
Bebe shivers and then she's a ferret with a black mask, curling up to sit behind Dean's neck. "You know what they say about a guy whose dæmon can't settle?" the guy asks, sounding speculative.
"No, what do they say?" Dean grits through his teeth because he's heard it all before.
He can feel the guy's gaze on the back of his neck for a beat before he huffs and says, "Nothin' particularly interesting."
"I'm Dean," Dean introduces. "This is Bebe."
"Sam," the guy says and then there's this awkward beat that's strangely blank. Finally Dean realises that he was waiting for a second introduction that will never come, force of habit.
"Sam," Dean repeats, fixing it in his mind. "So, where you headed?"
"I heard there's a poltergeist in Patience. Thought I'd check it out," Sam says. "I like the alliteration."
"You're kinda weird," Dean observes.
"I've heard that before," Sam says blandly and then they both laugh and with that, it's easy.
**
Dean has to admit that it's nice having someone by his side again. He split from his dad when he was sixteen, both of them rubbing each other the wrong way so old wounds never got a chance to heal and scab over. His dad had never been able to forgive himself for the deaths of his mom and little brother and as Dean grew into the features his mom had given him, John Winchester had stopped being able to even look at him.
Dean had learned to be self-sufficient early as a result. Dean wasn't really used to sharing space with someone anymore but he could tell after only a few weeks that Sam definitely was despite the creepy loner vibe he'd given off initially.
Dean was worried at first that maybe he was some kind of rebound partner to Sam, someone Sam would abandon as soon as he realized he could stand on his own two feet, but it never seemed to happen. Without ever discussing it, Sam stuck and they fell into an easy rhythm that had people blinking with surprise when they revealed that they hadn't known each other for very long.
Dean found himself liking Sam more and more and even though deep-down it should have been setting off alarm bells, he didn't really worry about it and neither did Bebe.
"Guess we're keeping him, huh?" Dean says, a few weeks after he'd first picked Sam up off the roadside, yawning and scratching idly behind Bebe's ears as she sprawls on his chest. Sam is asleep on the other bed with limbs akimbo.
"Guess so," Bebe agrees with a satisfied purr.
**
Dean supposes he shouldn't have been quite so content, despite the strangeness, to ignore the fact that Sam didn't have a dæmon. Mostly because it was only a matter of time before someone else wasn't willing to. It doesn't help that Sam is a giant with shaggy hair so even the vaguest of descriptions about the stranger with no dæmon has hunters looking at Sam twice if they ever cross paths.
Dean takes Sam to the Roadhouse, both of them itching for a break and more than a few beers when a man who's obviously beaten them to the few beers sidles up to their table. He has three buddies at his shoulder as all born troublemakers seem to and Bebe, currently a silver fox, moves from Dean's feet to his lap, putting paws on his belly in agitation.
"We been watchin' you two for a while," the drunken ringleader slurs, tapping a stubby finger on the table between Sam and Dean.
"We're flattered gentlemen, but we're not here for a random drunken hookup, despite your overall attractiveness," Dean quips, tipping his bottle in the leader's direction and then the flunkies in turn. "How about you let us have the quiet night we were planning on?"
"Sure," the leader says with a sloppy grin. "Jus' wanna lay eyes on that kid's dæmon. Clear up a discussion we been havin'." The man goes to poke Sam in the shoulder but Sam moves automatically, grabbing his reaching hand and twisting down until the guy lets out a high-pitched wail that has his friends blinking.
"Like my friend said, walk away," Sam growls and now Dean has to look at Sam, reevaluate who he's been travelling with because he'd been getting complacent, mistaking the kid he'd eaten pizza and watched a Die Hard marathon with only the night before as someone he actually knows.
The friends seem inclined to do just what Sam says but the leader's pride is hurt and he takes a swing. He's obviously no slouch even despite the booze but Dean can almost see the eye roll Sam wears as he easily dodges and lands an uppercut that puts the guy on the floor amongst the sawdust. The friends scoop their wayward leader up and drag him off without further argument or even eye contact. Sam sits back down and Dean realises belatedly that he didn't even get the chance to stand. Sam pulls his beer to himself and mulishly takes a sip.
"Um, we'd better go," Dean says and Sam sighs.
"Yeah, I guess so."
**
Sex seems like a natural progression to Dean but when he makes a pass a few days later, Sam merely snorts in a strangely amused and exasperated way and peels Dean's reaching hands away from himself. "Believe me, you really don't want to do that."
"I really do," Dean protests and winces when his tone is more thwarted child than heated adult. It's Bebe's turn to snort, still the fox and Dean is starting to wonder if maybe she's finally decided on a permanent form.
"Why are you always such a horndog?" Sam grumbles and Dean rolls his eyes because he thought he'd been heroically restrained the past few weeks. He's had offers, plenty in fact and he's resisted, thinking maybe he and Sam were heading somewhere good.
All Dean manages to actually get out despite this is an indignant, "Hey!"
"It's not... I didn't mean just you," Sam finally says.
"What are you talking about?"
"You ever wonder why we were so comfortable so quick?" Sam asks.
"I thought it was, y'know, chemistry," Dean says, waggling his eyebrows and Sam snorts again, an indelicate sound.
"Yeah, I guess you could say that," he allows after a pause, tapping his chin with a finger. "Look, I'm going to explain something to you and if by the end of it you want to see the back of me that's okay, it's happened before."
"Okay," Dean says slowly, sitting on the motel bed opposite the one Sam's perched on so they're facing each other across the space.
Sam steeples his fingers and seems to have a long think about how he's going to say what he's going to say before he starts. When he does, he says something Dean's not really expecting. "First off, I'm not evil."
"That's reassuring," Dean says, fighting the urge to reach for the knife under his pillow because when a person has to say that they're not evil, they usually are. The only thing that stills Dean's hand is the way Sam smiles, how it pings something familiar deep down inside Dean.
"I'm not really sure what's going on myself. Maybe this is purgatory or a special kind of hell or something, I don't know. All I know is that I die and then I wake up, over and over again. Every time I do, I wake up somewhere different."
"Different how?"
"Different here, or a world where the demons won and the last of humanity is scratching out an existence, or where there's nothing supernatural at all. Different like not the world I was born in."
"Come again?"
"I guess you'd call it alternate realities. All I know is that I've died hundreds of times and I've woken up again and been somewhere... different."
"Huh," Dean says, because he really can't think of anything else. It sounds crazy, ludicrous, but Sam looks so hopeful, so earnest that Dean really wants to believe him. Plus, to support the kid's story, he's walking around without a dæmon like it's normal and that's pretty damn bizarre. "You met me before?"
"Every time," Sam says, nodding. "Don't know whether I'm drawn to you or you're drawn to me but I find you in whatever shape you're in, in whatever world I end up."
"Whatever shape I'm in?"
Sam frowns and his eyes slip away, down to his feet and to Bebe who's curled up yet again too close to his toes. "Sometimes you're the... late Dean Winchester."
Dean digests that for a second and then nods. He's in a dangerous line of work, had more than his fair share of narrow escapes and from what he knows about alternate realities, it's the tiniest of decisions that can make a difference. Maybe he dodged left rather than right a time or two and ended up in the ground because of it. "So why am I your roost little homing pigeon?" Dean asks.
"Because you're my brother."
**
Dean's getting some air, watching Bebe bat at moths that are dancing around the motel's ground lights when the motel door creaks open.
"We parting ways?" Sam asks, voice tentative. Dean looks over his shoulder to see Sam scuffing at the carpet that's at the motel's thresh hold, obviously not wanting to intrude on Dean if he's not ready for it.
"You're really my brother?" Dean asks into the night air, tasting the words for himself as much as asking Sam.
"Not really," Sam says, dropping down next to Dean on the weathered wooden bench just outside their motel room. Bebe immediately quits her playing and joins them, wrapping herself around Dean's ankle, chewing idly on the laces of his boots. "I'm probably about as related to you as I am to the motel clerk that checked us in." When Dean looks at him in confusion, Sam turns so their knees are almost touching. "I mean yes, the world I was born in Dean Winchester was my big brother. He was, not you. Does that make sense?"
"I guess," Dean says, trying not to feel disappointed or at least trying not to let it show on his face.
"I'm sorry. I don't mean to be an asshole about it. I just... I can't start thinking about it the other way. I'm not going to be here very long and I don't think it's fair on either of us."
"You going somewhere?" Dean asks, raising an eyebrow.
"I always do," Sam says, sounding beaten-down by the prospect. "I haven't lasted more than a few months anywhere else. I keep thinking maybe it's because at some point I'll circle back around to my own world but I'm starting to worry this is just all someone's idea of a really bad joke or, y'know, some kind of punishment."
"Wait," Dean says, holding up his hands. "You said you die before you wake up somewhere else. You mean I gotta watch that?"
Sam's face goes blank before he says, "Huh." He rubs hands over his thighs and Dean sees the dark streaks his sweat leaves behind. "I guess I never thought... I mean I'm not here to..."
"Are you really clumsy?" Dean asks and when Sam just looks perplexed he waves a hand and says, "With all the dying? Do you keep falling down mine shafts or something? Is there a consistent theme?"
"I don't remember that bit. All I know is that I die, but I don't remember the specifics."
"So you could just keel over at any second, no explanation?"
"Maybe."
"Well, that sucks balls."
"Yeah."
**
Sam's reading, ballpoint pen lodged in the corner of his mouth. Bebe's rolling around in a patch of sunlight that's filtering through the dingy motel curtains. She's reverted back to a common house cat, stripes on her back and a fuzzy over-white stomach. As Dean watches, Sam reaches out a bare foot, probably not even thinking about it, and scratches Bebe on her exposed belly.
It's a violation, someone touching your dæmon. An intrusion that leaves you shaking and sometimes curled up with revulsion or worse. Bebe should spring away and Dean should scream but neither of them do, instead Bebe arches so that more of her belly comes into contact with Sam's foot and Dean feels nothing but a pleasant kind of hum in his head and chest, like something settling into place.
"I don't think you're going anywhere," Dean says and Sam, lost in his book and obviously not paying attention, grunts in agreement, responding to Dean's voice rather than his words. He finally looks up when he feels the weight of Dean's stare.
"Sorry, did you say something?"
"Nothing Sammy," Dean says as Bebe looks at him upside down, eyes blinking sleepily, her signature happy face. "Nothing at all."
-- Napoleon Is Always Right - George Orwell, Animal Farm
---His Dark Materials Cheat Sheet---
A dæmon is a manifestation of the soul of a conscious person in the Philip Pullman trilogy His Dark Materials. In those universes with physical dæmons, they exist external to the human in the form of animals representative of the person's personality, although children's dæmons may change form at whim. The bond between dæmon and human is intimate, and dæmons must remain within a small distance of their human (with the exception of witches); contact between a person and another person's dæmon is taboo, although dæmons may touch each other
Dæmons can touch each other freely. However, "the worst breach of etiquette imaginable" is for a person to touch another person's dæmon (even in battle, most soldiers would never touch an enemy's dæmon), though exceptions can be made (for example, between lovers). If one does touch someone else's dæmon, it causes great weakness for the person whose dæmon is being touched.
A person's dæmon is usually of the opposite sex to its human. However, in some cases it may be the same sex as the person; according to Pullman the author it might indicate some sort of gift or quality, such as second sight.
Rating/Warning: PG (language, Sam/Dean implied)
Wordcount: 3,501
Spoilers: None
Fandom: SPN
By:
kellifer_ficSummary: The first time Dean hears about the man with no dæmon is when he overhears two hunters discussing the best way to kill him.
Notes: Fusion with His Dark Materials - do not have to be familiar with the books to read. Some liberties have been taken.
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.
--
The first time Dean hears about the man with no dæmon is when he overhears two hunters discussing the best way to kill him.
"I hear he's good with knives," Bart Fellows says before taking a sip of whatever rotgut was his poison of choice.
"You know what happens to guys with knives. They get shot," Shelby Ashton rejoinders, intentionally or more likely unintentionally quoting a Tarantino movie.
Dean's expecting to feel appalled, and he is at the casual manner these two grizzled old guys discuss putting someone down, but he's also intrigued because from all accounts, the man is a hunter himself.
"Just gives me the heebies," Bart continues.
Possession's always a possibility with folk who are still upright and have no dæmons. Poor sods don't have a chance once the hell spawn takes up residence, cleaving themselves between the person and their dæmon so violently that the dæmon never survives. If the hell spawn vacates while the body's still ticking then all that's usually left is a gibbering shell that doesn't survive much longer itself.
Shapeshifters, bogeymen and some harpies could appear as two legs and all would be without dæmons of their own. Werewolves had them but they were so twisted out of true that you just knew something was up looking at them.
None of those were likely to travel the countryside, killing evil things.
Dean starts hearing about the man more constantly after that. He's a ghost, a scary story otherwise brave men tell to creep each other out. After a while Dean begins to seek the stories out. It's like most urban legends after a while, all know a guy who knows a guy who saw him, but no one has ever seen him themselves.
Dean's half-convinced that that's all this guy is going to end up being. A scary story, a hunter's bogeyman. He's not exactly expecting to run into him but he'd been half-tracking his progress across the states so it shouldn't have been a surprise that when he's pinned by a Rawhead, a monster that's the very worst combination of dumb, strong and child-eating that Dean can't resist, a stranger emerges from the gloom and saves his ass.
Bebe, currently a house cat with her fur standing on end so she looks like a ball with feet, only calms when Dean gets a hand on her.
"Hey man, thanks. Thought I was a goner," Dean says, watching a tall, shaggy-haired stranger wipe his enormous meat cleaver off on his sleeve. Rawheads went with a jolt of electricity best but beheading would put most things down, at least long enough to kill them they way they needed killing permanently. Bebe's purring loud in his ear and Dean nudges her away so he can sit up.
"Probably not the best thing to go after by yourself," the man admonishes, still sticking enough in the shadows that Dean's only got a real general impression of what he looks like with no specifics.
"You got a partner here then?" Dean asks with a raised eyebrow and the man pauses and looks at him.
"No."
"Well then, how 'bout we save the lectures for later and I buy us both a beer?" Dean offers, then stares hard because Bebe has edged so close to the man that she's almost pressed up against his shoes. "Bebe!" Dean gets out, feeling startled and a little off-balance and she skitters backwards, fur puffing up again and looking about like she didn't even realise what she was doing.
The man hasn't moved but to tuck his cleaver into the back of his jeans.
"Sorry," she gets out, sounding a little breathless. "I don't really know what that was."
Goose flesh breaks out on Dean and something cold slithers up his spine as he finally notices that he hasn't seen the guy's dæmon yet. Doesn't really mean anything, there was a boy in one of Dean's many high schools who had a dæmon that had settled as a brown snake and usually wrapped herself around the kid's arm, under his clothes.
Still creeped everyone out enough that they called the kid Freaky Freddy because he'd walk around looking like he didn't have a dæmon at all.
"Where's your...?" Dean starts to ask and then settles for making a helpless gesture with his hand. He's not sure how to finish the sentence without sounding like a prize idiot if what he's starting to suspect is wrong.
"My what?" the man asks, looking guileless. He's not helping Dean out at all and he must know it because when he steps forward enough that his throat and one cheek are in light, the cheek is raised a little like the guy's smirking.
"Your dæmon?" Bebe cuts in, ducking her head back and forth like maybe she's just missed seeing it.
"Never did get me one of those," the man says with a half-shrug and then he's turned away and gone, nothing but the rapidly decomposing corpse of the Rawhead to mark his passing.
Dean is left staring at the doorway the man's ducked out of with his mouth open right up until he feels little claws in his thigh and looks down at Bebe. She pointedly looks at the stinking mess of bones and rotted flesh and then rolls her golden eyes. "That's just rude, leaving us with the cleanup," she grumbles and Dean, if he ever gets over having a minor stroke, would have to agree.
Dean suspects the guy gets around by simply pretending to have a dæmon. Considering some can be as small as a spider or a field mouse it's not all that uncommon to see people moving about without them all that obvious.
Especially if the guy's always on the move and the only interactions he has are fleeting ones with motel clerks and people who are too freaked out to know any better by whatever was trying to kill them at the time.
His dad always said one of his greatest strengths was tracking and when Dean starts making more than a half-assed go of it, it gets easier to trace where the guy's been. He's making a similar loop to Dean of the countryside, sometimes parallelling Dean's own course and sometimes ranging farther out. Dean wonders if the guy uses the same way to find hunts, looking through the obits and the smaller local papers.
He waits for them to cross paths again.
It ends up not taking as long as he's expecting it to, if the person Dean's watching on the side of the road with his thumb out is who he thinks it is. Dean pulls the Impala up alongside him and leans past Bebe, now a mongrel mix dog, to drop the passenger side window.
"We're you headed?" Dean calls. He doesn't make a habit of picking up hitchhikers because it's a little hard to explain a trunk full of weapons and a glove compartment full of fake IDs but for this guy he's willing to make an exception, even if he doesn't fully understand why.
Bebe seems just about as mystified as she cocks him a confused look.
"You followin' me?" the guy asks, stopping long enough to rest an arm on the impala's roof and duck down to look at Dean. Dean's a little surprised because the guy is actually younger than Dean first thought, maybe just gone past twenty.
"Not intentionally," Dean says.
The guy pulls a face, one Dean can't read, but then he's nodding and pulling open the back door on his side, tossing his duffel bag into the car and himself after it.
Bebe shivers and then she's a ferret with a black mask, curling up to sit behind Dean's neck. "You know what they say about a guy whose dæmon can't settle?" the guy asks, sounding speculative.
"No, what do they say?" Dean grits through his teeth because he's heard it all before.
He can feel the guy's gaze on the back of his neck for a beat before he huffs and says, "Nothin' particularly interesting."
"I'm Dean," Dean introduces. "This is Bebe."
"Sam," the guy says and then there's this awkward beat that's strangely blank. Finally Dean realises that he was waiting for a second introduction that will never come, force of habit.
"Sam," Dean repeats, fixing it in his mind. "So, where you headed?"
"I heard there's a poltergeist in Patience. Thought I'd check it out," Sam says. "I like the alliteration."
"You're kinda weird," Dean observes.
"I've heard that before," Sam says blandly and then they both laugh and with that, it's easy.
Dean has to admit that it's nice having someone by his side again. He split from his dad when he was sixteen, both of them rubbing each other the wrong way so old wounds never got a chance to heal and scab over. His dad had never been able to forgive himself for the deaths of his mom and little brother and as Dean grew into the features his mom had given him, John Winchester had stopped being able to even look at him.
Dean had learned to be self-sufficient early as a result. Dean wasn't really used to sharing space with someone anymore but he could tell after only a few weeks that Sam definitely was despite the creepy loner vibe he'd given off initially.
Dean was worried at first that maybe he was some kind of rebound partner to Sam, someone Sam would abandon as soon as he realized he could stand on his own two feet, but it never seemed to happen. Without ever discussing it, Sam stuck and they fell into an easy rhythm that had people blinking with surprise when they revealed that they hadn't known each other for very long.
Dean found himself liking Sam more and more and even though deep-down it should have been setting off alarm bells, he didn't really worry about it and neither did Bebe.
"Guess we're keeping him, huh?" Dean says, a few weeks after he'd first picked Sam up off the roadside, yawning and scratching idly behind Bebe's ears as she sprawls on his chest. Sam is asleep on the other bed with limbs akimbo.
"Guess so," Bebe agrees with a satisfied purr.
Dean supposes he shouldn't have been quite so content, despite the strangeness, to ignore the fact that Sam didn't have a dæmon. Mostly because it was only a matter of time before someone else wasn't willing to. It doesn't help that Sam is a giant with shaggy hair so even the vaguest of descriptions about the stranger with no dæmon has hunters looking at Sam twice if they ever cross paths.
Dean takes Sam to the Roadhouse, both of them itching for a break and more than a few beers when a man who's obviously beaten them to the few beers sidles up to their table. He has three buddies at his shoulder as all born troublemakers seem to and Bebe, currently a silver fox, moves from Dean's feet to his lap, putting paws on his belly in agitation.
"We been watchin' you two for a while," the drunken ringleader slurs, tapping a stubby finger on the table between Sam and Dean.
"We're flattered gentlemen, but we're not here for a random drunken hookup, despite your overall attractiveness," Dean quips, tipping his bottle in the leader's direction and then the flunkies in turn. "How about you let us have the quiet night we were planning on?"
"Sure," the leader says with a sloppy grin. "Jus' wanna lay eyes on that kid's dæmon. Clear up a discussion we been havin'." The man goes to poke Sam in the shoulder but Sam moves automatically, grabbing his reaching hand and twisting down until the guy lets out a high-pitched wail that has his friends blinking.
"Like my friend said, walk away," Sam growls and now Dean has to look at Sam, reevaluate who he's been travelling with because he'd been getting complacent, mistaking the kid he'd eaten pizza and watched a Die Hard marathon with only the night before as someone he actually knows.
The friends seem inclined to do just what Sam says but the leader's pride is hurt and he takes a swing. He's obviously no slouch even despite the booze but Dean can almost see the eye roll Sam wears as he easily dodges and lands an uppercut that puts the guy on the floor amongst the sawdust. The friends scoop their wayward leader up and drag him off without further argument or even eye contact. Sam sits back down and Dean realises belatedly that he didn't even get the chance to stand. Sam pulls his beer to himself and mulishly takes a sip.
"Um, we'd better go," Dean says and Sam sighs.
"Yeah, I guess so."
Sex seems like a natural progression to Dean but when he makes a pass a few days later, Sam merely snorts in a strangely amused and exasperated way and peels Dean's reaching hands away from himself. "Believe me, you really don't want to do that."
"I really do," Dean protests and winces when his tone is more thwarted child than heated adult. It's Bebe's turn to snort, still the fox and Dean is starting to wonder if maybe she's finally decided on a permanent form.
"Why are you always such a horndog?" Sam grumbles and Dean rolls his eyes because he thought he'd been heroically restrained the past few weeks. He's had offers, plenty in fact and he's resisted, thinking maybe he and Sam were heading somewhere good.
All Dean manages to actually get out despite this is an indignant, "Hey!"
"It's not... I didn't mean just you," Sam finally says.
"What are you talking about?"
"You ever wonder why we were so comfortable so quick?" Sam asks.
"I thought it was, y'know, chemistry," Dean says, waggling his eyebrows and Sam snorts again, an indelicate sound.
"Yeah, I guess you could say that," he allows after a pause, tapping his chin with a finger. "Look, I'm going to explain something to you and if by the end of it you want to see the back of me that's okay, it's happened before."
"Okay," Dean says slowly, sitting on the motel bed opposite the one Sam's perched on so they're facing each other across the space.
Sam steeples his fingers and seems to have a long think about how he's going to say what he's going to say before he starts. When he does, he says something Dean's not really expecting. "First off, I'm not evil."
"That's reassuring," Dean says, fighting the urge to reach for the knife under his pillow because when a person has to say that they're not evil, they usually are. The only thing that stills Dean's hand is the way Sam smiles, how it pings something familiar deep down inside Dean.
"I'm not really sure what's going on myself. Maybe this is purgatory or a special kind of hell or something, I don't know. All I know is that I die and then I wake up, over and over again. Every time I do, I wake up somewhere different."
"Different how?"
"Different here, or a world where the demons won and the last of humanity is scratching out an existence, or where there's nothing supernatural at all. Different like not the world I was born in."
"Come again?"
"I guess you'd call it alternate realities. All I know is that I've died hundreds of times and I've woken up again and been somewhere... different."
"Huh," Dean says, because he really can't think of anything else. It sounds crazy, ludicrous, but Sam looks so hopeful, so earnest that Dean really wants to believe him. Plus, to support the kid's story, he's walking around without a dæmon like it's normal and that's pretty damn bizarre. "You met me before?"
"Every time," Sam says, nodding. "Don't know whether I'm drawn to you or you're drawn to me but I find you in whatever shape you're in, in whatever world I end up."
"Whatever shape I'm in?"
Sam frowns and his eyes slip away, down to his feet and to Bebe who's curled up yet again too close to his toes. "Sometimes you're the... late Dean Winchester."
Dean digests that for a second and then nods. He's in a dangerous line of work, had more than his fair share of narrow escapes and from what he knows about alternate realities, it's the tiniest of decisions that can make a difference. Maybe he dodged left rather than right a time or two and ended up in the ground because of it. "So why am I your roost little homing pigeon?" Dean asks.
"Because you're my brother."
Dean's getting some air, watching Bebe bat at moths that are dancing around the motel's ground lights when the motel door creaks open.
"We parting ways?" Sam asks, voice tentative. Dean looks over his shoulder to see Sam scuffing at the carpet that's at the motel's thresh hold, obviously not wanting to intrude on Dean if he's not ready for it.
"You're really my brother?" Dean asks into the night air, tasting the words for himself as much as asking Sam.
"Not really," Sam says, dropping down next to Dean on the weathered wooden bench just outside their motel room. Bebe immediately quits her playing and joins them, wrapping herself around Dean's ankle, chewing idly on the laces of his boots. "I'm probably about as related to you as I am to the motel clerk that checked us in." When Dean looks at him in confusion, Sam turns so their knees are almost touching. "I mean yes, the world I was born in Dean Winchester was my big brother. He was, not you. Does that make sense?"
"I guess," Dean says, trying not to feel disappointed or at least trying not to let it show on his face.
"I'm sorry. I don't mean to be an asshole about it. I just... I can't start thinking about it the other way. I'm not going to be here very long and I don't think it's fair on either of us."
"You going somewhere?" Dean asks, raising an eyebrow.
"I always do," Sam says, sounding beaten-down by the prospect. "I haven't lasted more than a few months anywhere else. I keep thinking maybe it's because at some point I'll circle back around to my own world but I'm starting to worry this is just all someone's idea of a really bad joke or, y'know, some kind of punishment."
"Wait," Dean says, holding up his hands. "You said you die before you wake up somewhere else. You mean I gotta watch that?"
Sam's face goes blank before he says, "Huh." He rubs hands over his thighs and Dean sees the dark streaks his sweat leaves behind. "I guess I never thought... I mean I'm not here to..."
"Are you really clumsy?" Dean asks and when Sam just looks perplexed he waves a hand and says, "With all the dying? Do you keep falling down mine shafts or something? Is there a consistent theme?"
"I don't remember that bit. All I know is that I die, but I don't remember the specifics."
"So you could just keel over at any second, no explanation?"
"Maybe."
"Well, that sucks balls."
"Yeah."
Sam's reading, ballpoint pen lodged in the corner of his mouth. Bebe's rolling around in a patch of sunlight that's filtering through the dingy motel curtains. She's reverted back to a common house cat, stripes on her back and a fuzzy over-white stomach. As Dean watches, Sam reaches out a bare foot, probably not even thinking about it, and scratches Bebe on her exposed belly.
It's a violation, someone touching your dæmon. An intrusion that leaves you shaking and sometimes curled up with revulsion or worse. Bebe should spring away and Dean should scream but neither of them do, instead Bebe arches so that more of her belly comes into contact with Sam's foot and Dean feels nothing but a pleasant kind of hum in his head and chest, like something settling into place.
"I don't think you're going anywhere," Dean says and Sam, lost in his book and obviously not paying attention, grunts in agreement, responding to Dean's voice rather than his words. He finally looks up when he feels the weight of Dean's stare.
"Sorry, did you say something?"
"Nothing Sammy," Dean says as Bebe looks at him upside down, eyes blinking sleepily, her signature happy face. "Nothing at all."
-- Napoleon Is Always Right - George Orwell, Animal Farm
---His Dark Materials Cheat Sheet---
A dæmon is a manifestation of the soul of a conscious person in the Philip Pullman trilogy His Dark Materials. In those universes with physical dæmons, they exist external to the human in the form of animals representative of the person's personality, although children's dæmons may change form at whim. The bond between dæmon and human is intimate, and dæmons must remain within a small distance of their human (with the exception of witches); contact between a person and another person's dæmon is taboo, although dæmons may touch each other
Dæmons can touch each other freely. However, "the worst breach of etiquette imaginable" is for a person to touch another person's dæmon (even in battle, most soldiers would never touch an enemy's dæmon), though exceptions can be made (for example, between lovers). If one does touch someone else's dæmon, it causes great weakness for the person whose dæmon is being touched.
A person's dæmon is usually of the opposite sex to its human. However, in some cases it may be the same sex as the person; according to Pullman the author it might indicate some sort of gift or quality, such as second sight.
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This was a delightful and unexpected crossover, neat idea and well-written. I really enjoyed it. The ending was subtle and happy-making. Soulmates! :)
"Wait," Dean says, holding up his hands. "You said you die before you wake up somewhere else. You mean I gotta watch that?"
Sam's face goes blank before he says, "Huh."
Wow, that hadn't occurred to me either! Now I feel sorry for multiple-universe Deans...