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Title: Masquerading As A Man Of Reason - Part 4/4 (Complete)
By: kellifer_fic
Fandom: SPN
Rating: PG (language/adult themes)
Category: Dean,Sam (gen)
Words: 3,985
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, no money!
Spoilers: Set after 2.01
Notes: Thanks to my beta *superfox*
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
“Where’s my brother?”
“He’s meditating,” Jenny answered, not bothering to look up from the paperwork she had spread across her kitchen table. She was chewing on the end of her pen and had ink stains between her index and middle fingers on her right hand.
“Let me rephrase that,” Dean ground out, putting a palm flat over the page Jenny was looking at so her eyes finally skimmed up his arm and came to rest on his face. “Where’s my brother?”
Jenny looked bored rather than cowed when she said, “Out in the back field, far enough from the house that he wouldn’t be disturbed.” Jenny reached forward a small, delicate-looking hand and gripped Dean’s wrist, shoving his hand off her papers. “I would rather he stay undisturbed.” Before she released his wrist, Jenny tightened her fingers enough that Dean felt his bones grind together. He wrenched out of her grasp with a curse.
“What the hell is your problem?” Dean demanded.
“You are my problem, Dean,” Jenny sighed, making it sound like it should be obvious. She stood, gathering her papers together as Dean gaped at her. “Sam has been suppressing his talents for months now and all because he was worried what you would think, whether you could handle it. He squashed what should have been a natural evolvement for you and it’s nearly killed him, nearly made him dangerous. The first decent thing you’ve done is bring him here and I’m surprised you pulled your head out of your own ass long enough to do that.”
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Dean growled, but he’d taken a step backwards with Jenny’s words, terrified that in some small way they might be true.
“Don’t I? You seem to be hell-bent on being angry at someone and I get that, I really do.” Jenny had moved to the doorway of the kitchen but turned back. “Maybe you should focus that anger where it belongs. I’m trying to help Sam and you’re treating me like the enemy. What does that tell you?”
Dean wasn’t rendered speechless very often, but he was silent now.
000
Dean was sitting on the fence that separated the house from the backfield when Sam appeared, looking dusty and tired. Sam spotted him and curved his path so he would end up where Dean was sitting, carefully murdering a piece of birch he’d found with one of his bigger knives, pretending to himself that it was Jenny and happily hacking bits off.
Sam fetched up against the fence and leaned forward, resting his forearms on the top.
“How was meditation?” Dean asked, tossing the piece of wood aside and putting his knife back into the holster at the small of his back. Usually when they settled somewhere for a few days, Dean wouldn’t stay armed but he’d felt naked without a blade the first time he’d gone to take it off and he’d kept it on. Sam had noticed but hadn’t said anything.
Sam was good like that.
“I don’t think I’m doing it properly,” Sam sighed scrubbing a hand through his hair so it stuck up in sweaty spikes that Dean had to fight the compulsion to smooth down for him. “Jenny gave me some exercises to help my focus but…” Sam shrugged, not finishing the sentence, his face puzzled.
“You can’t relax here?’ Dean hazarded, hoping against hope that he wasn’t crazy and Sam was feeling the sense of wrong that he’d been plagued by since they’d been there.
“Yeah. How did you know?” Sam asked, moving around so his back was propped against the fence, elbows on the top. From there he pulled himself up to sit beside Dean, who at that moment wanted nothing more than to reach across and hug his brother for getting it.
Sam’s eyes had skipped to Dean’s back where the blade was nestled and he nodded. “You too huh?”
“I don’t know Sammy, maybe it’s all the voodoo or whatever that’s making me jittery, but there’s something about this place that just feels…” Dean put his hands out and curled the fingers, unable to articulate the feeling he was getting just by being there. Jenny was part of it, sure, but as soon as the Impala’s front tyres had crossed over the property line, Dean had felt uneasy.
“Look man, I may be psychic or whatever, but I’d trust your gut any day of the week. We just… we just can’t leave though.”
Dean looked at Sam for a beat in the dying light of the afternoon. “I can have us packed and ready to go in ten,” Dean offered, a hopeful smile on his face which faded when Sam shook his head slowly.
“Dean, I can’t. No matter what, I’m dangerous at the moment.”
“Sammy-“
“No Dean, I am. I felt it get away from me. I…hurt you.”
“What’s a nosebleed between brothers?” Dean tried for jovial but it fell flat between them. “Look, there’s…” Something else Dean was about to say, but he took in the tired slope of his brother’s shoulders, the lank hair and the dark circles under his eyes and he sighed. He wasn’t quite sure what the make of what Jason had said to him, the kid might have been messing with him for all Dean knew and he just couldn’t add to Sam’s worries.
“We’ll stay, if you think it’s best,” Dean offered instead.
They sat together as the sun went down, neither talking, both just drawing off the other’s simple presence.
000
Dean wasn’t sure whether Jenny had done something to her couch to make it extra lumpy and uncomfortable but he wouldn’t put it past her. He rose with the dawn the next morning, pretty sure he’d gotten a total of about twenty minutes sleep, got dressed quickly and headed out to the Impala, the missed calls from Missouri still on his mind.
When he turned the key in the ignition, the engine turned over and then quit and Dean frowned. “Oh c’mon baby,” he sighed, leaning forward to sweep a hand across the Impala’s dash and then turned the key again. This time there was absolutely nothing. Dean let his head thump onto the steering wheel.
“It’s the protection runes.” Jason was just outside the car, looking at Dean through the window. Dean rolled it down and rested his arms over the side.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Naw, I told you, messes with everything for a couple of days. You watch, in like three days she’ll start just fine.”
“How far is town on foot?” Dean asked, getting out. He had always measured miles by the gentle hum of tyres underneath him.
Jason seemed to think about it, scratching at his chin idly with a hand that was possibly grubbier than the day before. “About five hours, depending on how fast you walk.”
“Son of a…” Dean sighed, kicking at the dirt with his boot. He looked to the house and then out towards the road, turning it over in his mind. He would be leaving Sam alone for probably a whole day and while the need to know what Missouri thought was so urgent was plaguing him, the need to keep Sam in the immediate vicinity was more pressing.
Always more.
“You didn’t tell him, did you?” Jason asked idly and Dean looked at him, not liking at all the glint of calculation in the younger boy’s eyes.
“Tell who what?” Dean asked, injecting boredom into his tone and lifting the hood of the Impala to check it out. He was getting the feeling that he shouldn’t be taking this kid’s word for anything.
“Why don’t you want your brother to know?” Dean got the feeling that Jason was being intentionally cryptic, whether to annoy him or for some other purpose he wasn’t sure.
“It’s none of your business. Sam’s got enough to worry about and besides, you’re probably just making the whole thing up. It probably was Sam that deflected you and you just want me to let my guard down around you.”
“Why would I do that?” Jason asked, blinking big eyes at Dean who, being Sam Winchester’s brother, champion of the puppy-dog eyes, recognised false wide-eyed who me? innocence when he saw it. The problem was, when the kid had first reacted, it had rung genuine and Dean didn’t hold out much hope that it was all some elaborate ruse.
“Jason, time for your exercises,” Jenny called from the front porch, hard eyes on Dean. Jason jogged back to the house and Jenny kept her eyes on Dean right up until the screen door banged shut behind her.
000
Dean found Sam in the back paddock again, this time with some symbols he’d never seen before scratched into the dirt around his brother in a rough circle.
“Focus symbols,” Sam explained with a glare when Dean scratched a boot through one. He leaned forward to obliterate it completely and redraw it and then settled back, legs crossed. Dean always got a dull ache in his knees when he sat like that for too long and wondered how Sam, legs six thousand feet longer than his own, could stand it.
“Really? I’ve never seen them before,” Dean said, going down onto his haunches to look closer. Sam cracked open an eye.
“Yeah, me neither, although a couple of them look… familiar.” Sam opened both eyes now, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to drop back into his meditative state until Dean got bored and left him alone. He reached forward and pointed to the symbol directly in front of him. “Like, I’ve seen that one somewhere before but I can’t remember where.”
“Dad’s journal maybe?”
“Yeah, maybe. Although why would he have focus symbols in the journal? He didn’t strike me as the meditation type.”
“I don’t know. Focus symbols could be used for lots of things. Maybe make a spell stronger, reinforce protection, stuff like that.”
Sam regarded Dean with a fond smile. “Your brain man. Sometimes… I just wouldn’t have thought of that. You make me wonder whether I’m really the smart one.”
Dean ducked his head, oddly flattered. “You know we just told you that so you wouldn’t feel so bad not being the pretty one, right?” Dean grinned and ducked when Sam took a swipe at his head. “Anyway, I’m going to have a wander around, see if I can find what’s giving off the jeebie vibes.”
“Is that the technical term?”
“You know it ,bitch,” Dean chuckled, cuffing Sam in the back of the head as he made his way back towards the house.
000
The house looked deserted, but knowing none of the vehicles would make it off the property, Dean was careful when making his way through the house, mindful that he could be interrupted at any moment.
Everything looked boring, non-descript, except when he tried to get into the attic. There was a padlock holding a bolt closed over the drop-down door but even though he heard the lock snick open when he applied his Winchester skeleton key, a paperclip he’d found downstairs, the padlock stayed stubbornly closed.
He looked at it, thinking it might have been rusted shut, when he noticed a tiny symbol inscribed next to the manufacturer’s mark on the bottom. It wasn’t one of the symbols Sam had scratched into the dirt outside but it was definitely, to Dean’s eye, of the same origin.
Dean left the house, not wanting to push his luck further, and took a walk around the property. He crossed the back paddock, seeing Sam at the end but not wanting to interrupt him again if whatever he was doing was helping, and moved to where there was a dilapidated shed in what looked like the very end border of Jenny’s place.
The padlock on the shed proved easier to open than the one in the house and Dean was disappointed to find that there was nothing more exciting inside than some rusted equipment and a ride-on mower that looked like it hadn’t moved in a decade. He checked the floor, tapping around looking for hollow places, but no secret trapdoors presented themselves.
Dean exited the shed and circled around to the back and stopped.
Arranged neatly behind were what looked like five graves, fresh from the way the earth was turned up and nothing had had the chance to grow on the top. There was a large stone placed in the middle of all five, a symbol inscribed in each. Again, nothing he recognised but definitely along the same lines as what Sam was using and what kept him out of the attic.
“I hate being right,” Dean sighed.
000
Jason stopped dead in the kitchen doorway, eyes going big.
“Watcha doin’?” he asked, watching as Dean picked up a shotgun and cracked it open.
“Just cleanin’ my guns,” Dean said. “It’s what I do when I have time to kill,” he added. Sam had been gone from the back paddock when Dean had gotten back and a quick survey of the house hadn’t turned him up. Dean wasn’t sure what he was dealing with yet and he refused to let panic in until he knew.
As Jason watched, Dean took a flask from his back pocket, took a swig and grimaced, setting it down beside him with a sigh. “What’s that?” Jason asked, eyeing the flask.
“Whiskey,” Dean said, looking up. “You’re too young to have any.”
“The hell I am,” Jason protested, crossing his arms and jutting his chin.
“Alright, one sip but don’t tell Jenny. She hates me enough already.”
Jason snatched up the flask with a grin and tipped his head back, taking a huge swallow. The effect was immediate. He dropped the flask, shrieking and clawing at his throat which was smoking.
“Did I forget to mention it was half whiskey, half holy water, asshole?” Dean ground out, rising to his feet and snapping two rock-salt cartridges into his shotgun. Jason had dropped to his knees, eyes huge and bloody furrows in his throat, smoke still curling almost lazily out of his wide open mouth. “Now, tell me how to get into the attic,” Dean said, nudging Jason’s temple with the shotgun.
Jason scrabbled for a pad of paper and pen from the sideboard near his head and in a shaky hand wrote the word Imbleyaet across the page. He held it out, tapping it and then held his left hand out in a claw, looking like he was gripping something.
“Okay, I’m sorry as hell if there is an innocent person in there,” Dean said, voice raised a little and then brought the butt of his shotgun down on Jason’s temple. He leant down and checked there was still a pulse before gripping the shotgun and taking the hallway stairs two at a time. He grasped the padlock on the attic door and closed his eyes.
“Imbleyaet,” he said and felt the padlock spring open in his grasp. Dean yanked the stairs down and thumped up them. He felt something glance off his temple just as his head cleared the floor and threw himself upwards, rolling sideways and bringing the shotgun around.
Jenny was standing in the middle of the room and Dean could see Sam sitting on the floor, cross-legged just behind her. “Sam!” Dean barked, but there was no response. Dean felt cold wash over him as he realised that Sam’s eyes were open but the whole eye was black.
“Dean, can’t you see your brother and I are busy?” Jenny snarled and shoved her hands forward. This time Dean felt something glance off his shoulder, making his whole arm tingle but he kept his grip on the shotgun, mindful that while Jenny stood directly in front of Sam he had a chance of catching Sam as well and not knowing what it would do to him in whatever state he was in.
“How are you doing that?” Jenny all but shrieked, yanking hands through her wild hair. She backed up until she was directly in front of Sam and then skirted around him, hands spreading over his face with her thumbs resting over his eyes. “Are you ready to watch Sam die, Dean?” she asked, her voice now calm.
“Don’t,” Dean breathed, gripping the shotgun harder.
“Be a good boy and put the gun down.” Jenny was smiling now.
Never give up your weapon. Never
John’s voice echoed through Dean’s mind and his grip tightened until his knuckles were white with the strain.
“Just what is it you were trying to do here?” Dean asked, tone reasonable. Jenny blinked at him, confusion washing her face.
“Put down your-“
“I mean honestly. It was all a bit of a mish-mash from the get go. I figured you tried to nail me as soon as we came in, maybe thought Sam would come by himself. That didn’t work so you had to come up with a plan B.”
“I said-“
“Lady, I’d hate to be in your shoes. Whatever big bad you’re working for is going to have your spine for dinner over this one.”
“Shutup!” Jenny roared and this time Dean felt it, felt that build-up of energy that Sam had been talking about and when it arced out toward him, Dean shoved.
It came out of me, like a punch.
Dean hadn’t exactly gone with Sam’s metaphor, more like he had swung a mental baseball bat when someone had lobbed a mental fly ball at him. Whatever it was, Jenny’s mouth opened in horror and then she tipped backwards and away from Sam, bucking like a fish on dry land before coming to rest. A cloud of black belched out of her and oozed through the cracks in the walls and away.
“Sammy,” Dean said, staggering forward on shaky legs, dropping the shotgun so he could pull Sam’s head into his lap as his younger brother slumped sideways, eyes closing. He blinked a couple of times and then looked up, green now in place of black.
“Dean?” he croaked.
000
Dean pulled up short, Sam’s arm slung across one shoulder, when they reached the bottom of the stairs and found Bobby and Missouri standing in the living room, Jason tied to a chair, cursing and spitting around the gag in his mouth.
“Hey guys,” Dean said, lowering Sam into the nearest armchair and ruffling a hand through his hair before he turned back to them. He felt something gentle skate over his mind and away and then Missouri was frowning at him.
“Now there’s a thing,” she sighed, looking at Dean with a careful eye.
“You boys okay?” Bobby asked. He had a battered notebook in hand with his index finger holding a place towards the middle.
“Nice place you sent us to,” Dean remarked and he saw Missouri’s eyes go hard, as if she’d like nothing more than to take to him with her famous spoon.
“I tried calling you as soon as I lost track of Sam. You boys just seemed to fall off the face of the earth and that got me worried.”
“What do you mean lost track of Sam?” Dean demanded.
“Powerful as he is, he’s like a low-grade hum always in the back of the mind. Not to everyone of course, I just knew what to look for. That disappeared a few days back like a light switch being turned off. I was scared for the worst.”
“You thought he was dead?”
“Or as close to it as would make no never mind,” Missouri agreed. “What happened here?”
“Your friend was possessed when we got here. I don’t know what she was trying to do with Sam, but she was sure sore that I was here too.”
“Is she-?” Dean’s eyes ticking down and away were enough answer for Missouri and she sighed. “You did the right thing. We with the power always know there’s little chance of saving us once we’re taken. That’s the tradeoff.”
“Is he-?” Dean canted his head at Jason and Bobby chuckled.
“Mad as hell and about to be exorcised,” he said, flipping his notebook open.
“There were some graves out by an old shed,” Dean said, retrieving a piece of paper from the coffee table and a pen. “There may be some missing people whose families we can advise.” Dean did a quick sketch of the symbol that had been on the stone on each of the graves. He held it out to Missouri whose eyes widened.
“Dean,” she breathed. “Those symbols are to draw power from the living”
000
Dean, Bobby and Sam sat on the porch steps, nursing beers, all covered in dirt and with a couple of shovels piled up at the bottom step. Missouri was indoors, consoling five rather shaken people who’d woken up buried alive as soon as the stones over them had been removed. Dean was pretty sure he would never shake the memory of the youngest, a girl of about six, whose arm had shot out of the dirt when he’d gotten close and had grabbed him.
“You think that’s what she was preparing me for?” Sam asked, a tremor running through his body and Dean reached a hand around and rubbed circles on his back.
“Don’t know kiddo. Doesn’t matter now,” Dean said, hoping Sam didn’t hear the tremble in his own voice, the very idea of Sam being buried alive yet another thing that would wake him up in a cold sweat for nights to come.
Later, with Sam inside packing their stuff and Bobby finishing off the exorcism that would release Jason, Missouri found Dean out by the Impala.
“Trying to get a read on you now is like trying to grip an ice-cube in your hand on a hot day. What’s that about?”
Dean shrugged. “Not really sure. Jason took a pot-shot at me when we first got here and I apparently deflected him somehow.”
“You’re taking this all fairly calmly. Folks find out they have power, usually panic at least a little bit.”
“I don’t…” Dean rubbed a hand over the back of his head. “I’m not really thinking about it like having a power.” He looked at Missouri. “It’s not like visions or telekinesis or anything.”
“Honey, just how are you thinking about it then?”
“I don’t know,” Dean shrugged and then smiled a little. “It feels… it feels a little like it’s defensive. Like it’s protection.”
“You may be right about that,” Missouri allowed. “Because even though we’ve broken up all the shielding runes around the place, I still can’t feel Sam the way I used to. I’m wondering if that’s you.”
“Maybe,” Dean slipped into the Impala as Sam emerged from the house with their bags, turning the key into the ignition and sighing with relief when she purred to life.
“You ever going to tell him?” she asked, putting a hand through the window to squeeze Dean’s arm.
“I will,” Dean allowed. “Sooner or later I tell him everything.”
000
“I’m still not fixed,” Sam said, settling into the passenger seat and only relaxing once they couldn’t see Jenny’s property behind them any longer.
“You were never broken,” Dean argued. “Anyway, Missouri gave me the names of a couple of other people that might be able to help.”
Sam’s eyes slid to Dean, apprehension clear on his face. “You think it’ll be safe?”
“Only if they like me,” Dean said with a grin.
“Be serious,” Sam grunted.
“I am. Anyway, you got a lot to work through but we got time.”
“Yeah, but I’m still worried I’ll hurt you.” Sam’s eyes had ticked out the window, chin propped on his hand and his whole body had gone tense.
Dean took a deep breath.
“Well, the thing about that is…” he began.
By: kellifer_fic
Fandom: SPN
Rating: PG (language/adult themes)
Category: Dean,Sam (gen)
Words: 3,985
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, no money!
Spoilers: Set after 2.01
Notes: Thanks to my beta *superfox*
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
“Where’s my brother?”
“He’s meditating,” Jenny answered, not bothering to look up from the paperwork she had spread across her kitchen table. She was chewing on the end of her pen and had ink stains between her index and middle fingers on her right hand.
“Let me rephrase that,” Dean ground out, putting a palm flat over the page Jenny was looking at so her eyes finally skimmed up his arm and came to rest on his face. “Where’s my brother?”
Jenny looked bored rather than cowed when she said, “Out in the back field, far enough from the house that he wouldn’t be disturbed.” Jenny reached forward a small, delicate-looking hand and gripped Dean’s wrist, shoving his hand off her papers. “I would rather he stay undisturbed.” Before she released his wrist, Jenny tightened her fingers enough that Dean felt his bones grind together. He wrenched out of her grasp with a curse.
“What the hell is your problem?” Dean demanded.
“You are my problem, Dean,” Jenny sighed, making it sound like it should be obvious. She stood, gathering her papers together as Dean gaped at her. “Sam has been suppressing his talents for months now and all because he was worried what you would think, whether you could handle it. He squashed what should have been a natural evolvement for you and it’s nearly killed him, nearly made him dangerous. The first decent thing you’ve done is bring him here and I’m surprised you pulled your head out of your own ass long enough to do that.”
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Dean growled, but he’d taken a step backwards with Jenny’s words, terrified that in some small way they might be true.
“Don’t I? You seem to be hell-bent on being angry at someone and I get that, I really do.” Jenny had moved to the doorway of the kitchen but turned back. “Maybe you should focus that anger where it belongs. I’m trying to help Sam and you’re treating me like the enemy. What does that tell you?”
Dean wasn’t rendered speechless very often, but he was silent now.
Dean was sitting on the fence that separated the house from the backfield when Sam appeared, looking dusty and tired. Sam spotted him and curved his path so he would end up where Dean was sitting, carefully murdering a piece of birch he’d found with one of his bigger knives, pretending to himself that it was Jenny and happily hacking bits off.
Sam fetched up against the fence and leaned forward, resting his forearms on the top.
“How was meditation?” Dean asked, tossing the piece of wood aside and putting his knife back into the holster at the small of his back. Usually when they settled somewhere for a few days, Dean wouldn’t stay armed but he’d felt naked without a blade the first time he’d gone to take it off and he’d kept it on. Sam had noticed but hadn’t said anything.
Sam was good like that.
“I don’t think I’m doing it properly,” Sam sighed scrubbing a hand through his hair so it stuck up in sweaty spikes that Dean had to fight the compulsion to smooth down for him. “Jenny gave me some exercises to help my focus but…” Sam shrugged, not finishing the sentence, his face puzzled.
“You can’t relax here?’ Dean hazarded, hoping against hope that he wasn’t crazy and Sam was feeling the sense of wrong that he’d been plagued by since they’d been there.
“Yeah. How did you know?” Sam asked, moving around so his back was propped against the fence, elbows on the top. From there he pulled himself up to sit beside Dean, who at that moment wanted nothing more than to reach across and hug his brother for getting it.
Sam’s eyes had skipped to Dean’s back where the blade was nestled and he nodded. “You too huh?”
“I don’t know Sammy, maybe it’s all the voodoo or whatever that’s making me jittery, but there’s something about this place that just feels…” Dean put his hands out and curled the fingers, unable to articulate the feeling he was getting just by being there. Jenny was part of it, sure, but as soon as the Impala’s front tyres had crossed over the property line, Dean had felt uneasy.
“Look man, I may be psychic or whatever, but I’d trust your gut any day of the week. We just… we just can’t leave though.”
Dean looked at Sam for a beat in the dying light of the afternoon. “I can have us packed and ready to go in ten,” Dean offered, a hopeful smile on his face which faded when Sam shook his head slowly.
“Dean, I can’t. No matter what, I’m dangerous at the moment.”
“Sammy-“
“No Dean, I am. I felt it get away from me. I…hurt you.”
“What’s a nosebleed between brothers?” Dean tried for jovial but it fell flat between them. “Look, there’s…” Something else Dean was about to say, but he took in the tired slope of his brother’s shoulders, the lank hair and the dark circles under his eyes and he sighed. He wasn’t quite sure what the make of what Jason had said to him, the kid might have been messing with him for all Dean knew and he just couldn’t add to Sam’s worries.
“We’ll stay, if you think it’s best,” Dean offered instead.
They sat together as the sun went down, neither talking, both just drawing off the other’s simple presence.
Dean wasn’t sure whether Jenny had done something to her couch to make it extra lumpy and uncomfortable but he wouldn’t put it past her. He rose with the dawn the next morning, pretty sure he’d gotten a total of about twenty minutes sleep, got dressed quickly and headed out to the Impala, the missed calls from Missouri still on his mind.
When he turned the key in the ignition, the engine turned over and then quit and Dean frowned. “Oh c’mon baby,” he sighed, leaning forward to sweep a hand across the Impala’s dash and then turned the key again. This time there was absolutely nothing. Dean let his head thump onto the steering wheel.
“It’s the protection runes.” Jason was just outside the car, looking at Dean through the window. Dean rolled it down and rested his arms over the side.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Naw, I told you, messes with everything for a couple of days. You watch, in like three days she’ll start just fine.”
“How far is town on foot?” Dean asked, getting out. He had always measured miles by the gentle hum of tyres underneath him.
Jason seemed to think about it, scratching at his chin idly with a hand that was possibly grubbier than the day before. “About five hours, depending on how fast you walk.”
“Son of a…” Dean sighed, kicking at the dirt with his boot. He looked to the house and then out towards the road, turning it over in his mind. He would be leaving Sam alone for probably a whole day and while the need to know what Missouri thought was so urgent was plaguing him, the need to keep Sam in the immediate vicinity was more pressing.
Always more.
“You didn’t tell him, did you?” Jason asked idly and Dean looked at him, not liking at all the glint of calculation in the younger boy’s eyes.
“Tell who what?” Dean asked, injecting boredom into his tone and lifting the hood of the Impala to check it out. He was getting the feeling that he shouldn’t be taking this kid’s word for anything.
“Why don’t you want your brother to know?” Dean got the feeling that Jason was being intentionally cryptic, whether to annoy him or for some other purpose he wasn’t sure.
“It’s none of your business. Sam’s got enough to worry about and besides, you’re probably just making the whole thing up. It probably was Sam that deflected you and you just want me to let my guard down around you.”
“Why would I do that?” Jason asked, blinking big eyes at Dean who, being Sam Winchester’s brother, champion of the puppy-dog eyes, recognised false wide-eyed who me? innocence when he saw it. The problem was, when the kid had first reacted, it had rung genuine and Dean didn’t hold out much hope that it was all some elaborate ruse.
“Jason, time for your exercises,” Jenny called from the front porch, hard eyes on Dean. Jason jogged back to the house and Jenny kept her eyes on Dean right up until the screen door banged shut behind her.
Dean found Sam in the back paddock again, this time with some symbols he’d never seen before scratched into the dirt around his brother in a rough circle.
“Focus symbols,” Sam explained with a glare when Dean scratched a boot through one. He leaned forward to obliterate it completely and redraw it and then settled back, legs crossed. Dean always got a dull ache in his knees when he sat like that for too long and wondered how Sam, legs six thousand feet longer than his own, could stand it.
“Really? I’ve never seen them before,” Dean said, going down onto his haunches to look closer. Sam cracked open an eye.
“Yeah, me neither, although a couple of them look… familiar.” Sam opened both eyes now, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to drop back into his meditative state until Dean got bored and left him alone. He reached forward and pointed to the symbol directly in front of him. “Like, I’ve seen that one somewhere before but I can’t remember where.”
“Dad’s journal maybe?”
“Yeah, maybe. Although why would he have focus symbols in the journal? He didn’t strike me as the meditation type.”
“I don’t know. Focus symbols could be used for lots of things. Maybe make a spell stronger, reinforce protection, stuff like that.”
Sam regarded Dean with a fond smile. “Your brain man. Sometimes… I just wouldn’t have thought of that. You make me wonder whether I’m really the smart one.”
Dean ducked his head, oddly flattered. “You know we just told you that so you wouldn’t feel so bad not being the pretty one, right?” Dean grinned and ducked when Sam took a swipe at his head. “Anyway, I’m going to have a wander around, see if I can find what’s giving off the jeebie vibes.”
“Is that the technical term?”
“You know it ,bitch,” Dean chuckled, cuffing Sam in the back of the head as he made his way back towards the house.
The house looked deserted, but knowing none of the vehicles would make it off the property, Dean was careful when making his way through the house, mindful that he could be interrupted at any moment.
Everything looked boring, non-descript, except when he tried to get into the attic. There was a padlock holding a bolt closed over the drop-down door but even though he heard the lock snick open when he applied his Winchester skeleton key, a paperclip he’d found downstairs, the padlock stayed stubbornly closed.
He looked at it, thinking it might have been rusted shut, when he noticed a tiny symbol inscribed next to the manufacturer’s mark on the bottom. It wasn’t one of the symbols Sam had scratched into the dirt outside but it was definitely, to Dean’s eye, of the same origin.
Dean left the house, not wanting to push his luck further, and took a walk around the property. He crossed the back paddock, seeing Sam at the end but not wanting to interrupt him again if whatever he was doing was helping, and moved to where there was a dilapidated shed in what looked like the very end border of Jenny’s place.
The padlock on the shed proved easier to open than the one in the house and Dean was disappointed to find that there was nothing more exciting inside than some rusted equipment and a ride-on mower that looked like it hadn’t moved in a decade. He checked the floor, tapping around looking for hollow places, but no secret trapdoors presented themselves.
Dean exited the shed and circled around to the back and stopped.
Arranged neatly behind were what looked like five graves, fresh from the way the earth was turned up and nothing had had the chance to grow on the top. There was a large stone placed in the middle of all five, a symbol inscribed in each. Again, nothing he recognised but definitely along the same lines as what Sam was using and what kept him out of the attic.
“I hate being right,” Dean sighed.
Jason stopped dead in the kitchen doorway, eyes going big.
“Watcha doin’?” he asked, watching as Dean picked up a shotgun and cracked it open.
“Just cleanin’ my guns,” Dean said. “It’s what I do when I have time to kill,” he added. Sam had been gone from the back paddock when Dean had gotten back and a quick survey of the house hadn’t turned him up. Dean wasn’t sure what he was dealing with yet and he refused to let panic in until he knew.
As Jason watched, Dean took a flask from his back pocket, took a swig and grimaced, setting it down beside him with a sigh. “What’s that?” Jason asked, eyeing the flask.
“Whiskey,” Dean said, looking up. “You’re too young to have any.”
“The hell I am,” Jason protested, crossing his arms and jutting his chin.
“Alright, one sip but don’t tell Jenny. She hates me enough already.”
Jason snatched up the flask with a grin and tipped his head back, taking a huge swallow. The effect was immediate. He dropped the flask, shrieking and clawing at his throat which was smoking.
“Did I forget to mention it was half whiskey, half holy water, asshole?” Dean ground out, rising to his feet and snapping two rock-salt cartridges into his shotgun. Jason had dropped to his knees, eyes huge and bloody furrows in his throat, smoke still curling almost lazily out of his wide open mouth. “Now, tell me how to get into the attic,” Dean said, nudging Jason’s temple with the shotgun.
Jason scrabbled for a pad of paper and pen from the sideboard near his head and in a shaky hand wrote the word Imbleyaet across the page. He held it out, tapping it and then held his left hand out in a claw, looking like he was gripping something.
“Okay, I’m sorry as hell if there is an innocent person in there,” Dean said, voice raised a little and then brought the butt of his shotgun down on Jason’s temple. He leant down and checked there was still a pulse before gripping the shotgun and taking the hallway stairs two at a time. He grasped the padlock on the attic door and closed his eyes.
“Imbleyaet,” he said and felt the padlock spring open in his grasp. Dean yanked the stairs down and thumped up them. He felt something glance off his temple just as his head cleared the floor and threw himself upwards, rolling sideways and bringing the shotgun around.
Jenny was standing in the middle of the room and Dean could see Sam sitting on the floor, cross-legged just behind her. “Sam!” Dean barked, but there was no response. Dean felt cold wash over him as he realised that Sam’s eyes were open but the whole eye was black.
“Dean, can’t you see your brother and I are busy?” Jenny snarled and shoved her hands forward. This time Dean felt something glance off his shoulder, making his whole arm tingle but he kept his grip on the shotgun, mindful that while Jenny stood directly in front of Sam he had a chance of catching Sam as well and not knowing what it would do to him in whatever state he was in.
“How are you doing that?” Jenny all but shrieked, yanking hands through her wild hair. She backed up until she was directly in front of Sam and then skirted around him, hands spreading over his face with her thumbs resting over his eyes. “Are you ready to watch Sam die, Dean?” she asked, her voice now calm.
“Don’t,” Dean breathed, gripping the shotgun harder.
“Be a good boy and put the gun down.” Jenny was smiling now.
Never give up your weapon. Never
John’s voice echoed through Dean’s mind and his grip tightened until his knuckles were white with the strain.
“Just what is it you were trying to do here?” Dean asked, tone reasonable. Jenny blinked at him, confusion washing her face.
“Put down your-“
“I mean honestly. It was all a bit of a mish-mash from the get go. I figured you tried to nail me as soon as we came in, maybe thought Sam would come by himself. That didn’t work so you had to come up with a plan B.”
“I said-“
“Lady, I’d hate to be in your shoes. Whatever big bad you’re working for is going to have your spine for dinner over this one.”
“Shutup!” Jenny roared and this time Dean felt it, felt that build-up of energy that Sam had been talking about and when it arced out toward him, Dean shoved.
It came out of me, like a punch.
Dean hadn’t exactly gone with Sam’s metaphor, more like he had swung a mental baseball bat when someone had lobbed a mental fly ball at him. Whatever it was, Jenny’s mouth opened in horror and then she tipped backwards and away from Sam, bucking like a fish on dry land before coming to rest. A cloud of black belched out of her and oozed through the cracks in the walls and away.
“Sammy,” Dean said, staggering forward on shaky legs, dropping the shotgun so he could pull Sam’s head into his lap as his younger brother slumped sideways, eyes closing. He blinked a couple of times and then looked up, green now in place of black.
“Dean?” he croaked.
Dean pulled up short, Sam’s arm slung across one shoulder, when they reached the bottom of the stairs and found Bobby and Missouri standing in the living room, Jason tied to a chair, cursing and spitting around the gag in his mouth.
“Hey guys,” Dean said, lowering Sam into the nearest armchair and ruffling a hand through his hair before he turned back to them. He felt something gentle skate over his mind and away and then Missouri was frowning at him.
“Now there’s a thing,” she sighed, looking at Dean with a careful eye.
“You boys okay?” Bobby asked. He had a battered notebook in hand with his index finger holding a place towards the middle.
“Nice place you sent us to,” Dean remarked and he saw Missouri’s eyes go hard, as if she’d like nothing more than to take to him with her famous spoon.
“I tried calling you as soon as I lost track of Sam. You boys just seemed to fall off the face of the earth and that got me worried.”
“What do you mean lost track of Sam?” Dean demanded.
“Powerful as he is, he’s like a low-grade hum always in the back of the mind. Not to everyone of course, I just knew what to look for. That disappeared a few days back like a light switch being turned off. I was scared for the worst.”
“You thought he was dead?”
“Or as close to it as would make no never mind,” Missouri agreed. “What happened here?”
“Your friend was possessed when we got here. I don’t know what she was trying to do with Sam, but she was sure sore that I was here too.”
“Is she-?” Dean’s eyes ticking down and away were enough answer for Missouri and she sighed. “You did the right thing. We with the power always know there’s little chance of saving us once we’re taken. That’s the tradeoff.”
“Is he-?” Dean canted his head at Jason and Bobby chuckled.
“Mad as hell and about to be exorcised,” he said, flipping his notebook open.
“There were some graves out by an old shed,” Dean said, retrieving a piece of paper from the coffee table and a pen. “There may be some missing people whose families we can advise.” Dean did a quick sketch of the symbol that had been on the stone on each of the graves. He held it out to Missouri whose eyes widened.
“Dean,” she breathed. “Those symbols are to draw power from the living”
Dean, Bobby and Sam sat on the porch steps, nursing beers, all covered in dirt and with a couple of shovels piled up at the bottom step. Missouri was indoors, consoling five rather shaken people who’d woken up buried alive as soon as the stones over them had been removed. Dean was pretty sure he would never shake the memory of the youngest, a girl of about six, whose arm had shot out of the dirt when he’d gotten close and had grabbed him.
“You think that’s what she was preparing me for?” Sam asked, a tremor running through his body and Dean reached a hand around and rubbed circles on his back.
“Don’t know kiddo. Doesn’t matter now,” Dean said, hoping Sam didn’t hear the tremble in his own voice, the very idea of Sam being buried alive yet another thing that would wake him up in a cold sweat for nights to come.
Later, with Sam inside packing their stuff and Bobby finishing off the exorcism that would release Jason, Missouri found Dean out by the Impala.
“Trying to get a read on you now is like trying to grip an ice-cube in your hand on a hot day. What’s that about?”
Dean shrugged. “Not really sure. Jason took a pot-shot at me when we first got here and I apparently deflected him somehow.”
“You’re taking this all fairly calmly. Folks find out they have power, usually panic at least a little bit.”
“I don’t…” Dean rubbed a hand over the back of his head. “I’m not really thinking about it like having a power.” He looked at Missouri. “It’s not like visions or telekinesis or anything.”
“Honey, just how are you thinking about it then?”
“I don’t know,” Dean shrugged and then smiled a little. “It feels… it feels a little like it’s defensive. Like it’s protection.”
“You may be right about that,” Missouri allowed. “Because even though we’ve broken up all the shielding runes around the place, I still can’t feel Sam the way I used to. I’m wondering if that’s you.”
“Maybe,” Dean slipped into the Impala as Sam emerged from the house with their bags, turning the key into the ignition and sighing with relief when she purred to life.
“You ever going to tell him?” she asked, putting a hand through the window to squeeze Dean’s arm.
“I will,” Dean allowed. “Sooner or later I tell him everything.”
“I’m still not fixed,” Sam said, settling into the passenger seat and only relaxing once they couldn’t see Jenny’s property behind them any longer.
“You were never broken,” Dean argued. “Anyway, Missouri gave me the names of a couple of other people that might be able to help.”
Sam’s eyes slid to Dean, apprehension clear on his face. “You think it’ll be safe?”
“Only if they like me,” Dean said with a grin.
“Be serious,” Sam grunted.
“I am. Anyway, you got a lot to work through but we got time.”
“Yeah, but I’m still worried I’ll hurt you.” Sam’s eyes had ticked out the window, chin propped on his hand and his whole body had gone tense.
Dean took a deep breath.
“Well, the thing about that is…” he began.
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Overall, this was a very good read. Good characterizations and pacing, and the banter and concern were done well.
Favorite lines:
You make me wonder whether I’m really the smart one.”
Dean ducked his head, oddly flattered. “You know we just told you that so you wouldn’t feel so bad not being the pretty one, right?”
LOL!
“Did I forget to mention it was half whiskey, half holy water, asshole?”
*g* I love it when Dean’s all snarky with the bad guys.
“It feels… it feels a little like it’s defensive. Like it’s protection.”
“You may be right about that,” Missouri allowed. “Because even though we’ve broken up all the shielding runes around the place, I still can’t feel Sam the way I used to. I’m wondering if that’s you.”
Best big brother ever. *pets Dean*
“You ever going to tell him?” she asked, putting a hand through the window to squeeze Dean’s arm.
“I will,” Dean allowed. “Sooner or later I tell him everything.”
Love that dialogue.