Static - Section Two

[glasslogic]

Chapter Three

there's a tremor growing in our own backyard
fear in our heads, fear in our hearts
prophets in the graveyard
                                                ~Jonas and Ezekial, Indigo Girls

Working on carburetors had never been Dean’s favorite part of playing mechanic, but with the rain pouring down outside in sheets it seemed like an ideal time to try and clean his. It wasn’t like a little grease was going to detract from the battered surface of the secondhand table Sam had dragged in. The mismatched rolly chairs salvaged from various curbs were surprisingly comfortable and it was easy to lose track of time as he worked.

Or it would have been, if Sam hadn’t been seated on the cheap linoleum floor in front of the television they had picked up from a resale shop, flipping channels almost before the picture had even resolved. The flickering light kept catching Dean’s eye and distracting him. He kind of liked it, actually, but it wasn’t helping him get the carburetor cleaned.

Sam hadn’t been in a great mood lately, but Dean hadn’t really been in the sort of mood himself to deal with it. He just felt... itchy, and a little out of touch. Like his skin was too tight, and things were a little out of synch. There didn’t seem to be any reason, so he chalked it up to cabin fever and tried to ignore his desire to add a little more chaos to their lives. Sam claimed to maybe be getting a better grip on his mental mojo, and Dean didn’t want to upend anything if there was a chance of a breakthrough. Stupid things were annoying him, though, like the rhythmic click of the remote as Sam flipped through channels. He was just about to throw the pepper shaker at his brother when Sam finally paused on one. The screen was full of flickering orange but Sam had the volume down so low it was a strain even for Dean’s sharpened hearing.

“What is that?”

“The river’s burning,” Sam answered without pulling his gaze away from the screen.

“Not something you hear every day.” Dean looked back down to the carburetor in his hands. “Maybe they will take that owl more seriously next time.”

Sam turned his head enough for Dean to see his profile. “Owl?”

“Yeah, you know -- from when we were kids. ‘Give a hoot, don’t pollute.’”

Sam turned back to the television. “The river's not polluted like that. It’s just... burning.”

Dean frowned. “Where is this?”

“Idaho.”

“Anything else weird going on up there?”

Sam flipped the channel as the news report turned to commercial. “Not that they mentioned. I haven’t really seen anything on the internet lately either.”

“Water doesn’t just burn, Sam.”

Sam didn’t dignify that with a response, continuing to click through channels that flared as bright splashes of color before stuttering sharply into a new pattern.

“Did you suddenly develop ADD over there? I like to channel surf as much as the next--” Dean bit his words off abruptly as Sam dropped the remote with a clatter of plastic and buried his face in his hands, shoulders hunched with pain.

Dean watched expressionlessly; there wasn’t anything he could do for Sam, but he was waiting with aspirin and water when his brother finally straightened back up. Sam took the offerings with a muttered thanks and downed them.

“Roadtrip?” was all Dean asked after giving Sam a couple of minutes to recover, trying to stifle his own glee at the prospect. Sitting around got old -- that had always been in his nature even before Hell and its transformations.

Sam started to nod and winced at the movement, face still pinched with pain. “It doesn’t look any more interesting than the other ones, though.”

Dean shrugged and offered a hand to pull him to his feet. “We’ve sat on our asses long enough. Maybe taking a few days for a trip will loosen up our creative juices.”

“I don’t think it’s a creativity problem, Dean. I just don’t think there is anything out there to find. No one has ever heard of Creation, or Entropy, or angels trapped in Hell. There’s just... nothing.”

“No time limit, Sam,” Dean reminded him. “It’s out there; we’ll find it. Or I will, eventually. Though since this might take, ah, the rest of your life... is there anything else you want to do for awhile?”

“Yes,” Sam grumbled. “I want to find out what the hell these visions are about. Getting my head split open for some random atmospheric discharge is getting old. If it really is random, I want it to stop, and if it isn’t... then what the hell already?! They don’t seem to mean anything!”

Dean slapped him on the back and grabbed the carburetor off the table to get the Impala put back together. “Think positive; maybe this one will have some nice, juicy corpses or a horde of zombies attached!”

Sam groaned and went to pack.

~~~~~

“This is not how I wanted to see New Orleans,” Sam remarked half a day later, trailing Dean through the filthy ruins of a dockside warehouse.

Dean shined the flashlight into Sam’s eyes. Sam recoiled and scowled as his night vision was destroyed.

“I don’t see squat here. Are you sure this is the right address?”

“I don’t get addresses, Dean. I get blurry images and freaking headaches. Abandoned warehouse, busted lock, wharf, boxes-”

“Rats,” Dean supplied helpfully, flipping one away with his boot.

“Yes,” Sam agreed, his voice still laced with annoyance. “And that sign.” He motioned off towards the front of the building where the Sea King Supplies sign was rusting on the wall.

Dean noted the tension in his brother’s face and voice; his headache had been unusually persistent, and Dean doubted anything but a handful of pills and twelve hours of sleep would even begin to dent it this time. There was another option that would take care of the problem quicker, but a filthy warehouse in the dead of night was not the place. Dean would have been okay with it, but he was pretty sure Sam would raise some strenuous objections. He sighed and handed over the flashlight.

Sam fumbled to grab it, surprised. “What are you doing?”

“Going with a less traditional method; it’ll be faster. Stay right here until I get back.”

Sam shifted uneasily, as he did anytime Dean’s inhuman nature came up. But he said nothing as his brother vanished into the enveloping blackness of the warehouse’s cavernous depths.

Ten minutes later, Sam whirled at footsteps behind him, hoping it was Dean giving warning of his approach..

“We’re leaving. Now,” Dean announced. He took the flashlight and clicked it off before wrapping one hand around Sam’s bicep in the total blackness.

“What’s going on?” Sam demanded.

“Bad mojo. No more talking,” Dean said tightly.

Sam stayed silent, doing his best to walk quietly as Dean dragged him back to the Impala. Dean made no sound at his side. If not for his grip, Sam wouldn’t have known he was there, a shadow against the black and completely at home within it.

Once back in the car, the inhumanity melted out of Dean’s frame and he relaxed into the seat, Sam’s brother again, and not a creature from his nightmares.

“What was that about?” Sam asked quietly.

Dean blew out a breath and merged into traffic, the warehouse district finally behind them.

“Someone’s been working rituals in the upstairs of that place. Bad rituals. The kind that attracts nasty little pests to feed off the emanations. Couldn’t be sure none of them were still hanging around, couldn’t be sure if they were that none of them were bright enough to tattle on us. Congratulations, Sam; you finally found something interesting. Not, you know, useful, but a step in the right direction.”

Sam ignored the dig and frowned. “Recent rituals?”

“Didn’t look like it. The residue still coating the site was enough to satisfy the bone pickers, not enough to attract my attention, though. I didn’t even notice until I was almost on top of it.” Dean drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, considering. “I’d say it’s at least six months or so old.”

“Why would I be having visions of a warehouse where someone did a ritual half a year ago?” Sam asked, baffled and annoyed. Dean said nothing and Sam gave his profile a suspicious look. Dean’s expression was blank, but not an honest blank; it was the kind of blank he looked when he didn’t want Sam to see something in his face. It had been a regular expression of Dean’s throughout their childhood, before Sam learned what their father really did during the endless days and nights they waited in motels and back bedrooms across the country. “There’s something bothering you.”

“What’s bothering me is that we drove thirteen hours to get here, and it’s going to be thirteen hours back. For no fucking reason.” He stomped the pedal with uncharacteristic roughness and Sam’s eyes narrowed.

“If you’re tired, I can drive.”

“I’m not tired, Sam! I’m just...”

“Dean.”

Dean swore, but gave in. “I recognized the ritual, okay? I recognized it, but I don’t know what it means. I haven’t got any answers for you, Sam. I have no idea why you would have a vision of this, but it seemed smarter to just kill the lights and haul ass instead of hanging around to see if whatever did that came back.”

“If you recognized it, then you have to know what it’s for. Let’s start there.”

Dean visibly hesitated, glancing over at Sam and then back to the road. Sam felt unease coiling again in his belly. Dean had always been a straightforward sort of guy for the most part, and becoming a demon had made him even more brutally so in some respects. To see him openly hedging like this was disquieting.

“It’s a ritual to... enhance suffering.”

Sam turned his own gaze to the windshield and considered that.

“I don’t understand,” he finally said.

“To drag out their suffering when you kill them. Make it sharper, better. It’s a torture ritual. Get it now?” Dean eyes didn’t leave the road this time. Sam knew because he was staring at him again.

“Someone was tortured to death in there?” Sam wanted to make sure he understood.

Dean nodded.

“Why?”

“Who knows? Probably just because. Demons like pain; you know that. It’s like a drug to some of them. The more a victim suffers, the more the demon likes it.”

“Was the person still there -- the body?”

Dean shook his head and for a few minutes the only sound in the car was the rumble of the highway beneath the wheels.

“Why did you recognize that ritual, Dean?” Sam finally asked in a low voice, not at all sure he wanted to know.

Dean’s smile was tight. “Just ask, Sam.”

“Fine.” Against the door where Dean couldn't see, Sam’s fingers were clenched around the edge of his seat. “Have you used that ritual?”

“What could that possibly change at this point?”

“I just asked you a question, Dean! I’m not picking a fight. You’re obviously familiar with it; I just wanted to know how.”

“Which is bullshit and practically an accusation!”

Sam felt his nails sink into the thick leather of the seat. “I wasn’t accusing you of anything. But a vision brought us here, so we should probably try and figure out why this was important. If it was important. You obviously have more information than I do, so excuse me for trying to get you to share!”

Sam’s stomach chose that moment to protest not having been filled for hours and the conversation was sidetracked into a debate on what was available at the next exit. By the time Sam had stuffed the last greasy wrapper back into the paper bag, Dean had the music cranked up high enough to make conversation hard and Sam resigned himself to pursuing the topic later. He could think of better things to do than pick a fight with a demon in the close confines of a car. Sam settled in to try and sleep, determined to pick the topic back up on more favorable ground, but Dean surprised him by abruptly shutting the music off.

“Dean?”

“I’ve never used the ritual, Sam. But you only have to see something carved into your own skin a few hundred times to get it really burned into your memory, you know?”

Sam swallowed, nausea twisting the food he’d just eaten into an uncomfortable knot in his belly. Dean never spoke about his time in Hell, and Sam had only ever managed to make himself ask the once. For his own sake, he would have had recounted every second of pain his brother had endured for him, a pale attempt at understanding just how much he owed for the time Dean had suffered for saving Sam’s life. But he didn’t think it would be a kindness to Dean, so he let it lie.

“Nothing to say?” Dean asked sardonically when Sam remained silent.

“That... answers my question. But you seemed... upset.” There was a horrible awkwardness to the entire conversation and he knew that Dean was letting him twist on purpose, but he pressed on anyway.

“You don’t think having it used on me time and time again while I was ripped and torn into screaming hunks of flesh, just to be instantly healed so it could start all over again, is enough to maybe make me a little upset to run into it again?”

“Is it?”

Dean snorted. “No. That was just the tip of the iceberg. I’d be about as upset to run into a knife I’d accidentally cut my finger with on this Plane.”

Sam sighed. “How excruciating are you going to make this for me?”

“There isn’t much to tell, Sam. It’s a ritual of the Rendering, almost any demon there could cast it with a little time and a victim. But these kinds of things aren’t so easy here in this world. It would take an unusually powerful demon to get any use out of it here.”

“Powerful like Lilith?”

“Lilith is a bit of a special case; she’s got a,” Dean made a hand gesture, looking for the right words, “grand destiny, and a lot of her power is bound to that purpose. She’s powerful, but there are others who are more dangerous.”

“But there aren’t many like that here, right?”

“There weren’t, and this is about half a year old. About the time we were having our little fling up in Illchester. I mean, like I told you, there really isn’t a whole lot up here to keep the attention of powerful demons. In the Pit, they have a captive audience and rule as lords of however much domain they can claim. Here...” Dean gave a kind of half shrug. “Here there are all manner of indignities they have to tolerate. If Lucifer had risen, it would be a different story, but things being what they are, I would have expected most of the partygoers to have gone home. Not be hanging out in warehouses.”

Sam frowned. “I find your use of the phrase ‘would have’ ominous.”

“The ritual doesn’t tell us anything but that six months ago, a demon of some significance was amusing itself here. Maybe it’s a warning.”

“Or maybe the world, or whatever, is just downloading random crap into my head.” Sam looked resigned.

“Hey,” Dean shrugged, “it worked out pretty well for us before. If the world wants to whisper sweet nothings to you now that the big event is over, it’s only polite to listen. Eventually it should get around to what we want to know. Get some sleep if you can.”

Sam agreed with Dean’s estimation of events; the warehouse was the first vision they had tracked down that actually related to anything of interest, but as horrible as what had happened there was, proof that a demon had been in the area months ago wasn’t exactly something that would get anyone excited. He leaned back against the door and tried to fit the visions together into some kind of picture that would tell him what it was he was supposed to be learning from them, but nothing coherent would form.

His eyes flew open when Dean steered the Impala off the interstate. “Stopping again?”

“Gas is almost a quarter cheaper.”

Sam eyed the gauge reading a half empty tank. “Money’s not exactly a big issue, Dean.” And it wasn’t, they still had plenty of funds left over from Sam selling off half the spoils of their father’s hunting eight years earlier.

“It’s the principle of the thing. Besides, if money’s not an issue then how come everything you drag into the house either comes from the curb or from a thrift store?”

"Habit," Sam shrugged. Dean mimicked the gesture then rolled his eyes and climbed out.

He scanned the parking lot while drumming his fingers on the roof and waiting for the pump to shut off. It wasn’t a great part of town, and half the people wandering around looked like they might have had a bit much to drink, but he wasn’t detecting any particular threats. Not that he expected any, but it was always the one you didn’t expect that stabbed you in the back. Or stabbed your brother in the back. Against the brick wall of the decrepit strip mall an emaciated man in ragged, filthy clothes was drinking from a brown paper bag and gesturing wildly at passersby. There was something odd about his aura, but there was something odd about a lot of people’s auras and it didn’t really hold Dean’s attention until something the man yelled caught his ear. It wasn’t in English, but it was very familiar. A quick glance into the car showed Sam was reading a paperback he’d picked up somewhere by the gas station lights. Dean rapped on the glass. Sam rolled it down a crack.

“What?”

“You want anything from inside?”

Both of Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “We just ate.”

“You just ate, I want a corndog. Back in a few.”

Sam rolled his eyes, but when Dean glanced back from the gas station door, his brother was engrossed in his book again. Dean ate his corndog and wandered closer to the man who was shouting at new targets.

“What does that mean?” Dean interrupted.

The man turned to Dean with no expression of surprise and smiled. “Well met! Have you come to hear the good news?”

“I came to find out if you had a clue what you’re yelling about,” Dean said impatiently. “Do you?”

“The end of the world, my brother. Sit beside me while I tell you about the end, when we shall all drown in a lake of fire!”

“Thanks.” Dean cut the man off before he could work himself back up. “I think I’ve seen that vacation spot. It was nice, got a tan.”

The man shook his head at Dean’s flippant tone and repeated the phrase that had caught Dean’s attention.

“What does that mean?” Dean asked again.

“They are coming.”

Dean felt a great stillness, remembering hearing Sam scream the same phrase while he wrestled in nightmares that had barely been willing to release him. “Who is coming?”

“They are. Everyone knows it that has ears to hear.” The man tugged at his own grimy example. “It’s been in the air for months. A great darkness that everyone had better be gettin’ prepared for.” The bum’s attention drifted from Dean as a pair of girls in stiletto heels and skirts so short Dean was surprised they weren’t flashing panties, if they were wearing them at all, staggered by on the sidewalk. “Time waits for no man!” the man railed at the girls, who gave him a startled look and teetered off as fast as they could.

The man shook his head. Dean kinda had to agree. He appreciated the girls’ efforts, but wearing shoes you couldn’t run in was asking to be eaten by something.

“Tasty treats.”

Dean looked at the man sharply, the comment uncomfortably close to his own thoughts, but the man wasn’t even looking at him.

“Dean?” Sam called his name from where he was standing beside the Impala, looking concerned.

Dean ate the last bite of his corndog and tossed the stick into a trashcan by the curb.

“Gotta go,” he told the man. He recognized the twist to the man’s aura for what it was now, and knew getting information from the hopelessly mad was a futile effort. He only hoped the insanity had caused the man’s channeling of whatever, and not the other way around.

“That’s the old news, though,” the man called as Dean started to walk away. “Don’t you want to hear the latest?”

Dean turned to hear the old man spout off another garbled line that meant nothing to his ears.

“And what does that mean?” he asked impatiently.

The man smiled broader, with a dark sparkle in his eyes and showing a mouth that was missing more than a few teeth.

“They are here.”

~~~~~

“What was that all about?” Sam asked when Dean slid back into his seat behind the wheel of the Impala.

“Nothing.”

“You stopped to have a private chat with a bum because you... what? Wanted to know where he got his awesome threads?”

But Dean didn’t rise to the bait. His expression remained pensive as his attention focused on the road.

“Dean?’

“It’s nothing, Sam. Just drop it.”


Chapter Four

Hands, like secrets, are the hardest thing to keep from you
Lines and phrases, like knives, your words can cut me through.
                                             ~ Dismantle Repair, Anberlin

Sam stirred uneasily in his sleep. They had been back from New Orleans for weeks and there had been no more visions. His dreams had been unquiet again lately, but nothing like the screaming nightmares of months ago. He wasn’t getting anything, useful or not. Dark circles under his eyes and the lethargy that weighed him down attested to his restlessness. He was suspicious that it was yet another facet of his unknown abilities starting to manifest, but wasn’t certain. God knew he had experienced enough to provide lifetimes of bad dreams, but this just… felt different. In the way that he felt other things no normal human could. It hadn’t reached the point he felt the need to confess anything to Dean, but his brother definitely knew something was up.

Sam sighed and opened his eyes in the darkness of the bedroom. His bedroom. In the house he shared with Dean. He didn’t know how long he could keep Dean entertained in the dusty flatlands of North Central Texas, but he settled for enjoying the peace while it lasted. The idea of having a house that wasn’t also a prison was still a novel one to Sam and he was happy every time he opened his eyes to see the same patch of badly popcorned ceiling overhead. Dean had been even more moody and closed off since they had returned from investigating Sam’s last vision, but he refused to talk and Sam was frankly tired of arguing with him.

They shared a bed --when Dean used a bed at all-- both on the nights the curse pulled them together, and other times. While he was still able to appreciate the attractiveness of other people, Sam’s body took no notice of anyone but Dean, just as it had taken no notice of anyone but Ruby before. Not that it still took a lot of notice of Dean outside of the curse. Sam had been entirely enthusiastic about Ruby, but she had had a lot going for her in that she was the right shape and not a sibling. Things were what they were, though, and he seemed to be slowly adjusting. Resigned to the situation, Sam was trying to make it into something more… comfortable, for himself at least. Dean had never seemed especially fazed in the first place. Though like he had said, after Hell, what was incest?

Sometimes Sam wondered if things would be easier if Dean were a girl, but not enough to encourage Dean to possess one to find out.

Sam was trying to learn to touch Dean more casually, to think of and see him as his lover, and not the older sibling he had both worshipped and resented for most of his life. Mostly worshipped, but the seven years he had spent in exile had given Sam plenty of time for introspection, and he had been forced to admit to himself that however much pain and upset he had inflicted on Dean during the tumultuous years of his adolescence, there had been a tiny part of him that had enjoyed it. Felt that Dean deserved it for always being the obedient son, the good son, their father’s perfect little soldier. Sam wondered what their dad would think of them now. If he would be proud of what they had overcome and accomplished… or if he would shoot them both as monsters without a trace of recognition in his eyes.

Dean was in the bed with him now. He hadn’t been there when Sam fell asleep, but Sam wasn’t surprised to find him there. As his sleep grew increasingly troubled, he woke up to Dean’s presence more often than not. The bed wasn’t very wide; Sam yawned and slid one arm around Dean’s bare waist where the t-shirt he wore had ridden up. The instant he made contact, Sam’s eyes flew wide, all sleep forgotten. He pulled his hand back as if burned and kicked out, shoving Dean onto the floor.

The demon managed to move fast enough to land in a crouch as Sam grabbed the silver knife off the nightstand at the head of the bed and slid out of the tangle of sheets to stand facing the demon in his brother’s skin.

“Sam?”

“Stay back!”

“What’s going on?” the demon asked, eyeing the blade warily.

Sam laughed, and it sounded a bit wild. “Did you think I wouldn’t know?!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I think maybe you’re still dreaming, Sammy.” The demon stepped back and hit the light switch.

In the light that flared, the situation was even more bizarre; there was nothing Sam could see that marked the man standing across from him as different from the brother he had known all his life. But he was different --it was different-- Sam could feel that in the air, crawling over his skin. It wasn’t Dean. He knew what Dean should feel like and tried to reach out to him with their link. It wasn’t something he had practiced much and he bitterly regretted being so focused on visions that he had neglected to work with other aspects of what he could do. All his desperate seeking returned to him was an indecipherable wash like nails on a chalkboard, icy and alien. He cried out in pain and fell to his knees.

“Shut up!” Sam yelled over his brother’s frantic voice when he’d recovered enough to breathe, drowning fear with fury. The demon had taken a step towards him when he fell, but the look on Sam’s face held it frozen in place. “Only my brother gets to call me that. I don’t know what the hell you are, but you aren’t him.”

“Sam, I’m exactly who I’ve always been. I don’t know what’s going on, but you’re messed up. Just…” It raked both hands through its hair in frustration. “…just don’t do anything stupid--”

Sam flung out one arm and reached for the demonic essence of the creature facing him, squeezing his eyes shut in concentration. For one quick moment, he felt his power bite -- but before he could clench down and try to force answers from it, there seemed to be some kind of shift and he closed his metaphysical fingers on empty air.

His eyes flew open in shock. He stared, and for a moment, he thought the creature’s eyes weren’t the vivid green of his brother’s, or even the impenetrable black of a demon’s, but rather some other shade entirely. It looked away sharply, and when it turned back, the eyes were simply green again and the expression on his brother’s face was one of strained calm.

“Sam. We can talk about this.”

“No. No!” Sam backed to the closet door and reached blindly inside for the bag he kept packed in case they had to leave in a hurry. He found the strap and pulled it up over his shoulder. The worn sweatpants and t-shirt he had been sleeping in wouldn’t attract attention on the street, and the couple hundred dollars in cash stashed in the bag would keep him on his feet until he could come up with a plan. Sam kept backing out of the bedroom door into the main room and towards the front door. The demon, or whatever, followed him slowly, its hands spread and palms flat.

“I don’t know what’s going through your head, or how I can make you believe me, but I’m Dean. Whatever you think is going on, you’re wrong; I swear, Sam.”

“Shut up,” Sam spat again, twisting the locks and finding the handle blindly, refusing to take his eyes off of the creature.

“Do you think if I was really some new monster or body thief I couldn’t easily take that butter knife away from you and just do whatever the hell I want?”

Sam’s expression of determination didn’t change. “If you follow me, I swear I’ll kill you.”

“Sam!” The thing in his brother’s flesh threw up its arms in exasperation.

Sam slipped backwards through the front door and out onto the street. It was three in the morning and deadly quiet in the neighborhood. In the front room of the house, a lamp switched on. Silhouetted in front of it, Sam could see his brother’s form, standing with arms crossed. It could only have done that to assure Sam of where it was, that it wasn’t chasing after him. Sam walked hastily away, glancing over his shoulder constantly to make sure that dark figure was still there. When he was far enough away that he could no longer distinguish it, he ran.

~~~~~

“Bobby?”

“Sam! Where the hell are you, boy?”

“It called.”

“If by ‘it’ you mean your brother -- then yeah, he called. Said you’d gone completely mad and wanted to know if I’d heard from you.”

“I’m sure it did.”

“What’s going on, Sam?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know, Bobby! He was Dean when I went to bed, and it wasn’t Dean when I woke up.”

There was quiet on the other end of the line for a moment.

“Are you sure, Sam?”

“I don’t make a habit of fleeing from my home in the middle of the night. So yeah, Bobby, I’m sure. You don’t believe me? What did it tell you?”

“Calm down, Sam. First things first. Are you safe?”

“I’m… in a public location. A few states away.”

“Good. Can I be someone you call in the first few hours next time you take off in the middle of the night running for your life, instead of one of the twenty-four hours later calls? I've got enough ulcers from your family. I thought this crap was all over!”

“Bobby.”

“Of course I believe you, Sam! He’s a demon, I’ll always take your side when it’s a question of honesty or your freedom. And I didn’t tell him a damn thing; I didn’t know anything to tell!”

“It.”

“What?”

“It. You called it ‘him.’ I don’t know what it is, but it’s not my brother.”

“Sam…”

“It isn’t, Bobby!”

“Fine. Why don’t you start over and tell me what happened?”

“What did it say happened?”

Bobby sighed. “It called me, said it was resting on the bed with you asleep, then you kicked it onto the floor, started yelling how it wasn’t your brother, grabbed a panic bag and ran away wearing your pajamas. It said it didn’t try to grab or chase you because it thought that would only make things worse.”

“It forgot the part when I tried to use my power on it and it just slid out of my grip. Ruby wasn’t able to do that, no demon I have ever encountered could do that. Not since I was first learning, not unless I was already exhausted. I don’t know what it is, Bobby. But it wasn’t Dean.”

“He sounded really concerned, Sam.”

“It only called you to find out where I am.”

“He didn’t ask me that.”

“What?”

“He never asked me where you were. The only thing he wanted to know was if you were okay.” Bobby let the silence sit for a moment before continuing. “Do you want to come here?”

“No! It obviously knows that I would contact you; it can probably guess that I might go up there. It must have access to Dean’s memories or something.”

“Or it might just actually be Dean and he’s doing exactly what anyone would do in his position.”

“It isn’t Dean!”

“Why are you so certain? Have you used your power at all against demons in months? You said yourself you felt like some things were changing after that whole thing with Lilith. Maybe you just messed up, maybe it doesn’t work the way it used to. Maybe your brother is sitting in a cheap apartment in Texas flipping out because he thinks you’ve gone completely insane and are dead in a ditch!”

“He didn’t feel right, Bobby.” Sam’s voice was almost a whisper.

“Okay, let’s try this a different way -- how long do you have?”

“Until what?”

“Until--” Bobby’s voice was incredulous. “Get with the program, Sam. Until you and your brother have to spend a little quality time together to keep you alive -- that’s what!”

“Maybe two weeks, probably a little less. I can go longer, but that’s when I’m going to start breaking down.”

“How much less?” Bobby asked suspiciously.

“I don’t know. Like you said, I haven’t really been mixing it up with demons lately. I don’t know how much what I did tonight took off the clock.”

Bobby cursed. “Can I call you back at this number?”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know, Sam. I think I need to call him back, though.”

“For what?”

“Information? Even if what you say is true, and it lies, at least that’s something. I won’t tell him anything, Sam. Can I reach you here?”

“No. But I’ll call you later. Thanks, Bobby.”

~~~~~

“Well?”

“I don’t have a whole lot more to tell you, Sam. What do you know about the tattoo?”

“The one with the curse?”

“Yeah.”

“Not a lot.”

“Would it be possible for anyone other than Dean to have it?”

“No.” Sam thought furiously. “No, I don’t think so. I mean, maybe, but they would need to have the actual curse tied to them. Ruby had it, and when Dean took the curse from her, it showed up on him. When he possesses other people, it shows up on them.”

“I’m not going to ask how you know about that last part,” Bobby growled.

Sam ignored that. “All this means is that I can prove it’s not Dean.”

“He says he has it.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Sam said flatly.

“He says he does, Sam. Could you tell if it’s a fake?”

Sam remembered hours spent tracing fingers over the thin black lines of the strangely compelling design. Loops and whirls tingling under his fingers. First on Ruby, then on Dean. Even one time on a stranger in the arid heat of a New Mexico summer.

“I think so. But even if he had it, that just means he managed what Dean did: he stole it.” Sam felt his throat tighten up. Dean might actually be gone. He had been trying to convince himself that if he just waited, Dean would show back up, somehow, and they could solve the problem together. But if the stranger had the tattoo…

“Wouldn’t you have felt that?” Bobby asked dubiously.

“I didn’t when he took it from Ruby in the first place.”

“You have less than two weeks to make a decision on this. He says he has the tattoo, so that means that whatever is in that body, you need them to live. He swears he’s Dean; he knows things only Dean should know. You say that nothing unusual happened that night that you know of, and that your power isn’t dependable. All of this is based off of a weird feeling you had, and I’m telling you, whatever is calling me from Dean’s body is doing a damn good job acting the part of a worried brother. He hasn’t asked me where you are, Sam.”

“Because it knows I’ll have to come to it eventually.”

“Sam! This doesn’t make any sense! It could have had you that night. What’s the purpose here?”

“Did it say anything else?” Sam asked, sounding defeated.

“Yeah,” Bobby sighed. “He said to tell you that you have ten days to come back on your own, and then he’ll do things his way. What are you going to do, Sam?”

“I don’t know.”

Eight days later, shortly after sunset, there was a cautious knock on a battered Texas door. After a few minutes, a lock turned and the door opened.

“You knock now?” the thing that looked like his brother asked levelly.

“I didn’t have my keys. Are you going to let me in?”

It stepped back silently. Sam drew a deep breath and walked inside. He looked around. It seemed strange that everything would be exactly the way he remembered when he felt like the world had flipped over in the past week. Even the soft hum of the air conditioner under the rhythmic song of outside crickets felt routine.

When he turned around, it was pulling off its shirt.

“That’s a little premature,” Sam said coolly.

The smile was thin. “I thought you might want to do some verification.”

Sam’s eyes dropped to its waist, where the thin black lines of the tattoo on its hip were visible over the edge of frayed denim.

“Don’t touch me,” Sam muttered, sliding his duffle from his shoulder and stepping in closer.

It responded by leaning back against the kitchen counter, spreading its arms out and wrapping its fingers around the edge.

Sam hesitated, then reached out to touch the design. Right before he made contact, the demon interrupted him.

“You could see the whole thing if I lost some more clothes.”

“I can see plenty,” Sam growled. “Hold still.”

He brushed his fingers over the tattoo and didn’t know if he should be horrified or relieved when the familiar tingle sparked in his fingertips. The tattoo was real.

Sam staggered back. The demon stepped towards him, one hand outstretched.

“Sam…” it began.

Sam was shaking his head to stop the words. “You aren’t Dean.”

“I am, Sam,” it insisted with somewhat strained gentleness. “I swear.”

“I know what I felt!”

“Try again.” It held its ground but didn’t move any closer.

Sam crossed his arms over his chest and glared. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you? For me to actively try and open my mind to you?”

It dropped its arm and ran a finger over the tattoo, drawing Sam’s eyes back to it.

“If I really wanted in your mind, Sam --more than I already am-- I’m pretty sure I could do it without your permission.”

“Is that a threat?” Sam demanded.

“It’s a reminder that I’m playing this entire situation much nicer than I could be. I don’t know what you sensed that night; I still think you had a freaking nightmare and lost your mind. But whatever, I’m asking you to look again. ”

Sam didn’t say anything, indecision obvious in his eyes. After a minute or two, the demon just shook its head a little and grabbed its shirt off the counter.

“I’m going to go lay down. You need to make up your mind how this is going to play out. You want to settle this peacefully, you know where to find me. You want to turn it into a fight, there’s the door. But you know where I stand on this; you put your life in danger, I’m going to come after you.”

“I thought it was my choice now. I thought after Ilchester that it was my life to do what I wanted with, including dying. That’s what my brother said,” Sam hissed.

“I said that, and I’ll stick to it if I have to. But not like this, Sam. You don’t get to make that choice when as far as I can tell you’ve gone flipping nuts. Our deal doesn’t include temporary mental illness.”

“We never discussed that in the deal.”

“Sounds like an oversight on your part.”

It pulled the door halfway closed behind itself after it entered the bedroom. A moment later, Sam could hear the squeak of mattress springs. He tried to let some of the tension out of his shoulders, but they still ached with the stress of coiled muscle.

“Fuck it,” Sam muttered and went into the kitchen cabinet to see what they had to drink. The higher the proof, the better.

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Masterpost