Static - Section Four

[glasslogic]

Chapter Six

You’ve got to know when to hold’em,
Know when to fold’em,
Know when to walk away,
Know when to run.
                                ~Kenny Roger, “The Gambler”

A decade’s worth of grime on the westward windows wasn’t enough to stop the reds and golds of sunset from creeping their way across the linoleum of the living room floor. Sam didn’t notice in his pacing, cell phone pressed tight to his ear as he listened to what Bobby had found out.

“Yeah, thanks, Bobby. I got your email a few minutes ago. I think I’m almost ready to try now.” He rolled his eyes. “I know you aren’t happy about it. --No, I don’t really care.”

Another pause and Sam’s eyes narrowed.

“I have to try something! It’s been two weeks now and no one has offered any new solutions or turned up any more information. Dean is getting weaker, or stronger. Whichever it is, it’s not good. I’m running out of options; feel free to jump in with any if you’ve been holding out.”

He nodded impatiently while Bobby spoke.

“Yeah, I understand. Grease spots, bad idea -- I’ve already heard this song and dance. Pretty much daily. You know, I would be a lot happier about you and Dean having private little phone chats if the only purpose didn’t seem to be ganging up on me.”

Another minute passed.

“Well, if it kills me, you won’t have to worry about Dean either.” Sam sighed. “I’m not sleeping on the floor, Bobby. Dean bought me a new mattress. Well, because he cremated my old one. It was more of an apology than I usually get for his crap." There was a pause and Sam nodded. "Yeah, I’ll be in touch.”

“I don’t know how much of an apology it is if we’re using the same bank account,” Dean observed from where he had been sitting at the table eavesdropping.

Sam slipped the phone back into his pocket and looked unimpressed. “The apology part was making you carry it in by yourself.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “We aren’t ganging up on you either.”

“It would be easier to believe that if you weren’t both using the same examples as to why this is a bad idea.”

Dean shrugged. “I didn’t say we weren’t discussing it. But we talk about other things too.”

“Like what?”

“He has an awesome recipe for gumbo I’m trying to get him to share.” 

Sam gave him a withering look and went back to the piles of research littering the kitchen table.

“So how close is close?’ Dean called after him.

“Tomorrow.”

Dean jumped up and dropped the paper he had been reading to the floor, ignoring its suddenly yellowing edges, and followed Sam into the other room. “Tomorrow? Tomorrow? When were you planning on sharing with the class?!”

“As soon as I was sure. Don’t you have things to do?” Sam asked pointedly.

“I don’t like this, Sam.”

“I had no idea, Dean. You’ve been so supportive up to now and all.”

Dean glared, then grabbed his wallet off the counter and stormed outside.

“I’m eating out,” he yelled back through the screen.

“Don’t hurry back,” Sam muttered, already getting lost again in the strangely compelling dance of runes and language he knew in his gut would put him on the path to answers.

~~~~~

After all of the stress and preparation, the event itself was fairly anticlimactic.

A dilapidated boatshed on the edge of Buffalo Springs Lake outside of Lubbock, two cans of spray-paint, a couple of candles and some holy water was all the company Sam had for his first attempt. He had considered a church, but finding a church abandoned enough to mark up the way he wanted was problematic, and the lake had been a holy spot for centuries. Since he expected some trial and error anyway, Sam had finally decided he might as well start at the site with the least risk and work up from there.

Dean was still unhappy with Sam’s plan, but he had finally been cornered into agreeing it was the best of a small range of options and agreed to stay away while Sam tested his research. Neither one was sure what kind of effect Dean’s aura might have on the complicated delicacy of the summoning Sam was attempting, but it only took Dean’s shrugged admittance that without filters, what he had for a soul was pretty much a direct line to Hell for Sam to firmly ban him from the proceedings. Dean’s version of Hell might lack the vicious trappings of the usual idea, but Sam was still pretty sure he didn’t want to accidentally summon anything out of it.

And Dean could keep his eye-rolls to himself.

A storm was blowing in over the lake by the time Sam was finally ready to start his ritual. The original weathered gray of the shed interior was almost invisible under swirling layers of runes and charms culled from more than a dozen religions. Candle flames that bobbed and flared in the breeze sliding through cracks in the planking and under the poorly attached tin roof didn’t help visibility, but Sam didn’t need to see much now anyway. Daylight was fading fast and dark clouds raced across the sky as he closed the door for the last time, and the first crack of thunder almost drowned out the syllables as Sam began to speak.

His years of occult research and a healthy amount of determination and adrenaline let him see the text he was reciting scrawled in his mind’s eye as clearly as if it was written in front of him, and his tongue slid through half-understood syllables with the ease of a lifetime’s exposure. He could feel power building like a tangible current in the room and was only half surprised when some of the runes began to glow faintly, barely visible against the wan light of the candles. Sam kept his pace, voice firm and strident, drifting from the text he had pieced together as something moved inside of him and brought other words to mind. Wind howled all around and ripped a panel from the roof, letting rain pour in. The candles sputtered out in the sudden downdraft of air and water. Papers lying in the rickety table swirled up with a life of their own, but Sam kept speaking, word after word falling from his lips like he spoke his mother tongue in the land of his ancestors.

Another crash of thunder and the sky stuttered in staccato bursts of light, blinding him as he spoke the last word, its harsh syllable hanging grating in the air.

Blind, drenched and ears still ringing from the last round of thunder, Sam still knew he was no longer alone. He felt a lazy sort of inquiry from Dean through the link between them and sent a hasty burst of Not Now. His brother’s interest sharpened but faded obediently into the back of his mind again, and Sam felt satisfied there would be no interruptions from that corner. The connection between them felt almost more sensitive in the wake of the spellcasting, but Sam had more pressing things to do than ponder the curse.

He stood silent in the dark for a full minute. Having not really expected it to work on the first go, he now found himself uncertain what to say. Then the candles flared back to life and Sam, still groping for some kind of greeting, was horrified to hear something Dean would have said spill out of his mouth.

“Don’t you ever change clothes?”

The angel gazed at Sam expressionlessly for a moment, then glanced down at itself before looking back up. Sam found it hard to meet the seemingly depthless blue of its even gaze. There was judgment there, and a kind of implacability that would have made Sam’s skin crawl if the power humming in the air hadn’t already accomplished that. The only thing that gave Sam the self-assurance to press on was a tiny glint he chose to interpret as compassion, or at least interest, and the angel’s helpfulness in the past.

“I am aware human fashions change frequently, but I had not thought so long had passed yet that my current attire would be noteworthy. Should I find something less conspicuous?”

“No. Uh, it’s fine. Really. You just... were wearing it the last time we met too,” Sam finished lamely. Even the loosened tie appeared to be hanging at the same angle.

The angel didn’t respond and seemed to be staring distantly at an unremarkable section of the packed dirt floor. Another cascade of thunder made Sam jump. Castiel blinked slowly and looked back up.

“We have a limited amount of time to talk before this conversation attracts notice. You lie near the heart of matters in which I have been commanded to not interfere. There is little that I can do for you, Sam. But in light of our past... acquaintance, I am willing to hear you out. Once. Speak quickly.”

Sam nodded. “I know about Dean being an Entropic Demon; I’m sure that isn’t news to you.”

“I am aware of his nature.”

“Okay, well, the filters, or wards, or whatever, that make him safe to be here are... collapsing, and we can’t seem to reach the angels in Hell. I don’t know what’s happened, but is there anything you can do to help him?”

“I am sorry, Sam. Even if I would help you, there is nothing I can do alone to repair the filters around your brother. It isn’t one angel in Hell that is assisting him, it is all of them. Granted, they are greatly weakened by their imprisonment, but even so, it is a task no single angel is up to. You are talking about interfering with one of the foundation forces of existence. None of my siblings would aid me in this.”

“They won’t help because Dean is an agent of the Entropic angels?”

“We are guardians of Heaven, not this Plane. My Father commanded that we are not to assist our brethren in Hell to escape the trap their own blindness led them into, or to take up their duties in their absence. When you were engaged in preventing Lucifer’s escape, I had more leeway to act. Lucifer was imprisoned by Divine command, and enforcing his punishment was a subject open to... debate. But there is no true discord in Heaven on this matter.”

Sam raked frustrated fingers through his hair. “Can you at least tell me why this is happening?!”

Castiel inclined his head slightly. “Ages ago, when the angels below realized they had been trapped, they retaliated by pulling the strongest of Lucifer’s followers deep into Entropy with them so that they could not act in their Master’s cause. Followers such as Lilith.”

“I’ve heard this before,” Sam said impatiently.

The angel continued as though he had not been interrupted. “The demons spent much of their time and power finding the door to Lucifer’s Cage and beginning the rituals that would open it, locating and destroying Seals, manipulating the birth of yourself and others like you, battling my own kind. But they also spent an enormous amount of power freeing Lilith from the angels’ hold.”

“Because she was the last Seal on the cage.”

“Correct. But with Lucifer lost to them again, thanks mainly to you and your brother’s intervention, there were a great number of powerful demons that had been anticipating their Master’s rise to power who then found themselves without purpose. Facing the long ordeal all over again, they decided to... try a different tactic. Instead of a slow search from the shadows, they bent the power they had been hoarding to free other powerful demons from the angels’ grip, and then those demons in turn combined to push the barrier holding the angels deeper into Entropy. Their ability to reach this world was already weak; now it is nonexistent.”

“That’s why they can’t maintain Dean’s filters anymore,” Sam concluded. “So the hunters are supposed to go around and... what? Fighting normal demons wasn’t hard enough, now we have to take on the most powerful demons in Hell?”

“Unlikely. I do not know of any hunters who are likely to survive an encounter with even the least of the newcomers.” Castiel looked thoughtful. “You perhaps, with Dean’s aid.”

“Fantastic. In a couple of weeks, Dean will be as big of a threat! Even if he wasn’t, I can’t devote my life to fighting an endless wave of demons. I have a quest already. Is there any way to... I don’t know, undo what the demons have done so that the angels can wrap Dean up again?”

“The barrier is being maintained at its current level by a constant stream of power pushing it down. If you cut the power, the angels would return to where Lucifer bound them in the first place.”

“Where they can help Dean?”

“Indeed.”

Sam chose to interpret the emotionless quality of the angel’s tone as Divine reserve instead of skepticism. It was better for his sanity.

“That sounds great, but cutting the power puts us right back to me hunting down and trying to... what? Kill a whole bunch of over-powered Rendering demons? There has to be another way.” Sam tried to be optimistic. “What about that disk you gave me to use at Illchester -- that drove all the demons away and stripped their power for a few days?”

“That disk was carved out of the wood of a tree that has not grown on this planet in five thousand years. The materials are very precise; there is no way to create another one.”

“It probably wouldn’t have been useful anyway. I would need a spell a thousand times more powerful to be anything but a waste of time.” Sam raked a frustrated hand through his wet hair.

Castiel cocked his head, seemingly untouched by the rain though the edges of his coat fluttered in the restless air. “The disk I gave you was copied from a Ward that is vastly more powerful. If you had the original, it would not only banish every demon in this Plane back to the Rendering, at best guess it would take them at least a century of your time to recover themselves enough to even make the crossing again, much less interfere in anything more... substantial. It would only affect the demons in this Plane, but that should wipe out enough to accomplish your goal.”

“What?” Sam attention sharpened. “Where is it? How do I find it?”

“It has been lost for many years,” the angel said solemnly.

“Of course it has.” Sam’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “How long is ‘many years’ exactly?”

“It was carved on another continent and carried here across a great bridge of ice. None of my kind have been aware of it since. We know only that it must still exist, as its destruction would shake the Heavens and not pass without note.”

Sam’s shoulder slumped. “A great bridge of... the land bridge? You people haven’t seen it since humans crossed to North America on the land bridge? That was like--” Sam wracked his brain, “--twenty thousand years ago!”

“As I said, many years.”

“This doesn’t help me,” Sam growled. “This doesn’t sound any easier to find than just figuring out a way to free the angels in the first place!”

“Perhaps not. You asked for help and I am afraid this alternative is all I have to offer. The Seal is an incredible force of Creation and Order. Its simple presence should burn like a beacon. For it to be hidden from us means that it must lie in a place of great Chaos and Entropy.”

“A place of Chaos and Entropy?” Sam frowned. “You mean like a volcano or something?”

Castiel looked unfocused again, then stiffened. “I must go.”

“Wait!”

“We are in danger of being noticed, which could be... unhealthy, for you. I wish you luck.”

Before Sam could try and muster a more compelling argument, lightning flickered and the angel was gone. Sam flung a candle at the wall in frustration; it was immediately doused by the pouring rain.

He tugged his cell phone from the pocket of clinging, wet jeans and called his brother to come get him.

The Impala rolled to a stop in the parking lot a few yards away about twenty minutes later and Sam darted through the downpour to climb inside. Dean grimaced at the water but didn’t say anything. He reached over the benchseat and dropped a towel into Sam’s lap. Sam picked it up with a muttered thanks and rubbed briskly at his hair.

“What are we gonna do about the shed?” Dean asked. “People are going to find it and think there’s a satanic cult in the area. Which I guess doesn’t matter much, but rumors start going around and your reading habits at the library will get a lot more attention.”

Sam opened his mouth, but before he could reply, a crack of lightning struck the ancient building and the small structure exploded into a ruin of flames.

“Cool; I like it when they’re helpful,” was Dean’s only comment as he shifted the Impala into drive. Sam gave the clouds a wary look. “How did the conversation go?”

“About like you’d expect,” Sam snorted. “Can’t help, don’t know, and nothing. Castiel did confirm what you thought about the demons, though, sort of. And there might be a tiny glimmer of hope.”

“Fantastic. And we’re out of food. Tell me about it on the way to the store.”

~~~~~

“So, that’s it then?” Dean asked about fifteen minutes later. They were picking up a few groceries at a mini mart on the outskirts of town. It wasn’t Sam’s ideal choice of places to have a serious conversation about Hell, Heaven and angelic revelations, but as Dean insisted, it wasn’t like anyone who overheard them was going to care or understand anyway. “Demons who were unhappy about us raining all over their parade at Illchester decided to throw a world-ending party anyway, used the energy they had stored up for the festivities to invite a few more guests, the newcomers used their muscle to shove the trap deeper into the Pit, and now we are crawling with super-jumped-up demons and I am totally screwed. And Heaven’s best and brightest won’t do squat because they basically say this isn’t their mess. Is that everything?”

“It’s not that it isn’t their mess, it’s that God told them to stay out of it.”

Dean snorted. “They were flitting around like mad when the demons were trying to bust Lucifer out. But now that the demons are just focused on the planetary roast part, suddenly they have to keep their hands clean?”

“That was different.”

“Of course,” Dean said dryly, “it always is. So did your feathered friend happen to have any helpful suggestions or good news to go with the suicidal despair it’s dishing out?”

“No,” Sam grumbled, then hesitated. “Well, maybe? You remember that ward I had at Illchester, the one I used to banish all of the demons before they could take their frustrations out on us?”

“Yeah, good times.” Dean pulled a can of black beans off the shelf and added it to their cart. “I love being ripped out of my body. My own body; it’s not like I was even possessing someone! Getting tossed out like some weak-willed ghost? For weeks? That sucked, man.”

“Sorry.”

“No, you aren’t,” Dean snorted.

“Nope,” Sam admitted with an easy shrug. “Anyways, that ward was a little copy of a more powerful one. Castiel seemed to think the original was powerful enough to banish all of the demons in this Plane, and maybe keep them helpless in Hell for a century before they would be strong enough to cause more trouble.”

Dean gave a low whistle and raised his eyebrows. “That would be awesome. Stop all of the current chaos, get my filters back in place, and give us a century to finish my side of the bargain? What’s the catch?”

“No one has seen it in something like twenty thousand years. All Castiel could say for sure was that it was in North America last time any of the angels knew where it was.”

“Twenty thousand?” Dean scowled. “That’s not any more helpful than the crap we are already working on.”

“That’s what I said... also, it’s supposed to be strong, Dean. Really strong.”

“Which would be the entire reason to dig it up in the first place,” Dean agreed.

“Castiel said every demon. It would banish you too,” Sam said pointedly.

“So then maybe I won’t be around to help,” Dean shrugged, then pinned Sam in place with a serious look. “Sam, if we don’t find a way to restore my filters soon, I need to be banished. I’m not kidding. And if the angels in Heaven won’t help, then we either have to free the angels in Hell, or at least reverse the latest shit so they can collar me again, or find a way to break the curse so I can leave this plane on my own.”

“The only way to break the curse is if I die, Dean,” Sam said in a low voice. “I die, you go to Hell, no one frees the angels, and they take their frustrations out on you for eternity.”

“There has to be another way, Sam.”

Sam licked his lips and found the shelf suddenly interesting.

“Sam?” Dean asked in a voice heavy with suspicion.

“There’s another possibility we haven’t discussed. We could... find another demon to take the curse. You would be free and I would still be here to work on the problem.”

“No.” Dean’s voice was flat and cold. Sam pressed on anyway.

“There has to be another demon out there who genuinely doesn’t want Lucifer freed, Dean. Finding one can’t be harder than our other options!”

“No,” Dean hissed again.

“Then what?” Sam snapped. “We’ve been looking for months to break the trap without a single freaking clue, finding Castiel’s Ward doesn’t seem any more likely, and you have how long again?”

Dean stepped into Sam’s space, grabbing him by one arm and shoving him back against the shelf of canned goods. He leaned in close and hissed, “Have you lost your fucking mind?! There is not a chance in Hell, Sam!”

“You prefer the alternative?!” Sam spat back. He tried to pull his arm free, but Dean’s fingers tightened hard enough to elicit an involuntary grunt of pain.

“Gee, let’s think. Rather than you being a puppet for whatever twisted, fucked-up monster we find to take you on? Yes! You think even if they don’t want Lucifer free that they will have any interest in our goals? If I’m going to burn for an eternity either way, I’d just as soon do it without knowing I gave you away like a pet! You think your situation sucks now? I’m nice to you and Ruby wanted you compliant; we’re not going to find anyone else who gives a damn about your wellbeing, Sam. You know what demons like? They like pain, and fear, and degradation. I thought you were supposed to be smart!”

They glared at each other and Sam was alarmed to see a smoky swirl of gray spiraling ominously into the vivid green of his brother’s eyes. He glanced down and the label of a can Dean still held in his free hand was curling at the edges and starting to peel. They were alone on their aisle, but the rustling noises of other people in the store were suddenly loud to his ears as he was reminded they were not the only ones present. It was abruptly imperative to Sam that he take the conversation, and his brother, someplace more... isolated.

Dean’s nostrils flared and he looked away, making an obvious effort to control himself. His fingers on Sam’s arm tightened a fraction more.

Sam brushed his attention over what he identified in his mind as the link between them, pushing just enough to try and sense his brother’s mental state. He had shied away from that type of contact since the incident in the bedroom, haunted by what had happened. But this was almost an emergency so Sam forced himself to reach out anyway. The results were... uncertain. What he could feel of Dean’s emotions was a confused jumble of rage and fear, all mixed together with something too alien for Sam to name. A something that reminded him of ashes on bare skin and the sensation of falling.

It was definitely time to leave.

“Dean, let’s go.”

“We need--” Dean’s glance took in the neat shelves of food surrounding them.

“We don’t,” Sam said firmly. “We’ve got cereal, which is fine for tonight. We’ll hit the store tomorrow. I just want to go home.”

“Home?” Dean echoed questioningly, the uncharacteristic distance of his tone ringing alarms in Sam’s head.

“The house, Dean. I want to go. Now.”

Dean released Sam as if he had been burned and turned wordlessly toward the main doors. They were almost there when a pair of guys pushed in and Sam swore internally, cursing whatever fate dictated that nothing in his life ever go smoothly. The newcomers wore dark hoodies and track shoes. With their faces lowered and hands tucked out of sight, they couldn’t have screamed ‘threat’ any louder. Sam gave a wary glance toward the register where a couple was being rung up by the mini-mart’s bored-looking teenage cashier. A young, tired-looking woman was reading the label on a box of crackers a few feet away while her child hung from one hand and chewed noisily on a granola bar beside her. The kid noticed Sam’s attention and deliberately crossed her eyes at him.

Dean had also stopped to watch as the guys headed for the register. Sam didn’t have a gun; he knew Dean had one tucked into his jeans but that wasn’t going to help much if this turned into a hostage situation. As if orchestrated by his pessimistic thought, Sam felt no surprise when both of the men pulled weapons from beneath their hoodies and barked orders at the customers to raise hands and kneel.

Sam threw a sidelong glance at Dean, but his brother had an odd half-smile on his face as he sank gracefully to the cheap tile of the floor. There was nothing human in the movement and Sam suddenly wanted Dean out of the store more than he wanted to avoid being shot.

“Look, guys--” he began.

“Shut up! We’ll take your money, your jewelry and your silence. Everyone does what we say and cooperates and no one will get hurt.”

Sam closed his mouth, but he was pretty certain someone was going to get hurt. Dean was utterly, and ominously, silent.

One of the men told the cashier to put all of her money into a paper bag. The other man was splitting his attention between Sam, Dean, the couple at the counter and the woman with her child, but seemed mostly focused on watching the woman at the counter twist her wedding ring desperately, trying to work it over her knuckle. Tears were running down her face as her husband stood watching with an expression of mingled shock and fear.

“Looks like we’ll have to cut it off,” the second gunman commented coolly.

That was too much for the woman’s husband. He took a step forward, shielding his wife. “We’re doing everything you aske--”

His words cut off with a bang as deafening in meaning as in volume. The man crumpled to the floor, his expression startled and a bloody stain spreading over his chest. The only sound for a moment was his wife’s increasingly panicky breathing as she hyperventilated.

“Anyone else have a problem?”

“I do,” Dean said, standing. The gunman leveled his weapon and pulled the trigger. Dean blinked, then glanced down and stuck a finger through the hole in his shirt. “Guess you should have brought something bigger?”

Then, while everyone except Sam gaped at him in shock, Dean crossed the floor in three easy strides and casually broke the second gunman’s neck. The first man was clutching the paper sack of money in one hand and his gun in the other, stumbling away from Dean.

“Stay back, man!” He fired several times wildly. Two of the shots hit Dean, several of the others slammed into racks and displays, and one of the overhead lights exploded. Sam felt a burning sting slice along his arm and looked down sharply to see a tear in the fabric over his bicep and spreading scarlet. He quickly glanced back up to meet Dean’s eyes, now gone completely gray. Sam couldn’t read anything in those eyes, but the rush of fury he felt in the link was being quickly eclipsed by the alien emotions he had noted before. Beneath Dean’s feet, spider cracks started running like water, spreading in a widening ring as the finish faded and the grout crumbled. A light fixture fell from a mount of suddenly decayed lumber and crashed onto the floor. Sam’s eyes widened with horror; everyone else was still frozen in a kind of shock, but Sam doubted they had noticed the true threat, the uneven ring of Entropy pooling out from his brother.

The demon his brother had become.

That moment of frozen tableau felt like it lasted hours instead of seconds, then the ring struck the gunman who had shot Sam and he crumbled into a pile of lumpy dust and scraps of cloth, the fall of the gun muffled by the remains. The people left standing in the store started screaming and stumbling back. Sam searched for some hint of awareness in Dean’s eyes but his brother stood like a statue, expression calm. The link between them was alive, but what he was sensing reminded Sam too much of the chaotic freefall of the bedroom and he wrenched himself away as best he could. Rippling magic destroyed tile under his feet and sent a display to his right crumpling to the ground, but Sam himself remained untouched. Jarred from his own shock by the disparity, Sam turned from Dean just in time to see the woman crouched over her husband’s body fall to mingled ash with his corpse as the cashier scrambled over the counter and sprinted for the exit at the back of the store.

The woman with her daughter was still frozen in horror, oblivious to the immediate danger they were in. Sam grabbed the girl and pulled her mother by the arm, hauling them both towards the exit door standing open from the cashier’s escape. Shaken back to action, the woman snatched her daughter from Sam’s arms and darted away, giving one wild-eyed look back into the building before vanishing around the corner. Seconds later, Sam heard a car squeal to life and speed away.

Lacking options and hearing the whine of sirens in the distance, Sam was steeling his nerve to confront Dean and try and get him out of the building before the police showed up, when his brother walked out of the exit door himself. Dean pressed the Impala’s keys into Sam’s hand and slid into the passenger side without a word. He wrapped his arms around himself and looked determinedly out the window. Sam started to speak twice, but there was really nothing to say.

Sam could see flashing blue lights reflected on buildings down the road and turned the key in the ignition, pulling away as the first of the police arrived on the scene.

~~~~~

When they reached the house, they sat in darkness and silence for a few minutes, Sam not knowing how to start the conversation they needed to have, and Dean lost in his own thoughts. Sam didn’t have any kind of clue as to his Dean’s state of mind. In a panic, he had cut off what little he could sense from his brother, but he didn’t try to kid himself that he had cut off Dean’s ability to read him in return.

“Dean,” Sam began.

“Go get your stuff.”

“What?”

Dean faced him for the first time since the store, and the streetlights let Sam see the irritation on his face. But the expression was entirely Dean’s, and even with the lingering horror of what had happened in the store, Sam felt a wave of relief. Which didn’t make Dean’s directive any less confusing.

“Your stuff,” Dean repeated slower, like Sam was too dim to understand. “Your laptop, jacket, anything else you want to keep. Go get it.”

Sam frowned. “The police won’t be able to find us that fast. And I didn’t see any security cameras; they might not even be able to find us at all.”

“I can’t stay here, Sam. And I’m not leaving you alone in a place that might be compromised. Grab your crap and let’s get going. The longer we stay here, the greater the risk.”

“Risk to who, Dean?” Sam asked tensely, making no move to open the door.

“Everyone. You saw what happened in the store. We’re out of time to play games, Sam.”

“So what then?”

Dean tightened the arms he had crossed over his chest. “You know what. We can’t figure out how to free the angels, and we don’t have time to chase more wild gooses. I’m losing myself in pieces, Sam, and I can’t tell you when or how it’s going to happen, just that it’s going to be more and worse. People died tonight. I’m not shedding any tears over the jackass who shot you,” Dean glanced at the blood-soaked fabric clinging to the shallow score alone Sam’s arm, “but I know there were others. Cutting me loose has to be our first priority, before it’s not just a couple of people in a mini-mart, but entire cities, states or continents I’m fucking up. Are you starting to get the picture, Sam?”

Sam rubbed at his eyes. “I can try contacting Missouri again about breaking the curse. I just... if she doesn’t have any ideas, then we’re down to suicide or auction.”

“I already told you the auction idea wasn’t gonna happen,” Dean snarled.

“Well, suicide doesn’t do anyone much good either, Dean! The demons will still destroy the world, at least as far as anything living is concerned, and you’ll be tortured for an eternity. So how the hell does that make any sense either?!”

Dean glared. “I’ll fucking kill anyone who touches you.”

“Is that what set you off tonight?” Sam glanced down at the wound that was starting to hurt in a way he couldn’t keep ignoring.

Dean looked down into the darkness of the footwell. “I was already on edge; it might have happened anyway. Things are getting messy in my head, Sam.”

“So we’re going to Kansas?”

“No. I’m going to the desert. You’re going to find an answer.”

~~~~~

Dean made Sam sit on the kitchen counter while he cleaned out and stitched up the bullet score. Sam, no stranger to either gunshot wounds or kitchen medicine, did an admirable job of holding still for the process. Dean only wished he would have also stayed quiet. Events were shoving them towards a bottleneck of bad outcomes and Sam resisting the necessary didn’t make anything easier.

“I don’t like splitting up,” Sam insisted for the tenth time in as many minutes.

“Missouri answer her phone yet?”

“No,” Sam snapped. “Which you damn well know.”

“Which is why I’m going to go spend time out in the sand with miles of nothing between me and civilization, while you go bang on her door until she answers. It’s not like anything out there will hurt me, Sam. I’m not alive. We just need to buy some time while you... work things out.”

“So you’ll just sit quietly out in the desert alone going slowly insane while I frantically try to track down a woman who for all we know has gone on a year-long vacation to the Outer Hebrides?”

“Where?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “It doesn’t matter where, Dean. This is--”

“Stupid?’ Dean suggested.

“Yes!” Sam glared.

“You have a better idea?”

“Screw you.”

“Sounds like ‘no’,” Dean said pointedly.

He grabbed his brother’s face and forced Sam to meet his eyes. He could feel Sam’s pain and it made his heart ache for the shitty hand fate had dealt them. Again. But he could also hear the enthralling song of the true Hell through the decaying filters that bound him, beckoning him home and growing louder by the hour.

“We’re out of aces, Sammy,” he said, as gently as he could, knowing no words or tone of voice would make Sam feel any better. “I fought my entire life to save people from monsters. Dad did, you did. But if you don’t do this, if these filters break and I’m stuck here by the curse, nothing we’ve suffered or done will have meant a damn thing. I want my life, my death, to have mattered, Sam. I want all of the shit we’ve slogged through to have been for something.” He let his hands fall away.

There was a suspicious wetness in Sam’s eyes, but he nodded at Dean’s words. “I know. And I know we don’t have any other good options. Just... when is it going to be someone else’s turn to deal with this crap?”

Dean shrugged and stepped back so Sam could slide off the counter. He shouldered Sam’s duffle bag, tossed the house keys on the table and gestured towards the door. “Probably whenever you die. Which for the sake of everyone, had better not be soon.”


Chapter Seven

Thou, straggler into loving arms,
Young climber up of knees
when I forget thy thousand ways,
then life and all shall cease
                                           ~Mary Lamb, Parental Recollections

When Sam thought of the word ‘desert’, his mind was filled with images of frozen waves of sand, crested into timeless sculpture above endless miles of empty plains. He knew better, but it was still always a subtle disappointment to look out over the scrub bushes and skittering life of the deserts in the western United States. Not that they didn’t have their own beauty, but one day he wanted to have the chance to look out on what he always thought of in a guilty corner of his mind as a real desert.

For their purposes, though, the Sonoma was big enough and had enough desolate corners that they both agreed Dean should be able to get lost, and stay lost, while Sam tried to track down Missouri. The state capital of Arizona being smack in the middle of it aside, it was still a freaking huge area of land.

The trip hadn’t been long by their standards, but it was still longer than Sam was used to spending behind the wheel without trading off driving. It was usually a battle to get Dean to give up the keys for even short distances, but this time Dean had categorically refused to take a turn at all, spending most of the trip curled up on the passenger side with his eyes closed. He rarely responded to Sam’s questions or needling remarks, and when he did, it was only long enough to growl at Sam to shut up.

Sam, with nothing to do but poke at Dean or dwell on the misery of their circumstances, refused to leave his brother alone until his eye caught on the yellowing curl of the map tossed onto the seat between them somewhere between Tucumcari and Santa Rosa.

“Dean.” Sam’s voice was sharp with alarm. Even with his gaze torn between watching the road and watching the map, he could easily see the paper aging and starting to crumble.

“I know, Sam! What do you think I’m doing?! Shut up and let me concentrate before it’s more than just the fucking paper products.”

After that, Sam kept an almost religious silence as they sped through the night and into the next morning’s dawn.

Just at sunset, they were close enough to their destination that Dean started giving directions, following some kind of internal map or idea. He found paths that looked untraveled in years, mere dusty tracks around boulders and cacti, until they came to a place that had obviously served as some kind of parking lot at one point. An ancient wooden picnic bench, warped and battered by the elements, stood at one corner. Dean barely waited for the Impala to stop before he shoved open the door and escaped. He stopped about a hundred feet away and sank onto the parched, dusty ground, an expression of vast relief on his face.

Sam followed more slowly, stopping a cautious distance away, waiting to see what happened. “Are you feeling better?”

Dean turned at the sound of his voice, giving Sam his full attention. He had gotten used to the muffled cotton feel of his senses under the inner wards and filters that let him play human. With those restraints worn so thin, he was unfolding back into them and it was amazing. Whole universes of jarring color and sensation assaulted him with each step, with every second. It was hard to see past them, think past them, to focus on what passed for this Plane’s reality. More difficult every minute to remember he had to make the struggle. Without the chain binding him to Sam, he would have shattered what remained of his prison days ago and fled back to the only place he belonged now.

There was something... odd, about the curse. Dean knew what the angels had taught him in his struggles, and what he had learned in Hell, but it hadn’t prepared him to be an expert in all forms of magic, and elaborate castings were definitely not his specialty. There was some flavor to the spell binding him to Sam, a subtle twist that he had not sensed during the year they had been stopping the Apocalypse. It tugged at him, and more interestingly, tugged at his demonic nature. With his human values and comprehensions being chipped away like old paint, Dean had thought he would shed interest in his brother as well. He certainly hadn’t remembered or given a damn about Sam when he had first been returned to the Plane. Family ties should be nothing to the demon he was becoming, like they hadn’t held up against the violent birthing process of his new nature all those many, many years ago in Hell. But now, despite the breakdowns, there was a... concern for Sam shot through all aspects of his self. A desire to keep him alive, and... unaltered. Even during the brief flashes when Dean was barely a fragment of himself, the demon still kept Sam safe, unchanged by the whirl of Entropy that molded and warped everything that it touched.

He forced his attention back to his brother’s question. “Now that I’m out of the car? Sure.”

“I didn’t bring it up before because you were... busy,” Sam said with some reluctance, “but I haven’t been able to get cell phone reception in three hundred miles. Is that you?”

“Probably.” Dean shrugged. “I’m doing the best I can.”

“I’m not bitching, Dean. I’m just trying to keep a handle on what’s going on.”

Dean snorted. “Best of luck. I can’t keep a handle on it and I’m living it from the inside.”

Sam eyed him for a moment without speaking.

“Spit it out, Sam. We haven’t got all day. You have things to do, remember?”

Sam scowled at the reminder but didn’t argue about it. “You destroyed my map; you... did what you did to that convenience store -- but both times you walked out with your clothes intact. It doesn’t make any sense. If it’s an aura, and you can’t control it when you flash over or whatever, then why are those things safe?”

Now it was Dean’s turn to weigh his brother with his eyes. It did make sense, kinda, but it wasn’t a sense Dean was sure Sam was going to like. Dean himself found it disquieting, and he worried that if he told the truth, Sam would depend on it when that dependability would be... unwise. But there had been enough lies and half-truths between them. Sam needed all the weapons Dean could give him, and he didn’t know how much more time he would have. And Sam wasn’t stupid, current reluctance to face reality aside.

“This thing between us, it seems to run a lot deeper than it should. Deeper than should be possible. Deeper than... me, maybe.”

“What?”

Dean scowled and tried to fit words around what he felt happening within himself. “It... cares. But not cares, really, more like it’s... interested, in you.”

“It?”

“I’m liking these one-word questions, Sam. I feel like you’re really helping with this conversation, bringing your squeaky voice and all,” Dean snapped.

“What is it, Dean?” Sam gritted out.

“Me. The real me, not Dean me.”

“It’s... interested in me?” Sam asked slowly.

Dean shrugged. “Probably because we’ve got this thing between us rooted way down deep. It’s getting all sorts of information from you that it wouldn’t normally get. It’s curious and... I don’t know. It’s not that Entropic demons can’t have emotions -- emotions lead to all sorts of great Entropic things. It’s that they lack the context to apply anything like that to this Plane. But with this link, it’s getting a different... experience.”

“So maybe it will control itself, not be some kind of catastrophic hurricane of destruction?” The hope in his brother’s voice was hard for Dean to hear; he had to keep Sam grounded firmly in reality.

“It’s chaotic, Sam,” Dean said firmly. “It might preserve things that are deeply connected or important to you minute by minute, like how I’m supposed to appear, but it-- I’m, not going to stay focused enough to make that permanent. Like I said before: I think you’re safe. I can’t make any kind of promise about anything else. This Plane is like a prison where every second is a new misery. The longer I’m here, the more the filters erode, the greater the discomfort. Soon it will be pain. Elemental creatures lash out at things that hurt them, Sam. And I don’t know how far fascination is going to get you. You need to hurry.”

Sam nodded. Dean could feel his misery. The trap was closing around them both and the best they could hope for was to mitigate some of the damage. He really, really, hoped Missouri had an answer for them. He didn’t want Sam to die, but there was no way in any Plane of reality he would turn him over to another demon. He’d cut his brother’s throat himself before he let that happen. Sam was his; and even if he hadn’t been, Dean had never been that much of a monster. He wouldn’t willingly turn a rusted nail over to another demon, much less his brother.

Dean looked up at the glittering stars of the clear desert night as the sunset stains on the western horizon slowly faded. He heard the crunch of grit under boots as Sam came closer. Dean tasted the energy of his life in the air, so much more vivid than the pinpricks around them, gleaming like fireflies to his altered sight.

“Do you need anything before I go?” His brother’s voice was made up of layers of sound that vibrated in individual currents to Dean’s ears. Each one was distinct and interesting as they rebounded off of leaves, sand, the car, the bench. Fractured into discord and shambles. He traced the rippling patterns effortlessly until they died away, unaware of the ticking seconds.

“Dean?” The was fear now in his brother’s voice as Sam redrew his attention. Dean forced himself to focus again.

“I’m... here. And I don’t need anything.”

“Okay. Well, before I leave, we really should... it’s been about three weeks. If we don’t do it now, I’m not going to get very far.”

That snapped Dean fully to attention. “Are you asking for something, Sam?”

The moonlight was bright enough he could see Sam’s scowl even without his altered senses. The curse was singing between them, telling Dean all he needed to know about the ache in Sam’s body, the awful need crawling over his skin. Dean thought about making Sam spell out what he wanted, speak in clear and painful detail. But he decided having Sam ask at all was sweet enough without twisting the knife anymore. Sam had enough knives in him. They both did.

“Let’s do this then.”

Sam nodded, some tension falling out of the line of his broad shoulders as he headed back to dig in the Impala’s trunk. He trudged back through the scrub carrying a rough canvas tarp and a sleeping bag.

He was kneeling to smooth out the corners when Dean crouched beside him and cupped a hand around the back of his neck, pulling him into a kiss tinged with blood. Sam responded helplessly, the power calling to something within him that he had no control over. Any part of his mind that wanted to protest as he eagerly chased Dean’s tongue back into his mouth being easily drowned out by every other shred of his being clamoring for more of the magic that sparked in Dean’s blood. It curled warmly into a cold place in Sam’s mind, but Sam fought the pull. Forced himself to push away until he was blinking at Dean from a few feet away. His senses were still spinning but he was aware enough to scoot back when Dean frowned and reached for him again.

“Sam?”

Sam shook his head, still trying to muster the words he needed to say when all he wanted to do was wrestle Dean back down and find a new vein to open.

“Sam?” Dean was closer now, hand reaching out to touch Sam’s face, and rising fear gave Sam back what he was looking for.

“No. Wait.”

Dean’s concerned expression was sliding into anger. “What do you mean, ‘no’? You want to pull this shit now?!”

“That’s not-- it’s not this, Dean! It’s what happened last time. I just want to talk for a sec first.”

“With the bedroom? I hate to tell you this, Sam, but I don’t think the sand is going to care much about a little aging. And the scrub will grow back. Stop scooting away.” He reached for Sam again but sat back with an annoyed sigh at the glare his brother directed at him.

“It’s not what happened to the room, Dean, it’s what happened... inside.” Sam grimaced. “When we did this last time, something happened inside of my mind. I could feel you, but not like you. I felt like I was... falling. It was awful, and--” He sighed. “The room was worse when I woke up, because it was real. But if we’re doing this again...”

“What you saw inside was real too, Sam,” Dean said quietly.

Sam nodded grimly. “I know. Can you -- keep me out, maybe?”

Dean sighed. “You shouldn’t have been dragged in in the first place. It’s the curse, the link between us. I don’t understand why Lilith would have carved something this... wide. It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t understand what’s happening and I don’t know how much I can do to prevent it this time either.”

“Can you try?”

“Yeah, Sam, I can try. No promises.”

Sam nodded and stood long enough to kick off his jeans and pull his t-shirt over his head. Goose bumps prickled up almost immediately in the evening air, but Sam wasn’t worried about the cold. Not when he knelt back into Dean’s embrace and kissed him hungrily, starving for the power of his blood, and not when he was pressed down naked onto rough canvas under the clear, starry vault of the desert sky. When the world began to fall away and the spiraling wash of converging realities threatened to rip him apart, he could still feel his brother wrapped around him, shielding him from the worst of the storm.

~~~~~

Sam woke up with the sunrise to find himself in one of his least favorite situations: sticky, sweaty and sandy. He was curled up on his side with his face pressed into Dean’s shoulder, wearing the boxers and his t-shirt he vaguely remembered Dean redressing him in to ward off the chill of the desert night, the sleeping bag unzipped and thrown on top. He pushed himself up to a sitting position and grimaced, reminded again that he wasn’t twenty anymore and there were consequences for sleeping wherever he happened to fall.

“This is disgusting,” he said aloud to the hawk circling overhead and the low brush a few feet away.

Dean rolled over beside him and stretched out on his stomach, resting his head on folded hands as he looked up at Sam. “Don’t say that. Sex is a beautiful and natural thing. Didn’t you pay attention in middle school?”

Sam snorted and scratched at a particularly itchy place under his boxers, grimacing at the dried, sandy mess that flaked off under his fingernails. “I don’t have a problem with the sex, Dean, though there isn’t anything natural about it. I have a problem with waking up with the aftermath congealing all over me.”

Dean smirked. “I don’t mind.”

“You’re disgusting too,” Sam grumbled, standing up and reaching for his jeans. He shook them out, then thought about scorpions and other desert dwellers and gave the pants another good shake.

Dean rolled his eyes and sat up on the rumpled blanket, recognizing the gesture. “Don’t worry; none of them would dare. The creepy crawlies of the world have a better understanding of my nature than humans do. They give me lots and lots of space.”

Sam gave his brother another look and shook the battered denim until he was satisfied his clothes were uninhabited, then pulled them on. There wasn’t any place to clean up; he would just have to live with what he could brush off until he found a gas station and could do a better job of washing.

He glanced over at where Dean was still sprawled out naked and frowned as something caught his eye. When Dean had first returned, after the bargain he’d made to save Sam’s life had sent him to Hell, there had been the dark sigil of a demonic lock marked on the inside of his thigh. Sam had recognized it from his own experience with possession years earlier. While trying to save Dean from cultists in the southwest, Sam had been forced to slash through the sigil. Worthless broken, the next time he had seen Dean naked, the mark had been gone. Until now.

“Get a new tattoo?”

Dean raised an eyebrow, then followed Sam’s gaze to the lock and shrugged. “A few days ago.”

“Where was I?” Sam asked, baffled.

“Researching.” Dean made a gesture that could be reasonably construed to imply either something with wings or something insane. Sam’s eyes narrowed but he got the message.

“Why? You anticipating a demonic rush on short guys and need to mark your claim?”

Dean snorted. “I’m more than six feet tall, Sam. It’s only mutant freaks like you that would consider me short.”

Sam waited, and after a minute or two of his level stare, Dean gave in.

“I just thought it might help me remember to stick with this body, you know? It’s not exactly hard to break, but it’s kinda like tying a ribbon on your finger. Demon-me is going to want to keep possession of a body because it’s more shielded from free energy that way. I just want to encourage myself to keep this body. The trappings don’t really matter, but you think of me this way, and the real me seems like it might be willing to take a cue or two from you so...” Dean shrugged. “Also, Entropic demons don’t think like Rendering demons do. When I’m other, I’m not going to have an agenda that requires the body I possess to be human. But we’re still going to share this curse. Are you following me here?”

With the smeared bruises of Dean’s fingerprints from an evening of sex visible on his skin, Sam was pretty sure he was following, and the road was going to some horrific places. It hadn’t even occurred to him that the demon might wander from his brother’s body.

“What about another couple of locks?” Sam demanded. “Would that make it harder to leave?”

Dean grinned like he thought Sam was kidding, but his voice was very serious when he spoke again. “Sam, when you go, if you come back, don’t bring anything you value.”

“If I come back?”

“We both know the score,” Dean said simply. “But if you do have to come find me, don’t bring the Impala, or anything else you don’t want to lose. Out here, without things to center myself on, it’s going to go faster.”

Sam almost asked what ‘it’ was, but realization stopped the question before it could escape. He had been doing a good job of pushing away what they were doing in the desert, what last night had really been, but he couldn’t ignore reality anymore. “I’m coming back, Dean.”

“Not if you get the job done and break this thing between us.”

Sam didn’t have much argument to that. He folded the bedding back up with harsh, jerky movements as a distraction from the turmoil churning in him. He was aware of Dean’s stare burning like the sun against his skin.

“We’ve been over this, Sam. We don’t have any choices.”

“I know.”

Dean held his arms out and Sam stepped into the embrace, wrapping his arms around his brother tightly, comfort and solidarity with none of the overtones of the previous night. This was all about family, and loss, and things that couldn’t be changed. After a moment, Sam stepped back and hugged the bedding to his chest instead.

“I’ll do my best.” Sam tried to project a resolve in his voice that he didn’t feel.

The confidence in Dean’s answering smile was everything Sam needed to see.

“I know you will, Sam. The world is counting on it.”

Next Section

Masterpost

 

Comments

[angeblond.livejournal.com]

i think that all the bonds, ties and whatever between them melt with the curse binding their souls i a stronger and stranger way.

And i love Entropic!dean , and more when he is all alpha male on sam ^^.

kiss my friend

[brothersnlovers.livejournal.com]

breaking my heart - again... love the story but find the brothers' interactions so painful, it's killing me. Really hope there'll somehow be a good end to this...sniff

[glasslogic.livejournal.com]

Awwwww. Light at the end of the tunnel, I promise! Well, as much peace as Fortress ended with anyways *wryly* there will be a third and final installment in the series eventually, but I try not to leave individual stories so unresolved you want to tear your hair out at the end *grins* Let me know what you think when you get there!

I'll answer your other comments tomorrow -- I saw them, I just haven't had more than 5 minutes to sit down this week...