Static - Section Five

[glasslogic]

Chapter Eight

The floods is threat'ning
My very life today
Gimme, gimme shelter
Or I'm gonna fade away
                                                ~Gimme Shelter, The Rolling Stones

The solitary drive to Kansas was one of the longest of Sam’s life. Dean had stood out on the desert sand and waved him off, keeping his distance like there was an invisible line he couldn’t cross. Sam wanted to stay with him; it seemed such a perfunctory goodbye when it could be the last time they would ever meet -- but if anything had ever defined his family, it was an understanding of duty. So he pulled the Impala onto the road without looking back and told himself it was desert grit and allergies that he wiped from his eyes with his sleeve. There wasn’t anything else to be said between them, and every minute now counted. Besides, dimly in the back of his mind he still carried an awareness of his brother. The link for Sam was virtually useless, but it was still a strange comfort as he burned miles down the highway in search of a way to sever Dean from the Plane forever.

Missouri still wasn’t answering her phone when he finally had service again. Sam left her another voicemail and tossed the useless cell down onto the empty seat beside him.

He drove straight from the desert parking lot where he left Dean to Missouri’s front door, stopping only for a hasty wash in a rest stop bathroom and gas when the tank was dry. Her driveway was empty when he pulled up to the curb in front of her house. Knock-out roses were blooming unkempt in front of the low, whitewashed porch and newspapers were scattered across the planks. Sam rang the bell anyway, then pulled the screen door open to bang directly on the door.

He gave up after five minutes and spun, frustrated, not knowing what else to do. Missouri wasn’t a hunter he could have Bobby make some calls and track down. He needed a different plan, but first he needed a nap and a real shower. He tried calling her again, and leaned his head against the wood with entirely new curse words bubbling to mind when a cell phone’s musical chime sounded from somewhere beyond the front door.

Sam was pulling the keys from his pocket and storming back down the steps to go find a motel when an ancient Cadillac in a lemonish color turned into the driveway. Missouri rolled down the window, glaring at him.

“Samuel Winchester, if you’ve put one scratch on that door you had better believe you’ll be spending the rest of the weekend refinishing it. Don’t think for one moment I won’t hold to that either!”

Sam was so relieved to see her he would have happily agreed to refinish the entire house in that moment. She climbed out of the car and pulled an overnight bag from the backseat. Sam was reaching to take it for her when she froze and stared at him.

“Oh, honey, what’s happened to you?”

“Too much to tell you out here,” he said quietly, “but I need your help, Missouri. Can I come in?”

She relinquished the bag to him and nodded. “I think you’d better. I had a feeling I needed to be back today. Good thing for you I put off visiting my cousin in Scotland and was just a state over helping out a friend.” She fixed him with a hard look. “And where is that brother of yours? I know he’s not anywhere close by, and I didn’t think there was a thing in this world that was going to get him to turn you loose. You boys have a falling out?”

Sam followed her back up the stairs to the front door where she fumbled to find the front door key. “Not exactly. I had to leave him in the desert. Things are bad. There’s trouble.”

Missouri’s expression turned grim. “You only have to turn on the television to see that much. Suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to find you involved.”

She sighed and opened the door, motioned Sam inside.

“Now, I’ve been traveling for half the day and you look five miles of bad road. There’s nothing I can help you with that won’t wait for a hot shower and some fresh clothes. Top of the stairs, room on the right. Meet me back in the kitchen when you’ve scrubbed off all the dirt. And please tell me you have something clean to wear?”

~~~~~

When Sam rejoined her in the kitchen, Missouri was pouring two glasses of tea and had sandwiches cut neatly on a plate. Sam never seemed to end up at her house except in times of serious trouble, but it still had a homey sort of air that appealed to the part of him that had always wanted a normal life. Just being in her sunny kitchen alone raised his mood enough to rekindle some hope. It was sorely needed; every way he and Dean had tried to turn only seemed to bring darker and darker prospects.

She motioned him to a chair and then took her own. Sam wolfed down one of the sandwiches and started talking. Missouri, eyes intent and expression serious, listened patiently while he recounted what had happened since Illchester.

He had written her a letter after the showdown with Lilith, to let her know he was still alive and how things had turned out, but everything since then was new information. He told her about Dean’s quest and the bargain with the angels in Hell, about his dreams that led nowhere, about disasters, disappearances, and what Castiel had confirmed about the demons. He talked about Dean losing himself in slow pieces. She didn’t look like it was news when Sam told her about the Entropic demons, and he filed it away to ask her about later; there were more pressing things on his plate.

Halfway through, when the sandwiches were gone, they took their tea into the living room and Sam sprawled out on her oversized sofa.

Missouri nodded occasionally while he spoke until Sam finally wound down to his most immediate problem.

“Dean can’t stay here, in this world. He’s too destructive, and he can’t control it. The angel said that he can’t do anything for Dean by himself, and the others won’t help him. It’s forbidden or some crap like that, which doesn’t even have anything to do with Dean! He’s going to destroy the world all on his own if he stays here like this, and now I can’t even figure out how to send him back to Hell.”

Missouri looked surprised for the first time since finding him on her lawn. “Why do you have to send him? If those filters are failing like he said, then he shouldn’t even still be here now. There must be something intensely powerful about, still binding him to this--”

“It’s the curse!” Sam cut in, frustrated. “He said he can feel it twisted all through him, tying him here. There has to be something I can do to break it. I know you said nothing short of my death, but if Dean goes back to Hell, he can’t complete his side of his deal with the angels, and then I’m the only one left to do it. If I’m dead too... I don’t know why it’s always us, Missouri, but I don’t think anyone else can free them. I mean, I can’t find evidence that anyone else even knows they exist!”

Missouri’s frown was deep and her brows were drawn. “Are you saying that curse Lilith cast on you is still there? After what happened in Illchester?”

Sam blinked, surprised by her apparent confusion. “Yes. Shouldn’t it be? I didn’t die.”

“What your brother did when he took it from Ruby was pick it up in one piece and just shift it over. He could do that because he didn’t really affect the curse, just confused it about its target. But when a spell’s caster tampers with something like that, they always take a risk. It might be all sealed up once it’s cast, but when you expose it to the power that made it in the first place, it becomes... soft, again. Malleable. And you said she was interrupted?”

“I knocked over something so it fell in the circle she was using for the spell; the whole thing collapsed. Then Dean was free and... nothing seemed different between us.”

But, Sam remembered suddenly, things had been different in the weeks and months afterwards. Nothing they had thought significant after everything they had gone through, but the expression on Missouri’s face was making him think maybe they had missed something important.

Missouri pursed her lips. “That’s just not right. Sit still for a moment while I get a good look at you.”

Sam, who hadn’t been moving around anyway, made a conscious effort to hold absolutely still. It was odd to feel like he was being stared at so intently by someone whose gaze was actually a little soft and out of focus. After a moment, Missouri blinked a few times and sighed deeply.

“What is it?” Sam asked nervously.

“It must have been awful in that church. The life you’d led and all the pain it’d brought you. To have the weight of the world on your shoulders and be so alone, finding out there are worse things than loneliness. Then things were better, you had a chance, and Dean, and to be on the verge of losing everything... I can’t imagine the kind of panic you must have felt.”

“Missouri, what are you talking about? Illchester was more than half a year ago. What happened there is long over with.”

“Sam.” Her look was sympathetic; she leaned in and rested one hand on his knee. “You breaking that circle when Lilith was interacting with the curse... it was destroyed.”

“No, no it wasn’t. I can absolutely promise you that whatever else might have happened, the curse was still intact. Is still intact. I can feel Dean even now, Missouri!”

“Oh, you’re still cursed. I’m not denying that. But the truth is all over you’re aura. It’s not Lilith’s curse anymore, Sam, it’s yours.”

Sam stared at her for a moment, the words not really making any sense. “Mine? What are you talking about; how can it be mine? I’m not any kind of witch; the only things I can cast are little, basic stuff. With drawings, and directions. I wouldn’t even know how to start casting something like this. And why would I curse myself?! Do you remember what this curse does?!”

Missouri waved an impatient hand. “Calm down, Sam. I didn’t say you did it on purpose.”

Sam slumped back into the sofa. “I don’t understand what you mean.” He seemed to be saying that a lot lately.

“What were you thinking about, when Lilith had Dean trapped in the spell circle and was trying to take the curse from him?” she asked gently.

It was the gentleness that really scared Sam. Missouri had been a lot of things to him at different times: family friend, mentor, confidant, ally, but she had played all roles with a certain air of tart brusqueness that had been comforting in its familiarity and expectation. For her to be gentle with him now... Sam felt cold sweat spring up along his spine.

“Other than how screwed we were? I... don’t know.”

But he did know. It wasn’t a hard trip down memory lane to remember the press of rough-cut stone into his back as he hung against the wall in the strangling grip of Lilith’s power. To remember watching Dean on his knees at her feet, screaming in agony. Dean fighting Hell hounds in the dark of an Indiana night. Holding his brother’s broken corpse in his arms, knowing Dean was damned. For him. The terror of losing Dean again, of losing at all in the face of Lilith’s apocalyptical plans. Clinging to Dean, to the curse, as hard as he could so she couldn’t take it...

“Oh, my God.” It was as fervent a prayer as Sam had ever uttered. The spike of panic and horror at what he had done was enough to get his brother’s attention hundreds of miles away, and the vague sense of comfort he got back might have been comforting if it wasn’t heavily tinged with the cool inquisitiveness that Sam associated with the demon at Dean’s core. He shuddered hard and blocked Dean out.

Missouri gave his knee another pat. “I’m going to get us some more tea. You sit right on that couch and breathe for a few minutes.”

When Missouri came back, Sam had his face buried in his hands. He spoke without looking up. “How did I do this?”

“You already know how you did it. Desperation and instinct. That’s the problem with power without structure; you wanted it badly enough and it... happened.”

“Well, I want Dean to have the filters he needs to be Dean! I want the demons back in Hell and the fires they’re starting all over the planet stomped out! I want the angels in Hell free from whatever trap they were stupid enough to walk into so they can do something about stopping the demons from ever being a problem again! I don’t see any of that just ‘happening’ and I guarantee, Missouri, that I want some of that every bit as much as I didn’t want to lose Dean at Illchester!”

Missouri waited out the tirade and spoke calmly when he was finished. “You’re strong, Sam. You have raw power and you have an advantage in certain arenas because of how some of that power is... tainted. But you aren’t up to being a wall between pure Entropy and one of its children. You can’t take on every demon in this Plane and you can’t descend into Hell and undo the trap. You were strong enough to forge a tie to Dean, to your brother, and anchor yourself so firmly to that identity that the spark of connection between the two of you is strong enough to survive the chaos that is his true nature now. It’s... impressive. I don’t think the original spell you carried when you showed up here last year would have stood up to it.”

“That’s fantastic, Missouri. That’s just... fucking wonderful. I’m just strong and stupid enough to have damned the world.”

“You watch your tongue with me, boy,” she snapped. “There’s no problem you have that’s gonna be made better by a lack of manners. Certainly not under my roof.”

Sam nodded in apology and picked up his tea, the cold dampness of the glass feeling good against his skin; a concrete anchor to a reality that seemed to be spinning out of his control, or even comprehension. He licked his lips. “I guess... maybe there are some changes in the curse. Little things, I can feel more of him. More emotion, I think? When I try anyway, or when he reaches out. And how it affects me after I... we, um--”

“I know how it works, Sam. Your recreation was done instinctively and in some panic. Probably kind of like blasting a fire hose into a china shop. I would expect a little variation.”

“But if it’s mine, if I made it... if it’s the only thing keeping Dean here now, can’t I just break it?”

“If you can wrap your head around it the right way, you should be able to dismantle it.” Missouri took a sip of her tea.

“Okay. Just... okay then. I can release Dean, he’ll go back to Hell. But he says that would make him happy, so... that’s okay too. Then I can work on freeing the angels myself. When I do that, they won’t have a reason to hurt Dean, and they can do something about the demons. Something permanent.”

Missouri set her glass down on a crocheted coaster and gave Sam a frank look. “This won’t be that easy, you know. You hardly have a grasp of basic skills, now you’re talking about doing something very specific. This isn’t going to be something you can do in a day, Sam.”

“What about in a week?” He smiled without humor. “Because I only have about three before I have to find Dean again, and from what he said, by then there might not be a lot of Dean left to find.”

~~~~~

Sitting on the neatly made bed in Missouri’s guest room, Sam called Bobby with the latest update. Bobby didn’t have a lot to say, just repeated ‘Jesus,’ a lot, promised to keep an ear out for anything useful and directed Sam to call if there was anything he could do to help.

Even though it was a lost cause, he tried to call Dean too. To explain the spike that had gotten Dean’s attention if nothing else. But like he expected, the call went to voicemail. Sam hung up without leaving a message his brother would never be able to check anyway.

Psychic boot camp with Missouri was even less fun the second time around than it had been the first. She called his progress deplorable from the last time she had given instructions and made him start over with the very foundations she had tried to show him the first time.

“I already know all of this,” Sam insisted.

Missouri’s look was highly unimpressed. “Know all of this or heard all of this? With the amount of time you’ve had to practice what I showed you, there’s no excuse to still be fumbling around with the fundamentals like you are. It’s been almost a year, Sam, and you still can’t find your own aura with both hands and a map?”

“I’ve been a little distracted.” Sam rubbed at his temple, trying to ease the headache that he could feel building right behind the bone.

“We make time for the important things, Samuel.”

Sam started to snap back at her about time and things that were important, but the glint in her eye told him it was unwise. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I’ve been trying.”

“Well, now let’s try harder. You need to push all of the distractions from your mind. All the pressure you’re feeling, everything with Dean, and focus now.”

Sam drew in a deep breath, seven years of isolation and a year practicing meditation had given him the tools to get that far at least. When he felt he was as centered as he could get, he looked up to meet her eyes.

Missouri squinted, and Sam had that bug-under-the-microscope feeling again, but then she nodded approvingly. “Let’s get started.”

~~~~~

When the alarm on his cell phone went off seven days later, Sam groaned and considered just going back to sleep. He knew he would regret it later, though, so he stretched, rolled out of bed and shuffled to the bathroom. Then he padded down the stairs and let himself out, sitting on the front steps to lace his sneakers on in the cool, pre-dawn air. Sunrise wouldn’t be for another half hour, but he preferred to run at this time of day. There was a sense of stillness and patience he found calming to his nerves. He wasn’t having nightmares, but there was a coil of uneasiness that lingered with him whenever he didn’t consciously force it aside, and his nerves these days needed all the calming they could get.

The first few days, he had followed his usual routine of flipping on a radio while he got ready for the day, but each morning the news was worse. Fires and earthquakes, people missing, sinkholes. A cruise ship that vanished for a week, only to be found drifting with nothing aboard but bloodstains. Sam was already solving every problem he could, the other demons would have to wait their turn. After that, he did his ablutions in silence, finding better concentration by simply tuning out everything he couldn’t fix.

While he ran, he practiced some of the exercises Missouri had drilled into him over the course of a week spent under her demanding tutelage. The silent streets and houses drifted past almost unnoticed as he concentrated on the pulse of his own heart and the rhythmic pound of his footsteps on the broken concrete of the sidewalks. He stumbled once, and regained his balance to find himself in front of a house that’s broad windows and pale siding were too familiar for peace of mind. The Winchester family home, back when they had things like that, looked exactly as Sam remembered from his last visit. That visit was more than a decade in the past, when he and Dean had been on the road tracking their father and had confronted a poltergeist in its walls. A poltergeist... and maybe something more. Sam wiped sweat from his face and panted while he looked the place over, considering. He gave a quick glance around, then walked across the lawn until he was somewhat shielded from casual sight by the heavy growth of the bushes. Feeling stupid, but still curious, Sam placed one palm firmly against the siding and closed his eyes. He used his new lessons to try and open himself a little to... whatever. If he could have ever used some maternal guidance in his life, it was certainly now. When he felt nothing but the breeze against his skin, Sam wasn’t certain whether he was disappointed or relieved.

The rest of the jog was uneventful and he let himself back into Missouri’s house almost an hour later to be greeted with the mouthwatering smells of eggs and sausage.

“Did you have a nice run?”

Sam nodded around the glass of water he was downing.

“Good. Go get cleaned up and then tuck in. Today we start the serious work.”

~~~~~

Another week of mind-rending instruction and iron discipline found Sam sitting cross-legged in Missouri’s living room. Rain pounded on the roof and heavy drapes blocked out even the wan sunlight occasionally managing to make it through the overcast sky. Candles melted in holders on the table beside him. Balancing on the precarious edge of new skills and hard lessons, their steady, golden light was almost more distraction that aid.

“So, that’s it then?” Sam held his hands out in front of himself, staring at the shimmering length wrapped around his fingers resembling nothing so much as a silken drapery cord. It was a shifting gray color, like living smoke with a thin tracery of black overlay that reminded him of the mark on Dean’s hip. It felt silky and light against his skin. One end led back towards himself to vanish into the haze he saw around his body when he glanced down, the other end faded off into the distance.

Missouri sat a few feet in front of him, surrounded by her own hazy aura. There were things Sam could see in it, shades and patterns of color and light, all with their own meanings. But Sam didn’t know how to read them, and couldn’t have cared less at that moment. He was holding his fate literally in his hands and he had no room for anything else.

“Missouri?”

She was staring at his hands intently, gaze flickering as she inspected things Sam couldn’t begin to imagine before giving a slow nod. “I think so. Does it feel right?”

Sam grimaced. “It feels like... I don’t know. It’s wrapped all around me. Of me.”

He gave a slight, experimental tug and gasped at the strangling sensation that tightened around him. Far, far away, Sam felt that quiet corner of his mind he thought of as Dean’s stir. But it wasn’t just in his mind he felt it; it thrummed beneath his fingertips in the silvery cord as a distant sense of concern flooded his awareness.

“Sam.” Missouri’s tone was sharp.

“I’m... fine. This is it. I’m sure.”

She scowled. “Well, whatever you just did, don’t do it again. You almost stopped your heart. Don’t be playing with it, just sever it.”

He gave her a helpless look. “How?”

“Imagine it snapping,” Missouri said impatiently.

“Just imagine it? That’s all?”

“You use your visualizations as a crutch. It’s lazy and unskilled, but we didn’t have time to train you up any better. You’ve got it pinned down in your mind now, that’s why you can see it in your hands. Just... break it. But for Heaven’s sake, don’t go yanking on it!”

“Heaven’s sake,” Sam echoed with grim humor.

“Sam,” her voice was firm when she spoke again, “it’s time. It’s taken us two weeks to get you here. But this is still way beyond your skill level right now; you should still be learning about theory and drawing pictures of boxes in crayon for visual exercise. I’ve used every shortcut I could think up to help you do this, but it’s not dependable and what you see now might take us another two weeks for you to grasp again. We’re lucky you’ve managed it at all. If you’re going to do this, now’s the time.”

Sam nodded, but didn’t trust himself to speak again. Dean was with him now, both Dean and other. He didn’t try and stem the channel between them and through it he could feel curiosity, regret and... love. Dean believed in him, believed that Sam could save them both. Sam gripped tight to the shining rope in his hand. He summoned all of the determination, will and strength that had carried him through the hurdles of his troubled life and channeled all of it into one single thought: break.


Chapter Nine

Well I dream you, constant stranger
With your best bloods and your anger
You say, "Mother do you claim me?"
My beloved, do you blame me?
                           ~Three Hits, Indigo Girls

“Get up, Sam.”

Sam groaned and curled up tighter. The pounding ache in his head was a match for the nausea in his stomach and the grinding pain in his eyes. He opened them a crack and was immediately sorry.

“Light...” he mumbled.

“I’ve only cracked the drapes.” Missouri’s voice was tart, but not without a trace of sympathy. “You need to sit up, swallow this and at least try to get on the sofa. It’s going on seven o’clock and my momma taught me it was bad manners to leave guests passed out on the floor. Gives a woman a reputation.”

The time didn’t seem right; it had barely been three when they had started the last session.

Insistent hands pulling at his shoulders didn’t seem to be going anywhere, and after two weeks of following orders, Sam’s body tried to respond to her instinctively anyway. With some mutual struggle, he felt the carved wood of the sofa dig into his back and slumped there, hoping she would be pleased enough to leave.

Hard tablets were pressed into one of his hands. “Swallow those.”

Sam was still thinking about it when she muttered something he couldn’t quite make out and then the tablets were being forced into his mouth. They tasted vile, but before he could decide to swallow or spit them out, a straw was pressed between his lips and the decision was easy. Water, blessedly cool, eased the dryness in his mouth and throat.

“What happened?” Sam managed after a few more moments of recovery. He tried opening his eyes again and had a little more success at making out a blurry, dark figure off to his right. There was a hesitation that Sam found ominous even in his dazed state. “Missouri?”

“I’m not sure,” she finally replied. “As much of yourself as you poured into trying to break that thing, it should have snapped like a dry twig.”

“It didn’t?” He knew the answer before she spoke, he could still feel the link in his mind. Dormant, but there. Sam swore tiredly and let her prod him up onto the couch.

“What’s wrong with me?” he managed muzzily as he curled onto the soft cushions.

“Backlash,” she answered shortly. “You took a nasty blow of your own medicine. I let you lay on the floor awhile while I checked you over and gave you a chance to pull yourself out of it. I don’t see any real damage done, just singed a little and probably hurts like a wicked punch. You’ll be better in the morning.”

“Floor?” was the most articulate he could manage.

She snorted. “I’m a little old lady, Samuel. Do you see me dragging your deadweight around anywhere?”

Something soft and woven was draped over him and Sam was finding it very hard to stay awake. “What about the curse?”

A firm hand tucked a pillow under his head and he heard the rustle of curtains before the room returned to blessed darkness.

“You get some sleep and let me ponder on that tonight. Tomorrow is another day, Sam.”

Yes, Sam thought before surrendering totally to the promise of pain-free sleep, but how many tomorrows are left?

~~~~~

Sam woke up the next morning feeling like he had the worst hangover of his life. Missouri, though he could hear her bustling around in the kitchen, was kind enough to leave him alone while he gratefully swallowed the Tylenol and water she had left out, then staggered upstairs to take a long shower.

Feeling marginally more human afterwards, he headed back down to figure out what exactly had gone wrong.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, ‘you don’t know’?” Sam demanded over eggs and toast. “I came here because you’re supposed to be an expert on this stuff!”

She met his scowl with a stern look. “You came here because you didn’t have anywhere else to go and don’t you even try and tell me otherwise. As for what went wrong... you looked like you did everything right. A little slipshod and fumbling, but that’s experience and time.”

Sam drew a deep breath. “Okay then, so... try again?”

Missouri looked pensive. “How long before you have to leave?”

“I can feel it now, but probably about a week. Three is about the most I can do and it’s already been two. I can’t let it go much longer than that. I mean, I can survive longer, but the further it goes, the more of my symptoms Dean feels. I don’t know how much of Dean is still left, and I don’t want to give the demon a reason to decide to come find me. I’m just hoping that he’s still aware enough to remember there’s a reason he has to stay put.” Sam cleared the table and started sliding plates into the dishwasher. “I can theoretically come back, but I don’t know. I just have no idea what I’m going to find when I go looking for him.” The cool curiosity he had felt the last time he brushed Dean’s mind had not been a good sign. “Going there and coming back, that’s almost another five days. I think there’s been a lot more decay than he expected in even just the past two weeks and every day is just another step closer to... disaster. There has to be something else we can try.”

Missouri looked pensive. “By everything I know, that curse should have snapped like cheap thread with everything you sent at it. It’s your spell, obviously your work. I need to think about this.”

Sam crossed his arms. “Can you think fast?”

“You have somewhere to be?” she asked tartly.

“Missouri.”

She waved him away. “Go practice. I need a little time.”

~~~~~

The door to his room creaked open in the middle of the night and Sam was instantly awake. He lay frozen, and then realized he could feel who was standing in the doorway even before she spoke. He didn’t know why he was surprised, it was her house after all.

“Sam.”

“Missouri?” He sat up and shoved the covers off. “What’s wrong?”

Even in the dim light from the hall at her back, he could see her grim expression. “What color was the curse?”

“What?”

“The curse,” she repeated impatiently. “What color was it? Sleep addled your ears?”

Not his ears, but Sam thought his brain might need a little more time to catch up. “Uh, it was... gray. Kind of silvery with black on it. Is that bad?”

Missouri swore tiredly.

Sam, alarmed at the middle-of-the-night wake up, was now almost panicked. “What?”

“That silvery gray color remind you of anything?”

Sam frowned, still feeling like he had cobwebs in his head. “Remind me of--” He reached out and turned the bedside lamp on with a click, Missouri’s weary stare reminding him of other eyes. Dean in the grocery store, the vivid green drowning under a gray tide. The ruins of a bedroom, facing a stranger in his brother’s skin. “Entropy? The gray is Entropy?”

“I think so. I’ve been talking to some people. People who aren’t interested in being involved with this, mind you, but we have a theory. Come downstairs, I’ll put the coffee on.”

~~~~~

Sam swallowed his coffee faster than prudent and knew he would pay for it later, but he felt a desperate need to be more awake to make sense of what Missouri was telling him.

“So what you’re saying is that even though I’m the caster and it’s my curse, Dean’s entropy has... infected it somehow? And that’s why it won’t break?” Sam rubbed his eyes. “How does that even make sense? If anything, I would think that would... I don’t know, destroy it maybe?”

Missouri refilled his coffee cup and folded her arms across her chest. “That would have been my thought too, but it’s not just destruction, it’s chaos. And this is pretty damn chaotic.”

“It’s interested in me,” Sam softly echoed something Dean had told him in the desert."

“I didn’t quite catch that, Sam.”

He sighed. “I said it’s interested in me. That’s why Dean said I’m not affected by the demon. It’s what he said when I asked him why when his aura was warping the world around him, things like his clothes weren’t ruined too. This tie between us, Dean’s feelings towards me, the demon is... I don’t know. I mean, he’s the demon, and he’s my brother, and even though he should be losing all of that as his filters fail, he thinks that the curse is kind of... underlining it? Letting the demon feel and respond to things in a way it shouldn’t while it’s trapped on this Plane. It’s interested in me, and in not hurting me. And things that I value, or maybe have deep impressions of, it might keep... safe, for longer. He didn’t know. No one seems to know.”

“No one could, Sam. Not many people have ever heard of an Entropic demon, and there’s never been one here before. All anyone has is speculation.”

“And all the speculation’s bad,” Sam agreed with grim humor. “So I guess it’s really not that surprising that it’s got its tendrils in the very thing that ties us together. Now the question is, how do I make it let go?”

Missouri pursed her lips. “If it’s still Dean, maybe you can just explain to him what’s going on and he can... pull back?”

“That’s a pretty big if at this point, I think,” Sam sighed. “Usually, I have some sense of him in my mind. It used to get stronger when the curse started, um, pulling on me, but since Illchester it’s more or less constant. It’s been feeling weird for awhile, though, and the last few days... the feeling is still there, but it’s not Dean on the other end. I don’t know how else to describe it.”

“I think I get the picture, Sam”

“You don’t!” Sam hurled the coffee cup across the room where it exploded into a thousand shards against the edge of the counter. He stared hard at the mess of shattered porcelain and hot coffee. “You have no idea what it’s like in his mind,” he said in a low, tight voice. “You can’t even imagine. And this is while he’s still unraveling. What the hell is it going to be like when there’s nothing of Dean left, and all I have on the other end of this is the demon?”

Missouri shifted from where she was leaning against the other end of the counter.

“Those cups belonged to my momma,” she said in an even voice.

Sam buried his face in his hands. “I’m sorry. I’ll... get you a new one.”

“Some things you can’t just replace.”

He didn’t say anything.

Her voice was gentler when she spoke again. “Some things you can’t just fix. You have to accept them for what they are and move on.”

“What if you can’t?” Sam asked through his fingers. He looked up to meet her level gaze. “What if what’s broken isn’t something you can move on with? We’re not just talking about me, or Dean, here, but the entire world.”

She didn’t say anything, but the glance she gave to the shattered coffee cup was answer enough.

~~~~~

Sam jogged up the white wooden steps of Missouri’s front porch around five that afternoon. He grabbed his folded laundry off the washing machine and stuffed it back in his duffle bag along with the usual assortment of crap he carried. Dropping it off by the front door, he headed for the kitchen just in time to run into Missouri walking in from the garage. She was covered in dust and dirt and wearing an extremely unflattering pair of cut-off sweatpants and a t-shirt encouraging participation in a blood drive. Sam didn’t dare comment on it, though.

“You find something suitably junky?” she demanded to know.

“Yeah. I got the car, brought in some dinner, ran some errands. Think I’m good to go.”

She pushed past him and walked to where she could see the street in front of her house. Sam didn’t miss her expression of distaste.

“Are you sure that thing will even get you there?”

Sam gave her a tired smile. “It’s mechanically sound. Doesn’t look good, but that wasn’t what I was after.”

“Certainly no one will look twice at you in that,” she snorted. “I’ve got the garage as cleaned out as it’s going to get. Go ahead and finish up while I wash some of this dirt off.”

Rolling the garage door down on the Impala was strange for Sam. She was only a car, but he had never done anything like this without her. Hell, more than half his childhood had been spent strapped into her backseat glaring resentfully at the back of his father’s head. Even when he had locked himself away for seven years, his last sight had been of Bobby driving her away. So when he had thought about the car that Dean had loved more than any woman, she was always out on the open road somewhere. Undamaged by the cascading events that had ripped apart their lives.

Storing her away felt criminal, but at least in Missouri’s garage she would be safe. As safe as anything else on the planet was. If Dean’s aura could reach her here then they had already lost, and if somehow they managed to actually pull off a grand miracle and Dean was aware enough to wonder where she was, well, Sam would know exactly where to find her.

Having said his farewells, Sam turned his attention to his new ride. The battered old Volvo wouldn’t be winning any glamour shots, but it was reliable and unremarkable. Sam didn’t have time to construct a false bottom for the trunk, but had settled for transferring what he considered essential of the Impala’s arsenal, then covered it with an assortment of blankets and more usual trunk items: a jack, some camping gear and a crate of bottled water.

Back in the house he did one last run through to make sure he had all of his things, then headed to the kitchen for last goodbyes.

“Stay long enough to eat?” Missouri asked.

Sam shook his head. “I can eat in the car.”

He held out one hand and they could both see the fine tremors that ran through it.

“Are you sure you’re going to be okay to drive?”

“I have to be. What are my options?” he asked wryly. “I can’t walk, and I wouldn’t bring anyone else near Dean until I know what kind of state he’s in. Besides, I’m motivated.” Fire was burning through his body and only one thing would quench it. He cared less for Dean’s state with every minute that passed, everything else starting to fade against the overwhelming need building in his body to taste the power in his brother’s blood.

Missouri pressed a wrapped sandwich into his hand and Sam could see the concern in her dark eyes. He wanted to reassure her, but it would be a lie and he knew she wouldn’t appreciate the effort.

“Bend down here.”

Puzzled, he did. She grabbed his shoulder and pressed a kiss to his forehead. Where her lips brushed his skin, he felt an odd warmth and the building inferno died back a bit, leaving him more clarity in its wake. She let him go and he stood back up slowly, a question in his eyes.

“A gift, for luck,” she said tightly. “It won’t last long, but hopefully long enough to get you there in once piece. I’m fond of this world, Samuel Winchester, the good parts and the bad. It might need a spring cleaning now and then, but I think I prefer it unconquered by minions of Hell.”

“I’ll do my best,” he promised.

“See that you do,” she said tartly.


Chapter Ten

Like lesser birds on the four winds, yeah
Like silver scrapes in May
Now the sands become a crust
And most of you have gone away.
                                ~Astronomy, Blue Oyster Cult

The remote stretch of the Sonoma where Sam had left Dean was not as he remembered. As he had imagined maybe, but not as he remembered. The parking lot and the barely visible road that led to it were still where they had been, but everything else...

Cresting dunes of golden sand carved through the landscape. After a momentary loss, Sam hiked up one to see how far the change went, but it was a frozen sea of sand as far as he could see. All of the scrub and cracked dirt had been consumed by the new terrain. It was as beautiful as he had thought it would be, and chilling in a way that had nothing to do with the weather. Also desolate, and empty.

There was no sign of his brother. Except the obvious.

“Dean!” Sam yelled, from the parking lot and from the top of the dune, wanting to go seeking him and yet worried about getting lost if Dean didn’t show up. As the hours passed, Sam called for his brother until his voice was hoarse. He pressed against the link in his mind, but Dean felt distant, and cold. Sam couldn’t pinpoint him any better than that. His hands were shaking so badly he spilled half of the water he tried to drink on himself and paced the parking lot restlessly, not knowing what to do. Finally, with the sun starting to sink behind the sand, he dragged the tarp and the sleeping bag from the trunk, made sure he had a compass, grabbed a few bottles of water and trudged out into the evening. If Dean came on him in the night, he didn’t want him anywhere near the car. Not until he was sure it was safe. Sam walked a mile in the dry, fading heat. Like the last night he had spent in the desert, the sky was cloudless and filled with glittering stars such that Sam had seldom seen in his life. With his bedding spread out and his brother missing, Sam forced himself to try and find sleep, but it was elusive.

He must have dozed off at some point, because he woke up to the smell of crushed vegetation and dry earth. It was still dark and the air was completely motionless. Memory flooded in and he pushed himself up slowly. Sometime in his sleep he had rolled off the tarp, but instead of sand underneath, he was sitting on a thick carpet of green grass.

It had definitely not been there when he had settled down. Sam didn’t need the link in his mind to know that Dean was nearby. He scooted back onto the tarp and almost jumped out of his skin at a touch on his shoulder.

“Dean,” he gasped in relief, his body knowing who it was without any help from his higher functions. Sam could already feel the storm of Dean’s truest nature hovering at the edges of his consciousness, and he fumbled blindly for the knife strapped to his leg, needing the taste of Dean’s blood more than he needed air. The blade slid free and Sam turned, then his thoughts ground to a halt, but not from the effects of the curse. Kneeling on the grass behind him was the desiccated husk of a man. Dry, parched skin was stretched over knobby, cracked bones and thin wisps of hair still rooted in discolored flesh that clung stubbornly to an almost bare skull.

“No, no...” Sam whispered in a harsh, rapid breath, because the curse was relentless. His body didn’t care about what Dean looked like, only about what was in his veins. Even when he didn’t appear to have any. Sam’s laugh was a little hysterical, but he could barely even flinch back when fingers that were as much withered muscle and tendon as skin and bone brushed over his jaw line in a curious gesture. He wanted the touch, wanted more of it. He sent desperation through the link between them, but it was like screaming into a void. There was nothing in what he felt from that link that reassured him his brother was anywhere to be found. The skull was... watching him; a damp glistening in the eye sockets that Sam hadn’t noticed before.

The wind shifted and carried with it the powerful odor of decay.

Dean had told Sam repeatedly that he was possessing his own corpse, that his mimicry of life was exactly that -- a mimicry. Sam had never understood the truth of that before as strongly as in that instant. And he was deeply, deeply sorry that he did.

The withered husk of his brother’s body moved with more alacrity than anything that dry and broken should have been able to manage. It seemed to gaze at Sam for a moment while Sam’s heart pounded so hard it threatened to burst from his chest, then the head turned and all of Sam’s attention was drawn to a new scent on the still air. Blood.

Dean’s blood.

Sam’s eyes were riveted to a small tear in the desiccated skin stretched over the clearly visible bones of his brother’s arm. Even under starlight, what seeped from that tear didn’t quite look like blood, thick and too viscous as it slowly oozed out over dirty flesh, but the fire in Sam’s body didn’t care. Without conscious decision, he crushed the corpse down into the grass, hands rough against the waxy, leathered skin, and closed his mouth over the wound. The first taste hit his tongue like lightning and his entire world narrowed down to that one point. He swallowed; every drop easing one kind of fire and building into another. Sam kept his eyes tightly closed. With chaos howling on the edges of his mind and the rising need in his body, he maintained just enough self-possession to wish desperately for the blackout of his senses that sometime struck him when he had let the curse run this long before quenching it. His sanity had already survived more than should have been possible in his life, but Sam thought this might be the last straw. Under his hands, it felt like the skeletal frame he gripped was almost more... substantial, and the blood he licked from withered skin ran easier over his tongue. The corpse beneath him moved, one bony hand gripping at his shoulder and Sam heard himself whimper, needing more than a glancing touch through cloth.

He was grateful when a sweeping darkness closed in on him, stealing all conscious awareness from his thoughts.

~~~~~

Wincing against the harshness of sunlight, even filtered through something, Sam smacked his lips a few times and grimaced, awareness coming slowly back to him. His mouth tasted like dry grit and death. Spitting a few times didn’t do anything but make it painfully clear just how badly he needed some water. And a toothbrush. He was lying under what felt like a tarp and he recognized the blue nylon of his sleeping bag just a few inches from his eye. Heat was baking through the plastic and he seemed to be naked. Sam frowned and shifted, then swore. A certain familiar tenderness filled in some of the gaps in his memory. He remembered he had been looking for Dean... and apparently found him. But he didn’t remember the encounter. Not remembering happened sometimes, when he had pushed himself so close to the edge that he was in danger, but he didn’t think he had been that bad off. And even if he had been, he should have remembered finding Dean. He didn’t appreciate the discomfort either; he and Dean had an understanding about that. Or at least they had.

With a sigh, Sam shoved the plastic of the tarp aside and sat up, swearing. A few feet away, Dean was sitting, eyes closed and naked, on a patch of dry and withered grass. That much bare skin in the unforgiving glare of the sun would leave a wicked burn, but Sam supposed Dean didn’t have to worry about things like that. Sand dunes towered over them, the serpentine sway of their wind-carved crests like something from a dream.

A bad dream.

Sam’s eyes flew wide and locked onto Dean’s face; in that instant, memory of the night before flooded back in. Sam drew a harsh, shuddering breath in remembered horror. His stomach turned over and he staggered a few feet away, golden sand burning the bare soles of his feet, and vomited.

When he slowly straightened again, Dean was watching him. His eyes were green, but the expression in them did nothing to calm down the alarm singing in Sam’s mind.

“Hey, Sam. You bring my car?”

“You said not to,” Sam answered carefully. Grateful to have Dean at least looking like Dean again. “Remember?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Dean’s tone was distant, almost like he was dreaming. Sam cautiously reached for Dean with his mind. He wasn’t rebuffed, but he wasn’t welcomed either. There was just... nothing. Sam shuddered and shut it down again.

Sam struggled against an impulse to grab handfuls of sand and scrub himself down with their grit, erasing what he could remember of the corpse’s touch the previous night. He spotted his clothes nearby and pulled them on, barely bothering to shake the sand off first. In retrospect, he assumed that what he thought he had felt before blacking out had been Dean’s body... reforming. He hoped it was, because he really didn’t think he was going to cope well if he took a shower later and found flakes of his brother’s corpse stuck to him along with the dirt and other debris.

“Dean, what happened...” Sam trailed off and motioned to the desert around them that was decidedly out of place in the southwest.

The demon glanced around, then shrugged with disinterest. He stood up and started to walk away. Sam crammed his feet into his shoes and scrambled to follow.

“Wait! Dean, wait!”

Dean paused and turned to watch him, head cocked with curiosity.

“We need to talk. I need your help. Can you... come back and sit down for a few minutes?”

When Dean showed no signs of moving, Sam grabbed his wrist and pulled gently. The demon didn’t resist and let himself be towed back to the tarp and the sleeping bag. Sam could already feel the sun baking into his skin, but certainly wasn’t going to risk losing Dean to jog back to the car for sunscreen. He tugged until Dean was seated obediently next to him, still watching Sam with a look of interest. Sam rinsed his mouth out with one of his water bottles, downed another one, and started talking.

The next two hours were easily some of the most frustrating of Sam’s life. Sometimes the demon seemed to be Dean, and sometimes it was completely not. Using his mind, Sam tried to draw out what remained of his brother in the spiraling chaos he sensed through their link. He explained repeatedly about the Entropy and the curse, how all Dean needed to do was pull back and he could be free. He begged, he ordered, he pleaded -- to no avail. Around the end of the first hour, when Sam was about to try screaming, the demon reached out and touched one of Sam’s hands, looking fascinated. Sam glanced down to see what was so interesting and noted nothing but the reddening of what would no doubt be an epic sunburn. On his personal list of ways to die, skin cancer did not get a lot of regard.

“Dean.” He snapped his fingers to refocus his brother on what he was trying to explain. The demon sighed but obligingly looked back up.

Sam barely noticed a few minutes later when a cloud bank rolled slowly in, but the sudden cool breeze was a welcome relief from the oppressive and still heat of desert air that had been roasting him alive. He drained his last water bottle and started his explanation again.

After another round, the demon sighed. “I understand, Sam.”

He sounded as close to Dean as Sam had yet heard.

Sam’s eyes flew wide. “Then you’ll do it?”

Dean’s brows furrowed; he looked almost confused. “Do... no.”

“Why not?” Sam gaped. “This is exactly what we wanted! You’ll be free; or at least free once I finish our quest. And you won’t have to suffer here, or hurt anyone. Just pull back so I can snap the freaking curse!”

Dean’s jaw set stubbornly. Sam recognized the expression as one of Dean’s most recalcitrant and his heart sank.

“Dean, I don’t understand. Why not?”

But Dean didn’t look like he was listening anymore. His attention was fixed on the sand streaming off of one of the crests to their left.

Sam buried his face in his hands. He’d tried everything he could think of to explain the problem to the demon his brother was becoming. He’d even drawn a freaking picture in the sand. It didn’t seem to be a comprehension problem, though Sam had no idea how much the demon really understood, but it seemed to be deliberately... refusing.

“You just hurt in this world,” Sam mumbled between his fingers. “You just hurt here, and you hurt the world by being here. I don’t understand why you won’t let me free you. You said this was what you wanted.” He felt tears of frustration well up and did nothing to stop them.

He didn’t expect the touch on his hair and looked up, startled. Dean was only inches away. The demon ran one finger gently under his eye.

“I’m just tired,” Sam confessed. “Tired and confused. I just want to help you. Why won’t you let me help you go... home?”

Dean wiped his hands off and sat back. “You need me.”

“What?”

“You need me. Here.”

“I need you someplace you won’t accidentally smash the planet!” Sam snapped.

“Here,” Dean insisted stubbornly.

“I’m going to figure out a way to do this without your help then,” Sam warned.

Dean shrugged. “Bigger problems.”

“Dean. You’re going to be the biggest problem!”

The demon stood up and brushed sand off naked skin that showed no mark of the sun. He stretched out, then casually turned back towards the desert where he had been heading before when Sam stopped him. “Be good, Sammy.”

Sam growled; irrationally irritated that of all the things Dean seemed to have lost, the hated childhood nickname had not been among them. On the other hand, it was very Dean. He made no move to chase after the demon this time. Dean had made his position, mind boggling as it was, perfectly clear.

The demon turned back one last time. “And take care of my car!”

Then he walked out of sight into the desert, leaving Sam kneeling alone on a tarp surrounded by the shifting sands.

Next Section

Masterpost

 

Comments

[angeblond.livejournal.com]

Sam should be able to weave Dean in entropic shield built from them.

*run to next chapter*

Me hooked? nahhh