Static - Section Six

[glasslogic]

Chapter Eleven

Hearing only what you want to hear
And knowing only what you've heard
You, you're smothered in tragedy
And you're out to save the world
                                    ~My Friend Of Misery, Metallica

“And that’s all he said? That you needed him and to take care of his car?”

“Yes,” Sam snarled, still as furious and confused three days later as he had been when it happened. Having listened to baffled reporters and sound bites of people talking about the amazing and unexplained environmental changes that had just appeared in the Sonoma, interspersed between the latest other global disasters, for the entire drive from Arizona to South Dakota had not helped his outlook. “The world is going to end, and he’s worried about the Impala. He’s a freaking Entropic demon, doesn’t even seem aware of me or what the hell I’m saying half the time, but he’s worried about his fucking car. You know what the end of the world is going to look like, Bobby? After the Rendering demons get done turning everything into rubble and human life is extinguished? It’s going to be Dean, in the Impala, cruising down empty highways, singing Metallica at the top of his lungs. Probably idly blasting rubble out of his way and barely freaking noticing that there’s nothing else alive on the planet!”

Bobby took a long sip of his beer. “Well, at least he still kinda knows you. That’s something.”

“Yeah,” Sam snorted in disgust. His own beer sat untouched in front of him, and even the peaceful evening breeze through the screen door of Bobby’s kitchen and the low song of summer crickets couldn’t make a dent in his mood. “He’ll probably have my corpse propped up shotgun and not even notice I’m dead. Just maybe wonder about how agreeable I’ve suddenly become. If he can wonder anything at all. Damn it!”

“And Missouri can’t offer you any other option?”

“No. She promised to keep talking to people. But things are scary enough that she says most people in her line of work aren’t feeling really talkative. Everyone is starting to get the message that big things are going down and they’re battening their hatches. Like that’s going to save anyone,” he growled.

“Sometimes runnin’ is all folks can think to do. Seems to me that you’ve tried it a time or two yourself,” Bobby said pointedly, gaze level.

“Yeah, and we see how well that turned out, don’t we?” Sam struggled to get control of himself again. “Fine. So unless something changes, I guess Dean is here for the long haul. I can’t do anything about that, so I’m just going to... try not to think about it, and focus on what I can do.”

“The angels.”

Sam nodded. “Somehow, I need to figure out how to break the barrier that’s trapping them. No barrier, no trap, and angels with a few millennia of pent up anger rise out of the Pit and kick the crap out of anything demonic they find slithering around. Hopefully, with a lot more motivation than the ones in Heaven showed when defending the Seals last year, because I really don’t think I’m going to want to live anymore if after all of this there is some kind of holy war and the demons win. Again.”

“The demons didn’t exactly win that little throw-down last year, Sam.”

“They would have,” Sam snorted. “They shattered almost all of the Seals and were all set to go at Illchester. If it wasn’t for Dean, humanity would be bowing to a new world order by now. So if that was the best defense angels could come up with, then we might be screwed either way, no matter what I manage to cobble together for a plan.”

“You said that angel told you Heaven was divided on what to do last year, though; that there was some argument going on. I don’t think we’re going to have that problem with the ones in Hell if they get loose. They have an axe to grind, and after as long as they’ve been locked up, it should be good and sharp by now. Did Dean even indicate he had any doubts about what would happen?”

Sam sighed. “We never really talked about it like that. He made a deal to free them; everything else is just assumptions.”

Bobby snorted. “I’ll take assumptions over certain doom.”

“Yeah.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, brooding over circumstances. After a while, Bobby stirred and grabbed himself another bottle from the fridge, looking thoughtful. “That angel you summoned; the one who helped you out with the ingredients last year. It didn’t tell you anything useful?”

“Castiel? All Castiel said was that somewhere there was a Ward that would banish all of the demons on Earth for about a century and strip them down enough that the angels in Hell would be able to help Dean again. It sounded great, but that Ward hasn’t been seen in thousands of years, Bobby! It’s as big of a quest as freeing the angels in Hell in the first place. Of the two, I might as well focus on the one that will solve the most problems.”

“The one you and your brother working together on non-stop for months couldn’t even make a dent in?” Bobby’s eyebrow said everything his tone couldn’t convey.

Sam scowled. “You want me to give up? You think I should be chasing a different shadow?”

Bobby glanced over at the muted television on the counter where a woman was recounting a story of three school buses full of elementary school kids that had vanished in Decatur County. The morning after the disappearance, a pile of all the missing children’s clothes had been found on the playground of their school. The bright clothing was fluttering in the background of the reporter’s tense explanation of events.

Neither Sam nor Bobby had any belief the kids would be seen again.

“I think that an angel who has bent rules for you before, no matter what it says, wouldn’t waste it’s time or yours blathering on about things that were meaningless. Stopgap or not, what you need to buy most now is time. You’ve gone down one road as far as you can and things are only getting worse. Maybe it’s time to try something different.”

~~~~~

The following sunrise found Sam in Bobby’s barn, spray painting runes on the walls. He was doing it from memory, but had spent so much time in research putting the ritual together the first time that he felt like the symbols were indelibly seared into his brain. Sam had stayed up with Bobby almost until dawn, arguing and discussing various options and possibilities, but by the time Bobby had finally called a halt for some sleep, Sam was both exhausted and fired up. Not the best mindset for making decisions. The result of which found him grimly determined to have another chat with Castiel. He needed a couple of things clarified, and he had a request.

“You don’t need all of that.”

Sam had been mid-spray and gave an embarrassing yelp at the sudden voice behind him. He spun to find Castiel standing there in the barn’s filtered shadows, looking exactly as he had every other time they had met.

The angel glanced over his shoulder at the wooden side of the barn and Sam felt something in the air; he turned back to see all of his tedious paintwork vanished.

“All that does is attract attention, and you attract quite enough of that on your own. I asked you not to contact me again.”

Sam drew a deep breath. “I know but... I have questions.”

“I have already given you my position on this,” Castiel warned.

“Please. Just five minutes; answer what you can and then I promise I’ll leave you alone.”

“And if I say no?”

Sam squared his shoulders. “I don’t think you understand just how much spray paint I can get my hands on around here.”

Sam thought he saw indecision in the angel’s unreadable eyes, but after a moment, Castiel nodded once. “I may not have five minutes. Ask.”

“Is freeing the angels in Hell something only Dean can do?”

“I’ve already explained that I cannot help you with that.”

“Right, because you can’t interfere.”

“Yes. My... presence here will be noted. I should not have come, and will not again.”

Sam nodded in understanding. “It’s just... I asked you for help before, to fix the filters on my brother and you said you couldn’t, and you said you couldn’t help me free the angels, but then you mentioned the Ward. I need to know more about that.”

“There is little more to tell you. It was carved by human seers who begged my Father for aid. They had seen a future where there would be need and wished to harbor against it. It was lost many thousands of years ago. Not even we know where it rests now, only that it still exists.”

“But according to what you said before, it was lost here somewhere, in North America; it will send all of the demons on this Plane back to Hell for a century, and... it works like the one in Illchester? Right? They’re banished because it guts their power?”

“Yes. As I told you before.”

“And the demons causing all the trouble here are the same demons that are interfering with the angels in Hell so they can’t help Dean. So ...if the demons are banished with that Ward, then the angels would be able to restore Dean and he would be okay?”

Castiel inclined his head but said, “There is nothing wrong with your brother now, Sam. He is as he is intended to be.”

Sam looked impatient. “Safe to stay in this world then?”

“In all likelihood, the Ward will banish your brother as well. It sings with the eternal rules of Creation and Order, in the instant of its use should sweep anything that properly belongs to Entropy back to its proper Plane.”

“Good! That’s what I want it to do, but not Dean.” Sam stared at Castiel intently. “Can you shield him from the Ward? Not... anything else. For that instant, can you protect him from being banished?”

“Sam...”

“This has nothing to do with getting the angels out of Hell or doing their job for them! I’m asking you to help me protect my brother. He has to finish his quest or what happened to him in the Rendering is going to be a cakewalk compared to his eternity. We didn’t cause any of this; everyone had had these plans for us since before we were born and we’re doing the best we can. I’m begging you for just one second. Just shield him from the Ward. It’s not just Dean’s best interests we’re talking about, but every soul that the demons trap!”

“And leave an unshielded Entropic demon loose in the Material Plane? Do you understand what it is his presence is doing to this world? If the Ward does not send him back, I cannot banish him, Sam. No one can force him out if he won’t go on his own. You tried to break the bond that anchors him to this Plane, and against all expectation, he refused. I can make no promises on what the Entropic angels will or won’t do; they should restore his filters, but they may not. And then where would that leave this Plane? This Ward may be the only chance there will be to save this world from him, and you want me to protect him from it?”

“You said yourself that unless the angels in Hell are set free, the balance will never be restored. The confusion in Heaven will continue, demons will keep crossing over, and things will just continue to get worse. Dean and I can do it, but we need a chance. Besides,” Sam added after a moment in a low voice, “if he has no filters, then the only thing to keep him here is me. I think you know that. I don’t think that ultimately he is going to do anything worse to this world than the Rendering demons will do once their century is up. Do you? Dean and I can put things right, we just need a chance. Some time to find the answer.”

The angel’s face was still. Sam could feel the considering weight of blue eyes again for what felt like an eternity.

“I can make no promises in this, Sam.”

“But you’ll try?”

“I will... consider your proposal.”

“Will you let me know what you decide?”

“Will it change your course of action?”

Sam thought about that, then reluctantly shook his head.

“Then I see no need to risk further meetings.”

“And you can’t tell me anything else about the Ward other than it’s in North America and someplace... chaotic?”

For an instant, Sam thought he saw something like frustration in the angel’s impassive eyes.

“I’ve given you all the help I can. Trust your instincts.” A beat of hesitation. “Good luck.”

~~~~~

As meetings went, Sam had had more productive. But he had made the strongest argument he could and just had to hope now that it had been persuasive. Sam wished he knew what instinct Castiel thought he had that he was supposed to be paying attention too. All Sam was aware of feeling was a sense of panic and futility.

Bobby had woken up around noon, suffering the effects of too much booze and too little sleep. Sam gave him a rundown on what he had been up to. Bobby rubbed his head while calling Sam half the names in the book for impulsive stupidity, then staggered outside to make sure his barn was still standing.

When he came back in, Sam was already entrenched back in the library with a pot of coffee and a legal pad, drawing.

“Do I even want to know what you’re doing now?” Bobby grumbled, helping himself to the coffee and Sam’s mug.

Sam didn’t bat an eye, completely absorbed in his work. “I’m drawing what I can remember of the runes from the Ward that Castiel gave me at Illchester. Maybe I can match them to something, or find some kind of clue in them.”

“How’s that going?”

“Adrenaline is supposed to be good for your memory, and I had lots and lots of adrenaline in my system last time I saw it.” Sam scratched through half the sheet so hard the paper ripped, then tore off the pages and started over on a clean one.

“That good, huh?”

Sam glared and snatched the coffee mug back.

“So you whistled up this angel... all to rehash what you already knew?”

“I needed to be sure of my information if I’m going to gamble everything on this,” Sam said flatly. “I already have almost nothing to go on; I had to make sure my facts were straight.” He was aware of Bobby’s considering gaze on him, but resolutely refused to look up.

“And Dean?”

The pencil in Sam’s hand paused. “If I could just free the angels then... whatever happens would be okay. Dean would be off the hook and free to be... free. But this way, all I’m doing is buying some time. I need his help, Bobby. I’ll do it alone if I have to, but I’m human. I’ve got another forty years or so, at best, and Dean has advantages that I don’t. The odds of actually figuring out a way to break the barrier are a lot better with his help. And if the Ward works and the angels can restore Dean’s filters, then there’s no goddamned reason for him not to be here helping me!”

“Hey,” Bobby held up one hand, “you don’t have to convince me. I just wanted to make sure I understood what the hell was going on. And... forty years? I don’t know if you’re being wildly optimistic, or selling yourself short.”

“You know what they say: it’s not the years, it’s the mileage.”

“Don’t I ever,” Bobby snorted, then headed back to the kitchen to find his own mug.

~~~~~

Two days of sleeping at the desk, and heaps of paper later, Sam had what he felt was a reasonable approximation of what the mini ward he had used at Illchester had looked like; its hypnotic lines and harsh angles almost mesmerizing even in his graphite representation. There was obviously a pattern to it, and equally obvious that it was nothing like Sam had ever seen before. And yet... something about it nagged at him. Something... that wasn’t coming to him.

Marshaling his frustration, Sam slid the paper into Bobby’s fax machine and pulled his well-thumbed book of contacts out of his duffle bag. As he was well aware from his years as a consulting specialist for occult matters, half the trick was in knowing the answers yourself, and the other half was in knowing who to ask when you needed help.

In between long hours in furtive phone calls with contacts all over the planet, Sam busied himself digging through crumbling parchments and fragmentary manuscripts, thumbing through the ancient tomes that arrived daily by mail. Bobby had no idea how much of his own money and favors Sam was blowing through, but he knew what it was doing to his phone bill. He also knew none of it would mean a damn thing if Sam wasn’t successful in his goal, so he kept the coffee on and worried about the problems he could handle – mainly, trying to keep hunters out in the field alive against overwhelming odds.

“It’s Enochian!” Sam crossed the loose dirt of the junkyard grinning, an ancient looking book Bobby didn’t recognize clutched to his chest.

Bobby pulled back out from under the hood of the truck he was working on and gave Sam a baffled look. “What are you on about now?”

“The runes on the ward I drew -- Enochian!”

“Eno -- you mean that crap Dee and Kelley dreamed up in the fifteen hundreds? That’s what’s written on your ward?” Bobby frowned. “Loses me a few bar bets,” he grunted. “We always said that language was total crap.”

“No,” Sam explained patiently. “I mean --yes, but also no. It’s a variation of that, but this is older. Probably where they got most of their material from in the first place. And there’s more. I think the Ward is actually Metatron.” He motioned for Bobby to follow him back into the house. Bobby wiped his hands off on a scrap of rag and followed.

“Metatron? I thought Metatron was an angel, Sam.”

“No, no, look here--” Sam dropped the heavy volume he had been carrying onto the loose papers covering the desk in Bobby’s living room with a thunk that made dust fly up into the air. “There are a lot of different references to Metatron in all kinds of religious texts. Admittedly, they point in a lot of different directions, but at least some of them call Metatron The Scribe of Heaven. But according to Duvaul’s translation of what was actually an older Enochian primer, those sources that refer to Metatron as the Scribe were mistranslations in the first place. It wasn’t a title, the word was inscribed, not Scribe. So it would have been “Metatron, as inscribed by Heaven.” Now Duvaul didn’t have any idea what that meant and just mentioned it in passing, but in the Dakon transcriptions--“

“The ravings of that poor beggar in Kandahar?”

“Ravings, but some pretty damn accurate stuff over the years. He talked about the Apocalypse, but he also talked about what Heaven had inscribed against the coming darkness. He was talking about demons, Bobby. Talking about something humans could use to banish demons.”

Sam looked intent, Bobby looked dubious.

“This is interesting, Sam. But I don’t see how having a name for it gets you any closer to finding the damn thing. It’s also a little thin.”

“Well, it doesn’t get me any closer by itself,” Sam admitted, then added hastily, “but if the Ward is Metatron then people know about it, Bobby! There are references, things to research. It’s a chance, and that’s a hell of a lot more than we had when looking for information about the trap in Hell. I’ll take thin, I’ll take anorexic, as long as there is something to find.” He closed the book with a satisfied thud and vanished back into the library.

But within a week all of Sam’s research had gone cold and he wasn’t any closer to finding something solid on the lost Ward. Having a name and a language was interesting but ultimately, as Bobby had suggested, worthless. Sam drew the runes over and over again --on paper, on the mirror after a shower, in the condensation that gathered on the table where he set his glass-- reaching for a spark of inspiration that never showed up. Sam was starting to feel what Dean claimed to feel anytime they’d slept in the same bed for three nights, a gnawing restlessness that told him to get out and move. To do anything but sit and stare at another damn scrap of paper. But he had no place to go that was as good as the place he was, so he gritted his teeth and dug in.

Still. There was something almost familiar about the runes, though Sam couldn’t say if it was the constant repetition or the genuine hint of a hidden memory.


Chapter Twelve

I wish I was a nomad, an Indian, or a saint.
Give me walking shoes, feathered arms, and a key to heaven's gate.
                                  ~World Falls, Indigo Girls

“That didn’t take long, I thought you were heading back down to the southwest to meet up with Dean?” Bobby frowned. Sam didn’t reply, just walked across the room and threw himself into a chair that creaked alarmingly under the sudden weight.

“Did you see about the earthquake in California?” Sam asked.

“Yeah,” Bobby replied cautiously. “Have to be dead to miss it. What does that have to do with you being back early?”

“Nothing,” Sam sighed. “Just... something Dean said.”

“You’ve only been gone two days, Sam. There’s no way you made it to the Sonoma and back.”

Sam shrugged out of his flannel and leaned back in his shirtsleeves. “I didn’t have to. I pulled over at a rest stop outside of Sterling to stretch my legs for awhile. He was... waiting for me.”

“In Sterling?” Bobby asked sharply. “I thought he agreed to stay in the desert. You know, away from breakable things like cities and people?”

“He doesn’t think like that anymore. I don’t know how aware he is of his actions, or of even where he is now at any given time. He doesn’t talk a lot, and what he says only sometimes makes sense. It’s so fucking frustrating, Bobby! Sometimes, I feel like it’s Dean and I’m reaching him, and then his expression changes and it’s all... whatever, again.”

“Did he... do anything?” Bobby’s tone was both wary and curious. He had watched the news reports on the desert and been both impressed and horrified.

Sam sighed. “I managed to drag him off into the woods a ways before...” Sam shrugged and Bobby grunted in acknowledgement of what he was glossing over. “It was a pine forest, and afterwards there wasn’t a needle on a tree for fifty feet in all directions. They were still green, just all over the ground. Weird, but not a rampage of destruction.”

Sam didn’t say anything about Dean’s mental landscape. There had been no indication his brother even tried to keep him out of his inner chaos this time, despite Sam’s whispered pleas, and the buffeting winds and confusion had almost felt like a psychic flaying.

“You just left him there?”

“No, he was gone when I was, uh, aware again. I don’t know where he went.”

“Bad news for the world,” Bobby muttered.

Sam snorted and stood back up, needing to shower before he got comfortable somewhere and passed out. “You can turn the television on any channel and see bad news for the world. If all Dean is doing is some casual deforestation, then I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.”

~~~~~

“Is that John’s journal?” Bobby asked across the kitchen table.

Sam, wearing a healthy growth of stubble and the same clothes Bobby had seen him in for three days, nodded.

“Why?” Bobby asked bluntly. “You think he wrote down some information you just happened to miss in all the years you and Dean used that thing like a Bible?”

“I don’t know. It’s just... these dreams I’m having.”

“I didn’t think you were sleeping at all. These aren’t like those nightmares you were having before, are they?”

“I’m sleeping as much as I can, Bobby. It just feels weird in my head and it’s worse when I’m asleep, you know how the air feels right before a storm rolls in? All still and heavy?” Bobby nodded. “It’s like that, like there’s something pushing against my mind that just can’t quite reach me.”

“Dean?”

Sam shook his head.

“No. That’s an entirely different sort of pressure,” Sam said grimly. He did have dreams he knew were flavored with his brother’s spilling nature. Dreams of chaos, and falling, and shredding winds that ripped at places he didn’t know how to protect. But as days and weeks rolled by, he was getting better at reaching out for the demon’s attention in those moments of panic, and once aware of his distress, Dean was usually obliging enough to toss him back out. Sam would wake up blinking at the ceiling, drenched in a cold sweat, but at least he had an out from those nightmares, so far. His other dreams were not quite as accommodating.

“So why the journal?”

“I... this is going to sound crazy--”

“Because everything else around here is normal and sane,” Bobby said dryly.

“Yeah,” Sam chuckled weakly. “Well, I feel like my dad is trying to tell me something.”

Bobby blinked. “That is... different.”

Sam closed the journal and dropped it to the table with a sigh. “I just keep seeing him. He doesn’t say anything, or signal anything, just looks at me. But I keep seeing him exactly the same and it feels familiar, likes the runes feel familiar. I’m missing something, Bobby; there’s something obvious that I’m just not picking up on.”

“And you think the answer is in that journal?”

Sam gave the well-worn, leather-bound book on the table a dark look. “I don’t think so. I’ve been over it and over it, and it’s not like I didn’t have it practically memorized before. But I don’t know what else he would be trying to indicate.”

“He left more behind than just that journal, you know.”

“I know. I’m going to grab a shower and then hit the road. I ransacked his storage sheds at Scottsbluff and Elko pretty thoroughly, but maybe there’s something...”

“Here’s hoping you didn’t sell whatever’s so important. If there’s anything at all.”

Sam glared. “Yes, here’s hoping.”

“Want company on the road?”

“No.” Sam shook his head, pushing back from the table and glancing at the muted television that as usual was depicting some kind of carnage, this time in India from the looks of the surroundings. “You’ve got more than enough to handle right here.”

~~~~~

When Sam showed back up this time and walked in the back door, it wasn’t Bobby who greeted him in the kitchen, but Rufus. The hunter gave Sam’s glassy eyes and flushed cheeks a long, assessing look, then grunted and went back to twisting wires on an elaborate weapon that resembled a crossbow, though not one like Sam had ever seen.

“There’s usually a rule about doing that on this table,” Sam muttered, pulling a wadded tissue out of his pocket to wipe his nose before tossing it into the trash

Rufus didn’t look up from what he was working on. “We’re a little past caring about the furnishings. You find what you were looking for?”

“How much do you know?” Sam asked warily, before dissolving into a coughing fit. He’d had trouble from hunters before, and only knew Rufus by casual meeting and rumor. Sam was willing to extend at least cautious trust to anyone Bobby vouched for, but Bobby wasn’t there.

“I know enough to be real hopeful you dug up something on your errand. Did you?”

“What are you doing here anyways? Where’s Bobby?” Sam avoided the question. He knew he had a fever again and was trying to breathe shallowly, so as not to set off another cough.

“Haven’t you heard?” Rufus asked with grim humor. “I live here now. Something cremated my city. No good now unless you like fields of ash and ruins.”

Sam was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry.”

Rufus gave an especially violent twist to one of the bolts. “Wasn’t your fault. Even as tangled up in this crap as you are, you didn’t sic the damn demons on us.”

Footsteps on the stairs made Sam look up just in time to see Bobby enter the room.

“You’re back,” he greeted Sam. “And you look like hell. You want to sit down before you fall down? And please tell me you found something useful.”

“Not what I was hoping for, just spiders and dust. I can’t imagine... I’ve been thinking about this all these hours on the road-- maybe you guys can come up with something. Castiel said the Ward is hidden in a place of chaos. What’s chaotic?”

“Dallas traffic,” Rufus offered.

“Parking lot after a football game,” Bobby suggested.

Sam grabbed a bottle of juice out of the fridge and glared at them both. “Fate of the World. The angel said it had to be hidden in a place of powerful chaos to prevent angels from being able to see it. I don’t think Castiel was worried about rush hour or who won the Superbowl!”

“If you think traffic is only bad in rush hour down there, you haven’t been to Dallas in a while,” Rufus observed.

“That’s not helpful.” Sam grimaced and fine lines creased the corners of his eyes.

Bobby slid a chair out for him and Sam sat down, rubbing at his temples.

“Vision?” Bobby asked.

Sam shook his head. “No, it’s that pressure I was telling you about --it's still here. All the time. Gives me horrible headaches. And this cold isn't helping.”

“You said there was pressure when you were dreaming,” Bobby said sharply.

“It was, at first,” Sam admitted. “But the last few days, it just never really leaves. When I’m awake, when I’m asleep -- if it doesn’t let up soon I feel like something is going to break in my head.”

Bobby shot Rufus a look but the other hunter was focused on his work. “What about your brother, is he... in there?”

“I’m not getting anything from Dean lately. He’s there, but... not paying me attention,” Sam replied in a low voice.

“Anything I can do to help?”

“No. Just hand me the aspirin and let me try and get some sleep. This trip has been a waste of time we don’t have, and getting sick is just the icing on the cake. My dad, my brother, and anything else that wants to rent time in my skull is just going to have to back the hell off and let me get some real rest or I won’t be good for anything, for anyone.”

~~~~~

In his dream, Sam walked along a broken sidewalk. Crowds of faceless people in dark clothing pushed past him, feeling cool like mist where they brushed against his body.

“Sam,” Bobby’s voice was low and tense.

He could hear laughter and shouting, conversation, but none of the words made sense to his ears. The air was thick and still, like the pressure that had been building in his head for months, but he could smell salt like the sea was near, and the sweet scents of summer grass and decay were heavy and close all around him.

“What’s wrong with him?” Rufus asked.

“He was sick when he got here; it’s the fever. Don’t think it’s been long enough to be anything else. Go grab that kit I keep in the closet, and an ice pack or two. Frying his brain is the last thing we need.”

Above him, the sky was a sea of gray, clouds spiraling around into a deep funnel like it would draw up everything around him until only the clouds were left. But not even the leaves on the trees across the street stirred, like the skyscape was something unconnected to anything else around him. Sam dismissed it with casualness only achievable in a dream. His footsteps dragged as he realized he knew this place, though it had been more than half a year since he had seen it.

“Shit. Sam, I need you to wake up now.”

“Is he bleeding?” Rufus’ voice was sharp.

Sam craned his head around until he could see across the street to the park and its benches. Empty. He struggled to reach the edge of the pavement, but the press of people was relentless. The colors of the buildings and greenery were starting to go flat, like all life and color were being drained away, and the voices around him grew harsher.

“It’s his nose. Not a head wound. Gimme the gauze.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Sam caught a flash of something and his head whipped around to see shockingly red hair receding through the crowd. Sam swore and struggled harder, fighting the sea of bodies to catch up with the figure walking ahead of him. He made progress only slowly, but just before he could grab hold of the figure, his father’s voice ripped through his consciousness.

Sam.

“Sam! Keep hold of him; don’t let him throw himself onto the floor.”

Rufus grunted. “The floor might be a better place for him if he’s going to struggle!”

Sam spun, shocked, but instead of his father behind him, or the crowd he had just fought his way through, he found...

“Sam!” Powerful hands shook his shoulders and Sam opened his eyes to see Bobby sitting beside him on the edge of the bed, hands tight on Sam’s shoulders and expression grim. “Are you awake now?”

Sam, still half in the dream, could only stare at him blankly.

“Singer,” Rufus called from the window. “You better come see this.”

“I’m a little busy,” Bobby snapped.

Sam struggled to a sitting position, touching his face gingerly, bemused to find cotton wads in his nostrils.

“You’ve got a nosebleed.” Bobby pulled Sam’s hand away. “Leave it alone for a few minutes.”

“Bobby.”

“What?”

“I’m not an expert on weather in these parts, but you often get snow this time of year?”

Bobby and Sam both looked up. Through the bedroom window, the junkyard was plainly visible. Trees, grass, dirt... and heavy, white flakes drifting past the window at the whimsical mercy of the late summer breeze.

“It’s got to be eighty-five degrees out there,” Rufus commented.

Sam didn’t need to see any more, he already knew what was happening. He struggled out of the bed and pulled his jeans on with shaking hands, ignoring his sweaty skin and the pain in his head that made his vision throb in and out of focus.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Bobby demanded.

“Dean,” Sam mumbled. Bobby glanced to the window then back to where Sam had finally gotten the button of his jeans through the hole and was lurching towards the door.

“At least let me help make sure you don’t break your fool neck on the stairs.”

~~~~~

Lightning cracked across the sky, arcing through dark clouds that shifted across the sky in banks and layers. Grass under his back was soft on his naked skin and the pale wildflowers that dotted the landscape smelled like spring to Sam’s senses. Snow was still drifting down, but it melted when it touched his skin, or the ground, even though it suffered no harm by the warm air currents it floated on. The pinpricks of coolness only added to the surreality, even more weird in some ways than the dreamscape he had escaped from.

Dean was lying beside him, jeans unfastened and clothes askew. Otherwise, he looked more like the Dean that Sam thought of as his brother than he had since Sam had first found him in the desert after trying to break the curse. Sam had buttoned his own jeans back up, and only hoped that no one had managed to get an eyeful while he had been... distracted. Unlike the last two times, Dean seemed in no hurry to leave, content to stay by Sam and watch the clouds race overhead.

“They’re trying to tell me something, Dean. The angels, or the World.”

Dean didn’t look at him, gaze still fixed on the sky overhead. This time, the fall had not been so bad, the power that swept through Sam had dragged him into the storm, but Dean’s attention had seemed firmly fixed. Even though the winds had been more violent, Sam had felt sheltered from them more, only having to struggle a little to keep himself pulled tightly together.

“I miss you,” Sam said finally.

Dean said nothing at all.

~~~~~

Bobby was waiting for Sam on the porch when he finally peeled himself off the field and headed back to the house.

“Is he going to stick around?”

“I don’t think so.”

They both looked up to where the sky was clearing and the snow had already stopped.

“He has good timing; I thought we were going to have to drag your ass to a hospital. Was that the curse, a vision, or some new unholy combination of trouble?”

Sam smiled tiredly. “I think it was the flu, Bobby. And a lot of sleepless nights. Maybe with something else thrown in -- my dreams were weird.”

“Something useful?”

“I don’t know. The pressure in my head is gone. I felt like something was trying to tell me something; it felt important, but then I was awake and...” Sam shrugged awkwardly.

“You were thrashing around, and bleeding, and sweating buckets,” Bobby grunted. “Waking you up seemed like the right thing to do.”

“Can't blame you for that, and I don’t know if you woke me up, or if whatever was trying to communicate with me just lost its grip.”

“You look okay now.”

Sam nodded. “The only upside to any of this crap. I’m just tired now, my lungs feel clear and my fever’s gone.”

“Back to the grind?”

“Yeah. I don’t suppose you have any good news on your end?”

Bobby snorted and stepped back so Sam could slip past him and through the doorway. “Depends on how attached you are to Vancouver.”

Later that night, Sam drifted from a dream where he and Dean were playing pool on inky black felt with cues that looked like shotguns and balls that looked like planets. It was Dean, and not the demon, he faced across the table and Sam was trying to explain about needing Dean back, to help him find the Ward. But his brother just shook his head and motioned impatiently towards the game. Sam lined up his shot, and then the pool table melted away, but it wasn’t Dean he was left facing, it was his father. John smiled at Sam, then the crypt behind him opened and black smoke boiled out. Sam choked and struggled in the cloying darkness that was smothering him, fighting to get free of it...

...and found his hands trapped in sweaty cotton sheets with the first light of dawn striping across the floor.

Sam knew exactly where he had seen the runes before. He just wasn’t sure the cure wouldn’t be as bad as the disease.


Chapter Thirteen

I'm speaking in tongues, handling you
I got religion now, look at it
The days grow longer
As we grow stronger
So shed your skin baby, let it rip
                                 ~Shed Your Skin, Indigo Girls

Bobby’s basement was like a rummage sale of the damned. The main workplace was nice, and Sam had always understood vaguely that there was maybe another room or two, but it turned out that there were entire little hallways and rooms blocked off with charmed padlocks and heavy furniture, weird contraptions and iron-bound chests. Sam realized fairly quickly that he had never really understood the full extent of how much supernatural trash Bobby had accumulated over the years. When he thought of Bobby’s basement, he thought of the panic room, and the two or three rooms off it that he knew were storage. But the place was an entire warren of tunnels and areas, with barely enough room to walk. Harsh white light from work lamps strung up with extension cords illuminated the areas. Sam wore gloves and tried to keep his hands to himself, but he needed something very specific and he didn’t want to ask Bobby if he didn’t have to. Mostly because he didn’t want to have to explain to Bobby what he was up to. He had tried contacting Castiel again first, for expediency if nothing else, but as promised, the angel had failed to appear, leaving Sam scrambling for a back-up plan.

Sam had realized where the Ward had to be, he just didn’t know if Bobby would see things his way or not. An incredibly difficult task could quickly become a truly impossible one if Bobby stood against him.

He stumbled over a rug that was fastened to the bare cement floor with what looked like iron spikes, and caught himself on a dresser. Set into the wood was a massive mirror. Sam frowned, rubbing dust off on his jeans. The reflection looked... odd. He was just leaning in to look closer when palms slammed against the wrong side of the glass and a terrified-looking woman faced him. She pounded on the mirror, casting frantic looks over her shoulder and pleading for help with her eyes. Sam stumbled backwards into a pile of cardboard boxes and went down, struggling to free himself from their unknown contents. A sharp crack echoed through the room and he looked up, shocked, to see a spiderweb fracture spreading out from where one of her palms hit the glass. With the break, he could hear her voice calling out for help, full of panic and fear. Then Bobby stepped over his sprawled legs and sprayed the mirror with some sort of clear liquid from what looked like a laundry bottle. The woman in the glass howled and vanished, the spider cracks running backwards in her absence like time had been thrown into reverse, until the glass was as smooth and untouched as when Sam had first entered the room.

Bobby turned to look down at Sam, then offered a hand to pull him to his feet.

“Holy water. Good for riot control.” He set the bottle on the dresser with his free hand. “There’s a reason people put padlocks on things, you know.”

“Yeah, I'm... sorry.”

“You could have just asked for the keys,” Bobby added pointedly, crossing his arms over his chest. “What the hell were you looking for down here anyways?”

Sam shifted uncomfortably. “William Fuld’s Ouija board.”

Bobby frowned. “I have that?”

“My dad did. He carried it around in a suitcase for a few weeks in the trunk when I was about eight. I didn’t know about the hunting or what was really out there then, I just thought it was cool. He gave me the worst spanking of my life when he caught me looking at it after he told me not to.”

“Your dad has his own lock-ups; why would it be down here?”

Sam kept a wary watch on the mirror over Bobby’s shoulder. “When I was a teenager, I asked Dean about it. I... thought it might be interesting to try to contact the spirit world and I remembered the board.”

“You boys sure put your own spin on normal teenage stupidity,” Bobby said dryly.

Sam shrugged, not denying it. The Winchesters had put their own spin on everything they’d ever done. They couldn’t even manage to die right.

“He told me it was in the storage shed in Minnesota; he also called me a few names,” Sam added, the recollection bringing a faint smile to his face that quickly faded. “But I ransacked that place when I sold stuff off eight years ago and it wasn’t there. It was on an inventory list of crap stuck in the back of the journal that Dad was going to move, but the list didn’t say where. But also on that list were the Tears of Artemis that I noticed you’ve got in that scummy fish tank upstairs.”

“They blend right in with the gravel and rocks; seemed like as good a place as any to stick ‘em.” Bobby shrugged.

“They give increased speed and accuracy, right?” Sam asked, curious.

“And a hunger for the flesh of one’s own kind.”

“That must keep things in the tank... lively.”

“You don’t see more than one fish in that tank anymore, now do you?” Bobby grunted, picking his spray bottle back up. “I did get a trunk of crap from John awhile back. I think... I think it’s this way.”

Sam gave the mirror one last look and was startled to see the woman’s eyes following him from the bottom of the frame where she was hidden mostly out of view.

“Don’t mind her; she’s not going anywhere soon and gets bored easily. Once we’re gone, she’ll go on back to sleep until some idiot disturbs her again.”

“What is she?”

Bobby shrugged. “Something nasty. Rumor says she’s been trapped in that mirror for a good couple of centuries. She broke out about a hundred years ago, killed a bunch of people before she was forced back in. Man who locked her back up made the dresser and handed it down through his family.”

“A family of hunters.”

“Right. The last of them got killed off a decade or so ago and we shipped her out here. One of the several reasons I believe in padlocks, and I’d appreciate it if you’d not pick them. At least not until we get the current world-ending crisis resolved. Now, you want to tell me what the hell you want Fuld’s Ouija board for anyways?”

Sam followed Bobby through the maze-like interior of his basement, ducking when the passageways were too short for his height. “I’m at a dead end; God knows where Dean is; I can’t find anything -- it seemed like maybe a shout-out to the spirit world wasn’t completely out of line.”

Bobby stopped in front of a locked door and pulled a ring of keys from his pocket. He tried a few until finally one clicked in the lock, then shoved the door open with a screech of unoiled hinges.

“Wait here,” Bobby directed, disappearing into the dark room.

Sam waited obediently in the hallway, fidgeting and nervous. From the room, he heard Bobby’s low swearing and the clink of metal and glass.

“You doing okay in there?” Sam called.

“Did this thing have a planchette?” Bobby yelled.

“How would I know?” Sam yelled back. “It was an interesting-looking board in a suitcase I wasn’t supposed to touch. Did they originally come with planchettes?”

Instead of a response, Bobby stalked out of the room, something flat and rectangular wrapped in dark cloth tucked under one arm. “If it had one, it doesn’t now. Let’s get out of here.”

~~~~~

“So... what makes this board so special?” Rufus asked. He was busy packing his kit, planning to head out and try and deal with a number of unexplained, half-eaten bodies that were showing up on the banks of the Colorado River.

“It belonged to William Fuld,” Sam explained, opening cabinets to find a shot glass. “He didn’t invent Ouija boards, but he was the guy who made them famous. Fuld claimed that it was messages from the spirits that gave him his business ideas that made Ouija boards so popular, which most people just blew off as marketing crap.”

“You think he was telling the truth?” Rufus raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Whether he was telling the truth about that or not, it’s pretty certain that something was whispering to him through the board. And whatever it was made him do a Peter Pan right off the top of his factory in Baltimore,” Bobby explained. He pulled a shot glass off of a shelf and tossed it to Sam.

“You’re going to try to communicate with spirits through a Ouija board that killed its last owner? I can’t imagine how this plan can go wrong. What are you going to ask it?”

Sam answered Rufus’ curiosity with a half shrug. “Still thinking about it.”

Rufus nodded and shouldered his pack with a nod to Bobby. “I’ve got to hit the road. You want me to look into that lake while I’m out there?”

“What lake?” Sam asked sharply. Sometimes, Dean bled into his sleep with images and sensations. It was fragmented and barely coherent, but Sam distinctly remembered a lake a few days ago. The water had shone like ice under the full moon, impossibly still, like something from a drawing.

“Some lake in Colorado; I have to drive right past the place. A couple of days ago, the partially dissolved remains of some swimmers were found on the shore. Seems to be my week for that kind of thing so I looked into it some more. Apparently, overnight what had been a fairly popular local vacation spot turned from fresh water to acid.”

“Do you have a picture?”

Bobby and Rufus both gave him strange looks. “Of the bodies?”

“Of the lake,” Sam replied impatiently, already walking into the other room to use Bobby's computer. It took him less than three minutes to pull up what he was looking for. He fell into the meditative practice Missouri had taught him: aware of each breath, focusing on them. He forced himself to look at the picture of each of the dead teenagers who had been swimming in the lake when it made its miraculous change. The article talked about volcanic gases and the violent changes possible with deep, cold waters. But the lake wasn’t volcanic, and Sam wasn’t confused about the cause.

“Don’t worry about the lake, Rufus,” Sam said in a perfectly even tone. “I’ve got it covered.”

He could feel the questioning look Rufus shot to Bobby behind his back, the rough grace of Bobby’s nod.

“Singer.”

When the door banged shut behind Rufus and Sam heard his car pull away, he turned. Bobby’s expression was grim.

“The lake, Sam?”

“Dean,” Sam said flatly.

“You’re sure?”

Sam shrugged. Bobby kept him pinned in place with his stare.

“Forgetting the demon for a moment, I wasn’t going to call you on it with Rufus sitting there, but you want to tell me what you really want the board for? Without the bullshit this time?”

Sam thought about hedging, but knew that Bobby would see right through it. He had gotten away with a few white lies to his father, and regularly pulled the wool over Dean’s eyes on things that were inconsequential, but never in his life had Bobby failed to catch him out. The world being in the state it was, Sam figured now was not the time to lose Bobby’s trust.

“I need the Colt,” Sam said honestly. “No one’s seen it since Bela stole it in Pittsburgh. She told me and Dean during that fiasco with the rabbit’s foot that she found a lot of her targets by asking the spirit world. I figure... what can it hurt?”

“The Colt?” Bobby looked puzzled. “I thought you were looking for the Ward?”

“I am, but if the angels can’t find it, I don’t think a handful of restless ghosts can either, you know?

“So how is the Colt going to help you? I can see why some other hunters might be interested, now that we can make ammunition for it anyways, but I thought you decided that taking the demons out one by one wasn’t a good solution? Something about it taking years and probably getting you killed early on? I pretty clearly recall you not being interested in doing that. Something changed I don’t know about?” Bobby’s eyes were narrowed.

Sam squared his shoulders. “I need the Colt, Bobby.”

“The Colt only does two things, Sam. And I’m not getting the impression you want it for its ability to kill damn near anything you shoot with it.”

Sam didn’t say anything. Bobby swore and ripped the hat off his head, wiping at his sweaty brow, an angry flush rising up his neck.

“You want to explain to me in short, simple words what the fuck you’re thinking to want to open the Devil's Gate for? You think we don’t have enough demons running around this planet already? Huh? You’d better answer me, Sam. And I better be plenty impressed, or you might be looking at doing a stretch in my panic room until you come to your senses.”

“It’s in a place of great Chaos, Bobby. So great that not even angels can see through the fog. And... I’ve had dreams. Memories from the last time it was open.”

“I was there the last time it was open, Sam,” Bobby growled. “All I saw were demons streaming into our reality.”

“You weren’t standing where I was,” Sam insisted. “You couldn’t see inside.”

“What ‘inside’?! There’s nothing inside but Hell, Sam!”

Sam shook his head stubbornly. “When it first opened, there was a second before the demons came out, an instant where I could see inside, and it was... carved, like the outside, and in the floor... I swear, Bobby, I thought I saw something round. I didn’t think about it again, and I’m not one hundred percent certain now. But I’m almost sure, and I can’t think of anywhere else it could be. It makes sense. And I think what was going on in my head is something trying to show me that.”

Bobby was quiet for a few minutes, arms crossed as he gazed at Sam appraisingly. “Sure enough to gamble the world on it?”

“The world’s already lost, Bobby. We’ve sailed off the freaking cliff and are just waiting to hit bottom. Unless I wake up tomorrow with the magic answer to break the angels’ prison, this is the only lifeline I think there is. I have to take this chance.”

Bobby was silent again, the weight of his stare heavy.

“Bobby?” Sam asked quietly.

Finally, Bobby shifted with a sigh. “Come on then, might as well see what the spooks have to say. Any reason you can’t just call up Missouri or one of her psychic buddies and ask them to riffle the spirit world?”

“She’s not a medium. She doesn’t mess with ghosts or any of that stuff, and I don’t know anyone who can get an answer out of this any faster than we can try. Even the one or two who might talk to me... the negotiating and reassuring would take days. We can do this.”

But try as Sam might, under the high sun or a moonless night, with Bobby, alone, by candles or just stars, the spirits said not a word.

“Maybe they don’t like the shot glass?” Bobby suggested after Sam’s third sleepless night of trying. Sam gave him as much of a glare as he could muster.

“Maybe they don’t like your house,” Sam growled back.

Bobby opened his mouth to retort, when there was a bang on the front door and the stench of sulfur filled the air. Bobby’s eyes went flat and Sam felt the power bubble up inside of him from where it usually lay quiescent, the power Ruby had trained him to destroy demons with. Sam had had no cause to use it for half a year and reaching for it now attracted Dean’s attention, such as it was, in a way that Sam hadn’t felt since they had lain together in the field of flowers and snow.

“Dean?” Sam was only aware he had spoken aloud when Bobby’s head whipped around to face him.

“That’s Dean out there? Since when did he start sporting the sulfur stench?!” Bobby hissed.

“Uh, what?” Sam blinked. “No --sorry. He’s in my head.”

Bobby muttered something about not enough whiskey in the world, grabbed the flask of holy water off his hip with one hand, and a sawed off from the counter with the other, and stalked to the door. Sam joined him after a moment, the link between he and Dean dulling away again as the demon apparently found nothing to hold it’s interest.

They stood at the front door in silence for a moment, but when nothing else happened, Bobby handed Sam the shotgun with a shrug and pulled the door open. The only thing on the other side was a crimson envelope with Sam’s name written boldly across the front in a shiny golden ink.

“Get the salad tongs,” Bobby grunted.

Two hours later the smell of sulfur had completely dissipated and Sam and Bobby had run every test they could think of on the envelope to check for curses or other enchantment.

“I’m just going to open it,” Sam said finally.

“Sure there isn’t anyone you don’t like you could get to open it instead?” Bobby asked dryly. Sam ignored that and carefully pried up the edge of the crimson paper. Inside was a simple white business card. On one side was an address, on the other “Want the Colt? Come alone.”

~~~~~

“No one actually expects the person to come alone, Sam,” Bobby scowled, watching Sam stuff clothes into his duffle bag. “Everyone says it, but nobody does it. No one smart, anyways.”

“Then I’ll have the advantage of surprise,” Sam retorted, examining the serrated blade Dean had left in the Impala’s trunk for him. Ruby’s knife.

“I’d rather you have the advantage of staying alive!”

Sam dropped his bag and turned to face him. “What do you want me to do, Bobby? Obviously, whoever sent the note has the advantage of information. But I’ve got a few surprises of my own, and if I could catch Ruby, who trained me, off guard, I think I’ve got a fighting chance against other demons.”

“Other normal demons,” Bobby snapped back. “But hasn’t half the point of all of this been that it isn’t the usual garden variety we’re dealing with now?”

Sam picked up the business card, with its perfect lettering and flamboyant delivery. “I’m not really getting the impression of sweeping cataclysms of destruction off of this, Bobby.”

“How does whatever sent this even know you’re after the Colt?” Bobby demanded.

Sam slipped the card into his pocket. “I don’t know. But I’ll be sure and ask when I get there. Did you find out anything about the property?”

“Only that it’s owned by Aleister Incorporated. Some kind of shell company that deals mostly in finances. Give me a few more days and I can ferret out more.”

“Will it change anything about my going?”

Bobby scowled. 

Next Section

Masterpost

 

Comments

[angeblond.livejournal.com]

HUmmm playing with the Great Torturer of Hell Itself! Sam you're so lucky buddy.

[silveritas.livejournal.com]

Dallas traffic.

LMAO YES. I know EXACTLY what you mean.

[glasslogic.livejournal.com]

My favorite part is that I always seem to hit town at rush hour in a rainstorm during the holidays. It's... like some automotive nightmare *dryly* Not that it's clam and placid any other time either though.

[silveritas.livejournal.com]

Ah yes. The holidays. They're right up there with Texas-OU weekend on the list of bad times to attempt driving in Dallas.