Now Say Hello, for Zara_Zee, part 2 of 2

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[Now Say Hello, part 2]

When he opens his eyes he sees birds, round gray doves perching in the high arched windows. Trapped in a tower, he remembers, with a djinn and a ghoul. This is the real part. This is not the dream. The girl, the ghoul, is sitting in her metal chair again, this time a little closer to the rusted bed frame, studying him with disapproving eyes.

“You’re very tenacious,” she says. “It must be the hunter in you. Why do you keep coming back?”

Dean grits his teeth. “I got a job to do.”

“But you should be happy. The djinn is making your wish comes true,” she chides. “Everyone else was happy. Happier dying than they’d been during their lives. I should know; I consumed all their memories.”

“What about their families? Think they’re happy, their kid goes missing, never comes back?”

“Listen, I’m not cruel. I return, give them a little closure. One last good memory of the dead. You know, hugs and I’m sorry and I love you and all that.”

“That’s why all the victims came back once and then disappeared again for good.”

“Yes. I don’t have to do it, but I like to.”

“I don’t believe you,” Dean spits out, infuriated by the girl’s smug little smile.

“Beg pardon?” She looks surprised at this incivility.

“Sometimes there are two vics, siblings. You’re going for seconds, aren’t you? Getting greedy.”

“Oh, you think it’s greed? Carelessness? It’s compassion, that’s what it is.” She looks earnestly at Dean, lifting her hands from her lap. “Sometimes I find siblings that are so close, so tied up in one another that it would be cruel to leave one of them alone.”

Rattled, Dean stammers, “Why—why not take the parents too?”

“Too old. My djinn likes them young.”

She drops her hands, looks down at Dean’s horrified expression, and says with quiet resignation, “You consider me a monster, but I do have a heart. My kind would call me soft.” She stares up at the doves, paired off up in the windows. “I haven’t seen any other ghouls in a long time,” she murmurs. “I know what it’s like, to be so lonely you wish you were dead.”

Dean knows it’s a trick, a monster’s ploy, but for a moment, as she sits with her eyes lifted like a pious figure in a Renaissance painting, he believes her.

“My djinn told me that you have a brother,” she continues sadly. “He’ll mourn you. But not for long.”

She crosses her arms over her chest, rises from her seat, and walks slowly out of Dean’s range of sight; he hears her footsteps tap lightly on the old wooden floors as she leaves the room. He attempts to get his left hand free of the loosened rope, but his numb arm refuses to work right, and his fingers are heavy and clumsy. Feeling lightheaded and close to panic, he wrenches his hand free and fumbles for his pocketknife.

He’s too late. With a sudden flutter of wings that sound like shuffling cards, the doves in the windows disappear, and Dean knows the djinn has returned.

*****

Dean’s kneeling on the rough wood floor of the cabin, almost crying with frustration.

“Why won’t you let me go?” he snarls at Sam.

Sam tosses the pickaxe aside and throws up his hands. “Oh, you’re making it my fault now?”

“No, no, come on, Sam, I need your help.” Dean gets to his feet and paces around the tiny confines of the room. “I’ve got to get back. Help me think.”

“According to you, I don’t even exist,” says Sam. “This is all you.”

“Yeah, that’s great.” Dean stands still and digs his nails into his palms, then pulls at his hair, but mere pain, evidently, will not take him back to the real world.

“You need to know,” Sam says patiently, “how to wake yourself up from a dream. Now, you could try scaring yourself awake, but you’re already scared shitless.”

“Thanks, Sam,” snaps Dean.

Sam lays a hand on Dean’s arm, and it feels warm and real and solid. “You shouldn’t be scared. You’re safe here, Dean. I’m safe. You can’t die in a dream.”

“Wait,” says Dean. “Say that again.”

“What?”

“ ‘You can’t die in a dream.’ When you’re dreaming, and you think you’re about to die, you never die. You just wake up.” He shakes off his brother’s hand and paces to the far wall of the cabin. He turns and looks at the bed. His ivory-handled .45 is lying on it, the sweet little pistol that he loves and that Sam’s always coveted.

Sam’s eyes follow Dean’s gaze, and they both lunge for the weapon at the same time. Dean is marginally faster.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” he says. He looks around the room, at the table crowded with junk, the pickaxe and crowbar on the floor, Sam’s deck of cards spilled across the bed. “The ghost thing, that was kinda fun in a way. Crazy, but fun, like a movie. We would’ve made a great team, you and me.” He bites his lip. “Too bad I can’t stay.” He raises the gun and clicks the safety off, and his brother draws his breath in sharply.

“No, Dean, wait.” Sam’s voice is soft, but tense with desperation.

“Sorry, little brother. This is how I get back. I’ve got to die.”

“Dean, no, this dream of yours is like the plot of every stupid testosterone-filled movie you love. You don’t die. You’re the hero. You save the day. You get the beautiful girl in the end,” Sam insists.

Dean shakes his head vehemently. “No, no, that’s not right.” He laughs weakly. “I’m not the hero; you’re the hero. I’m the guy, the guy you forgot about, the guy who takes the bullet, the guy who throws himself on the grenade, the guy whose last word is run.”

I’m the guy you mourn, but not for long.

“You’re serious,” Sam says incredulously. “You actually believe that. And you’d really do this? You’d leave me all alone?”

Dean feels a surge of anger. “Why not?” he says coldly. “You did.” He curses himself for the tears beginning to sting his eyes.

His brother flinches as if struck. “No,” he protests, shaking his head. “I didn’t. I didn’t,” he repeats, emphasizing the difference between himself and the real Sam. He reaches out hesitantly, and Dean doesn’t back away. “This is how it’s supposed to be, isn’t it? You and me.”

Dean tightens his grip on the gun and shakes his head. Sam takes a tentative hold of his sleeve. “This is what you wished for.” His hand slips lower and closes gently over his wrist. “Right?” he asks softly. “You and me against the world.”

Dean sees his brother through a watery blur. “I don’t know,” he says helplessly.

“Sure you do,” Sam says with a little smile. “Stay awhile,” he urges. He gives Dean’s wrist a tiny squeeze. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”

Dean closes his eyes, letting his tears drop freely, and his brother takes the gun from his hand.

His mind’s last protest—what have you done?—fades into an unearthly sense of relief as Sam pulls him into a hard embrace, his arm clutching so tight around Dean’s neck that he can’t even take a breath to sob.

*****

Somebody’s choking him. No, just shaking him, and it’s really annoying, so he opens his eyes. Rudy, with his hair looking remarkably like a bird’s nest, is staring down at him with mingled relief and disgust.

“Rudy, goddammit,” Dean croaks out, “where were you?”

“Yeah, you’re welcome.” Rudy hacks through his bonds, then holds up his red-stained knife. “I had some trouble finding lamb’s blood. Goat’s blood, dime a dozen, but lamb’s blood, this time of year? In the end, I wasn’t even sure if I actually got lamb’s blood, but it worked”—waving toward the desiccating corpse of the djinn—“so I guess it was. And then that thing, the girl—caught me off guard, I will say. Took a headshot to take her out, and now her goo’s all over you; blew open like a potato in a microwave—”

“Rudy, shut up,” Dean murmurs. “Jeez, a call would’ve been nice.”

“I tried! I couldn’t reach you.” Rudy looks him over and deftly ties a handkerchief over a small freely bleeding wound on Dean’s left arm. “Why’d you come charging in here on your own, anyway?”

“I didn’t! I got ambushed in the woods.” Dean struggles to his feet and leans heavily on the back of a chair. Rudy’s face is swaying slowly before his eyes, and his mouth seems to be moving too fast.

“Hell, you’re lucky I got here when I did. They were arguing over you, those two. The djinn was feeding off you, but the girl wanted to kill you right away. Said you were dangerous. That you were strong.”

“Oh, yeah?” Dean manages, just before he faints.

*****

It’s acutely embarrassing to be driven back to your father like you’re the kid who threw up in PE class. “Just take me back to my car,” Dean complains. “I’m fine now.”

“The hell you are,” Rudy counters. “Even if you were, I wouldn’t take any chances with John Winchester’s precious boy.”

“What?” Dean sputters.

Rudy smirks a little. “You should hear him go on about you,” he says. “You’d think the sun shone outta your ass.”

Dean gives him a sidelong glance, but Rudy doesn’t appear to be joking. “Well,” Dean says loudly to cover his sudden self-conscious blush, “that’s news to me.”

John is surprisingly calm about the whole deal, which, after all, ended well even though Dean did not cover himself in glory. Rudy is kind and doesn’t mention any of the more humiliating details—Dean being tied up and under the djinn’s spell when he had burst in, or Dean falling to the floor like a Victorian maiden in need of smelling salts—but it’s clear, even so, that on this job Dean was more hindrance than help.

Rudy’s in high spirits when he leaves father and son lodging in a Motel 6 near the freeway, fifty miles from the Thalia orphanage. “I owe you one,” Dean tells him, but he shrugs away both thanks and apology.

John closes the motel room door behind him, and Dean waits for his isn’t-there-something-you-want-to-tell-me? glare, an expression he dreads more than the shouting.

“You should take a shower,” is all John says, though. “And I’ll go get us some food. Burger King okay? There’s one next door.”

Dean nods wordlessly, and John reaches out to pat his shoulder gingerly. “What do you want?” John asks.

“Anything,” Dean says tiredly, but his father looks annoyed at this wishy-washy answer. “A double Whopper,” he amends before John can voice his irritation. “And onion rings.”

After John leaves, Dean stands under the feeble flow of the shower, presses his thumbs to his temples, and fights with a rising desire to cry.

*****

“I want to go see Sam,” Dean announces, bracing himself for his father’s objection. To his surprise, John looks at him mildly and nods.

“He is my brother,” Dean continues.

“Of course. Dean, you don’t have to justify yourself to me.”

“I just—he’s the only brother I’ve got.” Dean doesn’t know why he keeps talking, only that he wants his father to talk about Sam.

John pauses and scratches at his forehead, sighing deeply. “Yeah—” he exhales, looking down at the table. “I know.” He gets up and begins to stuff their discarded paper wrappings into the little motel trash can. “Dean, Sam will come back to us eventually. When he’s ready. In the meantime, he and I—it’s probably for the best we keep our distance. This isn’t bad—it’s part of his growing up. He needs to grow up.”

Dean asks lightly, “So when am I gonna grow up?”

“You grew up a long time ago, son.” John leans down to open the little fridge door. “Too fast,” he adds quietly as he reaches in for two more beers. It sounds more like an apology than a criticism, and Dean doesn’t know what to say.

“We’ll go get your car in the morning,” John says. He opens the beers and hands one of them to Dean. Dean’s drunk half of it before he realizes that it’s the first time he’s heard his father refer to the Impala as “your car.”

*****

Dean arrives at the Stanford campus in the early afternoon. It’s vast and intimidatingly beautiful with its red tile roofs, rows of low round arches, and long colonnades, glowing warm in the sunlight. He knows that a single phone call will bring Sam to him, but he’s determined to leave their meeting to fate. So he sits, and he waits to see if Sam will appear, walking around a corner or out of the shadows.

The greater part of his life is spent waiting, sometimes in boredom, sometimes in anticipation. Waiting for his clothes to dry in a laundromat, waiting for the cover of night so he can dig up a grave, waiting for a monster to return to its lair. No one here gives him a second glance; he’s got a book in his hand—The Grapes of Wrath—and a backpack at his feet, and it’s an odd feeling to realize that, superficially at least, he blends in here as well as anywhere else.

He’s been sitting by the fountain that graces the front of the big library for two hours, occasionally getting up to wander around the quad, and he gives himself another half-hour. If he hasn’t spotted Sam by then, he’ll leave. It wasn’t meant to happen. The students—some of them milling around, some of them striding purposefully—look too young, too self-assured. Sam will stick out like a sore thumb, awkward, too quiet, always with a little melancholy, if not outright misery, in his eyes.

When Dean catches sight of him, he’s laughing. He’s laughing, at the center of a little group of people, towering above them. He shows the easy confidence of a young man comfortable in his own skin, somewhat like the Sam of Dean’s djinn-induced dream, but nothing like the real Sam that Dean remembers. He’s grown at least another inch since Dean’s last seen him, and Dean naturally finds this an affront to both himself and big-brotherhood in general.

Sam’s laughing, and Dean’s first instinct is to hide. That laughing look will change to resentment in an instant, and Dean doesn’t want to see it. He gathers himself together; intending to slip across the walkway, under the arches and into the quad.

Sam is still a good distance away when he turns his head and spots Dean just as he gets to his feet. His double-take is subtle, but Dean catches it clearly. Sam’s hurrying toward him before he can blink. At the halfway point, he breaks into a run, as though he can sense Dean’s desire to turn tail. He’s not a particularly graceful runner, and he looks like a clumsy golden retriever as he dodges around people. Dean looks away sheepishly as Sam grabs him by the arms, large hands squeezing hard, pulling him off balance and then righting him again.

“Dean—” Sam gasps. “It’s you.”

“Hey, Sammy,” Dean says calmly.

“Dean,” Sam says again, releasing his arms and, thank God, smiling.

“Yeah, you said that.” Dean grins and claps a hand to his brother’s arm.

“What—” Sam begins again. “I mean, why—” he hesitates, apparently trying to rephrase “What the hell are you doing here?” into a less belligerent-sounding form.

“Just passing through. Thought, why not stop by and see you?” Dean looks around them. “In your new environment,” he adds. Sam’s sweet ivory-towered new home, where he’s been transformed from forlorn neglected little puppy into happy tail-wagging dog, apparently.

The unspoken sentiment must show on his face, for Sam’s smile falters a little. Dean adds quickly, “You look great. You doing okay?”

“Yeah, I—” Sam breaks off as his little gaggle of friends catches up to him. Dean has no idea what, if anything, Sam has told people about his family or his upbringing. He stands quietly, willing to follow his brother’s lead, though a diabolical urge to blurt out every eyebrow-raising fact rises in his gut as Sam takes a step back from him.

“Hey, guys, this is my brother,” Sam throws out.

“Dean?” queries one of the guys, to Dean’s surprise.

“Yeah. This is Dean.” Sam runs through their names: Brady, Prakhar, Erin, Laura. They are distantly polite as they are introduced and, one by one, extricate themselves from the conversation and go on their way, leaving the brothers alone.

“So,” Dean begins.

Sam eases in closer to him, anxiously conspiratorial. “Dean—”

“Yeah, I know: what the hell am I doing here, right, Sam?” Dean interrupts sharply.

“Is everything okay?” Sam asks, and Dean softens instantly at the flicker of worry in his eyes.

“Yeah. Everything’s fine.” Dean pauses. “I was passing through like I said. I’m gonna catch up with Dad in Oregon.”

“Why didn’t you call?”

“I was going to,” Dean lies. “I was just looking around first.”

Sam nods. “What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, no offense, but you don’t look that great. Did you get hurt?”

“Nah.” His brother gives him a skeptical look, and Dean admits, “Just a little.”

“Dean—”

“I lost a little blood. Not a lot.”

Dean waits, but Sam does not ask what he had been hunting. Instead he says, “Yeah, and Dad’s pissed at you, I bet.”

“What? No.” Sam shrugs, and Dean has to fight down his impulse to jump to their father’s defense. But dammit, Sam’s going to hear about this hunt whether he wants to or not. “It was a djinn, and—and, get this: a ghoul. They were holed up in this old orphanage; you should’ve seen it, Sammy, it was like the perfect horror movie setting—”

Dean stops. Sam has been frowning, and now he is staring into the distance, his jaw tensed. “So you took ’em out?” he says during the pause, without looking at Dean.

“Rudy did.”

Sam snaps back to attention. “Who’s Rudy?” he asks quickly.

“Oh, he’s—Dad knows him, he’s young, not a bad hunter. Dad wanted me to work this job with him.”

Sam’s eyes are wide now. “Why?”

“Jeez, who knows? Dad’s been—I dunno, I feel like he’s trying to matchmake me with a partner sometimes.” Dean laughs. “Fuckin’ embarrassing.”

Sam’s answering laugh sounds forced. “Well, let me know when the wedding is,” he says, but a tautness in his voice makes the quip fall flat.

The two of them stand silent and awkward until Dean shifts and announces, “Anyway, I gotta go.”

“Now?” Sam looks stricken. “Can’t we go get something to eat together at least?”

“Don’t you have classes?”

“No, not this afternoon. I’m supposed to work, but I’ll call in sick.”

“Where you working?”

“Just waiting tables. A diner-type joint. Too bad we can’t go there; you’d love the cheeseburgers.” Sam’s smile is back, his dimples appealingly persuasive. “Come on, Dean.”

“Yeah, sure, that’d be great. Just—” Pausing, Dean looks around him at the fountain, the landscaping, the leafy trees. Everything is golden and green. It’s pretty here. Too pretty.

“What?”

“Can we go somewhere…else?” Somewhere else, away from the charm of all these fresh-faced innocents; somewhere else, a quiet place where you can pretend you’re dreaming; somewhere else, where you can bring out your memories, little bits of debris you pull up from your depths transformed into pearls.

They walk across the campus to get to Dean’s car, and Sam points out landmarks on the way. He greets a couple more acquaintances and a professor. Dean only half-listens to Sam’s tour-guide comments; he concentrates on the feeling of quiet joy underlying Sam’s words. This is what you were wishing for, all that time, Sammy. But you didn’t need a djinn to get you here. You did it yourself.

Sam directs him to a run-down taqueria in East Palo Alto, and they take their food and park the Impala on an access road at the edge of the salt marshes bordering the bay. “I don’t know if we’re allowed out here,” Sam remarks, as though any prohibitions had ever stopped them before.

“Law-abiding Sammy,” Dean grins.

Sam shuffles his drink and his paper bag of tortilla chips before looking at him. “I’m actually thinking I might want to go to law school.”

“Oh God,” says Dean involuntarily, and Sam blinks hard and stiffens in the seat beside him. “No, no, it’s just—I kinda thought you’d end up a geeky professor type.”

Sam snorts. “Did you?” he asks.

“Yeah. Sitting in your library surrounded by books.”

Sam narrows his eyes at him appraisingly. “Huh,” he murmurs, with a faint note of surprise.

“Just can’t picture you in a suit,” Dean continues. “In a courtroom.” But he can, he absolutely can. “And you’d have to cut that hair, you know.”

“No I wouldn’t,” Sam bursts out.

“Yes you would. Grow that hair any longer and you’ll be a freakin’ yeti. It’s bad enough you’re ten feet tall now—who’s gonna hire Chewbacca for their lawyer?”

Sam’s laughing now. “What am I then, a yeti or a Wookiee? Besides, Chewie, as you know—”

“Oh hell no, don’t you start,” Dean interrupts, and Sam grabs his arm hard, shaking it. “Hey, watch it,” protests Dean, lifting his Coke bottle and swatting back, and for a moment, grappling with each other, they’re transformed, gleeful and untroubled.

Dean lets Sam win the little wrestling match before any spillage occurs. Sam sighs and slumps comfortably back into the seat. He half-turns and casts a lingering look around the car, taking it all in. “I miss it,” he says. Dean understands this to mean I miss us, not I miss this car, and his chest tightens a little.

“Me too,” Dean replies, and Sam’s mouth curves into a brief, gratified smile.

They finish their food, get out of the car to stretch, and wander down a path closer to the water. Dean watches a tiny plane descending toward the airport and says, “It’d be nice to sit out here at night. Watch the stars.”

“Too much light pollution,” Sam objects absently. He’s studying a large white egret standing alone in the shallow water some distance away.

They don’t talk much more. Dean wants to say something about their father, but he knows that will be inflammatory. To talk about keeping in touch will sound inane, and to even think about telling Sam about the dream-world he’d been in—well, that’s just impossible.

The sun is settling low in the sky when Sam gets out of the car in front of his apartment, the light streaking warm through the trees that line the pretty residential street. As Sam bends down into the window of the Impala, Dean tips his head to get his last good look in. “I’ll see you,” he says vaguely.

“Hey,” Sam says quietly, his eyes wide and earnest, with a single line of worry between his eyebrows, “why don’t you stay awhile?” His hands flutter briefly on the window frame, like birds shaking out their wings, and Dean’s own hands itch to grab, and clutch, not a nice feeling, too much like desperation, too much like spite. He’ll wring the life out of those birds if he gets them in his hands.

He glances down at his own hand resting on the seat back and shakes his head. “I can’t. I got things to take care of.” Not Sam, though. Not anymore.

Sam turns his head to follow a passing bicyclist, shading his eyes from the sun. “Yeah. Okay.” He straightens and gives the Impala a gentle slap on the roof.

“Wait,” Dean says. “I got something for you,” and he fumbles for the little sharp-cornered plastic box that contains his Led Zeppelin II cassette and, tucked snugly behind it, his secret stash of five neatly folded hundred-dollar bills.

Sam receives this from his outstretched fingers with a bemused look. “Dude, how the hell will I play this? Besides, this one’s your favorite.”

“Jesus, just take it, will you?” Take it: a memento, a souvenir, a keepsake. A relic. Starting the car, Dean gives Sam a nod and a last short wave, just a flash of his open palm. His brother’s mouth forms the word “Thanks,” inaudible over the engine’s rumble. He casts a thin distorted shadow on the sidewalk.

Dean pulls away from the curb. He travels a couple of blocks before making a right turn, and then another, and then another to circle back again. He bargains with himself: if Sam is still standing there, then Dean will stay awhile. Not long. A day. No more than two. Three at most.

He takes the last turn. The street is empty. The door of Sam’s apartment building is shut: clean, blank, final. The shadows of the trees stretch long and point to nothing.

Dean breathes again and turns his face back to the road. If his eyes are stinging, he can blame it on the blinding rays of the brilliant and oblivious sun.

***end***


Notes:
As far as I know, there is no town in California called Thalia. The “orphanage” where the djinn holes up is based loosely on the Preston School of Industry (Preston Castle) in Ione, CA.

The marsh area where Dean and Sam sit at the end of the story is Ravenswood Open Space Preserve. I’m not actually sure if you can get a car in there (probably not), but we’ll pretend.