[identity profile] summergen-mod.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] spn_summergen
Epilogue

They entered the emergency room, bloody and bedraggled.

Harold was on his feet but wobbly, pale from pain and blood loss. Mike and Asher were on each side of him, holding him up. Both boys were battered and dirty, moving slow and careful. Barry had a towel tied around his ankle and a twin clinging to each of his hands. Ben had no idea what he himself looked like. His shoulder still throbbed and had already bled through the bed sheet Scott had torn up and wrapped around his arm. His face stung, one eye already swelling closed. His whole body ached, and he was cold and empty in a way he’d never felt before.

Scott marched up to the front desk. “We need medical attention,” he told the nurse on duty. “And then I need to see someone from the local law enforcement. We took care of the lake monster no one bothered to warn us about.”

No one batted an eye at that, like maybe they really had known about the lake monster, and got everyone back where they needed to be and started fixing them up under Scott’s watchful, merciless eye.

It was pretty bad ass. If Ben didn’t feel so dead inside, he would have been impressed.

Ben was poked and prodded, his shoulder stitched and bandaged, the cuts of the things claws on his chest and ankle wrapped. The word shock was used, and someone gave him a shot of something that made him feel light and floaty.

“The good stuff,” Scott said with a pathetic attempt to smile.

At some point, he was put in a room with a window that looked out at the side of another building. He was in the pediatric ward, and though the room he was in was not private, the other bed was empty. The nurse put something or another on the TV, but there was a cheerful Wizard of Oz mural on the wall that was way more interesting. Dorothy and her group of body-part challenged friends were skipping towards the Emerald City. There was the Yellow Brick Road and the field of poppies. Toto danced around at his mistress’s feet.

Ben stared at it, tracing the black outlining of the figures with his eyes.

At some point, Scott came in. He sat in the chair next to Ben’s bed and started talking. He talked about how he had been so worried when they went to get everyone up and found the boys missing. He talked about how he and Barry had gone after them when the twins had confessed what they were up to, and how terrified he’d felt when he had seen Ben in the water with the creature over him. But he had arrived in time to see Mike take a chunk out of the creature’s skull with the nine, and he had gone to Ben immediately to drag him out of the water. Ben had been screaming, apparently, and Scott had been so scared, and he was so sorry, so, so sorry he had made Ben come on this trip.

“It’s okay, Scott,” Ben said, because Scott seemed to need it, and Ben really needed him to shut up.

Then Scott had given him a fleeting smile and told him that his mom was on her way and that he and Barry were going to take Asher and Mike and the twins to get some lunch. He would be back soon. Was that okay?

Ben nodded. Nothing sounded better than to be alone right now.

Scott left. Ben stared at the Emerald City on the fake horizon. There Dorothy and her friends would find the Wizard, and the Wizard would give everyone what they missing – a heart, a brain, courage, a way home. That seemed so significant somehow; he wished the drugs weren’t making him feel so fuzzy.

“We’re sorry.”

Ben looked over, and there were the twins standing beside his bed in matching green polo shirts that made him think of car engines for some reason.

“Why?” he asked.

“’Cause you lost stuff you wanted to keep,” Jake said.

“But don’t worry,” Owen added. “Even though some of its gone forever, there’s some left, and you’ll get it back one day.”

“Get what back?” Ben asked.

“Oh,” said Owen, “You’ll see.”

And though Ben wanted to push for more, to get a little more clarification on what exactly Ben would get back, Barry swept in, his ankle bandaged. He was wearing a green polo to match his kids’.

“There you are, boys!” he said, his false cheer firmly back in place. “Come on, let’s go get lunch and let Ben sleep.”

And then he ushered the twins out, chattering on about fries and shakes. The boys looked over their shoulders at Ben as they went, their looks grim and somehow pitying.

Ben settled back into his bed and found his eyes drawn to the mural on the wall again. He stared at it until his eyes drifted closed. He slept for the rest of the afternoon, oblivious to the two men who came to stand at his bedside for only a few minutes before leaving again.

Not that it mattered. He wouldn’t have remembered them, anyway.

***

Dean grumbled about having to put on the suit as usual, but the sharp edges that Sam had been listening to for the past year had faded from his words, and Sam couldn’t be bothered to drum up the usual annoyance. The Mark was gone, and with it the under-the-skin harshness of Dean’s every word and action. Maybe that had come at a price and maybe there were worse things coming, but he had his brother back, and he was so relieved that all the little things that usually drove Sam crazy were now just white noise in the background of his relief.

“This wouldn’t be necessary if someone would just talk to us,” Dean said, fiddling with his tie as he and Sam stepped off the elevator.

“Well, maybe the new victims will,” Sam said, steering them towards the nurse’s station. “It sounds like they’re tourists.”

Sam tried to sound hopeful, but his heart really wasn’t in it. This had been a frustrating case. They had already spent three days at and around the lake, finding absolutely nothing but empty public areas and suspiciously nonchalant reactions to the drownings. The number of deaths had climbed into the double digits in the past three months, but the sheriff was insisting that it was just a bad year for that kind of thing. Everyone else acted like the drownings were par the course in this time of year, more tourists at the lake and all, no need to be alarmed. It was almost as if there was a town-wide conspiracy to cover it up, and Sam would scoff at that notion except that he and Dean had seen it before.

Their only lead since arriving had come from a guy at the Gas-N-Sip the night before, an older guy with crazy eyes and a name tag that read Sal. He’d given them the creepy horror movie exposition act from the other side of the gas pump, warning them that they might not want to go down by the lake this year.

“Yeah?” Dean had asked while the pump ticked away. “Why’s that?”

“Lots of drownings,” he’d told them, eyes alight with inappropriate glee. “Suspicious drownings. My granny, well, she ain’t always right in the head, but she’s from the old country and she figures it’s grindylow. Don’t want to mess a grindylow. Nasty piece of work, a grindylow.”

He was like a caricature out of a Stephen King novel, but Sam couldn’t really blow him off. He and Dean had been thinking angry ghost, but a grindylow was a good possibility.

“If it is a grindylow, we’ve got a problem,” Sam had said when they were back out on the road.

“Yeah. Tell me about it,” was Dean’s grim reply.

Grindylows weren’t the small, simple creatures of British mythology that that grabbed small children with their long, spindly arms and drowned them. Grindylows were more along the lines of a Wendigo, huge and fierce, but way more powerful and a hell of a lot smarter. His father had gone on a hunt for a grindylow once when Sam was sixteen. He and six other hunters had gone after it, and he’d even refused to let Dean go when it had been his practice to take Dean on every hunt since Sam’s sixteenth birthday. They come back three people short and all beat to hell, and Sam had held off his attitude for a few days because the look in his Dad’s eyes…. Well, no other hunt had ever left John Winchester quite so haunted.

He and Dean had been on the verge of trying some other avenues of information that morning when the police scanner had spit out something about tourists and an attack at the lake, and they pulled out the Fed suits with the hope of talking to the victims before they had time to rework their memories of the situation and decide it was a near drowning or an alligator attack or whatever.

This was their best chance; if it was a grindylow, they needed to confirm it and then figure out the next step. Two hunters weren’t enough for this kind of hunt.

The nurse’s station was deserted, though Sam could hear murmur of voices in one of the rooms further down the hall, and they kept on walking. They already knew the room number, and it was better for them, really, to go in without alerting the staff. No one would stop them from seeing the patient or run interference on what he remembered.

A couple of kids were sitting in some nearby chairs as they passed. One was older, college aged maybe, leaning his head back against the wall with his eyes closed. The other one was most likely in his mid-teens, and he sat perched uneasily on the edge of his chair, one foot shaking nervously. Sam noticed them because they had similar boy band hair, and the younger one caught and held Sam eye as he passed, gaping at him in awe.

Sam frowned as they broke eye contact, suddenly uneasy.

“Mike,” the younger kid whispered, clearly unaware of how loud his whispering was. “It’s them.”

“Huh?” the other said sleepily, then sucked in a sharp breath. “Holy shit.”

Next to him, Dean slowed to a stop and gave Sam a questioning look. Sam shrugged, because yeah, he had no idea.

As one they turned back to the boys.

“Uh, can we help you guys?” Sam asked, stuffing his hands into his pockets. He looked between them, using his best stern law enforcement expression.

“You’re Sam and Dean, aren’t you?” the younger one said, eyes bright with excitement.

The older kid huffed. “Asher.”

“Do we know you guys?” Dean asked, suspicious.

The older kid got to his feet, moving slow and careful, one hand on his side. “I’m Mike Sorenson. This is my brother, Asher. You, uh, you saved us once.”

Sam eyed them both, trying to place them, but Dean snapped and aimed a finger at them. “Wait, Fitchburg, Wisconsin. The shtriga, right?”

The younger kid nodded eagerly. “Yeah. That’s us.”

The shtriga. Sam hadn’t thought about the shtriga in years, but he remembered that case pretty clearly. Dean had beaten himself up pretty badly over that one, finding fault and failure in himself where there was none to be had.

“Wow,” Sam said, unable to hold back the smile. Even Dean looked pleased. There was this tiny little burble of pride to see someone they had saved ten years on, alive and well. It didn’t happen a lot, but when it did, it made all the other crap that had happened to them hurt a little less, reminded them that they had done a lot of good among all the bad. It was even better when they were kids, kids who’d gotten the chance to grow up and have normal lives like these two. “That was like, ten years ago.”

“Yeah,” the older one said proudly. “I’m in college, and Asher is starting high school this year.”

“So are you guys here for the lake monster?” Asher asked with not an ounce of self-consciousness.

And all that elation of a job well done went out like a light.

“The lake monster?” Dean said, making the connection at the same time Sam did. These kids had survived a shtriga ten years ago only to be attacked by something else now.

“Yeah,” Mike replied. “Big and green. Sharp teeth, claws, glowing yellow eyes. It tried to lure us into the water and drown us.”

“Damn it, Sam,” Dean said, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “It is a grindylow.”

From that description? Yeah it was. Only the worst kind of monsters for the Winchesters.

“Are you guys okay?” Sam asked. They seemed okay, maybe a little battered now that Sam was looking, but there was no permanent damage if they were sitting out in the hall like this.

“No, man. Not really. I mean, we’re good, me and Asher.” He motioned between himself and his brother. “But not everyone is.”

“What happened?” Dean asked.

“Well,” Mike said, “Harold, our stepdad, always takes us on a yearly fishing trips with his college buddies…”

Mike told them a story about a fight between two of their stepdad’s friends and the one that came up missing. He told them about the weird weather and the screams of the missing friend in the middle of the night, and the monster that almost dragged one of them into the lake. They told them about the psychic twins and the plan they came up with and the creature’s trophy case build on the climbing frame of a playground. They told them about their friend Ben - who by the way, they had once saved from changelings, did they remember him? - had played bait because he had forgotten something really big, and how Mike had beat the thing to death with a nine iron and burned the body afterwards.

“Was that right?” Mike asked, head tilted to the side. “Should we have buried it or something?”

“Not necessarily. You did the right thing by burning it, though.” Sam’s throat was tight. Three teenagers and seven year old twins had taken down a grindylow, and Sam was damned proud. But his ears were ringing and his stomach had bottomed out because he did happen to remember their friend Ben who he and Dean had once saved from changelings.

Beside him, Dean had gone still, his jaw clenched so hard it must be hurting.

“What about your friend Ben?” Sam asked, because he knew Dean couldn’t right now. “Is he okay?”

Mike and Asher shared a loaded look.

“Yeah,” Mike said, “Physically, anyway. The thing took a bite out of his shoulder, but he’ll recover. He’s sort of weird, though. Like, not really there. The monster really messed with his head.”

Dean was white as a sheet. “What room is he in?”

“Four oh two, but-“

“But what?” Dean snapped.

Both boys flinched. Asher shrank back, taking half a step closer to his brother, but Mike straightened his shoulders and stood his ground, just as Sam would expect of a kid who beat a grindylow to death with a golf club. “I don’t know if you know this, but he doesn’t remember you, not really. And I guess you knew him pretty well at one point?”

Dean tensed up like someone was pulling out his fingernails one by one. “Yeah. I did.”

“Well, something made him forget you. The twins said it was big and bright and had a funny voice, whatever that means.”

Big. Bright. Funny voice.

Castiel. Right.

Dean’s eyes had gone dark, and he turned away, already heading for the elevator.

“Okay, thanks guys. We’re both really glad you’re all right.” Sam gave them a half-hearted smile. “You guys did good. Really good.”

Mike smiled weakly. “Thanks, but, um, be careful with Ben, okay?” The smile slid away and his eyes darkened. Asher gripped the sleeve of his hoodie, bunching it up between his fingers. “It was bad. The way he was screaming….”

Sam nodded, and cleared his throat. “Yeah. We’ll be careful.”

The elevator arrived with a ding, and Dean was getting on, going up to the fourth floor whether Sam was with him or not.

“Take care,” Sam said and hurried to catch up to his brother, sliding sideways between the doors just before they slid closed.

Dean was a wall of silence on the ride up. His jaw was clenched and his eyes were unseeing. Dean didn’t need this on top of mass of guilt he had now that the Mark was off, but he was getting it anyway, and Sam was going to make sure he didn’t doing something stupid.

Dean was really good at doing something stupid.

The fourth floor was the pediatric ward, and the room was two doors past the nurse’s station. Sam ignored the Wizard of Oz mural on the wall as they stepped into the room and tried not to think of Charlie, focusing instead on the kid slumped into the pillows, fast asleep.

It was Ben. Older, taller, but definitely Ben.

Dean swore as soon as he saw him, lying there beaten all to hell. The late afternoon sun was falling across the bottom of the bed, reflecting off the white waffled blanket, and the stark brightness highlighted just how much damage he had taken. The right side of his face was bruised and swollen, and one shoulder was wrapped and bound, a little bit of dried blood spotting it. The mother changeling hadn’t had Ben long enough to feed from him, and though Lisa had nearly died, Crowley’s kidnapping hadn’t so much as left a single bruise on Ben, but the grindylow had more than made up for the other two.

Sam kept a little back, giving Dean his moment as much solitude as he could. He expected Dean to touch him, to pet his hair or take his hand or something. Dean did reached out, hand trembling, but he snatched it back at the last second, clenched it hard at his side.

Sam wasn’t surprised.

“I’m sorry, Ben,” Dean muttered, and then a sharp pivot later, he was gone, stalking out of the room.

Sam sighed, and stood a minute more, watching Ben sleep. He had always thought Ben looked a little more like their dad than Dean, but had kept that opinion to himself. He could really see it now that Ben was older, something in the jawline and the shape of the eyes, and wondered idly if he was like John in other ways. If he was, Sam hoped he got all of the good and none of the bad.

“You did good, Ben.” Sam reached out and touched the back of his hand lightly because his brother hadn’t allowed it for himself. “You did really, really good.”

Ben shifted a little in his sleep, but didn’t wake.

Reluctantly, Sam turned, left him there sleeping and oblivious to their visit. Ben had had other people around him now, an uncle Mike Sorenson had mentioned and Lisa and probably Mike and Asher now, since facing down grindylows was the kind of thing that can make lifelong friendships. Dean didn’t have anyone but Sam, though, and on occasion, Castiel, and right now Dean was Sam’s priority.

Dean wasn’t in the hallway or at the elevator, and it took a little while, but Sam finally found him sitting in the Impala, his hands clenched on steering wheel at 10 and 2 and staring straight ahead.

“You okay?” Sam asked slipping into the passenger’s seat.

Dean gave him one of those smiles, brittle and pained, the kind that said he was anything but.

“I’m always okay, Sammy,” he said and started the car.

Liar, Sam thought, and let the matter go.
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