Northern Exposure for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
red_b_rackham (Part 1 of 3)
Aug. 29th, 2018 08:59 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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spn_summergenTitle: Northern Exposure
Recipient:
red_b_rackham
Rating: R
Word Count or Media: c12k
Warnings: Use of the F word
Author's Note: Dear R_b_R, I hope this hits at least some of your buttons! Based on the prompt asking for a MOTW case fic with stubborn hurt!Dean, because who am I to turn down a chance to hurt a Winchester? Hopefully this also hits some of your likes too. Note for canon purists - I’ve moved the timing of this case to June 2006, which is a couple of months later than canon.
Summary: Immediately after Sam and Dean escape from Green River County Detention Centre, they go deeper than deep by taking a long road trip to a job in Alaska.
Helpless, Dean watches with a pain-blurred sense of detachment as Sam rocks back on his haunches, maintaining the strange interwoven sing-song chant, the lighter voice of the woman, Ahnah, providing counterpoint with Sam’s tenor.
His little brother’s bulk is silhouetted against the twilight of the white-night solstice, the wide heavens behind Sam’s head maintaining an unreasonable cerulean blue at midnight.
Dean can clearly see the dark smoke-trail against the mother-of-pearl skies as the angry spirit is drawn out of his body. He screams in agony as the reluctantly departing creature tears him apart from the inside out.
The Alaskan night turns red, then black. Which is as it should be – the natural order tells Dean that night should be dark. He savors the satisfying rightness of it as he chases the darkness down.
The peace of unconsciousness doesn’t last long. He comes round, trembling and sweating. Sam’s hand is a heavy weight on his chest that feels restrictive rather than comforting. He can’t move; he feels as if he’s still at the bottom of the lake, breathing silt-heavy water instead of crystalline clear air.
“It’s ok, Dean. It’s gone.”
Dean closes his eyes against that fucking light that is all wrong for this time of night and wonders why Sam’s words bring no relief. Why the departure of the creature hasn’t ended the pain.
~0~0~0~
“Thought we were screwed before?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. We gotta go deep this time.”
“Deep, Dean? We should go to Yemen.”
“Oh, I’m not sure I’m ready to go that deep.”
Dean’s grin sent a stabbing pain through his cheekbone, while doing nothing to lighten Sam’s grim expression, so Dean gave up. He gritted his teeth, gripped the steering wheel and on a whim, turned Baby north. At least the rain had stopped before they’d finished digging the evil nurse’s grave – got to be grateful for the small wins, these days.
They drove in silence for the next few hours, until the rising sun painted the sky pale gold in the east. Dean had no specific destination in mind, but thought maybe swinging by Bobby’s in South Dakota would offer a few hours of uninterrupted sleep without worrying about the Feds.
By the time they pulled off the highway into a 24/7 gas station to refuel, the throbbing in Dean’s face had dulled to a low-level pain, which was at least useful for keeping him awake. Yeah, okay, very small wins.
Sam wandered out of the mini mart pocketing his cell phone while juggling with a handful of cheesy chips and sodas. Dean wished it was beer, but kept his mouth shut.
“How about Alaska instead?” Sam said, his voice muffled as he dumped the supplies onto the passenger seat. Dean stared blankly at Sam’s butt where it was sticking out of the car door, feeling like he’d missed two steps in the thought processes of that big geeky brain - again.
“Random, much? What do you mean, how about Alaska? It’s over three thousand miles away, Sam.”
“Bobby says there’s a case,” Sam straightened up and patted the bulge of the cell phone in his pocket, “and it’s probably far enough from Henriksen’s sphere of influence that he won’t think of looking for us there.”
“Come on, Sam, even God wouldn’t think of looking for us in fucking Alaska, and he’s supposed to be all-seeing and all-knowing!”
Sam leaned on the car roof and gave Dean one of those looks – the ones that accompanied a twinkle in Sam’s eye that warned Dean his little brother thought a killer argument was coming.
“It can be our Bolivia, but without the hail of bullets at the end,” Sam said, and his grin was sudden and blinding. “ You can be Sundance.”
Well okay then. Dean gave a dramatic sigh to disguise the fact his heart had just gone from lead to feather-light in the flash of Sam’s smile.
“You just keep thinkin' Butch.” Dean replied. “That's what you're good at.”
~0~0~0~
Some three thousand, eight hundred miles from South Dakota, and they rolled by something like this:
“Ok, Sam. Remind me. What the hell are we doing again?”
“A job, Dean, it’s just a job. You know, what we do – hunting things, the family business.”
“Yeah, right. A job in the absolute ass-end of the freaking world, that requires a four-day drive to get there, wherever there is. And requires us to cross into Canada for crissakes. Nobody in their right mind wants to go to Canada. Fucking mosquito infested backwoods, full of freaking bears and weird-ass, too-polite Mounties who lick moose shit…”
“You’ve been watching way too many reruns of Due South, dude.” Sam pointed out, but Dean was on a roll and didn’t miss a beat.
“…and deaf wolves, and ice hockey, and who the hell calls a town Trigger, anyway? Did they have a thing for Roy Rogers?”
Sam refrained from pointing out that Dean only had to suffer the four-day drive that passed through Canada because a certain person absolutely refused to fly, and wouldn’t countenance leaving his precious Baby behind to maybe use an alternative to flying - like a boat, for instance.
“Dean, Trigger the town was there decades before Roy Rogers and his horse. It was founded in three years after Fairbanks itself, in 1903.”
Sam tapped the folder on his lap that contained all Bobby’s research on the case, together with two forged military IDs and orders, which would serve in lieu of passports at the border crossing. He pulled out some of the case papers to study and automatically tuned Dean out – he didn’t think there were going to be many insights to be gained from Dean arguing that Trigger the horse was all right, but if the Impala was a horse she’d be much more intelligent and obviously way better looking. He knew from experience that Dean’s rambling litany would continue, regardless of whether his captive audience of one was listening or not. Dean’s seemingly endless list of grievances had started back in South Dakota, pretty much from the minute they’d left Singer Salvage. Bobby had made sure they were fully equipped for the journey, but sadly, Sam mused, Bobby hadn’t thought to provide Sam with a gag for Dean.
Dean had continued in the same vein on and off (mostly on) for the whole journey. The only diversion came when they crossed the Canadian border into Saskatchewan, which prompted a few pathetic puns about Sam being right at home there as he was a sasquatch – get it? Dean then refused to accept Sam’s criticism at the tenuousness of any link between the province and mythical creature, or accept the feebleness of the joke.
Sam knew Dean, and Dean hated silence, filled it with anything that came to mind. At the best of times it was music and deliberately off-key singing. At his most irritating, like now, it was grousing about anything and everything Dean could think of, especially if he thought it would annoy the hell out of Sam. It was all sound and fury, and signified nothing, other than Dean Winchester’s patented ability to be a dick at times. Dean felt it was all part of his big brother responsibilities to wind up his kid brother as much as possible. This bickering was as close as the Winchesters ever got to expressing affection for each other, and for once, Sam was very comfortable with that.
Laptop abandoned due to lack of wifi, Sam balanced Bobby’s paperwork on his knee, allowing the combined growl of the Impala’s rebuilt V8 engine and Dean’s intermittent bombardment of complaints wash over him in a soothing wave of background noise. Sam smiled. It felt so normal, and Sam would take any sized dose of normal after everything they’d been through lately. Every now and then he’d glance across at Dean just to bask in the lack of tension in the grip of Dean’s fingers on the worn leather-covered steering wheel, the easing of the tight lines round his lips, the casual elbow propped on the window.
From this angle Sam couldn’t see the slowly fading bruises that were their prison legacy. He could believe Dean was relaxed, if not downright happy, and it felt so much like a miracle he’d take it on face value for once.
~0~0~0~
Sometimes it felt like a long time since John Winchester’s death. Sometimes it felt like yesterday. Today was both.
Dad’s death and those parting words were still lodged in Dean’s brain like a sinus headache - but for the moment, at least, he could breathe easily again. Perhaps it wouldn’t last, perhaps in a little while the constricting band of iron wrapped around his ribs these last few months would return, but until then, Dean was going to enjoy the freedom. He relished the news from Bobby that their last job had saved Deacon’s life, as well as many of those inmates in the Green River County Detention Centre – deserving or not. He enjoyed the fact that Sam seemed so relaxed and happy, and ruthlessly squashed the stray fly of doubt that strayed into his head that buzzed about always losing people he loved, and having to save his kid brother from turning into Anakin Skywalker.
Which you know - nope, not gonna happen. Not on his watch.
And he had to admit, going to Alaska was deeper than deep. He might protest it was a barely more acceptable option than the Yemen in which to hide from Henricksen and his army of Feds, but it did mean they could still do their job. Saving people, hunting things. He turned his head slightly to hide the hint of a smile that was threatening to creep across his face and give the lie to the grumpy old man act he’d been putting on for Sam’s benefit for the last few days. Not that Sam would see it, because his little brother was snoozing with his head resting on the back of the seat, his mouth open wide enough to catch peanuts, if only Dean had any.
Dean kept one eye on the road while simultaneously scanning the sad, scrubby Yukon forest for the so-far elusive moose and bears, though really his mind was already jumping ahead to the case.
The anticipation of hunting something much more dangerous than any wild animal was the best antidote to the shit life threw at them that Dean could think of. The satisfaction of killing some evil son of a bitch without having to think about anything more complicated than the best way to take it down? There wasn’t much that could beat that feeling, apart from sex, maybe. Or pie. Mmm cherry pie…
Since there were no likely outlets for either a pie craving or killing monsters in sight, he turned the volume down on the radio (Station Middle-of-nowhere-in-Canada sucked out loud anyhow, all Bryan Adams and Celine fucking Dion) and turned to Sam.
Time to wake his brother up and annoy the hell out of him again.
“Okay, geek boy,” He said. He gave Sam a shove, grinning at the spluttering flail he got in response. “I haven’t seen a single bear or even a Mountie, so it’s up to you to entertain me. Fill me in on this wonderful case of yours again.”
He ignored Sam’s bleary-eyed glare at being woken, and let the familiar rhythm of his brother’s voice wash over him. Only half his attention was on Sam’s research; he knew full well there wasn’t much more to add from the work they’d already done with Bobby. The other half was on the long open road ahead, the wilderness and the freedom it symbolised. He grinned to himself when he thought about Henricksen and his G-men chasing shadows back in Green County, then let his grin grow wider when he remembered how the hot lawyer, Mara whatever-her-name-was, must have sent the Feds off on a wild goose chase to allow them to finish the case. It was good to know there were people on their side, sometimes.
Besides, Dean was good at multitasking, and though he might pretend otherwise, he was pretty damn good at retaining facts. Maybe not as good as Sam, with that freaky encyclopaedic brain of his, but good enough.
So he knew Trigger had originated as a gold mining town, an offshoot of the larger and more prosperous Fairbanks, but was now reduced to nothing more than a commuter suburb with a dwindling population that was being made even smaller by a series of strange and unexplained deaths. Sam and Bobby had done some preliminary research before the Winchesters had left Singer Autos, and their best guess was a vengeful spirit. Most likely it was some frustrated gold prospector from the early 1900s, as all of the deaths so far had the same MO.
The three otherwise unconnected victims had each been found at the old abandoned gold dredging station, their insides – lungs, stomachs, wind pipes, throats - thoroughly stuffed full of gravel and sand. Unlike Dredger # 8 at Fairbanks’ Gold Creek, only a few miles south, the Trigger dredger was no squeaky-clean tourist attraction, but a dangerous derelict hunk of machinery with deserted out-buildings, all surrounded by a large man-made, water-filled pit that had been used in the past to provide the water supply necessary for sifting gold from the same silt and gravel found inside the victims’ body cavities.
“Come on, Sammy, let’s skip the history lesson and get onto the good bits. Vic numero uno was the chick, right?”
Dean suppressed a grin at the sound of Sam’s deep sigh. That sound was usually accompanied by bitchface #21, and sure enough, when Dean glanced across, Sam’s face was twisted into his best long-suffering-little-brother-putting-up-with-the-wilfully-uneducated-big-brother look.
“The chick, Dean, had a name. Tanya Dennis, aged twenty-two, from Ohio. She was a tourist on a trip with a college party, and nobody seems to know why she was anywhere near Trigger, let alone its dredger, since her party were all supposed to be visiting the Fairbanks tourist trail. Anyhow, she went missing and some guy called Torngarsuk Clarke found the body three days later when he was walking his dog.”
“Wait, what was that? Torn what?”
“Torn-gar-suk, Dean. It’s an Inuit name. Apparently it means ‘powerful sky god’.”
“Powerful sky god, eh? Right.”
“Just…don’t.”
“Don’t what, Sammy?”
“I don’t know, Dean; whatever stupid remark, or Eskimo joke you were going to make, just don’t go there.”
Dean gave an exaggerated sigh of his own at that, but refrained from uttering the wonderful witticism he had been fishing around for, allowing Sam to continue uninterrupted with the run down on the other two victims.
Victim number two was a local, name of Andreas Betz. His wife had reported him missing but the local law enforcement hadn’t taken it too seriously. The guy was a notorious drunk, renowned for drinking Trigger’s lone bar dry, then staggering off to sleep rough in the woods, sometimes for a day or so. Usually he’d turn up with a hangover from Hades accompanied by an angry fist for his long-suffering wife.
“Sounds like he was just cruising for a bruising, dude,” was Dean’s conclusion on Betz. “Are you sure the abusive douchebag didn’t just drunk-stumble into the pit and drown?”
“Maybe,” Sam mused, “But that certainly doesn’t seem to apply to victim number three.”
“Right, the Mayor.”
“Yep. Mayor Maurice Miller - fine, upstanding citizen of Trigger. Fifty-five years old, fit and healthy, not known for anything more outrageous than occasionally doubling up as a DJ on Trigger’s local radio station. Apparently his DJ-ing style was a little – eccentric.”
“How eccentric?”
“Seems he liked show tunes and musicals, with a particular fondness for The Sound of Music.” Sam smiled as Dean winced, and added, “He also liked to sing along – while his mike was still switched on.”
“Oh, dude! If that’s not grounds for an angry spirit ganking him I don’t know what is. Shit, if I’d been forced to listen to that, I’d have ganked him myself!”
Dean gave an exaggerated shudder.
“Now I’ve got The Hills are Alive in my head, fuck you very much, Maurice! You too, Sam!”
The thought of all that distance stretching ahead with Julie Andrews as an earworm gave Dean the heebie geebies, and he reached on reflex for a Metallica tape. He slammed it into the cassette deck at full blast, which effectively ended the conversation for the next hundred miles or so.
~0~0~0~
The first person they met in Trigger was, as it turned out, the most useful contact they could have made. The short Inuit woman didn’t look that impressive at first glance. She was of indeterminate age, round faced and round bodied, though still attractive if Dean’s appraising leer was anything to go by. By now Sam wasn’t sure if Dean had any discernment at all when it came to women, as his brother seemed be attracted to ninety per cent of the female population under seventy five.
The woman greeted them with a smile and a wave as they pulled up to the first building they’d seen that looked like a store. She looked them up and down as they unfolded their crumpled Fed-suited bodies and climbed stiffly out of the Impala. They had donned the suits in the washroom of a gas station some fifty-odd miles before they reached Fairbanks – a tactical error, Sam reluctantly acknowledged as he vainly tried to smooth out the creases from his pants. Dean’s baby might give them a lot of legroom, but no car was kind to suits as cheap as these. In addition, the Impala was too low slung to exit gracefully when you were well over six foot tall, Sam thought, knowing he was being irritable, but too tired to care.
Sam was amused that Dean’s best sex-me-up grin only elicited a blank look, but the woman’s expression warmed when she scanned the Impala’s gleaming black and chrome.
“Oh, nice wheels!” She exclaimed with a low whistle of appreciation, and in Dean’s book, that was all it took. His heart was won, and he was convinced she had her head screwed on right. Sam could see the instant his brother forgot his momentary disappointment at the failure to score any points on the female attraction scale. Sam rolled his eyes as Dean’s proud grin lit up his face. Dean patted the dusty hood of his baby with a possessive hand as the woman continued her paean of praise.
“A sixty-seven Impala, right? Yeah, thought so. My papa had a sixty-nine Skylark until a couple of years ago; not as fine as this though.”
Sam stepped forward, hand out, ready to steer the conversation onto more useful topics for their investigation; like where they were going to stay, and possible sources of information - but Dean had somehow slipped in front of him and was already blathering on about the joys of classic cars. Sam thought about rolling his eyes again then decided against it. No point in wasting energy, since neither party was even aware he existed at that moment. Sometimes, living with his brother could cause bigger headaches than anything Sam’s psychic powers could produce.
Sam frowned and suppressed a shudder at the reminder of his so-called powers. He hated how the fear welled up inside his chest, and reflexively turned the fear into aggression. Maybe Dean should concentrate on saving his own ass from his little brother’s legitimate frustration, instead of saving said little brother from any Demon.
Sam gave a small, aggravated exhale, which Dean, of course, blithely ignored.
Sam was even more irritated when Dean’s conversational approach actually struck a rich seam of usefulness during the mutual bonding over the Impala. Dean’s genuine enthusiasm led seamlessly into a relaxed conversation about the woman, who’s name was Ahnah, her job, and Trigger in general.
It turned out that the place they’d stopped outside was a hardware store that doubled as both Trigger’s bar and social centre. Even more useful, Ahnah owned Trigger’s one and only motel. She pointed them in the right direction and also told them the best places in town to eat once they’d freshened up. There were only two choices; the pizza place Sam had already taken note of from Google Maps, and the bar.
Sam had a feeling that Ahnah hadn’t bought Dean’s cover story about them being Feds investigating the strange deaths, but also that she didn’t care who they really were, as long as they followed through on finding out what happened. Her tension had been palpable when Dean had touched on the topic of the strange murders.
Sam could feel her thoughtful dark eyes watching them as they got back into the Impala for the short drive down to her motel, where a younger, slimmer version of Ahnah, who could have been her kid sister, got them checked in.
~0~0~0~
To Part 2
Recipient:
red_b_rackhamRating: R
Word Count or Media: c12k
Warnings: Use of the F word
Author's Note: Dear R_b_R, I hope this hits at least some of your buttons! Based on the prompt asking for a MOTW case fic with stubborn hurt!Dean, because who am I to turn down a chance to hurt a Winchester? Hopefully this also hits some of your likes too. Note for canon purists - I’ve moved the timing of this case to June 2006, which is a couple of months later than canon.
Summary: Immediately after Sam and Dean escape from Green River County Detention Centre, they go deeper than deep by taking a long road trip to a job in Alaska.
Helpless, Dean watches with a pain-blurred sense of detachment as Sam rocks back on his haunches, maintaining the strange interwoven sing-song chant, the lighter voice of the woman, Ahnah, providing counterpoint with Sam’s tenor.
His little brother’s bulk is silhouetted against the twilight of the white-night solstice, the wide heavens behind Sam’s head maintaining an unreasonable cerulean blue at midnight.
Dean can clearly see the dark smoke-trail against the mother-of-pearl skies as the angry spirit is drawn out of his body. He screams in agony as the reluctantly departing creature tears him apart from the inside out.
The Alaskan night turns red, then black. Which is as it should be – the natural order tells Dean that night should be dark. He savors the satisfying rightness of it as he chases the darkness down.
The peace of unconsciousness doesn’t last long. He comes round, trembling and sweating. Sam’s hand is a heavy weight on his chest that feels restrictive rather than comforting. He can’t move; he feels as if he’s still at the bottom of the lake, breathing silt-heavy water instead of crystalline clear air.
“It’s ok, Dean. It’s gone.”
Dean closes his eyes against that fucking light that is all wrong for this time of night and wonders why Sam’s words bring no relief. Why the departure of the creature hasn’t ended the pain.
~0~0~0~
“Thought we were screwed before?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. We gotta go deep this time.”
“Deep, Dean? We should go to Yemen.”
“Oh, I’m not sure I’m ready to go that deep.”
Dean’s grin sent a stabbing pain through his cheekbone, while doing nothing to lighten Sam’s grim expression, so Dean gave up. He gritted his teeth, gripped the steering wheel and on a whim, turned Baby north. At least the rain had stopped before they’d finished digging the evil nurse’s grave – got to be grateful for the small wins, these days.
They drove in silence for the next few hours, until the rising sun painted the sky pale gold in the east. Dean had no specific destination in mind, but thought maybe swinging by Bobby’s in South Dakota would offer a few hours of uninterrupted sleep without worrying about the Feds.
By the time they pulled off the highway into a 24/7 gas station to refuel, the throbbing in Dean’s face had dulled to a low-level pain, which was at least useful for keeping him awake. Yeah, okay, very small wins.
Sam wandered out of the mini mart pocketing his cell phone while juggling with a handful of cheesy chips and sodas. Dean wished it was beer, but kept his mouth shut.
“How about Alaska instead?” Sam said, his voice muffled as he dumped the supplies onto the passenger seat. Dean stared blankly at Sam’s butt where it was sticking out of the car door, feeling like he’d missed two steps in the thought processes of that big geeky brain - again.
“Random, much? What do you mean, how about Alaska? It’s over three thousand miles away, Sam.”
“Bobby says there’s a case,” Sam straightened up and patted the bulge of the cell phone in his pocket, “and it’s probably far enough from Henriksen’s sphere of influence that he won’t think of looking for us there.”
“Come on, Sam, even God wouldn’t think of looking for us in fucking Alaska, and he’s supposed to be all-seeing and all-knowing!”
Sam leaned on the car roof and gave Dean one of those looks – the ones that accompanied a twinkle in Sam’s eye that warned Dean his little brother thought a killer argument was coming.
“It can be our Bolivia, but without the hail of bullets at the end,” Sam said, and his grin was sudden and blinding. “ You can be Sundance.”
Well okay then. Dean gave a dramatic sigh to disguise the fact his heart had just gone from lead to feather-light in the flash of Sam’s smile.
“You just keep thinkin' Butch.” Dean replied. “That's what you're good at.”
~0~0~0~
Some three thousand, eight hundred miles from South Dakota, and they rolled by something like this:
“Ok, Sam. Remind me. What the hell are we doing again?”
“A job, Dean, it’s just a job. You know, what we do – hunting things, the family business.”
“Yeah, right. A job in the absolute ass-end of the freaking world, that requires a four-day drive to get there, wherever there is. And requires us to cross into Canada for crissakes. Nobody in their right mind wants to go to Canada. Fucking mosquito infested backwoods, full of freaking bears and weird-ass, too-polite Mounties who lick moose shit…”
“You’ve been watching way too many reruns of Due South, dude.” Sam pointed out, but Dean was on a roll and didn’t miss a beat.
“…and deaf wolves, and ice hockey, and who the hell calls a town Trigger, anyway? Did they have a thing for Roy Rogers?”
Sam refrained from pointing out that Dean only had to suffer the four-day drive that passed through Canada because a certain person absolutely refused to fly, and wouldn’t countenance leaving his precious Baby behind to maybe use an alternative to flying - like a boat, for instance.
“Dean, Trigger the town was there decades before Roy Rogers and his horse. It was founded in three years after Fairbanks itself, in 1903.”
Sam tapped the folder on his lap that contained all Bobby’s research on the case, together with two forged military IDs and orders, which would serve in lieu of passports at the border crossing. He pulled out some of the case papers to study and automatically tuned Dean out – he didn’t think there were going to be many insights to be gained from Dean arguing that Trigger the horse was all right, but if the Impala was a horse she’d be much more intelligent and obviously way better looking. He knew from experience that Dean’s rambling litany would continue, regardless of whether his captive audience of one was listening or not. Dean’s seemingly endless list of grievances had started back in South Dakota, pretty much from the minute they’d left Singer Salvage. Bobby had made sure they were fully equipped for the journey, but sadly, Sam mused, Bobby hadn’t thought to provide Sam with a gag for Dean.
Dean had continued in the same vein on and off (mostly on) for the whole journey. The only diversion came when they crossed the Canadian border into Saskatchewan, which prompted a few pathetic puns about Sam being right at home there as he was a sasquatch – get it? Dean then refused to accept Sam’s criticism at the tenuousness of any link between the province and mythical creature, or accept the feebleness of the joke.
Sam knew Dean, and Dean hated silence, filled it with anything that came to mind. At the best of times it was music and deliberately off-key singing. At his most irritating, like now, it was grousing about anything and everything Dean could think of, especially if he thought it would annoy the hell out of Sam. It was all sound and fury, and signified nothing, other than Dean Winchester’s patented ability to be a dick at times. Dean felt it was all part of his big brother responsibilities to wind up his kid brother as much as possible. This bickering was as close as the Winchesters ever got to expressing affection for each other, and for once, Sam was very comfortable with that.
Laptop abandoned due to lack of wifi, Sam balanced Bobby’s paperwork on his knee, allowing the combined growl of the Impala’s rebuilt V8 engine and Dean’s intermittent bombardment of complaints wash over him in a soothing wave of background noise. Sam smiled. It felt so normal, and Sam would take any sized dose of normal after everything they’d been through lately. Every now and then he’d glance across at Dean just to bask in the lack of tension in the grip of Dean’s fingers on the worn leather-covered steering wheel, the easing of the tight lines round his lips, the casual elbow propped on the window.
From this angle Sam couldn’t see the slowly fading bruises that were their prison legacy. He could believe Dean was relaxed, if not downright happy, and it felt so much like a miracle he’d take it on face value for once.
~0~0~0~
Sometimes it felt like a long time since John Winchester’s death. Sometimes it felt like yesterday. Today was both.
Dad’s death and those parting words were still lodged in Dean’s brain like a sinus headache - but for the moment, at least, he could breathe easily again. Perhaps it wouldn’t last, perhaps in a little while the constricting band of iron wrapped around his ribs these last few months would return, but until then, Dean was going to enjoy the freedom. He relished the news from Bobby that their last job had saved Deacon’s life, as well as many of those inmates in the Green River County Detention Centre – deserving or not. He enjoyed the fact that Sam seemed so relaxed and happy, and ruthlessly squashed the stray fly of doubt that strayed into his head that buzzed about always losing people he loved, and having to save his kid brother from turning into Anakin Skywalker.
Which you know - nope, not gonna happen. Not on his watch.
And he had to admit, going to Alaska was deeper than deep. He might protest it was a barely more acceptable option than the Yemen in which to hide from Henricksen and his army of Feds, but it did mean they could still do their job. Saving people, hunting things. He turned his head slightly to hide the hint of a smile that was threatening to creep across his face and give the lie to the grumpy old man act he’d been putting on for Sam’s benefit for the last few days. Not that Sam would see it, because his little brother was snoozing with his head resting on the back of the seat, his mouth open wide enough to catch peanuts, if only Dean had any.
Dean kept one eye on the road while simultaneously scanning the sad, scrubby Yukon forest for the so-far elusive moose and bears, though really his mind was already jumping ahead to the case.
The anticipation of hunting something much more dangerous than any wild animal was the best antidote to the shit life threw at them that Dean could think of. The satisfaction of killing some evil son of a bitch without having to think about anything more complicated than the best way to take it down? There wasn’t much that could beat that feeling, apart from sex, maybe. Or pie. Mmm cherry pie…
Since there were no likely outlets for either a pie craving or killing monsters in sight, he turned the volume down on the radio (Station Middle-of-nowhere-in-Canada sucked out loud anyhow, all Bryan Adams and Celine fucking Dion) and turned to Sam.
Time to wake his brother up and annoy the hell out of him again.
“Okay, geek boy,” He said. He gave Sam a shove, grinning at the spluttering flail he got in response. “I haven’t seen a single bear or even a Mountie, so it’s up to you to entertain me. Fill me in on this wonderful case of yours again.”
He ignored Sam’s bleary-eyed glare at being woken, and let the familiar rhythm of his brother’s voice wash over him. Only half his attention was on Sam’s research; he knew full well there wasn’t much more to add from the work they’d already done with Bobby. The other half was on the long open road ahead, the wilderness and the freedom it symbolised. He grinned to himself when he thought about Henricksen and his G-men chasing shadows back in Green County, then let his grin grow wider when he remembered how the hot lawyer, Mara whatever-her-name-was, must have sent the Feds off on a wild goose chase to allow them to finish the case. It was good to know there were people on their side, sometimes.
Besides, Dean was good at multitasking, and though he might pretend otherwise, he was pretty damn good at retaining facts. Maybe not as good as Sam, with that freaky encyclopaedic brain of his, but good enough.
So he knew Trigger had originated as a gold mining town, an offshoot of the larger and more prosperous Fairbanks, but was now reduced to nothing more than a commuter suburb with a dwindling population that was being made even smaller by a series of strange and unexplained deaths. Sam and Bobby had done some preliminary research before the Winchesters had left Singer Autos, and their best guess was a vengeful spirit. Most likely it was some frustrated gold prospector from the early 1900s, as all of the deaths so far had the same MO.
The three otherwise unconnected victims had each been found at the old abandoned gold dredging station, their insides – lungs, stomachs, wind pipes, throats - thoroughly stuffed full of gravel and sand. Unlike Dredger # 8 at Fairbanks’ Gold Creek, only a few miles south, the Trigger dredger was no squeaky-clean tourist attraction, but a dangerous derelict hunk of machinery with deserted out-buildings, all surrounded by a large man-made, water-filled pit that had been used in the past to provide the water supply necessary for sifting gold from the same silt and gravel found inside the victims’ body cavities.
“Come on, Sammy, let’s skip the history lesson and get onto the good bits. Vic numero uno was the chick, right?”
Dean suppressed a grin at the sound of Sam’s deep sigh. That sound was usually accompanied by bitchface #21, and sure enough, when Dean glanced across, Sam’s face was twisted into his best long-suffering-little-brother-putting-up-with-the-wilfully-uneducated-big-brother look.
“The chick, Dean, had a name. Tanya Dennis, aged twenty-two, from Ohio. She was a tourist on a trip with a college party, and nobody seems to know why she was anywhere near Trigger, let alone its dredger, since her party were all supposed to be visiting the Fairbanks tourist trail. Anyhow, she went missing and some guy called Torngarsuk Clarke found the body three days later when he was walking his dog.”
“Wait, what was that? Torn what?”
“Torn-gar-suk, Dean. It’s an Inuit name. Apparently it means ‘powerful sky god’.”
“Powerful sky god, eh? Right.”
“Just…don’t.”
“Don’t what, Sammy?”
“I don’t know, Dean; whatever stupid remark, or Eskimo joke you were going to make, just don’t go there.”
Dean gave an exaggerated sigh of his own at that, but refrained from uttering the wonderful witticism he had been fishing around for, allowing Sam to continue uninterrupted with the run down on the other two victims.
Victim number two was a local, name of Andreas Betz. His wife had reported him missing but the local law enforcement hadn’t taken it too seriously. The guy was a notorious drunk, renowned for drinking Trigger’s lone bar dry, then staggering off to sleep rough in the woods, sometimes for a day or so. Usually he’d turn up with a hangover from Hades accompanied by an angry fist for his long-suffering wife.
“Sounds like he was just cruising for a bruising, dude,” was Dean’s conclusion on Betz. “Are you sure the abusive douchebag didn’t just drunk-stumble into the pit and drown?”
“Maybe,” Sam mused, “But that certainly doesn’t seem to apply to victim number three.”
“Right, the Mayor.”
“Yep. Mayor Maurice Miller - fine, upstanding citizen of Trigger. Fifty-five years old, fit and healthy, not known for anything more outrageous than occasionally doubling up as a DJ on Trigger’s local radio station. Apparently his DJ-ing style was a little – eccentric.”
“How eccentric?”
“Seems he liked show tunes and musicals, with a particular fondness for The Sound of Music.” Sam smiled as Dean winced, and added, “He also liked to sing along – while his mike was still switched on.”
“Oh, dude! If that’s not grounds for an angry spirit ganking him I don’t know what is. Shit, if I’d been forced to listen to that, I’d have ganked him myself!”
Dean gave an exaggerated shudder.
“Now I’ve got The Hills are Alive in my head, fuck you very much, Maurice! You too, Sam!”
The thought of all that distance stretching ahead with Julie Andrews as an earworm gave Dean the heebie geebies, and he reached on reflex for a Metallica tape. He slammed it into the cassette deck at full blast, which effectively ended the conversation for the next hundred miles or so.
~0~0~0~
The first person they met in Trigger was, as it turned out, the most useful contact they could have made. The short Inuit woman didn’t look that impressive at first glance. She was of indeterminate age, round faced and round bodied, though still attractive if Dean’s appraising leer was anything to go by. By now Sam wasn’t sure if Dean had any discernment at all when it came to women, as his brother seemed be attracted to ninety per cent of the female population under seventy five.
The woman greeted them with a smile and a wave as they pulled up to the first building they’d seen that looked like a store. She looked them up and down as they unfolded their crumpled Fed-suited bodies and climbed stiffly out of the Impala. They had donned the suits in the washroom of a gas station some fifty-odd miles before they reached Fairbanks – a tactical error, Sam reluctantly acknowledged as he vainly tried to smooth out the creases from his pants. Dean’s baby might give them a lot of legroom, but no car was kind to suits as cheap as these. In addition, the Impala was too low slung to exit gracefully when you were well over six foot tall, Sam thought, knowing he was being irritable, but too tired to care.
Sam was amused that Dean’s best sex-me-up grin only elicited a blank look, but the woman’s expression warmed when she scanned the Impala’s gleaming black and chrome.
“Oh, nice wheels!” She exclaimed with a low whistle of appreciation, and in Dean’s book, that was all it took. His heart was won, and he was convinced she had her head screwed on right. Sam could see the instant his brother forgot his momentary disappointment at the failure to score any points on the female attraction scale. Sam rolled his eyes as Dean’s proud grin lit up his face. Dean patted the dusty hood of his baby with a possessive hand as the woman continued her paean of praise.
“A sixty-seven Impala, right? Yeah, thought so. My papa had a sixty-nine Skylark until a couple of years ago; not as fine as this though.”
Sam stepped forward, hand out, ready to steer the conversation onto more useful topics for their investigation; like where they were going to stay, and possible sources of information - but Dean had somehow slipped in front of him and was already blathering on about the joys of classic cars. Sam thought about rolling his eyes again then decided against it. No point in wasting energy, since neither party was even aware he existed at that moment. Sometimes, living with his brother could cause bigger headaches than anything Sam’s psychic powers could produce.
Sam frowned and suppressed a shudder at the reminder of his so-called powers. He hated how the fear welled up inside his chest, and reflexively turned the fear into aggression. Maybe Dean should concentrate on saving his own ass from his little brother’s legitimate frustration, instead of saving said little brother from any Demon.
Sam gave a small, aggravated exhale, which Dean, of course, blithely ignored.
Sam was even more irritated when Dean’s conversational approach actually struck a rich seam of usefulness during the mutual bonding over the Impala. Dean’s genuine enthusiasm led seamlessly into a relaxed conversation about the woman, who’s name was Ahnah, her job, and Trigger in general.
It turned out that the place they’d stopped outside was a hardware store that doubled as both Trigger’s bar and social centre. Even more useful, Ahnah owned Trigger’s one and only motel. She pointed them in the right direction and also told them the best places in town to eat once they’d freshened up. There were only two choices; the pizza place Sam had already taken note of from Google Maps, and the bar.
Sam had a feeling that Ahnah hadn’t bought Dean’s cover story about them being Feds investigating the strange deaths, but also that she didn’t care who they really were, as long as they followed through on finding out what happened. Her tension had been palpable when Dean had touched on the topic of the strange murders.
Sam could feel her thoughtful dark eyes watching them as they got back into the Impala for the short drive down to her motel, where a younger, slimmer version of Ahnah, who could have been her kid sister, got them checked in.
~0~0~0~
To Part 2
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